Just add water!

This was originally post January 26, 2010.  With the twins now being 18 months, we have been rediscovering the magic of water!

I have a bunch of little boys in my family.  And I'm getting pretty good at recognizing the difference between deliberate naughtiness and boy curiousity.  This post actually goes for little girls too.

When one of my children has taken a full glass of milk, water, juice, what have you, and dumps it on the table, it is most likely to see the effect.  As a first time mother I was irritated when this would happen.  Now I know better.  My preschoolers and toddlers only get about an inch of drink in their cup at a time.  Sure, this helps keep the mess to a minimum but it doesn't satisfy their curiousity and encourage them to discover.

So I give them cups and buckets in the tub to dip and pour with.  The bathtub is a great place for learning.  This is how I taught my oldest to pour milk from a gallon.  He practiced in the tub.  I also occasionally shower with a little one and have given them a cup in the shower to fill up and pour with wonderment all over their head or on the shower door, or just a big splash on the shower floor. 

We live in California right now so the next tip we can benefit from on a near-daily basis.  Send them in the backyard to make their messes.  A big container of water on a plastic picnic table and a bunch of measuring cups and spoons.  You could also just set them in the grass.  Remember though, children can drown in as little as two inches of water.  Do not leave them unsupervised.   

If you live where there's snow, fill a spray bottle with water, add a few drops of food coloring and decorate the snow!

I love to also teach them to wash their hands.  We've taught them (repeatedly) at the bathroom sink.  We sing songs about it.  But every once in a while, like once a year, I bring out a dishpan of water and a bar of soap and we talk about it and all take turns washing. 

Water is a fun way to explore cause and effect, learn life lessons like cleanliness, learn about how healthy it is for our bodies, and more!

Bodies

Our FAD lesson today was about our bodies. I drew a picture of a body and we had a great time talking about each of our body parts and what they do.

We covered our eyes, then plugged our ears, then practiced wiggling our hands and feet. We talked about being sick, and how that is when our body doesn't work or feel right (very basic terminology for a 3 year old). Then we talked about what we can do to make our bodies feel healthy. I really liked this part as a parent, because it was a fun way to warm Lee up to things he struggles with. For Lee, I particularly focused on eating healthy foods, exercising, and washing our hands, faces, and taking baths. A child who doesn't like the doctor's office or brushing his teeth, though, could really use a lesson on what the purpose of these things are, and that could help.

Since our lesson was about 11:00 this morning, I let him color pictures and we sang songs while I prepared lunch and then we tasted all the healthy foods that I had made (lean stuffed meatballs, carrot sticks, and baked french fries) and talked even more about eating healthy.

(*Note, I'm making this sound like Lee has bad eating habits. He doesn't. It just happened to work out today that we were eating at the same time we were working on FAD.)

Great songs for this lesson would be: "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," "I'm being swallowed by a Boa Constrictor," or other songs labeling body parts. We have one we like to sing, I think it's from Sesame Street, called "No one like you." I searched YouTube in vain for this song, but oh well; the words are cute and simple and list body parts too.

This one turned into a really great lesson, and the icing on the cake was when my husband came up for lunch, asked Lee what we'd done that morning, and Lee told him without a single prompt, "We did school time, about our bodies! And so our bodies can be healsy!"

Theme days: Colors

When my oldest two kids were under three we often had "theme days."  I felt like choosing a theme like specific colors made the planning easy.

I remember a blue day when we had blueberries with our breakfast and blue milk, blue hard boiled eggs (from Easter egg coloring kits- but you could just use food dye and follow the directions on the box), colored with different shades of blue crayons, pointed out blue objects around the house, and even dyed the bubble bath blue with food coloring. 

I think it was after several days of different colors that we had an activity one day with colored water teaching our primary colors and secondary colors by mixing them.

If you're feeling adventurous you can even make your own playdough in your theme color.  I like to use this recipe posted about here.  I don't usually add the glitter though.  I personally don't like the smell of store-bought playdough.  So if we're not making peanut butter playdough than this is what we use. 

Getting ready for Halloween

I've been focusing my FAD lessons on Halloween preparation these past few weeks, and my son is so excited that it reminds me of how beautiful childhood really is. We've made garbage sack ghosts (a big white garbage sack with grocery store sacks stuffed in the head, then tied off with string and a face drawn on, hung from our trees in the yard), decorated with other little things we found in the basement, and found things going on in the community to attend. We also sing any Halloween song I can remember, practice our trick-or-treating, and make witch, monster, and ghost sounds. Our lessons also extend to Autumn, and often include going outside to play in the pretty leaves, or just sitting on the porch and watching them fall.

It is fun for me and for Lee to have these special holiday lessons. He is learning our family traditions and how to celebrate life. I love them because I learn to live in the moment, and how to find joy in the little details. I can't wait to do the same for many upcoming holidays!

Apple Paint--Bird Feeder--Nature Collage

Painting is always a good creativity booster. Cut an apple in half to make a star. Stick a fork in the top. Dip it in the paint and stamp circles with stars in the middle. Take a leaf that is still malleable and dip it in the paint to make leaf stamps. You could turn the apple circles into pumpkins if you draw a brown stem on the top. Get creative!

You could also make a bird feeder with an old toilet paper roll. Punch two holes across the top to thread yarn across the top for hanging. Spread glue all over the outside of the roll and then roll in bird seed. Lisa, I have extra bird seed I could drop off at your house if you want to do it.

Go on a small walk finding cool stuff like sticks, leaves, bark etc. and glue them on a paper to make a nature collage.

Peanut Butter Play-Dough

Try this recipe:
Peanut Butter Play-dough
1 cup peanut butter (creamy is best)
1 cup corn syrup
1 1/4 cup dry milk
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Knead together until smooth and play! Refrigerate between uses.

I love this because it is a great thing to play with, as well as totally edible and quite tasty. You can combine snack time with play time, and you can eat it up before it gets all dry and gross like store-bought play-dough. I grew up with this treat and craved it all through my pregnancies.

Today we used Peanut Butter Play-dough to talk about shapes. You can draw shapes on parchment or wax paper and then turn it over so that the kids can line up their play-dough over the shapes. It's a fun and new way to learn lots of things, too. When I was sixteen, I taught Piano lessons and drew a staff on wax paper, then put pieces of play-dough on the lines or spaces and had the kid name the note. (You can also do that with candies or pennies too.)

Teeth

Today we talked about teeth. We were able to brush and floss a stuffed animal that had lots of teeth. We then saw pictures of teeth that were well taken care of, and teeth that weren't.

As a side note, after the teeth, we had a pouring activity to develop fine motor skills. To wrap up the lesson we had bells we wrapped on her legs and turned on some nursery rhyme music to dance.

Community

The saying goes, "It takes a village to raise a child." It is true, on many levels.

One thing I've tried to do, but still need lots of work on, is being a part of the community where I live. I think it's important to find the interesting and special things about each area you live in, and help your children discover them. We are sometimes willing to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to see something 'cool,' but have we discovered those little wonders in our own backyard?

My exciting lesson today came from the Ares DM-1 test. I am fortunate enough to live just an hour's drive away from where the test was conducted, which was a test firing of the rocket that will take men again to the Moon, and eventually beyond (Mars). I took the kids out, and we got to talk about NASA and outer space, rockets, and also fun things like bright lights and loud noises. But more importantly, we were able to connect with the world around us in a very physical way.

I hope in your Focus time with your kids, you take a few hours here and there to discover something special near you. Whether it's a natural wonder, or a historic building, or a local museum, finding out about your community will always be a lesson you children will cherish.

Patterns

If there's one thing I really remember from my years in Preschool (which my mother taught), it is how essential patterns are for kids. Kids thrive on routine. When they know what is coming next in the day, they are much better behaved overall, and are able to help out.

So that was my lesson topic today. We sang the days of the week song (to the tune of "Allouetta" or however you spell that, you sing the days of the week starting with Sunday through Saturday, then say "now we start again.") We also sang the months of the year (to the tune of "10 little Indians:" "January, February, March and April. May, June, July and August. September, October, November, December, Those are the months of the year.") Then I got some cans and some boxes out of the cupboard, and also some dry beans of different colors. I helped my son make patterns like: box, can, box, can, box, can... or black bean, white bean, black, white, black...

Since this was our first time with patterns, I kept it insanely simple. I would go outside and discover patterns outside, but it is pouring rain, so we did it inside. Like the way the dresser drawers stack up, or the stripes on a towel, or the funky wood paneling in his bedroom.

By rotating activities I sort of kept his attention, though the lesson still was under 10 minutes. That's okay for me, that's why I'm doing lessons like these 3 times a week. It's to help him practice focusing, and to help him learn about small, simple things around him. Not bad for my first time, huh!