Mindful "Noticing" in Springtime!

 As Spring emerges, "noticing" has become our favorite word. We notice buds on bushes, water streams after the rain, pods lying on the sidewalk. Many "gifts" have been brought in - dandelions, shiny rocks, flower petals ... all the signs of spring!

As good as the children are at noticing, sometimes we adults are so busy organizing and planning, and just doing, that we miss the opportunities that are presenting themselves ... to stop and look through the eyes of the child next to us, and see where we can go with the subjects they are showing interest in.

Welcome and celebrate the interests of each child - see where their interests lie by the things they consider treasures and want to share with you or their friends. Find a way to incorporate telling about treasure in your day - a show and share type of activity, expanding vocabulary, and promoting conversation and questioning. Try taking turns filling a special bag or box and sharing what's inside! Each day could be a different surprise!

Explorations in parts of a flower or plant, how trees come back to bud, life cycles of plants and animals ... all of these "growth" topics are great for springtime, with examples all around us. Asking open-ended questions, such as "What would you like to do with it?" or "How can we find out?" will get your child more involved in the exploration.

Set up a "sticky wall" to give your children a place to display their treasures. A square of contact paper, hung sticky side out and tacked onto a window or other surface, can become a favorite display and organizing tool for your kiddos. With the light coming in, treasures are highlighted and can become a focus for future explorations. A dedicated exploration center, with small bins and boxes, is another way to organize special things that should be handled and examined. See what tools you have lying around - kiddos are always excited about magnifying glasses and plastic pincers - the tools of a "real" scientist!

Add art materials to the mix! Leave paper for sketching and clay for sculpting near the objects and see what they decide to do - maybe make a sculpture with sticks and flowers incorporated, or mold a tower with clay and rocks.

Combining natural materials with traditional art materials gives your kids a whole new experience! Sketching a rock with all its veins and colors helps children really see all the variety in its appearance, instead of just seeing a brown oval shape. It takes them deeper in "noticing."

 During the day, as you go about activities, make sure that you are present in the moment to witness these experiences, as often as you can. This attention to the little things is the mindfulness we hear so much about lately - young children are so good at this naturally, if we give them the opportunity :)

Have fun!

Board Game Bonanza

Playing board games with your little ones can be so much fun - and such an unexpected learning tool! Along with things you might think of - counting, letters, colors, etc. - game-playing is also GREAT for practicing social skills and language skills!!

To plan some game time, first you need to pick out some fun, engaging, and visually appealing games to play - little ones love to see lots of pictures and colors. When it is set up right, they can "read" what is going on, even before they can actually read words :)

Some first favorites are Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, both of which are labeled for children as young as three years old. They involve moving along a path on a game board, with some counting, one-to-one correspondence, and unexpected turns here and there. Your child will get practice following directions, taking turns, and being a "good sport"- all great things for them to learn!

   
Another fun option is Zingo, a Bingo-type game, where they have to use visual discrimination to cover their cards, to match the pictures/words shown. They get to fill up their whole card and will have a great time doing so :) There are other versions of this game which highlight numbers, sight words, etc., but the first one is all about pictures.

Any one of the Memory games offered at stores or online will help your child with this same skill, as well as recall and position words. With so many Memory games out there, your child will have no trouble finding a favorite to pick from :) They turn over two cards at a time, looking for matches, and then have to remember where the matches are as the game progresses.

Charades for Kids can be so much fun for children - and get them talking and acting things out! These are great ways to grow your child's language skills, both when it's their turn and when guessing what others are trying to show. All the cards have both pictures and words to choose from, so even non-readers can play!

There are Spot It cards for many different skills - alphabet letters, shapes, numbers - and they all help with visual discrimination and language skills - make sure you're talking with your child while playing! Any opportunity to engage in new vocabulary with your children is GREAT!

I recently saw a card game called Dr. Seuss "I Can Do That!" that looks like kids would have a blast playing! Each card has a different, sometimes very silly, activity to do that will get your children up and moving! It's on my list!

Get some games together, and get going! It will be great time for conversation, socializing, learning, and, most of all ....

Having fun!

We Are Scientists: Think It - Make It - Try It!

Scientists have questions, try to figure out ways to answer the questions, come to conclusions, and record their information. Sounds like every young learner I've ever met!  So, let your kiddos know that they ARE real scientists ... and watch them get to work!

To get started, you can put together an assortment of materials that might be useful - and definitely will be appealing. At first, the children might just want to tinker with each of the materials but, before long, they will start to see possibilities for using them in different ways. The idea is to provide this "makerspace" where they can have a thought and then test it out :) For example ... What would make this ball roll faster? Farther? Hmmm....

PVC pipe, in varied widths and lengths is a great place to start. Your local hardware store may even have it pre-cut into shorter lengths - two feet is a very workable length for little learners. I made sure to include two different width sizes (1 1/2" and 2"), as well as different joints that fit one or the other - or both! My scientists had to figure out which would work together and which wouldn't! It has been the workings of many experiments in velocity, friction, air pressure, etc., all by 3, 4, and 5 year olds.


A standard set of unit blocks, as well as any Duplo or Lego sets are great to have around, too. They can be used in conjunction with each other, as your child sees fit. Simple things like shoelaces, twist ties, and velcro strips make great connectors when building. Ping pong balls, available in colors and 6 to a package, were a big hit from my local dollar store!

Small cars, marbles (depending on the age of your children), and any small, light balls are all terrific tools for testing theories on speed and direction. Make sure that they are within reach and at eye view, so that inspiration hits :)

The idea is to introduce these elements but then STEP AWAY. Let the children formulate questions and try out hypotheses through interaction with this variety of resources.

Ask how, what, and why questions to help steer them, if they are stalled.

Maybe they want to see how to make the cars go faster or farther. How could you make that happen? What could you use?

Maybe they want to roll a ball so it goes farther than before. What would help with that? How can you use it?

Prompting to problem solve is the way to go!

My crew wanted to roll ping pong balls farther and faster - so they built this .... on their own!

See what your little scientists can come up with!

Have fun!

Dr. Seuss Books to Learn With

It's hard to choose a favorite Dr. Seuss book! There are so many and they each have a different lesson to teach ... and, they're so fun to read!

"Hop on Pop" is a great first read-along for your little ones - there are lots of Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) words involved, and many are rhyming words, which makes them easier to figure out. That feeling of success when kiddos first realize that they recognize a group of letters can propel them into being lifelong readers :)

Play a little game with some letter tiles or index cards ... look for a word that you can work with to change out a letter and make a new word. Show the word first in the book, and then build it with your props - sound out each letter and then ... SWITCH! Change out the first letter, like HOP and POP and watch your child get excited about what they could do with this!

There is nothing better than a little one bringing you a book, with THAT SMILE on their face, and saying "I can READ this!" I see that smile most often with a Dr. Seuss book attached!

"Green Eggs and Ham" is another early favorite! It's silliness and rhymes again make it easier and more fun to read - and the repetitive, lengthening list is a challenge that is still fun for them! The use of positional words is embedded in the text, and can give your student a boost in this math skill.

Pull out a favorite toy or stuffed animal and play a positional word SIMON SAYS game: Simon Says put the Teddy under the chair ... Simon Says put the Teddy in the cabinet, etc.

"Ten Apples Up On Top" is a favorite of many, and can really be enjoyed as a loud, dramatic read aloud, when it gets more and more exciting, as the numbers rise! Counting is of course a focus here, but not the only thing happening. You can discuss feelings and facial expressions, to look for social clues in the illustrations. There are different arrays of apples, up and down and stacked in groups ... not as easy as counting in a straight line!

Look for lessons all around while you are enjoying your Dr. Seuss books ... or any books!

Have fun!

Learning with Lois Ehlert

When you start to plan some garden activities, make sure that you gather up Lois Ehlert books to help your little ones understand what the garden is for! The illustrations and vivid colors are so attractive, and the messages are clear.

Start with "Planting a Rainbow" to illustrate the planning and planting process. Colors are the highlight here, as the flowers in the flower garden all represent the colors of the rainbow. The process of growing from seeds and bulbs is also shown.

"Growing Vegetable Soup" is a great book to show the growth of vegetables from start to finish. Little ones are not always sure where their food is coming from, and may need the visuals to make connections between what they eat and how it come to be. Combine this with a trip to a local farm or farmer's market to get your child's brain thinking outside the supermarket.

"Eating the Alphabet" is another great book for seeing what different foods people eat, including some your child may not be familiar with. It relates each food to alphabet letters, both upper and lower-case, for authentic learning. When children can see and experience things that they read, it becomes more real and stays with them longer. Learning the alphabet this way will give them reference points - visuals - to connect to.


Lois Ehlert is the author of so many great learning books - "Color Zoo" teaches shapes and animal names, as well as giving children a view into how pictures can be broken down into shapes, for easier drawing :) Die-cut pages and surprise flipsides give every reader something to look forward to, as the pages turn.

In the fall, "Leaf Man" and "Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf" are wonderful tools for learning all about the changing of the leaves and the process that deciduous trees go through each cycle. The author' s creative use of natural materials to make pictures in "Leaf Man" will have you and your child seeing leaves in a whole new way! Try to make your own leaf creations when you're done :)

"Snowballs" is a crowd favorite for wintertime - something for every season! The use of natural, found items in her pictures is one of her style choices that delight young readers, as they find things on the page that are familiar.

Lois collaborated with other authors as well, illustrating the "Chicka Chicka" books, among others, so it's easy to see why her style is so familiar and attractive to little ones - and everyone!

Have fun reading!

Learning with Collections!

There are so many things your children can do with a collection of objects! It could be coins, shells, rocks, buttons! I can remember, as a child, being fascinated with a jar of multi-colored buttons that sat on a shelf at my grandmother's house. We would pick some, or pour some out, and  play with them, making up all sorts of games.

There are many simple things your children may choose to do ... many of them math and science related! Let them play with collections, and make decisions about what to do with them. Their ideas might surprise you! They may first choose to just examine up close and begin to notice differences between groups - colors, sizes, shapes ...  noticing is the first step to classifying and sorting!

Counting collections is another great next step, while they are doing some examining :) You can add in some math vocabulary such as more, greater, less, fewer and they will have concrete examples right in front of them.

Then, patterns! Your kiddos may choose to make a pattern, or, if not ready for that, to continue one laid out for them - red, white, red, white ... what comes next? Ours asked for pipe cleaners to thread buttons on - in patterns! Simple patterns can evolve into more complex - instead of red,white red, white (ABABAB), they may try ABBABB or ABCABC patterns, using more colors or sizes.

Sorting mats have proven to be LOTS of fun for my kiddos - and a great focusing tool. Simply take large paper, draw a grid and laminate them to hold up through multiple uses.

My kiddos have pulled them out to examine all sorts of things ... shells, coins, rocks ....

They even took the plastic animals and sorted them by habitat - ocean, farm, polar, etc. Have them choose an attribute to sort by - color, size, shape, shiny, flat, bumpy, etc. -  and then figure out what goes where. They may have to make subgroups and it could generate great discussion :)

Attention to detail is something my friends are really getting involved in - they want to examine with a magnifying glass and do some sketching to really try to be scientists :) We talk all the time about how scientists observe, sketch and write about what they see ... collections are a great way to put this into play!

Have fun!

Seasons Felt Play

When learning about a topic, it's always fun to see where the children lead you ... they have great ideas and think out of the box!

To study the seasons, trees are a great focus. Start off learning all about trees ... talking, observing, looking all around your neighborhood, and then talking some more. Then, take out some felt and start cutting.

Make a felt background and hang it somewhere, at kiddo level, with velcro dots ... we used the back of a rolling organizer. Then, make a tree - or two! Discuss shapes and even make some sketches of what it might look like - great for conversation and problem solving. Trace the shapes on some brown felt pieces - even scraps would work - and begin to cut and form your trees. Cutting through felt offers a little more resistance than paper, so little friends may benefit from the cutting practice to strengthen those muscles.

Then, have children observe some branches and see that they are many different shapes. Start picking through the scraps that are left to find "branches." They come in all shapes and sizes! Pretty soon, your  friends will be asking about leaves ... one thing always leads to another!

As you cut, have the children take turns sticking the felt pieces up on the background, and get ready to be amazed at all the different ways the trees can be formed. Your kiddos will make lots of scientific observations and start to wonder about other trees - maybe the Christmas tree variety ... so you'll have to make those, too!

Let your children direct the action in a project like this! It gives them the power to ask questions, make suggestions, and there is no wrong way to do it! It's exciting for the littlest of friends, who cannot always make their drawings look like they want to - with this, they can make a representation of something that looks more accurate and real :)

We talked about all the seasons and they had ideas for each. As we go on, we will add to our felt set and revisit it for each turn in the weather - learning as we go!

Have fun!

We Are Scientists: Ice and Snow!

In the winter months up north, we can sometimes see a lot of ice and snow! When it keeps us from going outside to play, we bring it inside - to play and experiment!

There are so many ways to explore:

Bring in a big bin of snow to play with! Put on some mittens and make some mini snow people, using buttons and small sticks for decoration. Your kiddos will have great ideas for what to add for even more fun! Observe how the snow changes over time and talk about the volume of the snow - it fills a container but then, when it turns into water, does it take up as much space?





Try some ice dissolving - get some ice chunks and have small cups of salt and spray bottles of warm water available - and see what your little ones decide to do with them. Sprinkling or spraying may produce cracks and fissures - drop a tiny bit of food coloring in to see it spread out through the ice cracks!




Float an "ice cap" in some cold water! Take a container and freeze some water into an ice shape and set it to float. Notice how big it is and check the container for a good visual. Have some small polar animal figures available to float and balance, and observe over time ... as it shrinks! The kiddos will have some fun keeping their animals afloat and will make some great observations :)




See what other ideas your little ones come up with - exploring, asking questions, and trying out experiments will give them practice with the scientific process!

Give them pencils, paper, and crayons to record what they see - scientists aways keep notes!

Have fun!