Pancake Art

I bought a turkey baster at the local thrift store the other day for $.75 so I could make pancake letters. Tonight, V decided he would make us pancake shapes for dinner. He asked everyone what their favorite shape was, and then he proceeded to prepare the pancake batter (with help). He actually did really well “reading” the directions, and by the last ingredient (Eggs) he knew to look in the right column for the amount. I was really impressed with his ability to read a chart and sound out some of the words on the package!

I let him do a few shapes (a triangle, and a star, and a heart) and then I took over and tried my hand at some fancy pancake shapes. I had way too much fun, but the kids got a kick out of it. Our little friend who is staying with us (and is 3 months younger than J) told us his favorite shape for pancakes was “circle” and even when I made airplane, train, and dinosaur pancakes he still opted for a “circle” pancake. I’m not sure he realized what a novelty it is to have pancake art for dinner!

Do you play with your food? Do you let your kids help in the kitchen? What is your favorite “breakfast for dinner”? What is your favorite pancake shape?

Sometimes the TV is the best choice

Not all the time, and really, not very often.


But today is an unusual day. Today is the day my almost 3 year old found a pill box that belonged to a friend who was living with us until a few weeks ago.

The pill box had 3 clorazapan pills. After J found it, it had 1. I called poison control right away. Well, after I got through panicking. We don't ever have prescription pills and if we do they are hidden away and out of reach (and locked up).

Poison control wasn't too worried - they told me what to keep an eye out for, and said they would check back in an hour. They have actually called twice.

We're pretty sure she is going to be fine, but we're watching her very carefully just to make sure.

And until then, miss drugged-cranky-pants is snuggling with me while we watch Pingu.

What are your sick-baby fallbacks? Do you watch too much tv when the kids are sick?

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Play Food

V has been feeding me play "food" and bringing it to me in a cardboard "magic box".




This is ice cream. Mint maybe? Or cotton candy?




Donuts and "square apples" - I am unfamiliar with that type of apple. Now Braeburn, Gala, Fuji - I know those. But square apples are completely new to me.

Pretend play is really important for kids. It is linked to the development of a lot of cognitive skills in children, including self-regulation (which any mother of a tantrum-throwing two-year-old would agree is a very important skill).

A number of researchers have focused on the relationship of play to specific cognitive strategies such as self-regulation, narrative recall, divergent problem solving, and rule understanding. Following Vygotsky (1978), who theorized that young children use private speech in play to regulate their behavior, eventually transforming this private speech into self-regulation through internal thought, Krafft and Berk (1998) compared the private speech of preschool children in Montessori and traditional play-oriented programs and found that more private speech occurred in the play-oriented setting, especially during pretend play with fantasy characters

How often do your kids engage in pretend play? Do you ever join in?

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Play and Sort

I am a big fan of sorting.

And a little obsessive.

Of course, like any good obsessive mother, I have to make sure the kids are obsessive, too. And then, there is the fact that sorting is good for kids cognitive development. You don't need fancy games or worksheets or projects to teach kids about sorting. In fact, all you need to be slightly neurotic about the playroom being organized, and then you will have an opportunity every day to sort with your kids!



I made these toy bags for Christmas one year when V was getting too old for just baby toys and I felt like the toys were taking over the family room. There was an animal one, too (with an elephant on it!) but our animal collection quickly outgrew the size of the bag.



I also realized that the bags are only really good for toys that are better to play with in a set (train tracks, blocks, dishes) where these plastic drawers work better for "categories" of toys (robots/people/machines, building blocks, animals, etc). If the kids are looking for a lion, they just pull out the animal drawer and get a lion, instead of dumping out the whole bag.

And when it's time for clean up? Sorting practice!

I made signs from pictures I took of the kids' actual toys for the front of each drawer - to make it a little more personal, and to help them with sorting. I was thinking of printing them in color, but I think the black and white is less distracting. I am pretty happy with our system for now, but I want to build a toy shelf/cupboard that I can lock up (when the kids don't clean up their toys or when we don't want them out all over the place). However, I think I will keep a lot of our current system when I build the cupboard.

How do you organize toys? Do you have to convince yourself that having all those little toys everywhere is actually good for your kids? How do you get your kids to clean up their toys? Do you play games with them?

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Sorting Practice

I have always been a believer that the best learning happens when kids are doing something that matters. Like cooking, cleaning, or, in this case, sorting laundry.

This is a great activity for your preschooler, because they can learn a lot of things – first, they are practicing sorting (and this is beyond just sorting by ‘color’ because they have to use classifiers like ‘light’ and ‘dark’ and ‘bright’). Second, they are learning that their clothes don’t just magically go from the laundry basket to their drawers. I have let my kids load the washer and the dryer since they were big enough to sit up on top of the dryer (top loading washer + dirty clothes + baby = baby putting things in a container – and what baby doesn’t enjoy doing that!) but now V is old enough to learn how to sort laundry, so sometimes they help me sort the laundry. J likes to help, too, but we have to tell her where each piece of laundry goes. She’s learning, though, and can sometimes do a few on her own.

What “real  life” activities do you do with your kids? How do they learn doing every day activities? Do you let them help with the dishes? Sort the laundry? Mop the floor? What concepts do you see them learning as they participate in daily life at home?

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?

Just Say No to No

We say “No” to our children entirely too often for my taste. Especially the little ones. Is it any wonder that the first word of many babies is “no”? With my first, I was always very careful not to say “no” to him. If he was getting into something he shouldn’t be getting into, I would redirect him and show him something he could get into. (For example, if he was trying to pull out the glass bowls, I would show him the plastic ones, trying to make them look infinitely more appealing than the glass ones – then I would push the glass bowls farther back in the cupboard).

I don’t know if it’s because I am older and so I’ve forgotten a little more what it was like to be a child, or if it’s because I have two children, or if it’s because we moved five times last year and drove half way across the country for four of those moved, or what – but I say “No” a lot more. Especially with my baby. Which is ironic.

So, I am going on a “No” strike.
I am going to try my hardest NOT to tell my children “No.”

Now for those of you worrying that I am going to spoil my children, I didn’t say that I was going to allow my children to do anything they wanted to or get anything they want. But there are better ways to stop undesirable behavior than saying “No” all the time, and I want to experiment and see if it makes my children more obedient and me less stressed.

Think about it. If you’re doing something someone doesn’t want you to do and they say “Stop that right now!” you would probably get frustrated – not to mention embarrassed. But what if they said “Hey, could you come over here and help me with this thing? If you keep doing that, ____ is going to happen.” (fill in the blank with the reason why you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing). It is also helpful, I think, to talk about why that thing happening is undesirable. Face it, if you tell a two year old not to throw something on the floor because it will shatter into a million pieces, they will probably throw it on the ground. But if you say “Why don’t we put that glass bowl up here on the counter. If we drop it an it breaks, we won’t be able to mix our cakes (cookies, etc) in it.” And then, immediately act – that is, if said child isn’t obeying right away, gently guide their hands to put the bowl where you want it (use only as much force as is necessary to get them to do it – you may not even have to touch them, they might just need you near them to do it.

Here is a real life example from this morning. I bought some cheap plastic planters from the store to repot my poinsettias, and they were sitting out while we were cutting out letters (more about that later). Well, empty buckets are just begging to be stepped in, so in go the feet. At first I wanted to yell “No! Get your feet out of my planters!” in a really stern tone. And I got as far as “No” before I remembered that I’m trying not to do that. So I said, “These pots aren’t for stepping in. If we step in them, they might break, and then we wouldn’t be able to put our plants in them” (since I had promised earlier that the kids could help plant the poinsettias, this was very effective). And then rather than stopping there, I said, “Why don’t we sort our letters into the buckets?” which was met with enthusiasm and we sorted letters.

So, which was more instructive? Just saying “No! Don’t step in my pots!” or what I ended up doing? Not only did they learn that if they step in stuff, it might break, but we also ended up with a fun sorting game that ended up being really educational.

This can also extend to your children asking for something to eat/do/play to which the answer is “no.” Instead of your child asking “Can I watch T.V.?” and you responding with “No.” try responding with an alternative activity and then participate in the activity WITH your child. For example, “Why don’t we read a book together, instead?” “Why don’t we go ride bikes?” “Why don’t we go play in the rain/snow/sleet?” (okay, I’m kidding about the sleet… but you get the picture). Same with food. “Can I have some cake?” “Why don’t I cut up and apple and let’s dip it in peanut butter?”

Here is my challenge to you – for the next 31 days (I’ll remind you on the blog) try to use alternatives to “no” with your children.

Here are some suggestions to help:

1.) Redirect the behavior. If possible, show the child how to use the object in a desirable way, or how to act in a desirable way in the circumstance.

2.) Explain how the action is offensive/undesirable, and try to explain why and make it matter to them.

3.) Get up and move. Physically help the child to do the desirable action. Be gentle, but firm.

4.) PRAISE the child when they begin to do the desirable action.

 

Let me know how this works for you. Is this your parenting style already? How does it work for you? Are the other methods that you use to try not to say “No” to your children?

Little Photographers

Do you ever download your pictures from your camera to the computer and find several snapshots taken by amateur photographers on your camera? I’m constantly finding pictures of toes, the carpet, couches, toys (mostly on the floor), children’s fingers, my children, ME(!) ... you get the idea.

Half the time I wasn’t even aware that the kids were playing with the camera, which makes it that much more enjoyable to look through the pictures.

I think these pictures were taken while I was clipping fingernails. Obviously the ones of Little E were taken by Baby E (hey, she’s pretty good!) and the one of me and Baby were taken by Little E. Silly boy.

 

 

Cooking Day

A while ago I read this article that was featured in Simple Mom’s weekend links. I was really inspired by the article. When Little E was a baby, I used to let him do everything with me. Laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, you name it, he was “helping” – and loving it. I have a million excuses why I haven’t been letting my kids help in the past year or so – two is harder than one, life got crazy, we moved three times, etc – but none of them are very good reasons for stunting my children’s growth and development.

The article from the Kitchen Stewardship blog was kind of like a slap in the face for me and the motivator I needed to start letting my kids experience the real world through play. Remember when we were kids and work was play? I’d like to capitalize on that right now, while my kids are still young. I feel like I may have soured the opportunity though – it takes more than I thought it would to get Little E (who is only 3 1/2) to empty the dishwasher. And Baby E just likes to take stuff out and throw it on the floor. When Little E was a baby, he would actually help – most of the time. Baby E’s desire to throw stuff around a destroy things I explain with the fact that I haven’t let her so much as touch anything in the kitchen since she was practically born (the moving around had a little to do with that).

As you can see from our pictures, we’ve been trying to remedy that mistake. The kids enjoy helping out a lot more (we’ve got a long way to go!) and I am feeling like their ability to “play” doing “real world” things is making a difference. Little E already knows how to cut vegetables and hold a knife and the veggie so that he doesn’t cut himself. Sure, the chunks come out a little uneven, and the cuts are more often crooked than straight – but Little E is learning how to cook (and not just Mac & Cheese!) when he is 3. By the time he’s 30, he’ll be a gourmet chef, right?

Well, making gourmet chefs is not our goal as parents – but raising children who aren’t afraid to try “real world” things is. We want to expose them to all the wonderful things life has to offer, and not just “shield” them by letting them play with “fake” or “pretend” things – we want them to get down and dirty and figure things out.

Like the article at Kitchen Stewardship said: “Let us also live real lives and teach our children how to do real work, trusting that they, too, were created for more than just pretending.”