Sensory Play Promotes All Areas of Children's Development

I pulled this excerpt from a brochure for co-op parents. It refers to how sensory play is fostering development. It's so much more than just play!

Intellectual Development

• To develop creativity
• To understand cause and effect
• To refine problem-solving skills
• To learn basic math concepts such as volume, conservation, measuring, and comparing

Social & Emotional Development

• To learn and play cooperatively with others
• To develop group social skills
• To develop perseverance
• To explore social roles and relationships
• To deal with fears and problems

Physical Development

• To strengthen fine motor control
• To enhance eye-hand coordination
• To refine visual discrimination

Also not mentioned is how relaxing and stress-relieving it can be!

I Recommend...Fiskars brand scissors

As a parent and early childhood educator, I trust Fiskars for my children's scissoring needs.

http://www.fiskars.com/content/school_en_us/School/whyfiskars/teacher+knows+best

Pre-Cutting Activities

Strengthen your child's scissoring skills with some simple ideas:

1. The wooden clothespins (the kind that do NOT pinch open and sort of look like little soldiers) slide easily onto the lid of a container-oatmeal, frosting, box...make up a game?

2. Squeeze clothespins

3. Playdough, cutting playdough with scissors

4. Real clay with clay tools and hammers

5. Sort pom-poms or manipulatives

6. Finger plays, hand and finger puppets

7. Tear paper (torn paper collage)

8. Snip or fringe paper

To encourage proper grip on the scissors, make up a little tune and repeat this

Thumb on the top

Fingers on the bottom

Keep your elbow in

Toilet Paper Tube Binoculars

Share recycling with your children.

Is this the world you want to leave them?

Tape two toilet paper tubes together and you have binoculars for a bird walk or spotting animals at the zoo. Maybe a nice addition if your little man is playing soldier for the day or if your princess is looking out the window for her prince charming to come along. Decorate 'em, paint 'em camo, add a string...make it yours!

Responding to Children's Artwork

Sometimes I find myself in a rut of responding to children’s artwork with “Oh, that’s pretty!” Do you catch yourself doing that too? How boring it must be to hear that again and again! Asking “What is it?” implies that what they created must represent something but the child may have been exploring a media or expressing a mood. When we make more specific comments, we let children know we are really looking at the picture, and not judging it. Try these:

“Is there a story that goes with your picture?”
“You made some interesting color combinations with the paint.”
“Can you show me a red line?” (Describe what you see in the artwork.)
“Where would you like your name?” (Spell it aloud as you print.)
“These shapes must have been tricky to make.”
“How do the curvy lines make you feel?”
“You worked really hard to cover the whole paper.”

Stages of Art Development - The Universal Tadpole

Do your preschooler's drawing of people look somewhat like the form above? Right on! This is what I would expect from a preschooler developmentally. Your child is drawing "universal tadpoles!" When children all over the world are asked to draw a person at this stage, the same general form appears. Some sort of roundish blob with arms and legs and sometimes a face. It starts as a simple blob and lines and as the child develops you'll get more and more human details.

For fun, you can ask your child "Can you show me where the belly button is?"

"By understanding the developmental stages children progress through when drawing, you will be able to allow your child to express themselves spontaneously (Kellogg, 1969)."

· Ages 2 -3--scribbling. All children, regardless of their culture, make the same markings, in the same way at approximately the same age.
· Ages 2-4--scribbles take shape and look like circles, ovals, squares, triangles and crosses.
· Ages 3-5--children begin to make designs from the shapes they have been drawing.
· Ages 4-5--designs take on the form of people
· Age 5-6--children are at the pictorial stage

When parents understand the various stages all children go through, they will know it’s the child's first step in the developmental process of learning to draw.

Page 3 of the following shows pictures of the developmental stages in early childhood art. http://www.crayola.com/educators/media/successGuides_ece.pdf

Paint Sample Color Seriation

This is a freebie activity! Next time you are at a home supply store or any store that carries paint, pick up doubles of a few paint sample cards.

For younger kids:

With one card, leave whole.

With its match, cut apart.

Match the cut-outs to the whole card.

For older kids:

Use cut apart cards with no reference card to match to. It's tricky- the more shades on the card, the more visual discrimination comes into play.

Storage Idea: Envelopes

*Variation: Seriate sandpaper by roughness, fabric by texture, objects by physical characteristics like height or weight.

Grow an Animal

Dollar Tree has these neat little sponge-like critters that you can purchase that when you put them into water they grow and grow. The alligator works well for this activity.

To make this "educational" you check in on your animal daily for a week. With a simple measuring tape, measure the length and make a graph or chart to show its growth progress. You can also take pictures of the animal each day next to the measuring tape, print them, and challenge your child to sequence them.

There you have it, $1 math & science!

Roly-Poly Science

C is fascinated by these little guys and in just the time it takes to unload the car of groceries, he's gathered a handful. So playing from his curiousity, I came up with some questions to ask him about the bug that rolls into a ball and gave him a magnifyin glass to get a closer look.

Tell me what they look like?

What do you think roly-polys eat?

Tell me about your roly-poly.

How do they move?

Which end is the head and which is the tail? How can you tell?

Why do you think it curls up in a ball?

Can you tell me something else that is the same size as the roly-poly?

Want to know more? Read A Pill Bug's Life by John Himmelman, Children's Press, 2000.

This is a fun link too. New vocabulary= isopod! http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/invertebrates/isopod/Pillbugprintout.shtml

Fruity Frogs & Monarch Munchies

As seen in Family Fun magazine and Parents magazine, respectively.

We made this snack after reading It's Mine by Leo Lionni, a book about 3 quarrelsome little frogs that find out life is better in the pond when you share.

You will need: Green apples, green grapes, cream cheese, chocolate chips, Pepperidge Farm butterfly crackers, hummus, currants, optional green paper plates for lily pads

Directions: Cut apple into quarters, core. Add green grapes to one quarter for feet. Put two globs of cream cheese on top with chocolate chips in them for eyes. Spread hummus on butterfly crackers, decorate with currants.

Pattern Pocket

Materials: Stickers, construction paper, computer paper

Fold a sheet of construction paper in half, tape the edge opposite the fold. Next, cut some sheets of plain white paper (computer paper is good) so they fit easily through your construction paper pocket. Make patterns on these sheets with stickers.

Now you can slide a pattern sheet out one sticker at a time so your child can guess what comes next!

Patterns to try: A B A B, A A B B , A A B A A B, A B C A B C, etc.

*Extension: Your child can make a pattern with stickers.

Dissecting Flowers

Materials: Fresh flowers, magnifying lenses, tweezers

Purpose: To teach children about flowers and their various parts; and to let children explore flowers.

Procedure: Give child a flower to examine closely. An older child might learn scientific names for a few of the parts. A good chart can be found at: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/plants/printouts/floweranatomy.shtml

Younger children can compare, count, measure, feel, get a closer look.

Cautions: Allergies, some pollen may stain like on the anthers of a lily

*Extension: Grow your own garden. Sunflowers are a great example of plant life cycle because once grown, the seeds can be harvested to grow more.

*Extension: Press flowers or petals between wax paper sheets inside of a thick book to use for art projects.

Play Food

Since it is C's birthday, I wanted to talk about probably his all- time favorite "toy" and it's pretend food; play food. Now I've seen this done plenty of ways- you can spend money on the plastic or wooden version at the toy store. If
you are crafty and have some time, you can make fake food from felt. If I were only so talented I would, it can look really beautiful.




Over the years, C acquired a few sets of the plastic stuff. But I just wanted to call your attention to recycling food packaging. Empty oatmeal cylinders, cereal boxes, spaghetti noodle boxes, rinsed out plastic condiment bottles and juice cartons. It is the very cheapest play food! And you can cycle the old out as you eat the new, bringing excitement back to playing house all over again!

Share recycling with your children.
Is this the world you want to leave them?

Clean Mud

A wacky science/sensory recipe I did with the preschoolers today.

Materials:
1 bar Ivory soap
1 roll toilet paper
Popsicle sticks

Tear the toilet paper into shreds into a small tub or large bowl. Use popsicle sticks to grate the bar of soap into the toilet paper pieces. Add warm water a little at a time until mushy. Add water until the mixture sort of stops soaking it up. It gets an oatmeal consistency but the more you mix and mash it, the more the TP dissolves. Leave overnight for best results.

This is one of those ones that is hard to explain but neat to experience. Trust me on this one!

100 Books Every Child Should Hear Before Kindergarten

Our local libraries compiled a list of 100 quality children's books to read with children to help them develop their Early Literacy Skills. I couldn't find the exact same list online, but it close to this. It's a great resource- even printable! For those of you who will have kindergarteners this fall, take advantage of a whole summer of reading opportunities.

http://search.tacomapubliclibrary.org/booklist/booklist.asp?printme=1&iam=100prek

Dancing Garden

Use creative movement and guided imagery to introduce or review the concepts of plant growth.

1. Show the child some seeds. Talk about what seeds need to grow. All seeds store a little bit of food inside them to help the plant start to grow. Once the plant is in the sunlight, it can make much of its own food through photosynthesis.

2. Ask the child to become a seed, forming their body into the tiniest body shape they can create. What kind of seed are you? What plant will you become?

3. Lights off! Seeds grow underground in the dark. Explain that when they get food and water that they will grow in slow motion.

4. Give child a piece of fruit to eat to eat when it starts to rain.

5. A plant mister or spray bottle with water on mist becomes the rain. Encourage them to grow in slow motion, sprouting as they eat the food stored in the seed.

5. Turn on the lights. Now the seedlings don't need their stored food anymore. They soak up the sunlight and photosynthesize. Oh, but the plants can't make their own water so they might need a little more rain.

6. When the plants are grown, find out what each child is. What would happen with no sunlight? No rain? What do people need to grow?

WORDS YOU CAN USE: Seeds, plants, grow, nutrients, shape, slow motion, photosynthesis, rain, sun

Boat Loads

First, you'll need a small boat. You can use a toy boat, modeling clay, styrofoam or foil to create one. Float your boat and load it with small items, such as paper clips. Add a few at a time, watching the boat sink lower into the water. How much cargo will your boat carry before it sinks? Can you design a boat that will hold more cargo?

*Variation: Design the tiniest boat you can that still floats.

*Variation: Create a boat with a sail and blow it across the water. Ask a friend to race his or her boat across the water with you.

Bouncy Painting

In the middle is 3 primary colors of tempera- red, yellow and blue, in an old film reel lid. Our paintbrushes are nylons filled with rice and tied off. Just bounce into the paint and splat on the paper. Wonderful fun! The kids started bouncing right along with the nylons. I wish I would have taken an after picture, because the ground was splotchy too! It's addicting really. My quite obvious recommendation for this one is outdoors.

Flower Petal Perfume

Sometimes the boys pick me flowers that well, are a bit beyond my TLC. I let them make me perfume instead!

Tear up the flower petals and let them soak in a cup or two of water. After a good soak, pour the liquid into a new container through a coffee filter to catch all the pieces. Let the kids give it a fancy name and dab on a little of your new "fragrance."

*Variation: Add other smell-goods before you filter it, like cinnamon, vanilla, orange rind, etc.

*Variation: Different varieties of flowers.

Grocery List

Grocery shopping with 3 boys has always been a chore. But I keep C, my preschooler, occupied with his very own grocery list. When he was about 3, I drew pictures next to the words. Now I just write the words and we sound them out together. When he figures a word out and finds the item, he gets to cross it off the list.

Little does he realize that my lesson in all of this is seeing a purpose for print, another way we use language to organize and communicate. He feels a sense of pride for "reading" it too!

Crossing the Midline - Exercise Those Brains!

Physical activity is what gets blood flowin' and brains a goin'. Imagine a line going from the top of your head, down the center of your face, down through your belly button, the entire length of your body. That's the midline. Since the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice-versa, when arms and legs cross over, we are forcing both sides of the brain to communicate.

When children need their brains energized or refocused, do an activity in which they cross the midline.

Crawling- The kind babies do where the hand and opposite leg move together.

Windmills- Spread feet apart. Extend arms. Bend over at waist and tap right hand to left foot. Raise back up and tap left hand to right foot.

Elbow Tap- With arms at sides, raise one leg up and touch it to the opposite elbow. Switch!

Dance- With streamers or ribbons.

Dance Moves- Mark the children's midlines with painter's tape and challenge them to come up with a dance move that crosses the body.

Simon Says or Follow the Leader

More: http://make-the-grade-ot.com/Midline%20Crossing%20Activities.html

Salad Spinner Art

For this art activity, you will need:
A salad spinner
Watered down tempera paints
Small paper plates or circles of paper

Directions: Have your child place the paper plate inside the salad spinner, drop some paint on, replace the lid and give it a whirl!

This is usually a very popular project with the preschoolers, leading to multiple tries and oodles of finished paper plates to take home. Enjoy!

Shadow Shifters

All this activity takes is some chalk and a sunny day. Ask your child to locate their shadow.

Guiding questions:

What does your shadow look like?

Can you make your shadow bigger? Smaller?

Can you find a place where your shadow disappears?

What happens when our shadows come together?

Whose shadow is larger?

Can one person hide in another person's shadow?

Can you make your shadow wiggle? Run? Hold very still?

Trace around child's feet with chalk as they stand in the sun. Trace their shadow standing still. Point out where the sun is. Several time during the day, return and stand in the footprints to see what happens. Trace the new shadow with a new color of chalk. Look at the sun's position.

*Extension: Play "catch a shadow" with friends.

*Extension: Read Robert Louis Stevenson's My Shadow

Blueberries For Sal

Today we read Blueberries For Sal by Robert McCloskey.

In this classic picture book, little Sal becomes so involved in her blueberry picking, she doesn't notice that she's following the wrong mother - an equally startled mother bear! "Amusing and suspenseful and entirely childlike in appeal." - Booklist

Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!

Meet math standards: Number and Operations
*Computation
*Adding and subtracting
*Using objects to computer; using mental computation

((We used pony beads and a small metal pail from Target's Dollar Spot.))

Ask the child to listen as you drop a number of blueberries into the bucket one at a time. How many are in the bucket? Pour and count.

Add a small number to that. Pour and count.

Divide the blueberries into two or three groups and have the child pick which group has the most and which group has the least. Try it several times.

Have the child drop one blueberry at a time into the bucket and count out loud. How high can you count?

Write a numeral (for younger children) or a number sentence (such as 3+4 for older children). See if the child can put the right amount into the bucket.

All About Play...stages, toys & tips

General guidelines from Fisher-Price about what a 5-Year-Old's play might look like.

Clicky link:
Fisher-Price

Cinco De Mayo Maracas

A maraca is an instrument used all over Mexico that is shaken to create sound. They are usually played in pairs ie. maracas. They're simple to make and a fun addition next time you "dance it out!" Dancing is a stress reliever so get right in there with the kids and join the fiesta. You'll both feel better for it!

Seal uncooked beans or rice, beads, small pebbles, seeds, shells, or buttons inside of

1.) Two paper or plastic cups taped together.

2.) A film canister.

3.) Two small paper plates stapled together.

Writing Strips

For pre-writers

Cut a sheet of paper into smaller 3" x 8 1/2" strips. Give your child the strips along with a crayon or marker and let the scribbling begin. By encouraging your child to mark on the smaller sized papers, she'll be praticing smaller hand movements. Since we read and write from left to right, make a dot in the upper left corner and tell her it is the starting point.

Cues to use when talking about her writing:
"These looks like big loops, and these look like smaller loops."
"You have some long lines here and some short ones here."
"I notice you connected these loops."
"These marks are side by side."
"This is really close to the letter ( )."

Contact Paper Creations

A good investment next time you make it to town is a roll of clear contact paper. It has multiple uses. You just place items on the sticky side of one sheet and press another over it to seal.

Color Collage - all red items, all blue items, etc.
Shiny Collage - all that glitters and sparkles
Nature Collage - seal your findings
Autumn Leaf Display - fall colors are eye-catching
Flower Petal Suncatcher - press flower petals in between and hang in a window
Placemats - turn any of the above into placemats
Torn Tissue Paper - just tear and arrange

and many more at...
http://familycrafts.about.com/od/contactpaper/ConTact_Paper_Crafts.htm

Dictation

Merriam-Webster defines dictation as 2 a (1): the act or manner of uttering words to be transcribed (2): material that is dictated or transcribed.

My suggestion for you today is to write down what children say, word for word. That part is important because you give the child ownership of the story. When you do shorthand or leave words out, you're writing your own version of the story.

The messages you send to a child when doing this are "Words are important. YOUR words are important. Words on paper have meaning. Writing something down is a way to remember it later or pass on information." It develops language and literacy skills. It strengthens the imagination!

You can use dictation:

Next time your child brings you a piece of artwork try "Tell me about that!" and write it word for word on the back. Read it back to the child.

Ask your child to describe a photograph. Write down their account of what was happening in the photo. What's important to them might be quite different than what you remember. This can be quite amusing.

Have the child tell you a story. You write it, then the child can illustrate it.

Kids say the darndest things. Capture those moments by writing down what they say so someday you can look back together and laugh!

Great Zoo Escape

Hide several of your child's plastic or stuffed animals, counting as you go so that none get left behind later. For younger children, you might find it easier to stick to one room of the house. Exclaim "Oh no, (number) of animals have escaped from the zoo!" Ask your child for their help returning the animals safely. Count as you go.

*Variation: Take the game outside for an outdoor safari. Colorful gardens work especially well.

*Variation: Have a sandbox? Bury some treasures for later discovery. Jewels from the craft store are especially exciting, or rocks painted gold. Be sure not to give away the secret and watch your child's reaction.