Language Development

Last week, L woke up one morning and started stuttering. Nearly every word she said had a stutter in the beginning and end.  I panicked, of course, and started searching the internet to find a diagnosis.  Apparently this happens fairly frequently between the ages of 2 and 3 when kids hit periods of steep cognitive development and their language skills haven't caught up with how fast their brains are functioning (or something like that).

Salt and Food Coloring Art

The kids and I made some art today with salt and food coloring using a combination of techniques (salt painting, drip painting).

The materials were all things I had around the house - salt, food coloring, contact paper, droppers, and q-tips:

Animal Matching Activity

The kids have quite a collection of little plastic animal models.  One activity we do involves matching the animal figures to animal cards.  A month or two ago, I found some flashcards in the Target $1 section for North American Animals and another for Insects.  They went perfectly with our North American Animal Toob and the insect tub (from Oriental Trading).  After laminating the cards that had matching figures, I presented it to the girls as an animal matching game:

Shape Sorting Game

Activities seem to be more fun when they're done on a larger scale.  Since the girls (31 months) have been pretty bored with sorting by shape and color (they had it mastered around 18 months old), I thought I'd change it around by making it into a new game.  First I put some painter's tape on the floor in four different shapes.  Then I made shape cards for the photo dice, and brought out the tub of linking shapes:

Homeschool Week in Review

L and E are 31 months old.

Here are some random photos of the activities we've been doing (these are actually from the past 2 weeks since I didn't post last week).

Math:

We explored triangles with the geoboards this week.  The girls' fine motor skills are really improving.  L made triangles with relative ease, and E impressed me with the 'Christmas Tree' she made (I showed her how to make the first two triangles and then while my back was turned she added the other two!).


Reading:

My Amazing Kiddos

Having three children under the age of three can be both a challenge and a blessing.  I love every age and stage they go through, but right now seems like such an interesting time for all three.

I started blogging because I always said that I wanted to scrapbook or at least record memories of the children as they grow up, and I figured that an electronic medium was perfect for me since I'm a computer-nerd.

I noticed that I tend to write more about the activities we do then personal notes on the children, so I'd like to start blogging here and there about all the phases the kids are going through.  If you read my blog for ideas of activities to do with your kids, you can skip the personal posts.

I'm a Time4Learning Reviewer

Time4Learning has invited me to try their online curriculum for 30 days in exchange for an honest review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so come back and read about my experiences. Visit them for information about lesson plans, homeschool portfolios or writing your own curriculum review.

The twins have really been enjoying their computer time as we've gone through free trials of a variety of programs from Reading Eggs to K5 Learning to PBS Kids Play, so I'll be able to provide a comparison of Time4Learning with some of these other products.  I'm especially looking forward to trying their Math curriculum with the girls (who seem to be handling pre-K and Kindergarten math just fine), since I haven't been able to find a lot of online math programs I like.

Check back for my review over the next 30 days.

Yarn Octopus and Jellyfish

The girls were fascinated by the yarn I pulled out yesterday, so I decided to make a couple yarn crafts with them this morning.

The no-sew, no-knit yarn octopus doll idea has been around a long time (I imagine it's from the days before plastic manufactured toys), and is a lot of fun to make.  It ended up being more of a Mommy-craft, with help from the kids rather than something they could do all by themselves.

Making Orange Juice

I like to let the kids make their own orange juice once or twice a week (it's actually made with clementines not oranges, but we call it orange juice anyway).  It's a great Montessori motor-skills exercise with cutting, squeezing, and pouring practice. It is also useful for being able to describe the sequence of events (they tell me what we do first, what comes next, etc..).

Here are some pictures of the kids making their own juice:

The twins (31 months old) are not strong enough to really squeeze all the juice out, so for that part we either do it together or take turns.  Usually two clementines only produce a shot-glass full of juice, but it's the process that counts.  I always try to sneak in some liquid vitamins into the juice since the Vitamin C from citrus products helps with iron absorption.

In the past, we would also include a lengthy first step that involved scrubbing the clementines and then rinsing them in water, which the girls loved to do.  Unfortunately, my husband decided that the wonderful fruit-and-vegetable-scrubbers we had would be great for cleaning the bathroom, so we've stopped that part until I can get some replacement scrubbers. 

Exploring Sound: Science, Math, and Music Activity

Last weekend we did Lesson C-2 in Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding (BFSU) - "Sound, Vibrations, and Energy", and I decided to integrate the lesson with some fun music and math activities.

First we made string instruments out of rubber bands and cookie cutters:

The sound out of these was not that impressive, but the kids enjoyed holding them up to their ears and also strumming them and then feeling the vibrations in the cookie cutters.  We talked about how the vibrations from the rubber bands travel through the particles in the air to their ears (they understand the concept of air as a substance so maybe they got it, or maybe there's just some association made between vibrations and sound, which is fine too).  Then they put their ears on the wooden table and listened to sounds through this solid (they were surprised by the result and giggled). 

Next I filled up glasses with varying amounts of water and let them make some music.  The girls know how to distinguish high/low pitches and ascending/descending intervals from Kinderbach, so we played some games identifying the difference in the sounds each glass made:

 We've been doing a lot of work with patterns and number recognition lately, so I wanted to demonstrate the different ways we can make patterns with music. 

We composed music using different manipulatives.  One way was to put numbers in front of the glasses, and then, moving from left to right, strike each glass the number of times displayed on the corresponding card.  L really enjoyed rearranging the numbers and then asking me to play her composition.  Another way we composed music was to use two instruments (a glass, and a container for a drum), and assign a different color to each one.  Then we combined MegaBlocks to make a pattern to play:

For example, to play the composition above, you would play glass-drum-drum-glass-drum.  E was really good at this activity, probably because it combined her love of building with blocks with her love of music.

Finally, we took out our whole collection of percussion instruments and played some games reading quarter notes:

Sometimes I'd hit a drum a certain number of times and the girls had to pick the card that depicts the correct number of notes, and sometimes I'd pick a card and they would have to play the rhythm.  I think they can finally identify a group of four objects, which is something they've struggled with for a while in our RightStart Math curriculum.  In the picture above, L is playing the game, while E is making the letter "T" with her drumsticks (they're so creative!). 

Since the kids enjoyed this very much, I plan on expanding on these types of activities to include different rhythms and patterns.  I'll have to also search the web for more ideas on experiments to do with sound - I'm sure there are other fun experiments out there.

(Pizza) Pi Day

Since I'm a math-geek, I had to take some time away from my work today to celebrate Pi Day (3/14) with the kids.  First the twins used dot-paints to put toppings on their paper-plate pizzas:

We turned it into a dramatic play activity with a pizza box that was lying around (excuse the grease spots!).  E and I put together a 'house', and then we would call up the pizza parlor (L on the couch) to order a pizza (the girls loved pretending to talk to each other on the phone).  L would then drive the pizza over to our house for delivery, where we shared the pizza - yum!

The girls played 'pizza delivery' over and over and over. L noticed that it was hard to share the pizza, so I got her some scissors and she cut it in half to share with her sister:

For the 'pi' part of the lesson, I showed the girls how to take yarn and measure the diameter and circumference of our pizza and then compare them (yep - the circumference was approximately three times the diameter):

I had other math-related activities planned, but the kids were fascinated by the yarn, so we ended up doing some free exploration with the yarn instead.

Happy Pi Day!

Busy

It's been a couple days since I've blogged (yes, Mom, everything is fine).  We had a great weekend, and I have tons of photos and activities I want to share.  The problem is that it takes a lot of self-discipline to work from home (and actually get work done), and it's been too tempting to play with my amazing children and enjoy the beautiful weather lately.  So I'm behind on work, and have some catching-up to do for an upcoming deadline.  That means that the kids are going to be watching a lot of educational videos and entertaining themselves this week while I get my work done, and my blogging time will be severely limited.  Hopefully after a burst of productivity (and a lesson in time-management), I'll have a chance to post more about our homeschool preschool adventures.

Jack the Builder - Building Block Activity

We have a number of the MathStart picture books by Stuart Murphy, and today we did an activity based on the book Jack the Builder.  This book teaches the American way of doing basic addition (start at the last number and then count by ones from that point), and since I'm trying to teach the kids the Japanese way (via the Rightstart Math curriculum, which teaches kids to view addition in terms of 5s and 10s), I focused more on the block-building than the math.

The book is about a boy who builds various things as he stacks up more and more blocks.  I think this is a terrific book, not necessarily for teaching addition, but for its message about using your imagination and the wonderful illustrations (we spent a lot of time examining each picture and pointing out different objects we found).

For this activity, I took out our wooden blocks and the girls tried to duplicate the creations the boy was making.  There are a number of skills involved:

1. Picking out the correct blocks by color, shape, and size
2. If the same color/shape/size block is not available, identifying what criteria to use to select an alternative
3. Using the correct number of blocks
4. Placing the blocks in the right orientation to replicate the formation in the picture.

Of course I let the girls discover these skills on their own as they worked on this task:

The towers crashed before they could build the spaceship at the end, so they used their problem solving skills to engineer their own spaceships:

We counted backwards from 10 and the girls screamed "Blast Off!"  Then, like in the book, the kids knocked the towers down and started again, building all sorts of creations from their imaginations.

We're Going on a Number Hunt

The other day, E was throwing something away and declared, "There's 'S' in the trash!".  The kids have been spotting letters and numbers everywhere we go.  Since the girls are already proficient in letter recognition, I decided that we would go on a Number Hunt.  I let the kids raid the pantry looking for numbers on packaging.  Some of the numbers were so small that I had to take out magnifying glasses, which added to the fun.  It was wonderful practice spotting the tiny numbers and learning to identify numbers larger than 10.  We also compared quantities - this box has 8, this one has 12, which one has more? 

I cut out some of the numbers from the packages we didn't need, and the kids played with them the rest of the night (excuse the dirty table in the picture, this was right after a painting activity).  We'll have to do a 'Word Hunt' next to practice reading. 

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Decorate a Container with Cotton Loops

We made these gorgeous fabric-wrapped containers today - they could be used as vases, pencil holders, or kick-nack desk accessories and would also make wonderful handmade gifts.

A while ago I bought a bag of cotton loops which are supposed to be refills for those kid potholder looms (I was going to use them on a geoboard but then ended up letting the kids use rubber bands instead, so they've been sitting in my craft closet for a while).  You could also cut your own rings out of any stretchy fabric.  The kids and I spent the morning putting them on various containers:

Putting the loops around the mouth of the container and then pushing them down one by one was a terrific fine-motor exercise for the kids.  Taking them off again was fun as well.  If we make these again as gifts, I'd probably glue the loops that go around the bottom and the top of the container and let the kids fill in the rest.  They turned out so whimsical and colorful:

Now we just need to craft some spring flowers to go inside to make a cheery centerpiece for the table!

Watercolor Textures with Salt and Plastic Wrap

Here are two simple watercolor 'texture' painting techniques I've seen all over the web, which I've wanted to try for some time.  So when the kids wanted to watercolor paint their coloring pages today, I thought I'd give it a try.

First wet your paper (learned that it's best to get it really wet by running water on both sides of the paper until it is almost translucent, but doesn't fall apart).  Then do some watercolor painting, covering the sheet:

We worked on the one above together.  I was originally planning on trying the plastic-wrap technique on this one, but the paper was too try when we were done, so we tried sprinkling salt on it instead (both E and L loved this part).  When the painting was (mostly) dry, the girls and I took a look at it in the sunlight:

I love the 'snow' effect the salt creates.  This would be wonderful for children's artwork with a winter/snow theme.

Then L helped me paint another piece of paper (this time making sure it was really wet before we started painting).  When we were done covering the paper, we put wrinkled plastic wrap on top:

You're supposed to wait until the paint is completely dry before removing the plastic wrap, but the kids (or Mommy), couldn't wait..  Here is the result:

What a neat texture!  These would be so beautiful for making greeting cards or backgrounds for unique art.  We'll be experimenting with these techniques again, for sure.

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Left Hand, Right Hand - Homemade Game

The kids helped me make this really easy homemade game for learning the difference between Right and Left.  I used L's hand and a large ink-pad to make stamps of her left and right hands on a large sheet of paper (you could use paint as well, although I imagine that will be messier).  Then I cut out little "L" and "R" cards out of an index card and asked her to figure out which hand she used to make each of the handprints (this wording is important, because if you look at the palm of someone's hand facing you, it will be the mirror image, i.e. opposite hand, from yours).  I wrote 'L' and 'R' on her hands in washable marker to help her remember which was which:

L did a great job with this activity, repeating it several times.  We also played a game where I asked her to touch her left/right ear, eye, knee, foot, etc.. or do different actions with her left/right hand, and she enjoyed this quite a bit too.  I'm not sure she could identify left from right without having the letters written on her hand, but we'll keep practicing.

Of course, I couldn't take out the ink-pad without letting the kids have some free exploration with some animal stamps:

I took out a marker and drew some smiling-faces on some of the fingerprints and handprints on their paper, and L wanted to try too:

Aren't these cute?  L (31 months) made the faces all by herself - she's been making 'realistic' drawings since she was younger than 2 years old.  E tried to make a face but when it didn't turn out, she gave up and decided to build a tower with the stamps instead:

I love how each twin has a different personality, different strengths, and different interests.