Child-Sized: in the garden

I think one of the best ways to teach your kids about the earth is to let them play in it!

We took a trip to the local nursery in the spring and the kids got to pick out their own flowers, then we came home and planted them! It was a lot of fun, and the kids had a great time watching them grow.

Children like to work – to them, it is play. If we can capitalize on that, then we can help them grow to love work even as adults. Most work for me is play because my mother let work be my play, and now my favorite thing to do is go out and work in the yard, or build something, or write something, or solve a problem.

The best way to keep children happy “at work” is to provide child-sized tools for them to use in their work. When we bought our home, we had to go out and buy yard tools (shovels, rakes, etc). In our car on the way home were child-sized versions of the adult-sized tools we had just purchased. It is imporant that their tools are as high quality and of the same material we would buy. The yard tools we bought for the kids are made out of metal, not plastic. But you can expect them to work with a plastic shovel. You would never think of it. Having “real” tools requires a lot more adult supervision than most people like to give their children – for us it just happens, because we are always supervising our children.

What life-like, child-sized tools do you provide your children? Do they have child-sized kitchen utensils? Shop tools? Cleaning tools? How are you capitalizing on your child’s play?

Tire Tunnels

Earlier this summer I had the kids with me at a tire and auto place having the brakes checked out on my husband’s car (turned out it needed a lot of work done… but that’s another story). Well, it was a little bit of a wait, and while we were sitting around with nothing to do, the kids discovered that they could climb through the tires in the shop.

I was just grateful to have them entertained for a while, and the store folks didn’t seem to mind.

Nature Creations

We often have extra children in our home. We haven’t finished the requirements for our foster care license quite yet, so the children are not official foster children, but we often think of them as our children. We have been blessed to be in a position of helping several children (and their mothers) from broken homes. That is a story for another day.
One day while watching some extra kiddos, we took a walk and gathered stuff we found outside, and then made crafts and art projects using the things the kids picked up.

One of our extra kids showing off his find.

Little stuffing his bag full of sticks, rocks, and leaves.

Baby even enjoyed gathering rocks.

These boys are like peas in a pod. Little loves his “big brothers” and is constantly asking us to get him a big brother. These two brothers have spent a lot of time at our house and they feel like our children. We love them very much and we love their mom a lot, too. She’s an amazing woman. We enjoy these boys’ company when they come over. They are so well behaved and sweet kids.
After picking up lots of goodies, we headed back to the craft room to assemble our projects. One of our extras made some pigs from Angry Birds. Can you find them?
And here are the finished products. We had boats, spiders, Angry Birds, dinosaurs, faces, you name it. These kids were so creative. I loved watching them enjoy making something. 

Find more fun activities for preschoolers over on 

I can Teach My Child's Show-and-Share Saturday Link up!

Hopscotch and Sidewalk Chalk

One of our favorite things to do when the weather is good is draw with sidewalk chalk. This particular time we drew fishes and whales (and the latter eating the former…)

And then I had a stroke of genius. Teach my kids hopscotch!

So I drew a simple hopscotch board (complete with numbers) and taught the kids how to play. Baby mostly just jumped up and down the squares, but Little caught on to dropping the rock, skipping it, and picking it up on his way back. It was a great activity to help with gross motor skills like jumping, standing on one leg, and bending over to pick things up.

An added benefit was learning the order of numbers, and my favorite – they were wiped out and completely ready for naps afterwards!

Animal Workout

Did you know that you can get your workout in and play with your kids? We did this “workout” today. It’s a great way to talk about the ways different animals move, and we get a workout (and our kids get a workout!) at the same time!

I took these pictures with my phone, no flash, so they are a little blurry, but at least you can see that Little Einstein liked to move! I did every action with him, both to show him how they go, and of course to get my own workout. You can do each animal action for as long (or as short) as you want. I think we probably worked out for about 20 minutes, maybe half an hour. The great thing about this work out is that is it a lot like interval training, depending on which animals you move like, and for how long. You are working really hard for a few reps (say with your frog – jump squats) then you let your heart rate come down while you move around like a chicken, or stretch like a dog. Feel free to mix up the animal poses, add a few of your own, or simply let your kids make up their own animal moves. And hey – follow their lead! Chances are their move is a pretty good workout, too.

We started out stretching like a dog (downward dog, anyone? He wouldn’t put his hips up as high as he usually does when I took the pictures – which was after we had already been through all the animals once):

Then we moved on to some slower moving animals, like ducks, chickens, and roosters.

Remember to make the animal sounds. It makes the activity that much more fun!

After that we did a little bit of frog (jump squat!), crab, and horse:

 

Don’t forget to run around like eagle (or your choice of bird) – get those wings flapping for some lateral raises!

And last but certainly not least - “slither” like a snake. I could only do this one for a few seconds. Who knew it was so hard to move without arms and legs! We talked about how strong snakes must be. And of course, Little E wanted to “slither” down the stairs… I stopped him before he got too far. Didn’t want Baby trying to follow him!

In June, Little E and Baby E are going to do the Piglet Plunge in our local Dirty Dash after I run the 5K Dirty Dash. Last summer Little E and I ran the Dino Dash for Little Rock, AR’s Museum of Discovery. They had a 5K, and then afterward a little 1K for the kids. E has been asking me when he gets to run another race ever since.

It’s easy for kids to stay fit when they learn how much fun it is as a child!

How do you get a workout in with little kids around? Do you include them in your exercise? Do you have to encourage your kids to move around, or do they do it naturally?

I linked up at No Time for Flash Card's Link & Learn: