I'm Going Camping

My siblings and I played a word game when we were young called "I'm going camping". The "moderator" would start out by saying "I'm going camping, and I'm bringing ...." and then say something that fit into a category they had chosen. For example, sometimes we went through the letters of the alphabet, sometimes it was big things, or red things, or food item, or things that start with one of your initials, etc. Then the other players would take turns saying, "I'm going camping and I am bringing ... (fill in the blank). Can I come?" If the think you guessed was in the moderator's category, you could come. If not, the answer was no. Kind of like a convoluted game of 20 questions.

On your turn, rather than "bringing something" you could offer up a guess of what the category was. If you guessed correctly, you became the next moderator. It was a great rainy day or in-the-car game.

My kids aren't quite old enough for that game (although V is getting pretty good at abstract thinking games - for example, "Who Am I?/What am I thinking of?" games are some of his favorite).

That doesn't stop us from "camping" on rainy days.

This morning we built a tent in the living room using all the extra sheets.



It took up almost the whole living room.


The three playmates in the "entrance" of the tent.


I left a convenient "mommy-spy" spot by the railing where I can monitor all the action inside the tent. A few seconds after I snapped this picture, these two little guys got into it... I ended up having to remove them from the tent. Ah, children....

Funny thing about awesome tents... They only played in it for about 10 minutes... Then they were off to the bunk bed with their "lassos" (work out bands they had taped loops in).

Gotta love preschoolers.

What do you do with your preschoolers on rainy days?

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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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Muffin Cup Daffodils

I wish that I could link you to my friend’s blog – it’s really very cute, and her kids do such fun stuff! But alas, it is a private blog, and so I will simply show you the idea we got from her blog (thanks, Anna!)

This is the door to the craft room (notice the marker lines on the wall? Thank you, Baby). Yesterday was very rainy, so instead of doing a kid-swap with my neighbor friend like we usually do so we can both run, we stayed inside and made muffin-cup daffodils!

The one on top is mine, then Little E’s, then Baby’s (I helped her with the one that actually resembles a flower, and then I just let her go with the glue and paper and cotton balls.

E was more interested in playing “dragons” with the scrap paper that was left over from cutting out the petals. But he did manage to put down a few petals, the cup, and a stem – oh, and he drew “dirt” at the bottom.

They are really easy. Basically you either draw or glue petals, and then glue down a mini muffin cup. We actually used some little candy cups, too (the cake section at the craft store will probably have some of those, that’s where I got mine). I did a flower with each. The one on the left is with the candy cups, and the one on the right was with the mini muffin cups.

We also decided to add the letter “F” for “flower” since that is our theme this month. I was going to do the alphabet in order, B, C, D, F – but we’ll just skip right to F for this week, and start back at C next week.

What springtime crafts have you been doing? Are you kids more interested in playing with the scrap paper than actually doing the craft? How to you keep them focused? Or do you just let them play?

May Flowers

“April Showers Bring
May Flowers”

This little saying was the inspiration for our theme this month – which is plants/flowers. Because where we live right now, the earth is coming alive with all kinds of plants and flowers. We have been working outside in the yard (when it hasn’t been snowing or raining – yes, there is still snow in April… and May, even sometimes) and Little E and Baby E have been “helping.”

I have posted our “lesson plans” for the month on a new page, which is linked to at the right. Each month I’ll update those. Also, I posted the form I use for our “lesson plans” over on the “How We Learn” page. Feel free to print it out for your personal use.

To kick off our theme this month, we cut out flowers for The Front Window.

And remember those reusable strips from Scotch? Apparently they really are reusable, and what was once holding up our rainbows now hold up our flowers. I’m actually really glad I found them, because they are clear, so you can’t really see them on the flowers from the outside. The sticky putty stuff would have left a big white blob in the middle of our flowers. So, needless to say, I am very happy with my investment, and highly recommend the little strips.

Well, there are the flowers that will hang out on our window for May. Any ideas for something to stick up there in June? Suns maybe? I can’t think of anything else that reminds me of June. The summer is so sunny here. In July we’ll probably do an American Flag, and then we’ve got August before I can do fall leaves (September) and ghosts or jack-o-lanterns (Oct) and then all the holidays make for good window themes.

I Like to Look for Rainbows

Well, we finally updated the window. We took the hearts down at the beginning of March, but it has taken us a while to make the rainbows. We painted some rainbows a while ago, but we didn’t put them on the window (because they were more like papers full of different colors than rainbows). We also took a detour for a little and cut out some letters from cardstock.

I got the idea for these rainbows from No Time for Flash Cards (basically my favorite pre-pre-school blog). I didn’t have a lot of crafty bits and pieces, so I made some with construction paper, tissue paper, and old pipe cleaners and some sticky sponge letters.

I threw the “concoction” in a rubber maid drawer, put out some containers for sorting, and had them go for it. E was pretty good at sorting, but Baby just liked to put them in any of the containers, regardless of color (and she liked to move colors from one bin to another – I think we need to work more on colors and sorting with Baby). E was pretty good at fixing Baby’s attempts at sorting.

When they were done sorting, we had a nice rainbow of crafty pieces. Then I took pieces of butcher paper and drew a rainbow on them. I wish I had remember to get some Elmer’s glue, but all I had was hot glue – so we learned about being very careful around hot glue. I helped Baby with hers, and E did his mostly by himself. His turned out really good, and mine and Baby’s was pretty great, too. Mostly I just put the stuff on and she sat in my lap and watched and played with the pieces of paper and pom poms.

The one plus to the hot glue was that we didn’t have to wait for it to dry. We just cut out our rainbows and stuck them on the window. Speaking of sticking things, I went to The Big Box Store the other day to track down some sticky tack – you know, that stuff that is like silly putty that you use and reuse to hang stuff up? Well, they didn’t have any, but I did find some reusable tape strips by Scotch that seem to work the same way, but are a little neater (i.e., they don’t leave blue marks behind). I’ll let you know how they fare when it’s time to take the rainbows down next month – we’ll do flowers for the end of April – April showers bring May flowers!)

(although right now it is snowing… again…)

Find this post (and more great kids' crafts!) over at the


linky party over at delicateCONSTRUCTION

Março

Also known as March to us English-speaking folks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The calendar is paying off! Spring weather is always pretty unpredictable, no matter where you live, and our home is no exception. Just last week the weather was warming up – getting into the mid 50s. And then Tuesday we had a freak snowstorm, and now we’re back to mid 50s. Well, it has made for a frequently changing calendar, since we put a “weather word” on the day.

In the morning, we looked outside and chose the correct weather word to describe the day. The day it snowed (before it was snowing), it was partly cloudy outside, so we put the “neblado” sticker on that day. By the late afternoon, it was snowing. I think I was on the couch reading when Little E ran to me and said “I put the snow sticker on because it’s snowing!”

Today, the same thing happened – only opposite. This morning when we drove to a friend’s house to pick her up, it was quite windy, so when we got home, we put the “está ventando” sticker on today. Later, as I was in the living room chatting with said friend, the sun came out full force. Little E ran to me again, this time saying “I had to put sun on! Because, look! The sun!”

So I have to say the calendar has been a major success. He hasn’t been learning much Portuguese from it (although I have). But he has been learning about the weather. And most importantly, he has learned that the weather can change.

R is for Rainbow

Since it is no longer February, we decided that the hearts needed to come down off the window, and a new theme needed to replace it. So we decided on rainbows! We were going to make a rainbow for the window yesterday, but instead we just painted rainbows with water colors, and painted a rainbow R. Which reminds me – I don’t know how to say rainbow in Portuguese. We’ll figure that one out this week.

This afternoon, when the babies wake up from naps (yay for both of them napping these days! I guess I am sufficiently wearing them out!), we will make the rainbow for the window. I think that tomorrow we will play some counting and sorting games with colors.

I have been realizing that I need to expose Little E to numbers and letters a lot more. He knows his numbers… sort of. He used to know his letters when he was little tiny (smaller than Baby E) but I think that was a natural consequence of going to college with his mom. Now that we’re at home playing all the time, I neglect talking about letters.

Although, we’ve been reading a lot more lately, and he’s starting to ask me where words are in books. Particularly when we read the scriptures. We read scriptures each morning as part of our morning devotional – basically, I read it and he repeats. We also read scriptures together as a family before bed. The past few times we have read scriptures, when we read something for him to repeat, he will ask “Is __(repeat what I just said)_ right here?” and then he’ll point to some of the words. I take this as a sign that he is ready to start learning about reading. But first we need to learn some basics. For right now, when I read I have started pointing to the words as I read, so that Little E can solidify his hunch that those marks on the page have something to do with the story I am telling. I also encourage him when he repeats some of the words with me.

Another note about his reading – He is very good at reciting a story, or telling me what happened/is happening. His “reading” comprehension is amazing, and I’m glad, because that’s more important than being able to read at a 6th grade level when he is 5. So, now we just have to be careful not to sabotage his comprehension abilities. And we need to work on expanding his Portuguese vocabulary (which means, I need to work on expanding my Portuguese vocabulary!)

We’re getting back in the swing of things, and hopefully I can continue to blog about it.

I also found a few really neat blogs about learning through play and I will be posting about those blogs soon.

PS I need to remember this link forever and always. This is how you fix the images in windows live writer for wordpress. Here.

Calendars and Weather

Thanks to a friend who writes about her preschool activities on her blog, I made this calendar for us. We’re going to put birthdays and holidays on it eventually, but right now we have a little heart (it will be a shamrock for March, an Easter egg for April, a flower for May, etc) that moves along the days, we have a little church (igreja) on Sunday (because Little E knows that we go to Church on Sunday), and I made a bunch of “weather words” – faz sol (sunny), está ventendo (windy), nublado (cloudy), nevoso (snowy), chevoso (rainy), tempestuoso (stormy). Each morning we move the “Dia” heart (dia = day, and I meant to write “hoje” = today) to the next day, and then we stick on the “weather word(s)” for the day. As you can see, the day I took this picture it was windy. Today we put on “faz sol” and “nublado”- because it’s partly cloudy and I didn’t make a sticker for that. Maybe I’ll have to add that. Eventually I’ll also add the temperature (but we’ll probably start a new chart just for weather).

I’ll try to post a picture of our calendar each month. Eventually I’ll start putting up our monthly themes on the calendar... once I figure out what they are!