Handwriting Without Tears School Book

(4 Years)

*Blah, blah.  This post is my own opinion, I have not been compensated in any way.  Blah, blah.

"I love this school work.  I'm a lucky, lucky girl."  I hear this as I'm making the kids their breakfast.  I look over to see what she's so happy about.  It's her new school book.  Now, I know it sounds like I'm a walking advertisement to the folks at Handwriting Without Tears, but I can assure you I'm not being compensated in any way.  It just so happens that the few products that we have bought, they really like: the app, the slate board and tiny sponges, and the My First School Book (here's a link to their site*).

Little Miss was busy coloring in her school book.  I noticed how she was carefully trying to stay within the lines.  We don't do a lot of coloring, we do a lot of drawing, but not a lot of coloring.  So, I was surprised that she was concentrating on keeping the color inside the lines.  We have never even talked about coloring inside the lines before.  Although, we read a lot of picture books and that's probably where she picked it up from- the illustrations show coloring inside the lines.

These books are similar to the Kumon writing books, in that they both provide a lot of repeated practice.  They begin by drawing vertical and horizontal lines, then they use those lines to teach L, F, E, T, I.  Little Miss really enjoys working in her school books.  She takes her time choosing which marker she wants to use (she's been picking markers over colored pencils and colored mini pencils lately).

Little Miss will sit at the table and work on page after page after page after page... She has sat there for almost 40 minutes, on several occasions.  She will take her time and work on the entire page, then move on, without talking, until I finally ask her to put it aside so that she will eat her breakfast.

When she's working, she's in her zone!  It's cute.  It's hard not to interrupt and ask questions or give a compliment.  I know she's working, I let her work in quiet- that's how I like to work.

Wild One isn't really interested in this book.  There's times when he'll work on a page or two, but he'd rather "read", play with Legos or play pirates.  That's fine with me.  They are four years old.  There will be plenty of times, unfortunately, that they will be required to sit and write, whether they are in the mood to or not.  For now, if he wants to write he'll write - or maybe he'll take down this puzzle from the shelf and work on it by himself.

One of my friends asked why I leave that puzzle on the shelf for them, when they have already learned how to put it together so quickly.  Good question.  Not everything needs to be a struggle, sometimes it's fun to do something easy.  Plus it's great for his self confidence, and he really likes this puzzle.

Popcorn Magic with Lesson Ideas

(4 Years)

Me- Do you want to see magic?
Little Miss- I do, I do!
Me- What do you think these are?  (I poured out a handful of popcorn kernels)

Little Miss - Beans, tiny rocks, seeds. (I had her feel a kernel and describe it).  It's tiny, hard and yellow.
She poured 1/2 cup of kernels into a brown lunch bag.

Her brother finally emerged from his room and asked to help.  Then she folded the lunch bag over twice.

 

 
We put it in the microwave.  I pressed the secret POPCORN button.  They said, "hocus pocus!"  I asked what they thought was going to happen.  Little Miss - It's going to get hot.

Then they heard the all too familiar pop pop sound.  Wild One - Popcorn!  Mommy it's popcorn!  Are we making popcorn?  They watched as the bag started inflating and they began to pop up and down like little kernels.

We usually buy Orville Redenbacher's Natural Simply Salted Microwaveable Popcorn.  Yummm!  I've wanted to try popping it in the brown lunch bag for months.  I kept thinking, it can't be as easy as pouring kernels into a brown lunch bag and pop the bag into the microwave.  If it was that easy someone would have told me by now!  Well, it's just that easy.  I like a little butter and salt on my popcorn.  So we melted a tablespoon of butter and mixed in a little salt, then poured that over the popcorn and shook the bag.  So yummy!  How did I not know about this?

LESSON IDEAS
So... the teacher in me feels compelled to tell you that you can easily turn this into a math lesson- compare the volume of the kernels to the popped corn, or compare the weight.  If the kids are ready, you can also discuss the reaction (science) that took place.  A writing lesson can be to describe what happened with illustrations.  You can create a popcorn necklace or even paint with the popcorn (art).  There are even fun popcorn books that you can use for read alouds - Tomie DePaola's The Popcorn Book, Half Popped and Popcorn to name just a few that you can borrow or buy.  Today, we decided to observe and describe a kernel and compare that to the popped corn, ok and have a healthy snack.

Learning with food is so much more fun, isn't it?

Following Directions - Using Legos

(4 Years)

I love Legos!  Grandma and Grandpa bought this Cinderella set for Little Miss and Wild One almost a year ago, and they play with it so much that it has never been rotated off of our shelves.

The kiddies have helped me put this together a few times, not many- they usually start strong and then their attention fizzles by the end of Step Two and somehow mommy winds up finishing it.  Today, Wild One asked me to help him build the castle.  Hmmmmm, we'll see about that.

Legos aren't just for imaginative play, when you are putting a set together then you're following directions and you're counting spaces (to make sure everything is placed as per the instructions).  The part that I really like about the Lego sets is that it uses pictures to tell the child what to do.  Between steps, the child looks at the two pictures to determine what's different (look more math- comparing), locates the correct pieces (classifying and sorting/science and math) and figures out how to place those pieces so that they match the picture (more math and sequencing).

Throughout his construction of the castle, he kept saying, "I'm a builder!"  All I needed to do was to remind him every now and then to compare his castle to the one in the book, and there were a couple of times when I needed to point out a slightly misplaced block.  Other than that, the boy did it!

I love seeing that look of concentration on his face.  I remember reading in several Montessori books to let them work, meaning not to interrupt with questions or comments (including compliments).  It's hard staying quiet, so now when they are working I will change the music to something I want to sing along to (instead of listening to The Nutcracker or Kari Boral).  It helps keep me from interrupting if I'm singing Billy Joel or Linkin Park.

When Little Miss woke up from her nap, Wild One was so happy to show her what he created - are you ready? - for her!  I love that kid!  

Little Miss ran to the castle, sat down and the two of them began playing and laughing.

Wild One didn't know he was learning.  He didn't know he was practicing math, science and pre-reading.  He didn't know he was learning how to follow multi-step instructions.  He didn't know that he was strengthening his fine motor muscles to prepare him for writing and cutting with scissors.  He was playing and learning through play, and for us that is always the best way.

Easy Baked Jack-O-Lanterns

(43 Months)

I love Autumn.  Crisp Fall apples, the mouthwatering scent of pumpkin bread baking, pumpkin apple muffins, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin spice lattes...  mmm...  Last year we were lucky enough to visit my sister's family during the Fall (I miss you all so much).  They took us out to an apple orchard and the three little ones picked their first apples off a tree together.  Little Miss and Wild One still talk about how much fun they had with their aunt, uncle and cousin "Buddy".  Here's our adventure.  Look how little they were.

Buddy and my brother-in-law.  I miss you!!!!!!!!

I've been wanting to make baked cotton balls for a few weeks now.  When I saw Asia's baked Jack-o-lantern on Fun At Home With Kids, I knew we were going to get messy in the kitchen soon.  This is an easy and fun project for the kids to work on.  Little Miss and Wild One helped mix the flour and water solution, combined the colors, and squished the flour solution onto the cotton balls.

After Wild One finished with the orange cotton balls, he was done.  He said he didn't want to get his hands dirty anymore.  Oh well.  Little Miss kept working at it, she loved that she was working on this almost independently, with no help from Mommy.  By the way, did you notice in the above pictures that she is tilting the mixing bowl as she mixes?  That's how we mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients when we are making batter for cupcakes, muffins, pancakes, waffles.....  She even said, "we lift the bowl to mix the wet into dry ingredients."  I love that girl!

Here's the recipe:
We first made a huge batch of plain colored flour/water solution in a large bowl.  For the two Jack-o-lanterns we used 3 cups of bleached all-purpose flour and about 2 1/2 cups of water.  Next, we whisked the flour into the water until there were no more lumps (it's going to be thick and goopy, perfect for little ones hands to squish).  Then, we took about 1/2 cup of the faux paint for the green cotton balls and ladled it into a small mixing bowl.  We used about 3/4 cup for the black cotton balls and ladled it into a medium mixing bowl.  We left the remaining flour/water in the large bowl for the orange cotton balls.  I love how Asia incorporated scent to her faux paint.  We mixed in 1/2 tsp of cinnamon to the black paint* and 1 tsp of pumpkin spice to the orange paint, before adding in the cotton balls.  Little Miss and Wild One loved the delicious scents. Bake it at 300 degrees for 80 minutes (on tinfoil for easy cleanup).  It took our creation about twenty minutes to cool down.  This was perfect timing to work on before lunch, then let it bake and cool to be ready for after nap (if they nap).

With the left over faux paint, we added in some extra cotton balls to smash!  I'm so glad we did, because they had so much fun using the hammers to whack the baked cotton balls.  They were so surprised that the soft, fluffy cotton balls baked into almost a rock!  Then, I told them that we are going to go outside with some hammers and smash them.  "Can I use Daddy's hammer?"  Once that first baked cotton ball was smashed and they saw that the inside was still white and fluffy, they were hooked.  They began smashing one after another.  "Mommy, can we do more please?" Even Grandpa got into the act.  "Mommy, can we do more please?"

*I first tried making the flour/water black with food dye.  It kept turning green or brown.  After a few tries, I remembered that I had black liquid watercolor.  We tried that and it still didn't turn out black.  However, after it was finished baking it did turn black.

The kidabunks loved this project.  Little Miss loved every part of it, mixing, squishing, creating and smashing.  Wild One's favorite part was mixing and smashing.  I love that I have a beautiful keepsake that will hopefully last past this season.  They already asked if we can make more (baked) cotton balls.  Fun and easy.