The next time your children spill wheat all over the floor and you don't want to eat it or waste it, try making your own search and find toy like we did.Although my little children like to look for individual items, this is more of a novelty item that our guests like to play with. We made extra and gave them away as gifts. There are 20 items.Some, like the nail and the penny, are really hard to find! Here is what we used:
1.toothpick
2.pawn
3.glow-in-the-dark star
4.push pin
5.a slice of straw
6.macaroni noodle
7.die (singular dice)
8.ladybug pendant
9.clear glass pebble
10.metal from a clothes pin (this one throws everybody off!)
When my husband got a new desk for Christmas, he offered me the table that he had been using. Of course I don't want it! Where would we put it?!? Well, fortunately I gave it a second thought and consequently produced the best organizing achievement of Tamsyn history. There have been so many blessings that have come from our new system and I have been very excited to blog about it today.
Days of our lives
The crux of the system revolves around having a bin for every day of the week. I borrowed this idea from heartofwisdom.com. The basic concept is that at the beginning of the week you take a few minutes to put worksheets, manipulatives, and other school items in the daily bins and when the respective day comes you just take the box out and complete the work inside it. We have been doing this for about two months and it has worked great for us. My young children have noticed that school will be done when the box is empty. This is easier for them to understand than a check-off list. They are learning the days of the week too!
This tote came from Wal-Mart, and was made from two plastic dressers. They came with four small drawers and three large drawers. Michael and I each had one and I stole two little drawers from him. He wasn't using them anyway. :o)
School supplies
The funnest part of this project for me was gathering the school supplies from the four corners of the house and bringing them all together in one place. Now the pom-poms, craft sticks, crayons, glitter glue, play-dough, flashcards, and all the other random supplies have gathered into one space where I will ACTUALLY USE THEM! As my family grows, I will probably need more of these drawers, but for now we are content to have labeled: Paper Supplies, Craft Supplies, Flash Cards, Manipulatives, Laminated Toys, Workbooks, and one left-over drawer which is begging me to finally buy tempera paints since it's out of the children's reach.
Puzzles
Before: Puzzles were stacked on the bookshelf so the children would be drawn to them. Result? Mommy did the puzzles more than the kids and the puzzles were conveniently never unpacked when we moved here.
After: The puzzles have a home in a tote with a lid. This tote was previously filled with random school supplies, but when they found a new home in the drawers, this tote was repurposed. Result? The puzzles are getting used without destroying my sanity. The other tote that is the same size as this one is our sand exploration center
School Toys
Any toys that were originally purchased for educational purposes were gathered into this tote, leaving less clutter in the playroom, and more focused use by the children in the clean environment of the kitchen table.
Bits of Intelligence Cards
These are part of Glenn Doman's Encyclopedic Knowledge program. Construction paper is stored in the back for easy access.
Conclusions
This is a wonderful addition to our kitchen. Aside from the common advantages like "a place for everything and every thing in it's place" and "store it where you use it", there have been a few unforeseen advantages to having the school supplies in the kitchen.
·Housekeeping is not my forte, and if I have to choose between a school session and cleaning up after lunch, I always choose the first. I tend to avoid the kitchen... Having the supplies downstairs has been great for the kitchen table and the floor underneath. I don't want sticky pancakes on our puzzles!
·Educational toys make great temporary entertainment while I finish making dinner. When I'm in the kitchen, the children love to be there too, and I can help them with their puzzles and toys while I'm cleaning.
·Child-led school time. Understandably, the table is a tempting place for the kids, but I have strictly enforced that it is MY table. However, every night they have the opportunity look in the drawers and pick out activities for the next day. I also tend to give in when they beg me to do school with them.
·Brief sessions during mealtime. With the bit cards so handy, we have started pulling them out. As the children watch the cards, they sometimes forget about being picky eaters.
As our family grows and their needs change, we will add more totes and perhaps a bookshelf, but this kitchen learning center is here to stay!
About a year ago, my youngest siblings made these polar bears with my son. We printed out the template from www.thebestkidsbooksite.com, cut and glued them onto blue construction paper for contrast, and had fun gluing cotton swabs to them. We found that the most effective way for the younger children to do this was to have them dip the cotton into a small tray of glue, instead of gluing the polar bear. Some of the kids wanted there to be snow in the picture. Sometimes the joy is in the doing, not in the results. :o)
This was part of a unit study on polar bears. We also read Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World from the library and discussed how penguins and polar bears do not live together and showed the kids where polar bears live on a globe. We showed pictures of polar bears from the National Geographic magazine, and said a polar bear rhyme similar to the one found here. We also snacked on fish crackers because polar bears eat fish. I think that unit studies like this are especially helpful for introducing new concepts to younger children.
I had a friend who recently introduced Math-U-See to me, with the recommendation that children learn their numbers and numerals up to nine before beginning. This was good advice. As I poured through the Introduction to Mathematics book (now replaced by the Primer) and became excited about the program, I realize that they need this foundation before being ready to begin the formal program.
Therefore, my goal is to teach my three-year-old his numbers up to nine. As I contemplated how to get him there, I decided that the answer is quite simply to play with the Math-U-See blocks with my children.
In the beginning, I referred to the blocks by their number and color. "Will you please hand me the orange two block?" After a couple of weeks, I just started asking for the number, and if he was confused, I would clarify by telling him a color. In a way this is teaching him to associate numbers with colored blocks, but this information is being used in the real world too. In the month that we started playing with the blocks, he has gone from understanding two to understanding four. If I give him three raisins and his sister four, he will complain using real numbers. Although he knows that the violet block is "six", he still doesn't recognize six objects in a different context. But understanding six in any context is pretty good for a three-year-old, and further understanding will come with practice.
Building Walls
This activity has even worked with my 22-month old. I will choose a larger block, like nine or ten, to build a wall on. Then I will place a slightly smaller numbered block and ask my children which block I need to finish the row. My son is often involved in his own building project, and will shout out "three". My daughter is more excited to help me, and grabs me a pink block. She recognizes the missing space up to three, but struggles with four or more. Since she does not even say her numbers yet, I think this is a great start. My son can do it with all of the blocks now. He reached this mastery by building his own walls. We build ten walls, nine walls, eight walls, and so on. My daughter prefers to make her own six walls, because violet is so pretty.
Unit Puzzles
I made these puzzles to teach quantity and numeral recognition. Procedure? Give the child a handful of unit blocks, tell them the name of the puzzle that they are doing, and let them place the blocks on the cards. They are willing enough to do these puzzles if all I give them are unit blocks, but if the rest of the blocks are within reach, they won't touch these. I only occasionally pull these out, but I have had good results. Those familiar with the Math-U-See program will recognize this format, I have simply repurposed it for my younger children. You need Math-U-See blocks to do these puzzles, but if anyone is interested, feel free to print these out and use them.
We love Math-U-See, and we haven't even started yet! In the future, we will be purchasing more blocks, and using their full curriculum. It is amazing to me that these manipulatives can be used from the pre-primer stage all the way through algebra. Playing with blocks is fun = Math is fun!
Recently we have started using the Math-U-See curriculum in our home, adapting it for our pre-primer children. One of the highlights of the program is making a poster of a placed called "decimal street" to teach place value. Looking for ideas, I found The Daniel Academy's lapbook. I really liked the idea of using Cars characters to make the street more appealing.
For our edition, green units go to Mater's tow yard (mater is green!), tens go to Sally's hotel, and the hundreds get to go to Lightning McQueen's castle. Sweet!The Sheriff is there to make sure that none of these places become too crowded. Only nine units can be in Mater's tow yard at one time, for example. If there are ten, then they trade up to become a ten block and can go to Sally's hotel. The helicopter is there because he's just cool that way. Un-pictured are the numeral cards that can be placed on the respective squares to say how many blocks there are (or should be) in the different places.
My children (namely my son) love to use their trucks to load the different blocks. If a tornado stirs things up, it's the truck that puts every block back in it's place."Mommy!The semi-truck is taking the tens to Sally's hotel!"Getting to play with the math-u-see blocks is their reward for finishing the rest of their school.
I have been amazed at how my son has picked up on the idea of place value with this poster, because he still doesn't understand his numbers yet beyond four.Four-hundred and forty-four makes perfect sense to him, but five is still a little hard for him to grasp beyond knowing that that's how many fingers he has on his hand.Playing with the blocks every day is helping him learn his numbers too.
"Checkmate in two moves" says my son after an engaging match.
Then I wake up. The truth is, my three-year-old son does not even have the attention span to play Candyland. Before he was two, he knew his basic colors inside and out, and so when he was 2 1/2, we gave him Candyland for Christmas. He thought that the board was cute, and that the little gingerbread men were fun toys, but we ended up putting it away. Even now, his version of the game is to walk the gingerbread men down the path and to talk to all of the characters as they journey to the king. We managed to play half of a real game once, then he threw the pieces all over the floor and said "The end!" Fair enough, we put it away.
There is something that I heard Susan Wise Bauer say 10 years ago at a homeschooling conference that means more to me today than ever before. She said: "There is an intellectual maturity than can be given to children through a superb education, and then there is a social maturity that only happens when they've gone around the sun a few times." I find myself thinking these words all of the time. What was my goal in presenting Candyland to my son in the first place? He already knew his colors. Sitting down to play a game like that requires a certain social maturity that he just doesn't have yet. Next year I'll probably be rolling my eyes at this article because it will be all that he'll want to play.
So why chess?
When my son was a baby, I saved this article from the Mothering magazine and decided that I would introduce chess to my children when they were three. That was before I had heard of Doman or any of the other early programs. Studies have shown (that's vague, I know, I'm not going find you a study for this post, sorry!) Ahem! Studies have shown that children who play chess do better in math and science, and overall academically than their peers who don't play chess. I believe it. My family loves chess, and my children are often exposed to it when we visit them.
Going back to the social vs intellectual maturity idea, what can you teach a preschooler? What are they intellectually ready to handle? I've put it to the test with my son and here is why I have found:
1.They are old enough to learn how to respect the pieces. When he would throw the pieces all over the floor, we immediately put them away, even though he still wanted to play with them. He doesn't throw them around anymore.
2.They can learn the names of the pieces. He knows them. Even my 22-month old knows the difference between a pawn and a horsie.
3.They can learn how the different pieces move. This has been our biggest breakthrough. He knows how about half of the pieces move, and he thinks that it's funny that they can only move certain ways. How silly! Moving on with his version of the game…
4.They can learn that only one piece can occupy a square at a time. This was actually a tricky thing that had to be learned. Pictured is how my daughter set up the board, you can see that she doesn't quite understand this yet. My son does.
5.They can appreciate the beauty of the pieces and the board. This is the number one thing that makes them request the game again and again, I think. The pieces are beautiful. The board has intriguing spatial patterns. They want to learn.
6.They can even learn how to set the board up. We're working on this, but he now knows where the pawns go, and that the rooks go in the corners.
Where do we go from here? As soon as he can play Candyland, I will introduce him to Lincolnshire chess (referred to in the Mothering article as "The Pawn Game"). When he can play Candyland, he will have mastered the art of taking turns, he will understand that somebody wins and somebody doesn't, and he will have the patience to see the game to the end. Here is a video showing how to play Lincolnshire chess.
As a side note, Frank Ho from math and chess shares a kinesthetic way of teaching how the different pieces move. I can't wait to try it!
I am the oldest of 11 and for Christmas my younger brothers completed a sewing project that they got from Washington Online, which they gave to my son for Christmas. My children have had a lot of fun with this toy. It has reinforced color and sorting. We have talked about big and small, and sorted the dinosaurs by size as well as by color. I wanted to highlight this project today and tell my brothers, good job! My siblings have had a lot of fun with the K-12 curriculum this year. Editors note: My youngest sister helped too. Thank you!
