What Bear is Reading

Gifts is a book we have been enjoying since Bear was about 15 months. I had put it away for a while, but we have been reading it again lately. It is a wonderful story of a grandma who goes a travelling and asks her granddaughter what she would have her bring.  The story rhymes lyrically and flows without missing a beat.  As the story progresses, the little girl grows up.  The little girl, now grown up, ends the book by saying to her own child, "My gran had such a wonderful time, that now we are going, too. And everything she gave to me, I'm going to give to you."
The story is beautifully illustrated with Barbara Reid's award winning Plasticene art.  Bear and I love to gaze at all the details in the illustrations.
I love the story even more now as we head into the new year and our geography "work". There's a map of the world on both inside covers with pins stuck in the places where the grandma went a travelling.  The illustrations depict each location wonderfully.

I highly recommend this book.

See here for other book recommendations.

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Geography Lesson and Postcard Exchange Revisited

As I mentioned in this post Bear and I are trying to collect as many postcards as possible.  We've quite a list going, but if you read our blog and haven't participated because you don't want to do the whole pay-it-forward project, we would still appreciate just a single exchange.  I particularly would love if any readers in  

Asia, South America, and Africa 

 would consider sending us a card.  I am so amazed that I actually have readers from all these countries! 

Bear knows all her continents and I think she would be thrilled if she had a postcard from each continent. 

If any one wants a card from Costa Rica....

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Air Pressure - An Experiment

We're on a science kick at the moment.  Here's another easy experiment.

You need a small glass (we used a small empty Gerber container). a piece of cardboard to cover the glass, and water.

I highly recommend doing this over the sink, just in case.

1. Fill your glass completely with water.

2. Place the cardboard over the glass.

3. Hold the cardboard and turn the glass upside down.

Ask your little one to predict what will happen when you remove your hand.

Remove your hand from under the cardboard and be totally amazed that the cardboard stays there.  The air pressure pushes up on the cardboard and keeps it there!

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Solids and Liquids

What better way to explore the states of solids and liquids than by helping Mommy prepare a chocolate fondue?  Bear was fascinated to see the chocolate melting.

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Tot School

Prereading

 

 An alphabet bingo game.  We took the letter tiles and matched them to their upper case. So easy, Bear got bored quickly, but wanted to keep playing because she loves the buttons.

 

Using the Melissa & Doug Alphabet Puzzle Book to find "what sound does lion start with" and so on.  I love that the pieces are magnetic.  I find the book aspect of this puzzle to be a bit of a frustration factor though; hence the cookie sheet.

 

Spelling using Boggle Jr.

 

Math

 

Don't know why this picture won't center.  More of this fraction puzzle.  She asks for it daily.

 

I made a snowman counting game for her, focusing on numbers 1 through 5.  She flips a number tile then places the corresponding number of buttons on the snowman.  Notice she "helped" decorate the snowman with her markers before she started with the buttons.

I posted about the above game here, but we did two variations.  One where we played with buttons instead of pompoms, and another in which she sorted Cheerios, Goldfish crackers, Cornflakes, dried blueberries and raisins.  You could play it with candy, but Bear isn't allowed candy.

Art

Painting and oil pastels.  You can see her star project here.

Science

We made crystals and explored solids and liquids while making chocolate fondue.

Fine Motor Skills 

Grating soap to make soap balls.

 

Transferring water by squeezing it out of a sponge.  Great for finger and hand muscles.

 

Her Melissa & Doug Latches Board.  She spends lots of time with this one.

And building "chateaux" with her Melissa & Doug Unit Blocks.  The fairies have moved from their tree stump.

To see what other's are doing in Tot School, visit Carisa's blog.

I feel that the activities we are doing are more advanced and address preschool learning objectives; therefore, I will be moving on to join Jolanthe's Preschool Corner the first week of January.    This coming week will mark the last of our Tot School posts.  We hope you continue to follow our learning activities over at the Preschool Corner.

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Stars - Oil Pastel Resist

Bear loves her new oil pastels.  They are so much better than using Mommy's ancient broken ones.  After she had explored using them a bit, I drew a star using the silver and gold pastels.

I drew dots for her and she connected these inside the stars.  

 

Then she added watercolors.  This one is hers.

 

Mommy got in on the fun too.  This one is mine. 

 

This kept her engaged for a really long time.  She did a total of 8 stars in the same session!

It makes a good project to go with a lesson on the three wise men or Epiphany.

It also goes well with a book we've been reading called The Christmas Star.

.

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Crystals

Here is a wonderful wintery science experiment that could potentially become a tree ornament for next year's tree.

You need 3 Tbsps of Borax for 1 cup of boiling water, a wide mouthed jar and some pipe cleaners.

1. Make a snowflake shape with your pipe cleaners.

2. Make sure snowflake fits in jar.

3. Fill jar with boiling water and add Borax.  Stir to dissolve.

4. Hang snowflake in the jar.

5. Go play.  Come back later to observe.

Be amazed that there are crystals growing on your pipe cleaner snowflake!

 

A word of advice: if you want your snowflake to maintain its snowflake appearance, do not leave it in the jar too long or you will have so many crystals, it no longer resembles a snowflake.

Observe snowflake through the magnifying glass.

Observe other crystals (salt and sugar) through the magnifying glass.

Did you know that every crystal has a different shape, and that this shape is maintained regardless of size?

Here is more information and directions on how to make sugar crystals (we tried, but it didn't work - I must have not put enough sugar).

The original idea came from the Martha Stewart website.

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Daily Top Ten for the New Year

It's that time of year when I start thinking about New Year's Resolutions and examining what works and doesn't work in our routines (or lack of them) at home. 

I was inspired by my friend Nicole at  Tired, Need Sleep to write my own list of the  

top ten things I want to accomplish each day.

One thing I struggle with is having a balance with the two children.  I spent so much more time with Bear as a baby, reading to her, chatting with her, playing with her.  I am guilty of often placing J-jo on the mat next to us and focusing all my attention on Bear.  He's happy and satisfied, but my Momma heart feels like I am not doing my best with J-jo.

Here's my list:

1. Quiet time with God every morning and night for at least ten minutes.   I used to be so diligent about taking the time to read my Bible, pray and journal before I had Bear.  Then, J-jo came along and I've given even less time to the one who has blessed me with all my earthly treasures (my husband and children, of course!).  I think I can manage at least ten minutes, even if it means reading my Bible aloud to the baby as I did this morning.

2. Meaningful time with my husband. It's so easy to put the kids first.  I just want to make sure that my husband and I connect each day and have conversations not laced with kid talk.

3. Morning prayer and Bible time with Bear (and J-jo if he isn't napping).  It's really important to me that Bear gets into the habit of praying.  We say grace and bedtime prayers, but I would like to add one more dimension to it.  We have been reading her Bible daily since it arrived and I want to continue doing this, but I also want to read to her from the actual Bible occasionally.

4. Minimum of 20 minutes of reading to each child.  I probably already read this much to Bear if not more, but poor J-jo probably doesn't even know what a book is! (Kidding!)  He joins us in Bear's read-alouds, but I need to read his books to him too (Bear has quite sophisticated taste in books for a two year old and I'm sure J-jo would much prefer Sandra Boynton to Jan Brett for example).

5. At least 20 minutes of focused one-on-one time with each child.  Again, Bear gets plenty of this, way more than 20 minutes, but J-jo gets the short end of the stick.  It's my goal to do more "activities" with him (such as walk around the house and point things out to him, pick up an object and tell him about it, sing songs and nursery rhymes to him) on a more consistent basis.

6. Daily outside time. This one has been very much neglected since the birth of the baby. 

7. Reinstating rest/nap time for Bear.  I've succeeded in having her take naps a few days in the past week, and I need time to blog plan and prepare her learning activities and spend time with J-jo if he happens not to be resting at the same time as Bear.

8.  An art, craft, or sensory activity each day.  We definitely already do this between play dough and painting/drawing.  It is very important and needs to be on the list so it doesn't get abandoned accidentally.

9.  A music activity daily. As a teacher in my previous (before children) life, I know the importance of music in children's lives.  We sing a lot of songs and nursery rhymes together but I want to make sure we listen to a wider variety of music and play with Bear's instruments a bit more.

10.  Housekeeping chores (dishes, sweeping, you know...that horrible stuff I'd rather NOT do).

Maybe this will keep me from trying to accomplish so many things and feel like I am not getting any of them done! 

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Fun with Fedex

Way back in October, while waiting for Daddy to run an extremely long errand,

Bear and I did an awesome pre-reading activity. 

We played I Spy with a FedEx envelope. 

It kept Bear from getting bored

and she practiced her letters and letter sounds without even realizing it!

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Butterfly Wings

I used two of my old ballet skirts to make Bear some butterfly wings.  It was really easy.They also double as fairy wings.

I laid out the skirt and gathered it in the middle using a hair elastic of coordinating color, then I added some arm bands with bias tape I had left over from another project.  I tied the waist ribbon into little thumb and wrist hooks and the wings were ready to go.

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The Spindle Box

In Montessori, a spindle box is used to teach counting.  I made a spindle box for Bear using an old cereal box and popsicle sticks, but she wasn't too interested.  However, she was interested in feeding her foam number puzzle pospicles. 

It really is the same principle as the spindle box and I followed the "script" when presenting it.  She enjoyed it and did it a few times before running away.

 She was sad about zero not getting any popsicles though.

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Just wanted to share

I just discovered a really great science link.  And I wanted to share it!  Enjoy!

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Some Physical Activities

I had a large die that we used for learning colors way back when Bear was little.  I added some sticky notes with action words, like crawl, clap, arm circles, hop, and a couple more.  The we rolled the die and had to do whatever action to the color posters at the other end of the room.

Bear crawling to the posters.  (She crawls with her knees off the floor because the tiles are so hard!)

I also made these posters for her when she was first learning colors.

We ran back and forth across the room calling out colors (supposedly in French, but Bear was being stubborn about saying them only in English) and then hitting the poster of the color that had been called out.

I saw this activity (or something quite similar) on My Bilingual Boys.  It's an empty ornament box.  I put stickers inside on which I had written the numbers.

Bear climbs some plastic boxes we have, then kneels and drops her felt strawberries into the container while I call out the numbers they landed in.  I try to have her call out which number she wants the strawberry to fall in.

What do you do to make your learning activities more active?

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Some Science

One of my goals is to do more science related things with Bear.  Nothing major, just more of a conscious effort to include a bit of nature study, biology, chemistry (well, we do do a LOT of baking), or physics each week.

This week we made oobleck. 

If you haven't made oobleck before, go into your kitchen now

and get your cornstarch and some water (the recipe I followed didn't work, so I just eyeballed it.  Maybe 1/2 cup water to 1 cup or more cornstarch) and mix.  You will get a substance that is a Newtonian Solid. 

It flows and pours like water, but when pressure is exerted upon it, it is hard and crumbly.

Bear didn't want to touch it at first, but ended up playing with it in the end. 

It oozes between your fingers just like slime. 

We talked about solid, liquid, pressure, slime, texture words like oozing, gooey, soft, hard. 

We did this in French and English.  It was a great vocabulary builder.

Then Dad walked in and was amazed because he doesn't read blogs and had NO idea what this was. 

J-jo watched from his perch in the middle of the kitchen island.  He spends a lot of time there observing. (Don't worry, he can't roll off as he's really too fascinated by his big sister to even think of moving and he is VERY far from any edges.)

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Tot School

 

I hid the letters of her name in rainbow rice and she spelled her name after finding all the letters.  She can order all but the last two without help.

 

 

A hand-me-down alphabet puzzle.

 

Playing store.

Cutting with fancy scissors (a lot more challenging than with regular scissors, but she loves these and persevered much longer than I thought she would.)

 

Crayon rubbings of the sides of the shape sorter.  She also shape sorted a bit.

 

She loves this fraction puzzle.  We do it as a number puzzle and she ignores the denominator.  I am hoping she is subconsciously absorbing all this fraction stuff though!  I hated fractions as a kid.

 

A new game of dominoes.  We got her to play half of a game, but then she just wanted to "play."

 

 

Hiding other letters in the rice and spelling.

 

Counting.

 

Shapes with popsicle sticks.

 

Gingerbread men Five senses book.

 

Number soup.  Got this idea from One Hook Wonder.  She had to add the number I called out.  We also dumped all the numbers and alphabet cards in there and would take a spoonful and have to say each card that ended up in the spoon.

Observations from the week:  Bear was counting one to ten but now insists on saying one-six-seven-ten.  Is that normal?  I'm thinking it is her stubborn nature refusing to perform and her desire to just be a funny girl and say what she wants.  Who knows for sure, though.
She can count to three and understands the one to one correlation with three objects.  She recognizes that four dots on the die is 4.  She can tell me the name of all of the numbers 0 to 10 (when she wants to) so
I think all of our playing of number games has been successful. 

To see what others are doing in tot school, see 1+1+1=1.

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