Category: Uncategorized

Giant Puddle Paint Brush

Leave a comment

Giant Puddle Brush (1)

When life gives you rain… go paint with puddles! After two days of gray skies, the sun broke through in the late afternoon, and I hurried the kids into rain coats and out into the sunshine. The rain had stopped, but left behind warm puddles on the sidewalk, making it the perfect moment for puddle stomping… and puddle painting.

A note to parents on this activity: Your kids are going to get wet and you’re just going to have to be okay with that. As a result, you probably want to play during warm rain rather than cold rain, so no one starts shivering. Then just be ready with towels and dry clothes when you head inside.

With that preamble aside, the fun outside is gorgeous! I showed the kids how to draw with chalk on the sidewalk right next to puddles. Either dip the chalk in the water to wet it, or draw in a saturated spot of pavement for deep, rich colors.

Giant Puddle Brush (3)

Then we used a child-sized broom as our “paintbrush”. Sweep across the chalk with water from a puddle, and you’ll get a gorgeous smeary effect.

Giant Puddle Brush (2)

Veronika loved sweeping over my drawings, or adding her own.

Giant Puddle Brush (4)

Big brother Travis loved making big swirls of color in the deepest part of the puddles and then sweeping through it (he called these “ghosts”).

Giant Puddle Brush (5)

We left positive messages for the neighbors, too, since we’re all social distancing!

Giant Puddle Brush (8)

Older kids might want to get really artistic with this and younger ones will probably just make doodles.

Giant Puddle Brush (7)

Either way, it’s fantastic rainy day fun.

Giant Puddle Brush (6)

Bottles and Lids

1 Comment

Bottles and Lids (1)

For about a week, I saved up every plastic bottle we finished in our kitchen (think: juices, peanut butter jars, mini spice jars) and set them aside. Today, I simply presented Veronika with the collection!

I had all the jars and lids apart, with the challenge for her to find the right lid for each jar.

Bottles and Lids (2)

Beyond that, though, she was interested in playing with them in ways I hadn’t anticipated. First, she showed her understanding that these containers used to contain food, because she tried to “drink” from them; the orange juice might have still smelled like juice!

Bottles and Lids (3)

Then she loved piling them back into a bag and toting them around the apartment.

Bottles and Lids (4)

After a while, she did get more into the puzzle of jars and lids, testing out various combinations.

Bottles and Lids (6)

She looked so proud when she could twist them on and off again.

Bottles and Lids (5)

For extra fun, we took the collection up to bath time!

Bottles and Lids (8)

Not only did she continue the challenge of lining up bottles and lids here, but the bottles were perfect for squirting and pouring.

Bottles and Lids (7)

You can even take the same collection outside for water play on a warm day!

Bottles and Lids alt

 

Kindergarten Home School Week 7: Thursday

Leave a comment

Home School 33 k

Travis nixed the lessons that came home from school as suggestions today. So I was glad to be armed with a lesson plan all my own!

9-9.30: Math. Today’s page in his summer workbook was counting animals “hiding” in the desert. He counted and wrote these out, making a few of the numbers backwards… a good reminder that we haven’t written numbers in a few weeks!

Home School 33 c

We then extended the activity. For each animal, how many more were needed to a make 10? Counting this out in rainbow cereal made it silly and yummy.

Home School 33 b

The bonus on the page was to spot the letter 4 made out of sticks. So we then brought in sticks from outside, and made a whole bunch of numbers!

Home School 33 d

He was particularly proud of his 5. (Meanwhile, baby sister was busy with crayons).

9.30-10: Recess/snack. Riffing off the animal “hide and seek”, I challenged him to a real game of it for recess. It made him so happy to play together this way, a good reminder of the play he’s missing out on with friends at the playground.

Home School 33 g

10-10.30: ELA. I went light on this subject today. We played a round of fishing with sight word fish.

Home School 33 h

Then he sat down for Lexia but quickly grew frustrated with the day’s topic of story sequencing. He looked so relieved when I said he could stop, in favor of…

10.30-11: STEAM. Our encyclopedia page of the day was about the weather, specifically clouds and the rain cycle. It was good timing, since he completed his weather chart for all of April today (sun won!).

Home School 33 a

Then we made a demonstration of rain falling from saturated clouds, and old experiment I last showed Travis three years ago!

Home School 33 l

We also made cloud “paintings” (another repeat project) for the art in our STEAM, which got baby sister involved, too.

Home School 33 m

11-1: Lunch/free play. Magna-tiles have been one of my favorite toys during home school, because I can give him an engineering design challenge!

Home School 33 o

As mentioned, Travis nixed the suggestions from his teachers, including Music, Spanish, and a wellness presentation from the school counselor. It felt nice not to push him, and he rounded out the day with solo play, a game together (Charades), and reading a book from the summer list: Frog and Toad All Year. Meanwhile my toddler had some fine motor building with knobs and got to enjoy an online library storytime.

Drawer Knobs & Screws

Leave a comment

Drawer Knobs (10)

In the on-going search for household items that keep little hands busy, today’s installation features… drawer knobs! I have a set that I’m saving for one of those “someday” projects, but I realized today they had a current use keeping Veronika occupied.

I twisted off the tiny pieces first (nuts, washers), leaving her with just the screws, the drawer knobs, and the decorative metal backplates. These three components seemed too large to be choking hazards, although I do recommend supervising play like this since even the blunt screws could be a hazard if stepped on or chewed on.

Drawer Knobs (4)

The idea was for Veronika to line up the screw with the hole of each knob, and she was so proud – and delighted! – that she could do so.

Drawer Knobs (2)

Sometimes she had the screw turned the wrong way, which meant it didn’t fit into the hole. I showed her how to turn it around for a big smile of success.

Drawer Knobs (6)

At one point, she did throw a tiny tantrum over it. She threw the items on the floor, and discovered they made fantastic noises! Then she was back to screws and knobs.

Drawer Knobs (9)

She liked the way the knobs spun around on the screws.

Drawer Knobs (5)

When she experimented with the backplate on the screw, she discovered that it made a great jangling noise. Almost like little baby cymbals!

Drawer Knobs (7)

This activity was great for her fine motor skills, but again you can’t quite call it toddler busy play since you’ll need to supervise.

Cylinder Pictures

Leave a comment

Cylinder Pictures (7)

Veronika loves to scribble these days, and one of the easiest ways to occupy her when I need a few minutes is to let her loose with a box of jumbo crayons and a few blank sheets of paper.

Cylinder Pictures (3)

As is probably the case with your toddler, though, she has a tendency to fill up one portion of the paper and to leave the rest of it completely blank. So here’s a fun way to display your child’s early masterpieces while hiding that blank space.

Cylinder Pictures (1)

Trim the paper if needed (for example in sections that are completely white), then wrap the remaining paper around itself into a cylinder.

Cylinder Pictures (6)

Tape shut and set on a mantle or windowsill. Even a little one’s scribbles look so artistic this way!

Cylinder Pictures (4)

These drawings truly were all Veronika’s doing, except when she asked me to draw her stars on one sheet.

Cylinder Pictures (2)

If your child wants to take the cylinders down to play with then, that’s fine too. Just think of it as “process art”!

Cylinder Pictures (8)

Kindergarten Home School Week 7: Wednesday

Leave a comment

Home School 32 h

We had a day with…wait for it… no tantrums! Our journey through a K-to-1st Grade summer workbook continues to be a success.

9-10: ELA. The corresponding workbook page was similar to what his teacher terms “writers workshop”, a topic that normally prompts Travis’s anger. But seeing it in this novel format, he was an eager participant!

Home School 32 a

The assignment was to write abut what a desert woodpecker might do when it arrived in its cactus home. Travis used his imagination to say the woodpecker would remove the prickers! He proudly sounded out this sentence, then drew a picture. To make it a bit more scientific, I prompted him to think about how the bird’s nest might be in the cactus, too. Travis proudly added 3 stickers to his chart after these pages. We even found an old set of toy sticks and balls that helped us engineer a “nest”!

Home School 32 r

He finished with a proud stint on Lexia, working on sight words. (Baby sister was busy with colored cups).

Home School 32 b

10-10.30: Snack/free play.

10.30-11: STEAM. Today’s encyclopedia page was about the seasons. We watched the QR code video explaining the Earth’s tilt, then returned to an old art project: four seasons trees. The last time we did this, Travis wasn’t even 3 years old! This time, he drew his own tree trunks.

Home School 32 d

He didn’t want to get his fingers messy, so his job was to the find the right color tissue paper for each season’s tree leaves and crumple it, then I dipped it in glue and adhered to the tree. Snipped q-tip swabs made “snowflakes” on our winter branches. This craft nicely kept my toddler busy, too!

Home School 32 e

11-1: Lunch/free play. I’ve learned that giving him this chunk of time during little sister’s nap really helps his mood.

1-2: Outside time. We squeezed some math into our walk by making patterns from nature finds.

Home School 32 o

We also used the walk for a letter hunt!

Home School 32 n

2-3: Snack/Health: A homemade ranch dip with veggies was a great chance to talk about the colors and review the way a rainbow of veggies impacts our health. This led to good play with an old veggie farm set. That was the end of the school day, with some quiet solo puzzle play rounding things out.

Home School 32 q

Tonight’s storytime read was Don’t Throw It To Mo! with a nice, can-do message.

 

Michelangelo’s Bathroom

Leave a comment

Michaelangelo's Bathtub (3)

Just as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is designed to make grown-ups look up, here’s a trick to tilt up your little one’s head! This little “art” project can help your child tip his or her head up during hair washing if they are otherwise fearful or reluctant to do so. It works like a charm!

You can cut up any pictures for the project, including old magazines or even old calendar pages. We had an old book of nursery rhymes that’s become tattered over the years, but I love the illustrations. So I snipped out a few, and began to tape them to the tub walls.

Michaelangelo's Bathtub (5)

I deliberately chose images of Veronika’s favorite things, including cats, chickens, and stars.

Michaelangelo's Bathtub (2)

And she has some unexpected favorites, like umbrellas!

Michaelangelo's Bathtub (4)

She loved watching as I hung the pictures, oohing and aahing as if she were in an art gallery. Come bath time, I was so pleased when my trick worked. “Where is the sheep?” I asked. Her little neck craned up, and water poured over her head without any getting in her eyes.

Michaelangelo's Bathtub (6)

Success! I intend to mix up the pictures on occasion so our “art show” stays fresh.

Michaelangelo's Bathtub (7)

Colored Stacking Cups

Leave a comment

Colored Stacking Cups (12)

Here’s a twist on a recent game I played with Veronika, in which I simply presented her with a stack of plastic cups to pile and nest any which way.

This time, I had a pack of pretty cups in see-through pastels: think spring greens and rosy pinks, and daffodil orange.

Colored Stacking Cups (1)

I gave Veronika the cups in hopes of not just stacking and nesting but also so we could play around with light and shadow. Veronika is so into her shadow these days (“Hi shadow!” she says on our walks), so I knew she would love this.

Sure enough, first she was just interested in the cups as…cups.

Colored Stacking Cups (5)

To my amazement, she quickly had them in one huge pile!

Colored Stacking Cups (7)

Lest I think this was just an accident, she then moved the cups out of her big pile and created another, off to her other side.

Colored Stacking Cups (6)

But the real magic happened once the sun was at an angle, streaming into our living room. I showed her how the rings of the cups showed up as a circle shadow on our rug.

Colored Stacking Cups (2)

“Hi shadow!” she said. You can then play around with how the shadow changes depending where the cups are stacked, or even just at different angles to the sun.

Colored Stacking Cups (8)

Needless to say, they were just gorgeous to play with in the window.

Colored Stacking Cups (4)

Although the building of complicated structures is beyond Veronika at eighteen months old, I loved showing her the dazzling effect.

Colored Stacking Cups (14)

She loved adding the finishing touch!

Colored Stacking Cups (13)

And when the sun goes down, you can just go back to regular cup towers.

Colored Stacking Cups (10)

Kindergarten Home School Week 7: Tuesday

Leave a comment

Home School 31 a

For the second time, I built Travis’s school lessons around a summer K-to-1st grade workbook instead of the school’s lesson plan. This method continues to engage him far more.

9-9.30: STEM. The corresponding workbook page was about following directions for a train maze (words like up, behind, left, right, etc.). Travis gamely followed with a pencil…and then it was time to engineer the real thing!

Home School 31 b

He set up a track with masking tape and then gave me instructions toward “treasure”. Things got a bit off track (pun intended!) when he started adding Magna-tile structures as traps along the way, but I guess it was good to encourage extra building and imagination!

Home School 31 c

As a bonus, the train play kept baby sister busy, too.

Home School 31 d

9.30-10: Weather. The corresponding workbook page was about packing for a trip to the hot desert, crossing off items that didn’t belong in the suitcase. We made this hands-on with a real suitcase after!

Home School 31 e

Travis selected shorts, baby swim diapers, summer sandals, and other hot weather gear. We even threw in a little subtraction: If I have five items and angry pirates take two, how many items are left? Get silly with your subtraction stories!

Home School 31 f

10-10.30 – Snack/free play. Chances are that suitcase full of items will spark a game or two. Meanwhile I kept baby sister busy with magazines.

10.30-11: Science. Our encyclopedia page of the day was about sunrise and sunset, as well as a solar eclipse. Travis followed the QR code to a video about a total eclipse. We then tried to recreate one at home! How could the tiny moon block out the enormous sun? With a Styrofoam ball on a pencil as our moon and a big beach ball as the sun, we explored the idea.

Home School 31 i

We took turns holding each item and walking down the hall away from each other to see how perspective (his big word for the day!) allowed the small ball to block the bigger one.

Home School 31 j

11-1: Lunch/free play.

1-2: Outside. A nature walk was also a mini lesson on migration today.

“School” ended thereafter since Tuesday is his half day. We rounded things out with a board game and a little movement play, but he also had time to socialize with a friend online.

Our bedtime story for review was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, an old favorite, but it was interesting to read it in a new light. He answered questions after like who was the main character, and what problem needed to be solved.

Tantrums today? Only when I made the mistake of seeing if he wanted to do the actual lesson plan sent home from his teacher (rainbow writing, writers workshop).

Home School 31 h

These suggestions received lots of attitude, confirming my decision to “go rogue”. I thought he might enjoy the day’s social/emotional learning on the Power of Yet, but this too received only tantrums. Onwards!

 

Stop!

Leave a comment

Stop (3)

“Stop” and “go” are important concepts, and there are lots of fun ways to introduce them to your toddler through play. Here’s a movement game with a few props thrown in for extra enjoyment.

Stop (2)

To make STOP and GO signs, I cut shapes with the words on colored construction paper: a red octagon for the former and a green circle for the latter. You can attach these to craft sticks, but I found that wooden kitchen spoons made for sturdier handles that Veronika could hold easily.

Stop (1)

I picked Veronika up and twirled her to the following ditty, holding the green sign:

Round and round and round we go,

Round and round and round we go,

Round and round and round we go.

Round and round and STOP!

Hold up the red sign and stop spinning on the last word of course! After dancing in my arms, the siblings took a turn holding hands and walking in a circle.

Stop (5)

Or sometimes Veronika just twirled herself about, holding the signs and grinning.

Stop (7)

Big brother Travis was a super helper showing her how to freeze at the right moment.

Stop (6)

Chances are your toddler will want to play with the signs even once the ditty fun is done.

Stop (4)