"Bless all young mothers..."

This past weekend I hosted a delightfully successful Phonics and Early Maths workshop for 42 mothers and pre-school teachers. We had the joy of listening to two knowledgeable and passionate ladies share some wonderfully creative, practical ideas for playfully teaching our children, and my toes curled with utter delight as I watched the moms in the audience enjoy the whole thing! But I had put in many long hours to make the morning happen, and spent most of last week making up goodie bags, sewing bunting and a banner for my toy display, baking and frosting cupcakes for the ladies to enjoy at teatime, and sending out many, many e-mails in reply to queries about the event. Still, what a joy to see something like this come together and mothers being inspired to go home bubbling over with delicious ideas!

So when my husband suggested a daytrip up the West Coast on Sunday morning, I gratefully accepted! Earlier in the week I saw a quick and easy recipe for kebabs and couscous salsa salad over at Se7en, and I quickly put it all together to serve as a cold lunch later in the day. We packed the picnic basket, the small folding table, some soothing instrumental music, and a bag full of books to keep littlies entertained, and winded our way through glorious fields of spring flowers, and up the coast to a tiny fisherman's villiage called Velddrif. It was the perfect spot for us: a seemingly endless stretch of shelley beach,  little waves just big enough to cause a toddler tremendous excitement without any threat of knocking her over, and only two other people also quietly enjoying the mellow spring afternoon on the beach.

Sweetpea picked the Namaqualand daisies from a little patch of wildflowers next to where we were parked...

Lunch is served!

All I forgot was a cheery table cloth -will do better next time!!

After lunch the Dad dozed in the shade of the car, Arrowboy explored the succulents growing on the road next to the beach, and Sweetpea and I used some of our enamel picnic crockery as vessels for building sandcastles. And all around just the sweet quietness of swishing waves breaking over broken shells and pebbles, and the seagulls overhead...

And off he goes..

The view...

And then, after all that delicious tranquility, we headed back home with two exhausted children who nodded off before we even reached the tar road again... And it would have been the perfect end to the perfect day if only they had remained asleep for the rest of the two hour drive home. But, alas, Sweetpea woke up after just ten minutes, terribly groggy and complaining of an earcahe, until her wailing woke up ArrowBoy and he joined in the cacophony with wails of his own, and all this persisted for the rest of the drive home, and well into evening. I fell into bed bleary-eyed and drained later that eve, only to be woken shortly thereafter by Sweetpea's inconsolable sobs that the only way she could ever go to sleep, is if I let her sleep with us. By four in the morning the Dad and I could not stand the kicking anymore, and I carried her back to her own bed.

Suffice it to say that I don't do well on lack of sleep, and that today was hard, Monday being laundry day and then the oven stopped working and dinner was late and I found out we won't be moving to a house with a beautiful big yard after all...Oh my goodness, it is a sure recipe for horrible, selfish, utterly unattractive SELF-PITY!!!!

 But then..oh then... at the end of it all, I sat down at my computer to tie up some loose ends in the admin department of this household, and inbetween browsed a few blogs...and discovered this poem. And a little wall broke inside and released some weary tears and The Gentle Shepherd softly reminded me again that "He shall gently lead those that are with young." Isaiah 40:11.

" God,

bless all young mothers

at end of day,

kneeling wearily with each

small one

to hear them pray.

Too tired to rise when done...

and yet, they do,

longing simply to sleep

one whole night through.

Too tired to sleep,

too tired to pray...

God,

bless all young mothers

at close of day."

~ Ruth Bell Graham

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...

Some super-fun Fish crafts

Hope you are not all fished-out yet, because we are still having oceans full of fishy fun around here! Since paint and glue are the two most amazing substances as far as Sweetpea is concerned,  we've been using a lot of both to create some fantastic sea creatures!

After reading the book Bright Stanley by Matt Buckingham ( you can order your own copy by clicking on the link below), we talked a bit about how fish are covered in scales. I bought a stack of really excellent books on sealife from Bargain Books last week, so we paged through them in search for pictures of fish with scales, and learnt that not all animals that live in the ocean have scales: Some have skin, others have feathers and still others, like seahorses are covered in flat protective shields!

After all that it was time to get busy with some glue and paper scales, and here is what we came up with:

(I just CANNOT get this picture to go the right way - aaargh! But you get the idea!)

                     

And since Sweetpea has a newfound fascination with JELLYFISH, we had to make one of those, too! I cut a paper plate in half and she painted it green. When it had dried, we used sponge stamps to create an interesting texture on top of the green. Lastly we smeared plenty of white glue to the back of the 'head' and glued on the tentacles. Of all our fishy crafts, this one is Sweetpea's favourite by far! We stuck it up against the glass sliding door and it looks beautiful when the sun shines through the cellophane!

Our friend Trudie from Fun with Little mouse gave Sweetpea this sticker set and she spent an entire afternoon recreating the story of Nemo on the pretty background sheet. Thanks, Trudie!

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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What a beautiful baby!

This darling little donkey foal was recently born on my sister and her husband's farm and I couldn't resist posting these photos to share the cuteness with you all. I think it looks like the little fellow is wearing a really fluffy hat!

My brother-in-law shared with us that donkeys make really good mothers and are very protective of their young. For this purpose they are kept on the farm: see, they are put out to graze with pregnant cows or cows with young calves, to protect the young calves from jackals. One kick from a protective donkey mama is enough to kill a jackal.

I think there's a beautiful and encouraging little lesson here for us mamas who have friends with very young babies, who might be feeling a little overwhelmed at times...As that new mommy tries to find her feet in this wonderful adventure that is motherhood, let's not be the jackals who critisize and attack. Instead, may we rally around the new mom and give her space to find her and her baby's own, unique rythm. Let us strive to be a blessing, always.