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August 8th, 2008
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Playing and learning through play is fundamental to the under 5s. If you want to know more about the process and get into more depth on the subject what better place to look than
Early Childhood (EC) Smart
Lots of articles that make you think and direct you onto further reading about play and the early years.
Highly recommended.
Always on the look out for new blogs about play. Any recommendations?
Popularity: 26% [?]
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August 5th, 2008
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After reading Junior magazine, that came via Grandma. I was reminded about a childhood game I love and now my big guy loves.
We’ve been looking for some new games to play as he has such a photographic memory he wipes the floor with us when we play any of the matching games. Grandma’s idea of putting the cards back in different places works still in his favour. This is one great learning strategy he’s already developed. Let’s hope he keeps for test learning later on. 
We received a photo bingo for Christmas which he also is good at. So we were looking for another game that leveled the playing field. Never mind trying to let him win. We never really won. Since game play is about winning and loosing we felt we weren’t doing him any justice if we only every played games he could wipe the floor with us…………and it done our self esteem no good either.
So what better game than games of chance like shut the box and now snakes and ladders.
For various reasons we decided to make our own. Although a long project over many days. ( 4 or 5) It did heighten his excitement and gave us a project to do together. Perfect for the summer and just before starting Kindergarten. It was nice to be badgered and harassed to do the next part.
Buying one in the shop wouldn’t have been half as much fun. But you can find them Snakes & Ladders & Ludo - Toy
land Snakes & Ladders Learn and Play Rug Carpet
.
These are the steps we took.
- Find the sm photo in Junior magazine of a snakes and ladders board
- spend 15mins trying to locate magnifying glass. Give up.
- Find cereal box we could use.
- Cut out the back
- Locate a long enough ruler to draw lines and work out a 10 by 10 grid that looks right. ( This took mummy a lot longer than anticipated) We nearly gave up here.
- choose colours to represent the squares.Not sure crayon was the best medium as the snakes aren’t clear. Hindsight is 20/20.
- Mummy drew on the numbers that big guy said in order. I continued when he’d run out and said them out loud.
- Marked a line on each alternate box in one colour. BG coloured these boxes in.
- Line by line 1-100
- Looked at the ladders and drew the parallel lines in from one number to the next.
- BG drew in the rungs.
- Explained the concept of Ladders good and why.
- Drew the snakes ( don’t laugh) BG drew in the strips.
- Explained the concept of Snakes bad and why.
- Added title.
- Found counters and a die.
- Played our first game 5 days later
Snakes and Ladders is a great game for Maths. This game has its own special place with the other games even though it’s homemade and everyone that comes the house gets trapped with playing.
There is something about this board that means you can get so far and then be knocked so far back but still come back from the dead. We’ve had a lot more wins for mummy and daddy ( yippee!) which also allowed the big guy to loose gracefully……………well nearly half of the time gracefully. But the ups and downs really keep all involved. A fair bit of cheating with landing on the snake square but putting the counter away from the snakes mouth means you don’t have to go down it. Raises a smile as does landing on a ladder square half way up and deciding you can jump that high so let’s climb to the top.
Most games last a lot longer 25+ minutes but what a lot of learning, laughing and talking going on.
Try an online version
Popularity: 36% [?]
Technorati Tags: childhood game, shut the box, snakes and ladders., Kindergarten, Junior magazine, Maths
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August 1st, 2008
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Website to love: Planning with kids- thoughts and ideas about making family life fun.
This site is bursting with information about parenting. Planning Queen has a great free ebook with 100 tips for planning for your family.
Some of my favourite posts
Getting hands on
10 tips for getting children to solve their own problems
Rotating the children’s toys
We could all do with some better planning in our lives. Pop on over.
Popularity: 20% [?]
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June 24th, 2008
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This time last year we were getting used to a new town and country. We had fun investigating new things to see, smell and hear. If you’ve not walked in your neighbourhood what a walk might inspire you.
One year later, we’ve moved again. We have lots of comparisons. Having lived in a rural village, small town and now suburbs of a city it’s great opportunity for the kids to make these links. They are getting to know their local area by walking around and sharing old photos to develop geographic awareness. Where we live and what’s around us grows on us but sometimes you have to be explicit and draw your kid’s attention to it.
We found the book, Where Do I Live?
and have enjoyed getting to know how to explain where we live using appropriate vocabulary.
The language is simple enough to lead the children from where they live in their home. Starting first in their bedroom and expanding through, home, land, street, neighbourhood, town, city, suburbs, state , country, continent, world, earth, planet, solar system, galaxy, universe and back down again. The pictures support the text giving the kids an idea of size and proportion moving from page to page.
My toddler loves to thumb through the book and look at the pictures whereas the big guy likes to substitute himself for the text as we read it together trying out the new vocabulary.
Moving need not feel so disorientating for kids if they start developing a sense of place and home. We have a placemat of the world that we regularly find family and identify new countries.
Two frequently requested books at the moment are Mr. Popper’s Penguins
and Lost and Found
; both feature penguins. Finding Antarctica on the map and the places mentioned in the story is a lot of fun. Understanding time, distance and scale makes more sense after reading the Where do you live? book as does looking at maps in general. I wouldn’t say they understand the concept totally but are getting the idea that we can’t go from Australia and swim to Madagascar ( no doubt to see the animals from the movie) in one day!
We just got a Peters Projection Map
to compliment the Mercator map we’re used to seeing at dinner and everywhere. The Mercator map is the one Universal uses on their films, the one that spins. Representing a sphere on a flat piece of paper is not without its problems. Both maps when used together give a more accurate view of the world. I like the Peter’s projection as it gives a more realistic view of the world and the sizes of the countries.
If you’ve never done it before look at the continent of Africa on both maps. Knowing how big your country is compared to others is an important skill to develop to realise how small or big you are especially as you start looking at politics way way down the line. For more information & debate about the benefits of using different types of maps
We had a fun time finding the same countries on each map.
- Finding where we live.
- Identifying familiar places.
Developing your child’s sense of place is something that develops over time with a little input here and there. Children think of me, me, me and showing them how they fit in the world is an amazing thing to watch as they begin to realise there are so many things other than me.
See the next part to find out some practical play activities to try .
******What activities do you do with your children to promote awareness of their Where they live?******
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Technorati Tags: geographic awareness, penguins, Antarctica, map, sense of place, play activities
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