I went through a phase a few years ago where I read everything Maria Montessori ever wrote and tried to incorporate as much exploratory learning and play in our everyday activities. One of the things that I didn’t do enough of was color games. Mostly, I couldn’t think of what kinds of containers I could use that would be easy for little hands to hold, easy to measure and unbreakable. Well, now that my mind is locked on these stupid plastic bottles, I can’t stop thinking of ideas of how to use them.
Every night after dinner, I try really hard to take an hour away from whatever work I have on the go (and there is always work to be done) and do some sort of non-TV, hands-on activity with Panorama. Tonight, we did two games. Primary color mixing and color grading.
For the first one, I added a blob of red, yellow and blue tempera paint to three bottles, then filled with water. I gave her a spoon and she mixed them together. Here is a youtube video of the process.
I was pleasantly surprised by how fun she thought this game was (she played for about another 30 minutes after this video making colors such as "avocado"). Also note how much LESS whiney-four-year-old she becomes as she starts seeing that I am NOT trying to torture her, and how it is OK to make a mess. She hates mess in general.
For the second game, I made a concentrated batch of purple and a concentrated batch of white. Then I had her mix 1 oz, 3oz, and 5oz of purple with enough white to fill to 6 oz. Then, she lined them up by which one was darker. She liked this game a lot, too.
I can see this becoming extremely popular. We’ll take it outside next time on the little tikes picnic table and try some more variations on the theme- such as making 10 different concentrations instead of 3, etc.
I saw this workbook ( My Book of Number Games (1-70) ) at Target and there was something very simple and appealing about its cover- almost Eric Carle-like- that attracted my attention.
When I flipped through, I found the inside to be equally interesting. The book contains 38 connect the dot exercises that get slightly more difficult as you progress. The first few go from 1 through 10, then it slowly works up so that the child is tracing from 1 through 70. On the reverse of each connect the dots exercise, there is a color by number that gives the child practice identifying the newly introduced numbers. For example the one on the reverse of Panorama’s seal had her distinguishing between several numbers in the twenties.
Panorama liked this book from the first time we tried it, but she did get pretty frustrated the first few times she attempted the connect the dots. I had to show her how to stop and look for the next number before beginning to draw the line, and we practiced drawing straight lines with mock-up dot exercises I made for her on regular paper. It didn’t take long for her to get the hang of it, and I have been very impressed about how well she "reads" numbers greater than 10. She’s up to the thirties now.
I would recommend making copies if you can of some of the earlier exercises instead of working right for the book. Panorama is the type of kid that thinks a whole page is "ruined" if she makes one line loopy (especially when we first begn this book), and it was nice to be able to let her try the same puzzle again.
Since this workbook has been so popular, I’ve picked up a few others. They all have that same simple, sane and practical tone with no in-your-face cartoon craziness or 100 pages of stickers. Just low key, fun, yet challenging exercises.
I was staring at my bottles again yesterday and I came up with something PERFECT. Bottles invariable have imperial volume markings, and usually metric as well. They are the ideal baby beaker for chemistry experiments! Add a lid for shaking up your mixtures, and those avent sippy lids (without the control value) are useful for pouring and sprinkling.
Here are a few chemistry games I came up with that Panorama and I have tried:
1. Temperature Check: Fill bottles with warm, cool, and ice water. Check temperatures with concrete thermometer (if you aren’t like us with 100 concrete thermometers laying around like expired pens, your hardware store should have something that will do the trick, or any safe thermometer will do.) Add salt to an ice water bottle to check its effect.
2. Different Viscosity: Combine dish soap with water in various concentrations. Use the metric volumes to add 60mL, 140mL, 200mL,etc of dish soap to several bottles. Add water to fill to 260mL. Mix. Drop a penny into each one and note how long it takes for it to sink to the bottom.
I will be raking my kids’ science books this weekend for more ideas.
My father began a tradition recently- he sends the kids postcards. This may not seem like a big deal, but it has turned into something pretty neat. Panorama loves getting mail, and she loves hearing from family members that she doesn’t see very often.
Sometimes the postcards are from vacations or exotic locations, but even the seemingly mundane “Greetings from Scranton” type cards that are bought from gas stations for a quarter are extremely popular. He tends to buy three or four cards at a time, then instead of running around and finding a stamp, he’ll just send one or so a week once he gets home.
When one of these notes arrives in the mail, it gives us a chance to sit down on the couch before dinner and talk. We read the message, look at the picture and pull out the map, or open up Google Earth. As they get older, I’d like the kids to have a wall map that we can mark with dots or pins for places we’ve been, and cards we’ve received. (The subject of kids and geography is one I am going to spend more time on later, especially after reading this yesterday.)
Now, I need to laminate them with contact paper (so that both sides are visible) and bind them together into a simple book. I’d really like it if we could continue to flip through them and learn new things, as well as keeping a bit of a memory book of notes from people we love. How many examples of your grandparent’s handwriting do you have?
Other relatives have begun sending postcards, too. In addition to postcards that they buy, they’ve made some with their own photographs using online tools from the post office.
My daughter will be four next month and she is chomping at the bit to read. She is constantly arranging the magnetic alphabet letters on the fridge into nonsense words and asking me “What does this spell?” “Um, scterhhitmsmiff?”
She knows all of her letters, their sounds, and some really simple words like “cat”, “mom”, and “gymboree parisian poodle rainslicker.”
We have gotten into a routine of watching Super WHY! and Word World on PBS and doing the curriculum activities. She also enjoys Leap Frog DVDs and games, and we read all the time together. I was considering investing in one of the Hooked on Phonics programs, but before dropping $50+ dollars, I decided to hit the Mom Forums over at www.babycenter.com and see if anyone had any suggestions or success stories.
This Hemp Diaper does it all and when we designed it we had your baby’s comfort in mind. That is, for example, why we developed a special new hemp/cotton/polyester blend giving you a one of a kind hemp diaper. This fabric is very very soft and ‘comfortable’, super-stretchy and best of all it does not stiffen over time!
) at Target and there was something very simple and appealing about its cover- almost Eric Carle-like- that attracted my attention. 
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