On a Golden Springtime

On a day like today who could stay inside?




Food always tastes better at a picnic!



Where are you eating lunch today? Where is your favorite picnic spot? How are you enjoying spring?

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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?

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!

Era Uma Vez

We’ve been getting quite a bit of snow lately, and a while ago, while Baby E napped, Mr E took Little E out to build a snowman. When I went out, this is what I found! A Mr E sized snowman!

Little E loves building snowmen, and playing in the snow in general. Later I found out that he was disappointed in the big snowman, though. We were at the grocery store and Little E saw the bulk carrots in the produce aisle and wanted to buy one so we could make “a E-sized snowman.” Because he couldn’t reach the face of the big snowman he had made with Mr E. He wanted to make a snowman that he could reach so he could put the carrot in on his own. Cute kid.

A few weeks ago, Little E wanted to build a snowman, but there was no snow outside. Then he asked for a big carrot, which we also didn’t have. Then I told him I could make him a carrot. So I pulled out the construction paper and made carrot noses for the babies. It took a little convincing for them to let me tape them on, but after they figured out that it wouldn’t hurt and they would look like snowmen, they consented.

Then we sang this song:

http://judahhimango.com/FlashAudioPlayer/player.swf

Era uma vez um homem de neve (Once upon a time there was a snowman)
Um homem de neve alto assim (A snowman tall like this)
O sol derreteu o homem de neve (The sun melted the snowman)
Até ficar bem baixinho assim. (Until he was small like this)

 

You do the actions and stand up really tall, and then crouch down on the ground as the snowman melts.

Here are the words in English:
Once there was a snowman, snowman, snowman,
Once there was a snowman, tall, tall, tall!
In the sun he melted, melted, melted,
In the sun he melted, small, small, small.

There is something magical about snowmen and playing in the snow. Maybe because it only lasts such a short time (unless you have below freezing temperatures for a week or more... then it sticks around for a little longer). Maybe because it brings out the kid in us. Either way, we love the snow, and Little E can’t get enough of his snowmen!