Learning by Heart – week 15

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

~M is 4 years old~

SHELF ACTIVITIES:

Sewing buttons – M watched me hand sew a quick repair job on his pillow several days ago, and was very, very interested.  So I set out this little button sewing activity for him: 

He used an embroidery needle and yarn to sew the buttons onto the cotton fabric.  Here’s how it turned out: He did a great job and really enjoyed it too.  He had to hang it in the window for the “birdies to see”. {Sigh – we have too many things hanging in our windows for just this reason.  We honestly can barely see out of a few, but it’s hard to take things down!}

 

Tying knots – this was supposed to be for knot-tying practice:

I thought M would love this, but no.  He was disappointed that it wasn’t a lacing card and didn’t have a picture on it.  Then he asked for train lacing cards, so I have made some for next week. (I would just let him use my shoes for knot practice.  I know he would love that, but I’m really not interested in untying knots in my shoes!  I’ll have to find an old pair somewhere.  Or maybe Daddy’s shoes. :) )

 

Pipeline Game – I found this several months ago at a thrift store, and I put it out on M’s shelves once in a while as a fine motor work.  This time we actually played the game, several times, and it’s a lot of fun.  There is a die to roll that tells you what shape pipe you get and the goal is to create a pipeline from your starting side to the opposite side of the board.  Your opponent can block you and “cap” your pipeline, and then you have to start over.  It really is a lot of fun and we’ve all been enjoying it (too bad I don’t have an action shot!): 

 

Design and Drill – this is a new, great little activity for M.  The drill really works, and has 3 bits that go with it, all of which work on the included bolts.  That’s neat in and of itself, but there are also 20+ designs included; M picks one, then puts out all the bolts needed, drills them in, then un-drills them and starts over again.  It’s neat because he has to mentally transfer the design from the card to the board (usually by counting each row to see how many blank spaces there are before the first bolt):

 

Picture Pies – these are from a great little book titled, Picture Pie by Ed Emberley; you can make almost anything by cutting out a circle, then cutting it into a variety of shapes.  I’ve been choosing a design from the book, then drawing the circles and cutting lines for M, and giving him a small drawing showing how to put the pieces together, or simply showing him the design in the book.  This week he did a bird and a mouse:

  I think these will be a feature on his shelves many times in the weeks to come!

 

Biggie Fuse Beads – these were a hit again, as always.  This time, M came up with his own designs, then took a lot of care in getting it “just right” on the peg board.  Here is a car he made, with a road beneath it and sky (with clouds) above it.  You can see the seat and the steering wheel too. :)        

 

 

  “TOGETHER” ACTIVITIES:

Math Skills:

We haven’t done much in the way of Math, although I do think the Picture Pies and Design and Drill mentioned above definitely qualify as math activities.

This week I tried to help M understand why teens look the way they do – he can count to 100, but he is having trouble identifying written numerals.  He’ll say “two, five” instead of “twenty-five”.  (Small digression here – when I say he’s having trouble, I mean it is troubling him that he can’t identify them; I honestly have no problem with it and know that he’ll eventually get it, but since it’s something he’s interested in learning, I’m happy to help him out a bit.)

I printed out some number cards (I can make these available as a printable file if anyone is interested – let me know!), and grabbed our homemade Montessori bead bars.

First We put a ten bead bar to the left and a single digit bead bar to the right (4 is pictured here).  Then we took the 10 card (which he can identify) and placed it above the appropriate bead bar, and did the same with the 4 card: 

Then we “chugga-chugga-choo-chooed” our bead bars together, and counted them – fourteen!

Then we “chugga-chugga-choo-chooed” our number cards together and I showed M how to place the 4 on top of the 0 so that it was right over the 4 bead bar, and the 1 (for 1 ten bead bar) was right over the 10 bead bar: 

Fourteen beads to count, and the number 14 to show it.  We did this with all the teens, and I then showed him how 20 is simply 2 10 bead bars.  It was much simpler to do this than it sounds in writing it all out! :)

He got it, but was ready to quit at 20.  I can’t tell yet whether this really sunk in or not, but the chugga-chugga-choo-chooing was pretty fun. :)

 

Literacy Skills

Rhyming:

M is all about rhyming now, so I stuck the following letter magnets to the side of our dishwasher:We sounded out ‘at’, then picked a couple of the other letters to place in front of the ‘at’ and had fun making up rhymes –”the cat sat on the bat under the mat and gave him a pat” and that sort of thing. :)

 

More Rhyming:

I grabbed a little bowl full of miniature objects and we took turns closing our eyes while the other one picked an object and hid it in their hands.  The person with the hidden object had to give rhymes as clues to help the other person guess the hidden object.  I was surprised that M had trouble making rhymes for words that had more than one syllable.  He always tried to make a rhyme for just the first syllable and nothing for the rest of the word, which made my guessing pretty difficult sometimes. :)  Also, a couple of times I tried to give him hints with the beginning letter and a rhyme, like “it starts with ‘z’ and rhymes with ‘bebra’” and this just completely floored him, hee hee.  We’ll play this again some time; it will be interesting to see how he progresses.

Spelling and Letter Formation:

One day M got out a bunch of toothpicks and wrote his name with them.  This was completely on his own, and he was really very proud of himself:Yes, it’s backwards.  Totally backwards.  This didn’t bother him, but he did tell me that it was too hard to make “baby” letters with toothpicks, so he decided to make most of them “mama” letters.  I think it’s interesting that he has picked up on the fact that only the first letter of his name should be upper case, and I’m just a tiny bit worried about the backwards thing. 

I will be posting about our science experiment of the week on Sunday – don’t miss it! :)

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner, Friday Wrap Up,and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Indoor exercise for those long, long, long, loooong winter days

In Minnesota we are used to winter.  This doesn’t mean we like it, but we are used to it.  Some days, like when the wind chill is 30 degrees below zero (fahrenheit), we don’t go outside.  I know that at least 20 minutes outside every day, regardless of the weather, is one of the best things for children.  But seriously, when it’s dangerously cold out and it takes 30 minutes to bundle them up and 30 minutes to unbundle them, not to mention mopping up wet floors and making hot chocolate and etc. etc. etc. – the going outside thing is just not going to happen.

And since this year it’s winter pretty much everywhere, I thought I’d share some great kid exercise cds we’ve found and have been putting to good use lately.

I know that most kids don’t need something structured like this to act wild inside, and get their “exercise”; but after several days inside I’ve found that M needs a little something to get him up off the floor where he’s staring at his trains going around and around and around.  I try telling him to get up and do something!  But inside the house there’s just not as much inspiration for something active to do, like there is outside.  And since I don’t really want him deciding to sled down the basement stairs on his old crib mattress (yep!), these cds come in very handy.

We’ve checked out many from our library, but here are our top 3:

Wiggle Wiggle and Other Exercises, by Bobby Susser.  This is a fun one, with exercises put to song – there’s one for stretching and strengthening your muscles, one for just wiggling to the music, etc.  They are basic, pretty easy, and easy to follow.  M loves the one about Marching in a Circle.

Silly Willy Workout, by Brenda Colgate is probably my favorite, because not only is it super fun, but there’s also a short narration for each song that explains what to do as the song plays.  There’s also a great variety of exercises.  This cd also has the option of listening to the songs without the beginning narration, once you are used to doing them.

Preschool Aerobic Fun, by Georgiana Stewart – this cd has warm up, moderately vigorous, vigorous, and cool down exercises.  Each one is labeled on the cd, so when we don’t have time for the entire cd, I just program our player to play one or two songs for each category so we still get in a warm up, active exercise (which will give you some REAL exercise!), and a cool down.   This one also has instrumental selections like the bunny hop, which is so much fun!

Have a beautiful, energetic day! :)

Learning by Heart – January

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

The sweet deer that visit us weekly at our nature center.
  We are getting to be good friends with these graceful and beautiful animals. :)

I’m not sure where the time has gone this month!  We haven’t done a ton of learning activities, but we are slowly getting back into the swing of things.  I’m re-thinking and re-planning some things as we go.  I’ll try to just hit the highlights of this month in this post (sorry if it gets too long!).

~M is 4 years old~

SHELF ACTIVITIES
(independent or semi-independent activities)

Mostly, I’ve been rotating toys on M’s shelves this month.  New toys from Christmas make this easy to do for a while.  I have plans to create a page where I can list all the activities I rotate on the shelves for M, because I think it’s fun to read that kind of thing, but also because I think it gets kind of tedious on these weekly posts to keep listing the same things time after time.  I will, however, make sure to mention any new items that I put out for him.

Folding:

M folds laundry like a pro (towels and washcloths mostly), but has been practicing his paper-folding skills since we got this great little book.  He loves this book, and I let him do as many pages as he wants.  He tends to get obsessed with something until he has mastered it; apparently this is just what makes him happy and how he learns best, so I don’t really follow the rule of stopping an activity while he’s still enjoying it.  Doing that frustrates him and makes him less likely to take it up again.  Here’s a little example of what this book is like:

See the little mouse?

Eek!  It’s really a giant elephant! ;)

It is so much fun – I’m not much of a fan of traditional workbooks, but the Kumon group of books is excellent.

 

Cutting and Pasting – I cut construction paper in several colors to size, hole-punched the edges, stuck it all in a 3-ring binder and gave it to M for his own photo album: He has his own digital camera (an old camera of ours that doesn’t have a memory card, but takes about 20 pictures at a time), so I’ve been printing out some of his photos for him.  He loves to cut them out and place them on the pages.  He actually uses double-stick tape most of the time for the “pasting” part of this.  I think it will be so much fun for him to look back through when he’s older.  It’s not the best quality, but it’s simple, inexpensive, fun, and a good way to sharpen those scissor skills. :)

As you can see, he’s fond of self-portraits, hee hee:

 

Mazes and dot-to-dots - I also made a little book of these for M.  The mazes were from another Kumon book, and the dot-to-dots were something I found on Amazon.  I cut off the binding and placed each page in a page protector, then all of it went into another 3-ring binder:

This has been a big hit with him.  There are, I think, roughly 80 mazes – great for reasoning skills and fine motor skills.  The dot-to-dots each go up to 100, which is a real challenge for him right now, and we normally do those together.  Since the pages are all in page protectors, he uses a dry-erase marker to do them, erases them with a piece of felt, and then does them over and over again.  I think this will be a great car-trip book!

Math: Not much has been done on this front, although M continues to enjoy counting anything and everything.  One day he decided he wanted to count to 100 and surprised himself by actually doing it. :)  He only needs a little help once in a while, and he does not recognize the written higher numbers, but wants to, so that’s what we’ll do next. 

Science: M loves doing this: 

Mixing colors of water in an ice cube tray.  He asked to do this, which he does from time to time.  It’s one of his favorite things.  He likes to watch the colors mix, use the pipette, etc.  Normally he then asks for these ice cubes when he’s taking a bath, and enjoys watching them melt and color the bath water.

We’ve been doing one mama-led science experiment per week, and I’ll post about these at Science Sunday on Ticia’s blog – stay tuned!

As you may know, M is obsessed with all things electric, especially light bulbs and batteries.  He has been itching to know how these things are made, and I found a couple of interesting you tube videos about just that – How Light Bulbs are Made, and How Batteries are Made.  He was fascinated by the machines that make these things and loved the videos, although I’m not sure how much he really understood (the voice over sounds like a computer voice and has what might be a British accent).  I was pretty fascinated too!

 

Literacy:  We’ve been reading, reading, and reading some more these past weeks.  We are content for now for that to be the main thing in this area.  Actually, more than content, we are loving it.  I feel like we’ve found so many great books lately, which I hope to post about soon.  I’ve decided to wait until this fall to start any book units with extension activities – that’s what we will do if M doesn’t go to a “real” preschool then.  We’ve been reading chapter books at lunch over several days, and picture books for about 1/2 hour each afternoon (snuggle time!).  M’s comprehension of the longer books continues to amaze me.  Sometimes he understands things I don’t even catch!  He’s developing a real love of books, which makes this mama very happy. :)

He is also a rhyming fiend.  Everything has to rhyme lately – oh goodness, you can imagine the nonsense going on here.  Things like, “Mommy, did you ever see a bug licking a fug?”  {Sigh}  or “Are you a dishwasher, made out of fishfasher?”  {Sigh again}

I found some great nursery rhyme sequencing cards here.  I made a little cardstock mat to place them on: 

I printed out several sets of sequencing cards, and by looking at the cards, M was usually able to tell which poem they were for.  Then we’d say it together and then he’d say it again, while setting the cards out, in order, on the appropriate square.  He really enjoyed this.  I’ll probably set this out on his shelf with more cards for him to do independently.

 

Karen at Prekinders has these fantastic rhyming mats and cards, which we also did.  M always enjoys doing these!

 

Art:  We’ve started going to a weekly music class – it’s very informal – lots of playing around with a great assortment and variety of instruments, some movement songs, and lots of rhythm activities.  We enjoy it a lot, but I’ve noticed it’s the same activities, in the same order each week.  Occasionally there’s a new song thrown into the mix, but there just isn’t enough variety to keep us interested in going each week.  There are only 6 more sessions, so I think we’ll try to make it to 2 or 3 more.  It could be such a wonderful program if a little more effort went into the planning.

As far as other art – this drawing cracks me up:

It’s just a regular drawing of him, but see the rectangle drawn around him?  And how his feet aren’t touching the bottom?  It’s M jumping!  Hee hee, I love it.

We’ve also been doing one planned art project per week.  Most recently, we colored on white construction paper with crayons, then rubbed over it with mineral oil.  This was an idea from one of Mary Ann Kohl’s books (can’t think of which one right now), and it was supposed to make the colors brighter.  It didn’t really seem to be working, so I showed M how to make a loopy design and then color in each open area, hoping that with more color all over the paper it would work better.

It worked okay, and actually the oil made the paper seem more like a thick vellum, which was pretty neat.  We hung the finished artwork in the window to be a suncatcher, but unfortunately we haven’t had much sun lately.

 

Miscellaneous:  Lately I wander around my house, seeing things like this:

M has definitely mastered his screwdriver skills, and I realized that I really don’t need to worry about providing many fine motor skill activities for him anymore. :)

 

This is a little old, but every year, once Christmas is finished, we set our tree outside and make treats for the animals:

We also read The After Christmas Tree, by Linda Wagner Tyler:   which talks about the tree’s “second season of giving”. 

 

Finally, I’m not sure what category this falls into, but it was fun!  I filled a bowl with water, added a bunch of small objects, and let it freeze outside overnight.  The next day M chiseled away at it to get all the little things out.  He really enjoyed this!

 

Hope your winter is full of coziness! 

 

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner, Friday Wrap Up,and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Melted Crayon Christmas Trees (or any other shape you’d like)

I know this is not an original idea; I think many moms have tried this at one time or another.  But I thought I’d write about it because it was just so much fun for M.  I first saw the idea several years ago in MaryAnn Kohl’s book, Scribble Art. 

M has been asking to melt crayons into shapes since we made heart crayons for Valentine’s Day.  This kid grabs onto an idea and does not let it go. 

10 months later I finally gave in.  :)

Actually, the real reason we haven’t done it is that I’ve only had heart shaped muffin tins (the silicone kind).  So when I saw some cute tree-shaped ones at Target I grabbed them and one day last week I gave M the good news (you could use cookie cutters, but I felt too lazy to go to all that work, lol).  Boy, was he ever excited.  He spent a good 10 minutes at the kitchen counter going through his bucket of crayons and picking out the ones he wanted to use. 

Like this:

Yep, just hanging there like a monkey, sorting crayons.  Did I mention he was excited?  (No, he wasn’t drinking the Coke in the background, that’s just for Mama, hee hee.)

After finding a variety of colors, with a good assortment of green shades, and peeling off all the papers, it was time to break the crayons up.  M came up with the hammer idea on his own.  Putting them in a plastic baggie first was my idea. ;)

He’s hammering them into tiny pieces in the photo below.  Hammering so hard his mouth is hanging open and you can’t really see the hammer because it’s moving so fast.  This may have been his favorite part:

We pulverized the greens first, and placed a layer of them in each mold:

Then the pretty colored ones were sprinkled on top:
You want these to be sort of thick, otherwise they may break when you pry them out of the molds.  We filled our molds up just a little less than halfway.

We put them in a 150 degree oven for 15 minutes, pulled them out, and as they started to harden, I poked a straw into them to create the hole for the ribbon.  Then we put them in the fridge to finish hardening and to loosen up a bit, for another 15 minutes. 

We popped them out of the molds (all the trunks broke off, darn it), tied on ribbons, and picked out one for each grandmother:

We colored with the rest for a while, and then hung them on our Christmas tree.  Aren’t they pretty?

Honestly, this was such an easy project for me – M did almost all the work, and loved every second of it, from finding the “right” crayons, peeling the papers off, and just about everything else.  All I did was put them in the oven and take them out.  Well, I tied the ribbons too.  But really, as easy as this was, I was surprised at the amount of pure happiness it gave him.  I definitely have to find more (cheap) shaped silicone muffin pans!

Have a beautiful day! :)