Play and Learn with Mama: Fire Fighter Lap Book

   I have been meaning to do a few weeks of Play and Learn activities with a community helpers theme for a while now, so when a mom in our local home schooler's group recently arranged a visit to the fire station, it was the perfect opportunity to jump right in with some fun activities!

   We started with a very simple lap book:

For the cover I printed a paper doll and fire fighter outfit from Making Friends. I coloured and cut it out for Sweetpea the night before, and she then had fun 'dressing' her fire fighter in the correct sequence.

  The next day we revised the order in which a fire fighter dresses for a fire emergency by discussing this picture I printed from here . I had made an extra copy, and Sweetpea then glued the pictures in the correct sequence into a mini book.

  We also had lots of giggles as we practiced Stopping, Dropping and Rolling, after we had discussed this picture, also from the resource above. (Click here.)

  There are some amazing free fire fighter printables available online, but since most of them are English, I designed and laminated a few of my own. Carissa over at 1+1+1=1 has a great post full of tips on how to create your own printables for lap books and tot packs. You can check it out here. Ours included:

  Size Sorting:

  Counting from 1 to 5:

  Letter practice:

 Pre-writing exercises and Matching pairs (and learning some interesting new words in the process!):

{Note: I will gladly e-mail you these printables to you if you're interested - just leave me a comment.}

  I also laminated these pages I printed out from Club Fire Facts.

I cut off the top of a manila envelope and glued it to the back cover of our lap book to keep the laminated pages together.

Using what we have 3: MAGAZINE PICTURES - Animal Matching Cards

Note: I have tried for several days to upload the photos for this post correctly, but with no success. Here's hoping none of my readers end up with a cramp in the neck after reading this!!)

Travel magazines usually contain breathtaking nature photography. I cut these out and laminated them to make sturdy, beautiful animal identification cards. I have over a 100 cards of different sizes, but here is a little sample:

For the most part, my children just love 'free playing' with these. They stare at them and talk about them and make up little stories, and ArrowBoy especially likes imitating the sounds. But they can also be used in more structured ways.

The possibilities for using these are ENDLESS...

Here are a few very basic ideas:

MATCHING:

Match the plastic animal to the picture card. (A variation for my older child is to put the chosen animals in a cloth bag and she has to then 'feel' for the one on the particular picture card!)

Match the picture to a magnetic animal from our Melissa and Doug set.

BEGINNING SOUNDS

Use alphabet flash cards to match the animal on your picture card to the beginning sounds.

SORTING:

• Sort by continent on which the animals are found
• Are they wild / farm animals, or pets
• Mammals / birds / reptiles
• Place in alphabetical order (for older children)

Or... play 'I Spy' to practice hearing beginning sounds.

Play and Learn with Mama - the vision!

 To give a little more structure to our play and exploration of the world this year, we will be using a book per week as a launch pad for play and learn activities. I am all for large doses of free and independent play and letting toddlers explore and experience, but since our current home and garden does not allow for much of this, I have noticed increasingly that my children (and I!!) become frustrated and bad tempered as the day goes on.

  To overcome this and preserve the peaceful atmosphere of our home, I have decided to give more structure to our playing and learning this year by doing 'playschool at home' in the mornings. I knew from the start that a literature-based program would be ideal for us since both the children LOVE stories and books. The two best programs I found for our three-year old are Sonlight and Before Five in A Row. I really, really like their choices of books and activities, but we had one major problem: it was all in English. Now, my children are both bilingual - their dad is an Australian who cannot speak Afrikaans at all, so all they ever hear from him is English, while I only communicate to them in Afrikaans,  my mother-tongue. But, although they understand and speak both languages equally well,  and although we read books in both languages, it is important that I continue instructing them in Afrikaans in order to not confuse their language development.

  So...I had to come up with my own program. And let me tell you, I am having so much fun!!

The idea is to choose a good children's book per week, i.e. one that offers

• beautiful language, 
• engaging illustrations, 
• subject matter that appeals to my children, 
• and offers us some new things to explore, either through the story or language, or through elements in the illustrations. 

The book itself can be written in either Afrikaans or English, but we do the activities in Afrikaans. I also prefer books by local authors, whose subject matter and visual 'clues' will teach my children about their own environment. That said, I will also be including English books from overseas.

   Once I have selected our book for the week, I start to explore it for ideas that I can turn into

• crafts 
• discussions on interesting or new vocabulary 
• science and geographic information my daughter will be able to grasp 
• opportunities for simple math activities
• gross and fine motor skills practice
• emotional awareness, etc.

  I have a spiral-bound notebook in which I then plot our activities for the week, and each evening after the children are in bed I can quickly prepare the next morning's activities. Sometimes this keeps us busy for about half an hour, while on other days we go for the whole morning! (Interestingly enough, I find that the mornings in which we do a lot of playing and learning together, turn into our most peaceful days! It seems to fill their joy-cups right up, and leave then contented for most of the afternoon.) 

   (I try to choose our books around a few general themes - currently it is birds, then will come fruit and vegetables, and since we are also discovering maps and South African culture, there will definitely be a local flavour to many of the choices, too.)

  In addition to our book theme for the week, we also have a separate Bible theme. At this point I am focusing mostly on teaching them about Jesus: who He is, how He loves us, what He teaches us in His Word. This we do through

• Reading the particular passage from Scripture and various children's Bibles
• Practicing our memory verse for the week
• Singing a related Bible song
• Enacting the story according to the ideas of Godly Play. (more about this is  a future post).

  In addition to this we also have a good habit to practice each week, and we have started with some simple calendar work each morning. We also try to go for a morning walk where I let them walk at their own pace. (After supper in the evenings we put Sweetpea in the backpack and Arrow in the stroller while the Dad and I walk at a pace that means business!!)

  ArrowBoy has a nap after lunch which usually last for about an hour and a half to two hours. For an hour of this time Sweetpea has to also have some quiet time and she may either read or quietly play by herself. She often asks me for paints and paper and then happily paints while I catch up on admin or sewing or just tidying up a bit. 

   I look forward to sharing with you in upcoming posts all the fun we are getting up to, and would love to hear about how you spend time with your toddlers!

The Obedience Jar

   My biggest challenge as a parent so far is, without a doubt, toddler discipline. Phew! Glad I got that off my chest!!

   My daughter has inherited my inclination toward the dramatic, has very selective hearing, and finds nothing more amusing than switching to sloooooow motion whenever I need her to obey quickly. Add to that the fact that I am quite the disciplinarian and have a very goal-oriented personality, and you have a wee bit of a time bomb ticking merrily away there! Soooo...these days my bedside table is laden with books on the topic and most of my quiet time each morning is spent desperately clinging to the hem of my Master's robe, begging for wisdom and a soft voice and for His Spirit to rest on my shoulders like a gentle dove when I start to feel the annoyance building up.

   One of the books have proved to be a gem: Lisa Whelchel's Creative Correction. It is a fantastic book crammed with practical ideas for dealing with just about every disciplining issue you may ever encounter with younger children. The chapter called In The Beginning deals specifically with Toddler Discipline, and has had me giggle out loud as I was able to relate to so many of the scenarios! The Toolbox section of that chapter is chock-full of super ideas to creatively correct.

    I've adapted one of her suggestions to encourage Sweetpea to be obedient: I used two honey jars and placed 22 glass pebbles in each. For every time Sweetpea obeys a clear instruction with a merry attitude, she can remove one pebble from the 'disobedient'/frowny face jar, to add it to her 'obedient'/smiley face jar. The idea was that disobedience would work in reverse, but I soon realised that this process would become far too drawn-out to have effect, so we are sticking to only rewarding good behaviour. As soon as the frowny face jar is empty, she will get to choose a special treat: a small sticker album, a mommy-and-me-only trip to the park, or an extra story at bedtime.

    I also like to help her "bind up Truth in her heart" as we go along, and so whenever she obeys, I praise her for not only listening to me, but also for obeying God's command in Ephesians 6:1: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right."

   At the time of this writing we have 5 pebbles to go - I will keep you posted!

Coin Polishing and spontaneous maths!

I had planned a coin polishing activity for Sweetpea as a Practical Life excercise for this week.

I set it up as follows:

Coins, a paste made from bicarb of soda and water, water for rinsing with a drop of white vinegar added, polishing cloth, an old toothbrush and a glass jar for cleaned coins.

Sweetpea loved this activity! The highlight was the way the coin fizzed as soon as the bicarb reacted with the vinegar!! :-)  It was great for introducing new vocabulary: shiny and dull, scrub, bicarb of soda, polish etc. 

I had not planned any further than just the cleaning, but she started noticing the pictures on the coins, and soon was sorting them enthusiastically. We casually spoke about the National Symbols represented on each, and I was impressed by how quickly she cottoned on to the fact that this is "South Africa's flower/bird/etc". She immediately made the connection that these symbols were similar to the national flag, thanks to the flag crafts we did around the time of the Soccer World Cup.

She sorted the coins according to pictures and size first, and then we arranged them from shiniest to dullest! We also counted each row to see how many of each value there was. I made a point of calling the coins by their value and picture names, eg, "Let's count the 5 cents with the Blue Crane on." At the moment I am not at all concerned about teaching her number symbols - I feel it is far more important to first understand how many five are, than recognising an abstract symbol.

She then decided to stack them, so I just sat back and enjoyed!

After all this we sat back and basked in the glow of all the magnificent learning that had just taken place. These are moments that seem to almost transcend the need for words. There we are, a mama and her daughter, blissfully satisfied, almost as after a wonderful meal, with a knowing little smile around the corners of our mouths, and a glint in our eyes: "I know you know that we know more now than we did before!!"  We were really just in our little house, playing around with some coins, and yet...We were together someplace magical. And I will not trade these moments with my child for ANYTHING in the world - not status or money or pretty shoes or designer clothes or fantastic holidays or to do my grocery shopping at Woolies. I will go threadbare and hungry if only I can continue  feasting on these moments of love, and warm myself at the fire of the light in my children's eyes. And I thank God for a husband that values this, too.  

The Hansel and Gretel method! (Part 2) - strewing their paths with EXPERIENCES

HAPPY THOUGHT

The world is so full of a number of things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings!

~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

In my previous post, I quoted Susan Dodd as she defined strewing.  But in her definition she also included another way in which parents can draw their children into new learning experiences, which I'd like to share with you here. She said:

 "...But there's another element which isn't physically "strewing" but involves instead taking the children out and about with the idea of their seeing (hearing, tasting, smelling, touching) things they might not have come upon otherwise and that you can't lay casually about the house.


Sometimes it's just as simple as driving another route to the same old place, or going to a different grocery store than usual. Other successful outings of note which I consider in the same category as strewing (though not the same action), include

*construction sites
* any public doing like racing remote control things in a parking lot or vacant lot—just passing by
   is sometimes sufficient without even stopping
* concerts
* fleamarkets
* garage sales
* new stores just opened
* old stores in danger of closing (take them in before it's gone)
* prairie dog towns
* vacant lots with wood we can pick up for firewood


And with ALL those things, we get time together, shared experiences and conversation...."

The best 'field trips' are free and happen on the spur of the moment, and these are the ones that usually makes the biggest impression on my little ones. I think it is because these are the kind of experiences which deal with real life, everyday-in-action. Just this past week we've had some super little trips, mostly impromptu and never intended as 'educational' at first, but they turned out delightfully engaging nonetheless:

Some municipal workers were felling trees just up the road from us. We were kissing the Dad goodbye when I heard the unmistakeable sound of chain saws, and since mama's on a mission (more about that in a later post) which requires some nice logs, I quickly bundled the bambinos into the car and off we went in search of the scene of the crime. The children were fascinated by the whole business: the saw, the branches falling, the way one man was hoisted into the tree by the others using a thick hemp rope...even the orange road cones which were placed on the sidewalk piqued their curiosity!

On the same day we visited a new co-operative store which opened at a small shopping centre in our neighbourhood, and spent a very interesting half an hour exploring everything from gigantic gumboots, to secateurs, to paint swatches and birdseed. Oh, the questions a little girl can ask when the world is so full of such wonderful things!!

On Saturday afternoon we took a quick trip to a friend's farm just outside of town to pick up more logs (are you curious yet?? ) and saw a lamb with a broken back leg in a cast (this became a topic of great concern and interest for the next 48 hours!), triplet lambs, and two pouncing puppies. We had to stop to chase some sheep out of the way, and had a ton of fun crawling and climbing over a pile of  logs and tree stumps - great gross motor excercise and sensory stimulation galore!

And they are building a new road just down the road from us, and just from passing by there every few days, my daughter has already learnt the difference between a grader and  an excavator, and is seeing for herself how a road is built! We stop in the parking area of the shopping centre across the way, and wave to the construcion guys, and chat about how much further they are a long than when we came past here last time.

We all have access to these rich 'learning grounds.' It is just a question of whether we will stop, take the time to explore and answer the myriad of questions that will inevitably be pouring out of little minds when presented with such utterly interesting opportunities! What experiences are waiting in a 5km radius from your house to be explored by inquiring young minds??

Here are some very simple ideas for interesting places to visit with your little ones:

• The Post Office - you can even write a letter to a grandparent or friend and let your child buy a stamp and mail it!
• Your local library. I will never cease to be amazed at how few mothers take their children along to go take out books!
• A local nursery or garden centre - oh, the wealth of things to explore: big bags of potting soil stacked high, smooth pebbles, garden tools... Don't just head for the kiddies play area and then leave when they are all played out. Look at and discuss and let them touch different kinds of plants: succulents, mosses, vegetable seedlings, shrubs.  
• A train station!
• A butchery / bakery / florist - with everything available pre-packaged and ready to go in the almost generic environment of supermarkets, specialist shops are a real treat!
• A church bazaar / school fete / community fair / farmer's market - pay attention to the posters on the lampposts, you will be amazed at the array of interesting things happening in your area!
• Cat and dog shows, or you can even just stop to watch when you see a doggy training class in progress.
• Or how about just talking to them about what is happening at the petrol statoin while you are there for a fill-up?!
• My children LOVE going through the car wash!

There is wonder and beauty and breathtakingly interesting things all around us - it is our priviledge as parents to open these doors to knowlegde to our children!

The Hansel and Gretel method! (Part 1)

 In an earlier post from this week I mentioned the idea of strewing as a way I use to expose my children to new and interesting things, and I thought it well worth another mention, since it is such an effective way of broadening your little ones' horisons, and for getting them interested in things they would otherwise have shown no interest in!

   Point in case: a client of mine stopped by last week to pick up some educational toys she had ordered for one of her children. We stood chatting a bit about educational toys and how to get children interested, and I shared with her my ideas about strewing, i.e. leaving things out for the child to discover on his own. I advised her to not make a big deal about the 'brand new educational toy that mommy has just bought for you to practice your pen grip'...but instead to not even tell the child about it at all. Instead, I suggested that she took the peg board set out the following day, and place just the peg board and some pegs out on a tray  where the child would easily see it. If he was curious enough, he would explore it on his own - the best way to learn!! Then, I said, it would be a good idea to put it away for a few days. Next time she takes it down, she should once again put it out on a tray, but this time, add two or three of the pattern cards that came with the set, again just leaving it out there for the child to explore when he is ready. I received an e-mail for her today to tell me how well it has worked!

  A lady by the name of Sandra Dodd is the author of the first article I ever read about strewing. I loved the idea of unforced, child-lead learning that it presented. Someone asked her to define strewing, and I share this snippet from her website, on "Strewing their paths":

What I was referring to was leaving things around and changing them out.

Some of our most successful items have been toys or objects for playing with (sometimes not purely a toy) like
pattern blocks
castle blocks
magnets (or some new magnet toy where something swings or moves)
a prism
odd little crafts things with some tactile element people will just HAVE to pick up and mess with (fuzzy, furry, slippery, gummy...)
printouts of good cartoons or little articles or humor lists (generally taped inside the bathroom or left on the counter there, or on the dining table)
new foods, snacky stuff, in a bowl, out
interesting rocks, rinsed, in a bowl, on the table

     It is important, though, to interject here and emphasise that this does not imply one has to cram every imaginable surface chock-a-block with activities or things for your child to 'discover'. In fact, a more minimalistic, but dynamic, approach seems much more effective. For example, many children have heaps of toys that are kept in a large bin or toybox in either their bedroom or the living room. And when the child is bored and disinterested, her parents cannot understand why: she has all these hordes of wonderful toys!! Ah, but how absolutely devoid of any opportunity for discovery and imagination is such a set-up. It does not appeal at all to a child's natural curiosity; it does not invite him to discover, to investigate; it leaves no room for wonder or amazement. It is just a heap of toys - the same, day in and day out. Remember the old saying, familiarity breeds contempt? Well...if it applies to people, most of whom are at least somewhat different from one moment to the next, how much more would that be true of inanimate objects?

   I think the true value of strewing is dependent on three factors: keeping in touch, keeping it 'fresh', and minimising distraction. Here are some suggestions to attain this:

1. Keeping in touch: know your child's current interests
Jelly fish are a big hit around here these days, as are anything relating to penguins and birthday parties, and Sweetpea LOVES cutting things with her small scissors! ArrowBoy is big into containers with lids and throwing small objects into larger containers, as well as opening and closing drawers. I try to flow with their interests, drawing them in deeper with well-chosen books and activities. (I love being 'available' to my family in this way - isn't it just such a priviledge to observe so closely the passions and pleasures as your child discovers the world? And then to be right there to 'open the door' a little bit more, showing them some new and breathtaking wonders!)

I try to keep a balance between fuelling current interests and introducing new ideas. Today was a particulaly blustery day, for example, and the perfect opportunity to start wondering out loud about the wind and where it comes from!


2. Keeping it 'fresh' : Rotate your child's toys and other interesting materials 

   - I use labelled plastic bins (5 liter ice cream containers I bought from the plastics shop for about R8 apiece). I used inexpensive labels to label them according to the days of the week. Sweetpea's Monday bin has a set of natural wooden blocks, small wooden dolls and two cars, while on a Monday ArrowBoy gets to play with his hammer and ball set, his Sort and Play bucket, and a simple knob puzzle.

   -  I also have a printed sheet on the inside of their closets where I have listed, according to the days of the week, which other toys and games to bring out that are too big to fit in the ice cream containers.

   - Now, again, I don't just dump all of this on the living room carpet first thing in the morning. Some of the activities are placed out on trays for Sweetpea to 'discover' during the day. I may put a peg board and some pegs in a tray on the kitchen counter, and leave out two or three books on sea life on the little table in her bedroom, maybe together with a few small platic fish and other sea creatures she is bound to find on the pages of those books.

   - When they tire of whatever it is they are plaing with, I can always quietly pack that toy away and go to my list inside the closet to check what else they haven't played with for a while, and set that out.

   - Remember that the fact that they haven't seen a cetain toy for a while, does not automatically guarantee they'll be interested in it today. Our children are individulas, just like you and I, who may just not be in the mood for the pegboard today. That's OK. If you have chosen well, there will be more than enough alternatives for them to choose from elsewhere in their playing  and learning environment.

3. Minimising distractions: Less is more

I am by no means the world's most organised person. On the contrary. But I also know that I function much better, feel much calmer and more contented, and are able to focus more joyfully on things I am busy with, if my environment is uncluttered and 'quiet'. The same applies to my children.

We live in a small house, and if the living room floor becomes too cluttered with toys, my children's playtime becomes marked with irritation. If the house is tidy, though,  and there is one kind of toy on the carpet (this can be a single toy, or a collection like a playmat and cars, a few small wooden dolls to ride on them, and even an empty box or two that serves as a house!), a skill toy on the kitchen counter, a few books on a night stand and a 'changing station' for baby dolls set up in the bedroom, my daughter can freely move about the house and find something to pique her interest in almost every room!

****

I am aware that as you are reading this, you may feel that what I am talking about involves a lot of work. On the contrary: It took me about two mornings to organise our toys into daily containers and  draw up the closet door list, and since then I seldom struggle with bored children and having to rack my brain to come up with something to keep them busy with. It also does not take away spontaneity - in fact, 'strewing their paths' with good quality toys, books, and things to explore, opens up many, many doors for spontaneous learning - for all of us!

In closing, may I encourage you with a quote from Rose Kennedy:

"I looked on Child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty, but as a profession that demanded the best I could bring to it"

Keeping it real: the final fishy chapter

So, we have been having endless amounts of fun exploring fish the past two weeks, and the most gratifying part of it all is how much Sweetpea has come to enjoy and learn from some factual fish books I bought for her from Bargain Books two weeks ago. We read them together about three times, and now she spontaneously seeks them out, and pores over the photographs, commenting on details and naming all the different kinds of fish and other sea animals. Her favourites are blowfish and jellyfish.She loves telling me that giant sharks have no teeth and are therefore not scary, but that hammerheads are very dangerous. The only confusion is around walrusses and whales: the Afrikaans words for these two animals sound almost exactly the same, so when she points them out to me, she sometimes uses the wrong one.

One of the Montessori principles that appealed to me most when I first read Paula Polk Lillard's Montessori from the Start almost two years ago, was the focus on using REAL things when teaching our children: picture books with photographs, and small plastic animals that look like the real thing. She also emphasised that one gives concrete information  to the hand first, before trying to give abstract information to the brain, and as such I try to keep my children's learning experiences as real and direct as possible. So, to conclude our fish theme on a high note, I bought a fish home from the fish market at our local grocery store (R21, 50 from Checkers, in case you'd like to do the same!), for us to explore. I set it on a tray on a low table outside and brought out our fish books as well, so we could do some comparisons.

Sweetpea's reaction to the fish was interesting: she immediately knew this was different - real -  and I think she sensed something unnatural about a real fish lying so still on a tray... At first she wouldn't come close and stayed behind me, curiously peeking over my shoulder and asking questions, but not daring to come too near. Of course ArrowBoy was hands-on right from the word go!

My, what big eyes you have, grandma!

We spoke about how the fish was caught in the sea by a fisherman, and that it was now dead. I didn't make a big deal about it, though, and drew her in with questions about the parts of the fish we learned while building our felt puzzle earlier in the week. I explained how the gills worked and showed her the sideline that helps with balance - all things that are way beyond her current level of understanding, I know, but it felt right to do so and she listened intently nontheless. When I opened her books to compare fishy traits, she finally relaxed and started exploring on her own.

And my, what big teeth you have! PS: forgive my ignorance, but I was surprised at our fish's cute little tongue!

The Gills.

The original plan was to cook our little specimen for supper that evening, but all the learning took a lot longer longer than I anticipated and as a result the fish was in the sun for far too long. The Dad suggested we chop it up finely and use it as compost (!?) but I am already having endless trouble with neighbour cats, so alas, the little fellow ended up in the trash...

Foam fish numbers game

As part of our fish theme this week I made a fishing game to help Sweetpea with recognising amounts of one to three. Although she counts well up to 12, we are still working on understanding just how many THREE are. So, I made a special die that would only have one, two or three dots per side. For this I used a polystyrene cube, and drew on the circles with a black marker.

I cut the fish from craft foam and again used a black marker for drawing the dots. I also added a few unnumbered fish with different facial expressions.

Since it was a beautifully sunny day, we took the game outside on the grass and she was fishing from atop the trampoline. To play, she had to follow my instructions. I could say: "Throw the die. OK, you threw a three. Now find the blue fish with three dots on its body." Or, I asked her to catch the sad-looking orange fish. This is a really simple little game and we played for only a few minutes, but since she is a bit wary of counting these days, it was perfect - we practiced a  few number concepts and before she was bored, we were done!

For bath time I removed the paper clips and when the foam got wet, it stuck nicely to the side of the bath, so we rehearsed our numbers again in a playful way!

The rod we used came with a magnetic puzzle that is part of the range of Nucleus Toys which I sell. The fish puzzle is now out of stock, but I have this lovely butterflies and bugs puzzle available for R40 each, so let me know if you would like to order one!

 Also, I sell the craft foam I used to make the fish with, at R8 for a pack of three sheets in assorted colours.

Parts-of-a-fish puzzle

As part of our fish theme this week, I made this fish felt puzzle for Sweetpea, based on the Montessori puzzles that teaches animal parts.

To make my own version, I covered a piece of cardboard (left over from the box my vacuum cleaner came in) with blue felt, using fabric glue. I then drew on the design with a black permanent marker.

I cut the parts of the fish from orange and red felt, and glued an A5-size manilla envelope to the back of the puzzle board to store the parts in.

The letters are from the Suczezz range of educational toys that I sell (the alphabet theme is R44. E-mail me if you would like to order some!) I have decided to start including letters more in our play. No pressure for Sweetpea to formally learn them, I just keep putting them out there and spelling things as we go along. She seems to learn best in this by-the-way manner: instead of sitting her down and teaching at her, I point things out in a casual way and she often surprises me with the things she picks up through observation.

We build this puzzle before we start any of our other fish themed activities every morning. The first time I showed her all the parts and where they go, and also named them for her. She then built it on her own, and I again repeated the correct name of each part as she did.

I leave the puzzle out for her in case she wants to return to it later in the day. Just this afternoon she sat building it at the kitchen counter, and I was impressed to see that she had also built the word fish, all on her own! (We are a bilingual family and I teach in my native Afrikaans, while my husband, an Australian, communicates only in English. PS: I showed Sweetpea the correct place for the dot on the 'i', but she insisted on keeping it right on top of the long part. Will be pointing out 'i's when we read our bedtime story tonight.)

A very exotic bottle fish!

It has been my intention for ages now to organise our daily learning activities around a central theme. Maybe not necessarily a theme-of-the-week kind of thing, because some themes may require a longer period of time to cover and others less, but you get the idea. I feel this will help me to more intentionally prepare learning activities and crafts at the start of each week, and give a little more structure to what we are doing.

So, I was doing the dishes on Sunday afternoon and wondering about what our very first theme would be. I had just used the last of the dish washing liquid and the empty bottle was standing next to the sink while I worked. I try to recycle a lot of our household junk into craft materials for Sweetpea or simple homemade skills toys for ArrowBoy these days, and so I was also trying to come up with an idea for using this oddly shaped plastic bottle for a craft. I had been eyeballing it for a while, and when I turned it on its side, I thought it rather looked like a peculiar kind of ....FISH! Aha! And so the theme for this week was born!!

As soon as the rest of the Joyful Family went for naps, I started prepping for the week's actvities...but alas, then Sweetpea woke up really ill on Monday morning and has been feeling far too miserable for doing much more than sitting on Mama's lap. She did perk up for an hour or two this morning, though, so here is what we did:

On Sunday afternoon I pre-cut the fins from an empty oats box, and also used a craft knife to cut slits in the plastic bottle where the fins would go.

While the children were playing this morning, I set up our craft tray with everything we needed. I find that this is the key to doing successful crafts with toddlers: have everything in one place, ready to go!

Sweetpea LOVED pushing the strips of red cellophane into the bottle - it was a super fine motor activity, too!

Painting the fins.

Painting white glue around the neck of the bottle. We attached a strip of orange felt for the mouth, and the eyes are craft foam circles on which Sweetpea drew some pupils with a black marker. We stuck  it on with white glue.

Ta-daaa! Our beautifully exotic bottle fish!

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