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March 19th, 2012
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The LO loves letters, counting and cars. He’ll line cars up all day; count everywhere and draw letters into everything. Colours are a different matter.
Not sure if he truly knows his colours as he’s a big prankster. He loves to call an apple and orange. Just because he knows someone will smile and laugh at him. I love his sense of humor. It’s a little troublesome though to know if he actually knows his colours. I don’t think he really does; well maybe one or two colours but not the basics.
Does it bother us?
Not really. We know that our children develop at different stages. It would help him though to know his colours and so here we are trying to have some fun with it to expose him to more colour activities.
Using some coloured lollipop sticks and mini clothes pegs, we coloured, we quickly assembled a game.
I left the sticks and the mini clothes pegs altogether on the table. As he came in from riding his bike he was curious, calm and alert. Immediately he started matching the yellow lollipop stick and the clothes pegs. Yes a result!. Then he started lining them all up ( sound familiar) and finally started making letters.
After a bit of play like this we played together.I’d deliberately chosen lots of one colour ( Yellow) , one of one colour (Red) and a few of another (Blue) to make the colour difference really obvious and hopefully cut down on the guessing.
Why the mini clothes pegs?
I can hear you all asking. No it wasn’t to stump and frustrate those little fingers. I wanted to do this activity together and we had to work together to create the plane. I could ask for his and he would give.
Here’s the most important part, as he gave me the lollipop stick or the clothes peg I held it a few seconds more and got him to look at me and repeat the colour name.
We have all versions of yellow from wellow, ellow, lellow and more and apart from the usual development path it’s part of his speech work is to slow down, focus on the speaker and repeat.
This activity gave that opportunity. For other children and him later on, we’ll use the normal sized pegs and this would be more of an independent colour matching activity.
Once we assembled our planes…….Brrrmmmmmm. Lined them up. We were off flying high!
We’re looking for more fun colour sorting or matching activities. Share one of your favourites in the comments.
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November 2nd, 2011
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Melissa over at Chasing Cheerios mentioned a Cultural Exchange just before the Summer. It sounded a great idea.
The idea was to send a packgae out that represented your country to a group of people. Melissa coordinated the whole thing. We were in a group of 6 people. 6 packages- how difficult would that be?
Naturally life gets busy during the summer. My husband was back after a year deployment so life was hectic. The kids also spent a large portion with Grandparents. I didn’t want to send activities for them to do. Hanging out with the Grandparents was all that was required.
So September rolls around and back to school. Again super busy. The boys and I worked really hard on finding UK things and what they wanted.
This is what we selected for our package. Each one was a little different.
ELC money in Euros and Sterling- Twining fruit Tea. (We’re big fruit tea drinkers but we were thinking of the kids- no caffeine!)
- Mini chocolate digestives ( I had to buy a second packet the first packets got…er..um eaten)
- Love hearts and traditional sweets
- keyring with a tourist attraction from the UK/London. Here we have the traditional phone box. Not many of these around.
- Make a flag activity
- Information pack about the K including recipes
- Drawn picture of a Beefeater costume.
Imagine that duplicated 6 times. It was an interesting time at the post office sending these off.
Next the wait…….
So far we’ve received one from Arizonia and one from Japan.
The boys are beyond excited to open them up. We unpacked them at Dinnertime.
If you get the chance to participate in an exchange….do!
There are lots of physical swaps online. I spoke about the International Postcard Swap on the podcast recently.
Have you participated in any swaps? Share the links below
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July 21st, 2011
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It’s that time of year again with the ( UK) Summer holidays right on our doorstep. You can tell it’s almost the end of term because the shoes just fit, there’s a hole appearing in all the school uniform trousers and you’ve just realised you’ve been washing less uniform as parts are surely at school. Left as one part of the goal post or on the bench.
Everyone’s tired.
We try and make a teacher gift each year. After being on the end of this annual ritual of gift giving, I loved the gifts that were handmade the most. I never expected gifts and although I can remember a few gifts I really don’t remember who didn’t give me gifts.
Gift giving has gotten a little out of hand. I still use the what-we-can-afford and not what-everyone-else -is-doing as the measure.
The kids felt good doing and making this particular gift. Over the past few months we’ve had all different ideas. But with time on our tail we wanted something that was practical, useful and homemade.
I’d come across these pens in the States at offices when you needed to fill things out. For us that was inevitably the doctors office where we feel we lived with three children as well as any office we went to on the military installation. Before flower pens they must have lost so many! Also I made one during a MOPS session complete with pen holder. Mine lives in the car.
Per child
- one artificial flower ( We bought ours at Habitat) There were two flowers on one stem. Habitat is going out of business so we got a mega bargain.
- Floral tape
- Scissors
- Biro
Measure the artificial flower against the pen. Cut so the flower head shows and the base is near the bottom of the pen.
Start wrapping the tape around the pen and the stem of the flower so it overlaps. The MO watched me do a few wraps and was able to complete the whole thing himself. The BG (8) completed it all.
Smooth out the tape and adjust the stem/pen alignment. You may need extra tape at the bottom especially if you cut the end of the stem. check the pen holds well and no sharp edges.
Why a pen?
Teachers use a lot of pens all the time.
They’ll find your pen among all the pens.
Optional
* Add a spray of your favourite flower scent to the flower head or a few drops of essential oil. The boys chose this option.
To complete the gift
I interviewed the MO with some simple questions. He wrote the answers. ( 3-5 words each time around) Five questions, I think in total. I printed out the questions and we stuck his answer down and put the question on top so it was a lift the flap to see the answer. ( Should have taken a picture)
The BG wrote a letter to his teacher talking about the highlights of his year.
Both labeled them Thank You cards.
Would love to see your homemade teacher gifts
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July 13th, 2011
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Put together two things; paint and cars!
We had some left over paint so spread it onto a tray.
Using his favourite car he started with the lines on the tray.
Once he saw the paper he was excited to try there. We used quite a few pieces of paper.
This was one of those fun things we did last Summer that I just found on the camera. We did it at Grandma and Grandpa’s house where there was carpet under the table and a long walk to the sink.
(Yes, I was very nervous!)
Roll on the unstructured activities…… no aim in mind for this activity. He set his agenda and stopped.
Despite my fear all went well.
Other posts you may enjoy about painting from the Raising Playful Tots Index
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June 15th, 2011
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Simple Father’s day gift that your toddler can make.
Special handmade paperweight.
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