Academics – Page 13 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Kitchen Brush Flowers

We have the wonderful blessing of living on the edge of the Texas Hill Country. The wildflowers this time of year are just incredible! A while back, I got this cute little piggy kitchen brush at Dollar Tree for Becca, but I wasn’t sure just how I wanted her to use it. Then I got to thinking what awesome paintings it would make… and the Mountain Laurels also inspired me! So, I drew “bark” onto the paper, and then she had a blast dabbing green paint and then lavender paint, making her very own Mountain Laurel paintings! You could easily do this with green and then any color to mimic any flowering bushes that you might have in your own yard. I can also imagine it’d be great for fall colors as well – red and yellow would look incredible “stamped” this way to make fall trees! Or, just use the kitchen brush to dab colors around on the paper and make a lovely collage just perfect for the background of one of your 2016 calendar pages! So many fun options when you paint with a kitchen brush!!

Baby Proofing for Baby #2

When you have your second child, everyone can tell you that life is about to get interesting, but nothing really can prepare you for just HOW VERY interesting life is gonna get. Especially when that second one is a boy who is into EVERYTHING. (And is a very special but large part of why I haven’t had much time to blog lately…)

So when we had Becca it was easy to childproof – because we over did it, really. Ya know, it’s first child syndrome – everything was super super safe. But we also didn’t have a whole lot of tiny little toys everywhere. We had age appropriate toys because, well, she was it. But now that she has tons of little tiny toys, and puzzles, and paper back books, and, and, and, and… little Brother is coming along and crawling and pulling and opening and pushing and dropping and EATING everything… Whew. Let me tell ya’ll… it’s really fun in our house. (Not to mention all the fights that are caused when Baby Bee grabs something that belongs to Big Butterfly….) So baby proofing took on whole new meaning. I thought I’d write a post to help those with second babies not yet crawling to give you some ideas of how to prepare for what is to come.

1. Plan a place for special toys.
We had Becca’s art cart and activities for downstairs on shelves in the dining room… quick and easy access, and a great place for her to use them while I’m cooking dinner… but also right where Brother could get to them and mess them up, or worse yet, get hurt by them. So this was probably the biggest baby proofing we’ve had to do. I had to clean out and move stuff to the attic from our under-stairs closet so create room for a set of shelves I got at Target, and for her art cart. That has become a FABULOUS storage area for her special things – that she can easily access, but he can’t because there’s a closed door in his way. Even if you don’t have a closet you can use, if you have a cabinet you can put a child lock on, that’s better than nothing. I just love having them in the closet because she can easily help herself – just like she’s been used to doing. Obviously, you’ll have to make use of whatever space you have.

2. Give your Big Butterfly a safe space.
When he was younger, we would often carry Gray into Boo’s room for visits, and she loved that. But as soon as he started crawling around, we started having issues. She has toys that are not only unsafe for his little mouth, but are more “sacred” that are in her room. So we have chosen to instate her room as her safe space. Brother isn’t welcome until he stops putting things in his mouth. I’ve made it very clear to her that this is not a permanent arrangement – he WILL be welcome in her room down the road, but rather than feeling we need to childproof her room to protect her toys from going in his mouth, he’s just not coming into her room right now. She likes knowing that her special things are safe and aren’t going to get chewed up. She really appreciates that, and it also helps when I see her playing in his room and abusing one of his toys or using it inappropriately – I remind her to take care of his things or she won’t be allowed to play with them. Touché.

3. Find some products that make your home safer. (Each of these includes affiliate links, thank you!)

We have this baby gate and love that we can move it and have two different locations where we use it. It is high quality, and has worked well for us since Becca was little. It also works to keep our dogs confined to a space as well. Dreambaby Retractable Gate

These sliding locks work great to keep our side-by-side refrigerator doors closed, and also to keep the closet doors closed. Dreambaby Sliding Locks, 3 Pack

These latches are super easy to add to cabinet doors and drawers – we have them all over our kitchen, and like that they are hidden from view, and easy for any adult to open. Safety 1st 14 Pack Wide Grip Latches

These plug protectors are easier to use than some of the others – just press the button and they’ll come out… but kids can’t get them out, they really do lock in securely. Safety 1st 24 Pack Secure Press Plug Protectors

What’s your favorite child proofing tip? Do you have more than two kids? What did you learn about baby proofing for boys vs for girls? PLEASE SHARE in the comments!!!

Making Music At Home

Special thanks to Jennifer Hayenga for sharing today’s From the Heart segment. She’s very passionate about sharing music with her kiddos, and I sure appreciate her sharing some of the songs that they enjoy in their home, and what her kids have been able to learn by participating in music education – both at home and in class! Jennifer’s family lives in the Dallas, TX area. You’ll learn more about her in her post. Here’s Jenn:

One of the subjects across the board that I see overlooked is music education and the mentioning of children’s music CD’s or songs that parents are sharing with their children. As a gifted educator in science, MS in curriculum, Mom of twins, I see that many skill sets are often introduced to children but few are truly developed. Most parents tend to gravitate towards sampling, allowing the child to decide, since there are so many choices out there.

Music education for children doesn’t necessarily mean playing an instrument or being able to correctly identify one when asked. It is about making neuro-connections with your child’s brain and stimulating the receptive and expressive systems. The receptive system primarily impacts music aptitude which continues to develop until approximately 9 years of age. During this time, music ability increases or decreases from the lack of quality stimulation which is when a child’s singing voice is also developing. From birth through age five, the brain is much more active than later on, making this a crucial time for “laying down the foundation” and “building the connections” that will last a lifetime. In addition, children also build vocabulary through music and learn how to pronounce words correctly which is why an early start is beneficial to proper language development.

Not all children need to be enrolled in a music class for this type of learning to be achieved. Parents can implement these kinds of activities at home teaching their children about macro and micro beats, vocal play, verse variation, fingerplays and more.

Some of my favorite songs are:

“Me, You, and We” by K. Guilmartin

“I Had a Little Frog” by Mary Anne Hrin

“My Ball” by L. Levinowitz

“Apples and Cherries” by K. Guilmartin

“Great Big Stars” (credit unknown)

“Between” by Wayne Brady

“Buzz Buzz “by Laurie Berkner

Laurie Berkner has wonderful children’s music and her CD’s can be checked out from the library for FREE. Another favorite one of ours is Road Trip Sing-Alongs which is a 3 CD set playing familiar songs from your childhood. My twins still love them today. We also play our music at home, in the car and do fingerplays and activities together. My children have just turned 2 and have been singing verses to songs since they were a year and have been doing fingerplays since that time. It has been amazing to watch their vocabulary and understanding of words grow. They learned their pronouns at age 1, opposites such as (Big-Little, Short-Tall, Up-Down, In-Out, On-Off, full-empty, Open-Close, Stop-Go, Push-Pull) and many others all because of MUSIC that I played and sang with them in our home and not from a paid music class! If you have any favorite songs or music, please share. We would love to hear what your kids love.

I am including a few pics from our music class session so you can see some of the things occurring in class and how the parents are participating.

I have cropped other children out of Jenn’s pictures since we don’t have their parent’s approval to post their photographs on the internet. You can see her two sweethearts participating in a drum class with their teacher.

Another great music/tech/language connection Becca enjoys are the Signing Time dvds as well as Rachel and the Treeschoolers dvds – which we find at our library. Rachel Coleman teaches kids through songs how to use sign language to communicate in Signing Time, and in Rachel and the Treeschoolers, they not only learn signs, but also a lot of basic preschool concepts as well – our favorite is the weather dvd. I love how she encourages the Treeschoolers to not be afraid of a thunderstorm!!

Our favorite cd to listen to in the car is by the Justin Graves Band and is children’s worship music – we have their Happy to Be Me Cd!

Mini Engineering Challenges

Here we are, once again, on the 2nd Thursday of the month! I’m not quite sure where March went, to be perfectly honest with you! But, we did some awesomely fun mini engineering challenges in March… so here are some new ideas for you to try with your little engineers!

We love our Bristle Blocks! If you don’t have a set of these, you can definitely purchase them on Amazon here (Battat Bristle Blocks Basic 112 Piece Set Building Kit – affiliate link, thank you!). Bristle blocks are fabulous for so many reasons, but Becca really enjoys the way they feel – as a sensory seeker, she will sit and rub these blocks while she’s thinking about where to put them. They just feel really neat in her hands. Many times, I just let her build whatever, but sometimes I’ll say “see if you can build a ______” and give her an idea. It is fabulous to let your little engineer free play with blocks and building materials, but it’s also a wonderful idea to give her a specific task to focus on – it puts her brain into the mode of needing to solve a problem, and figure out how to best complete the task at hand. So next time you get out the bristle blocks, try some of these fun things as building challenges:

boat
car
house
rocket
dinosaur
school

Becca loves to build cities. Who knows, maybe someday she’ll be a civil engineer and work for some large city, or be an architect who designs skyscrapers. I love that the sky is the limit for her. And all of the activities we do encourage her to grow and play in new and different ways. She loves the wooden blocks that my dad made for me when I was a kid, and she plays with them frequently. (If you see the apples on some of them and wonder about that, check out this post from last fall about our Ten Apples Up on Top activity – she still enjoys doing that, and anytime I mention taking the apples off, she gets very defensive of the apples! HA!) But anyway, if your kids don’t have a wonderful set of wooden blocks, there are some fabulous ones available on Amazon – try this set: Melissa & Doug 60-Piece Standard Unit Blocks. (aff link, thank you!)

So when your kiddos are building with their wooden blocks, free, imaginative play is awesome, but you can also take it to a different level by creating a challenge for them – see if they can create a variety of structures. Becca loves to build towers with her blocks, so I asked her one day, “well, how about if you build a city this time?” (She typically builds cities only with her Duplos.) She had so much fun creating roads and buildings and even decided where each person in our family would live and work, where the park and school and church were located… she really got detailed with it! I would definitely encourage you to play blocks with your kids and challenge them to build a city! See what fabulous ideas they come up with!

Becca loves straws. She’s fascinated with them – not only in their function, but also in the various ways she can play with them. The other day, she decided on her own that we could “probly” make a rainbow with them, but informed me “I’m gonna need some major help.” So I obliged, gladly! She knew the rainbow started with red on top, so we found all the red straws and laid them out, then we talked about each color and figured out how to place them inside of each other. When she was done, she declared “George is the treasure under the rainbow!” and proudly placed him underneath. That made me smile so big. This girl has a heart of gold. And she really does cherish her little friend.

Encourage your little engineer to play with straws. Remember that building doesn’t always involve making a 3d structure – but also can be a fabulous 2d construction as well. We’ve made several other straw pictures since then – we’ve built a house, a pirate ship, a dinosaur, some clouds, and an airplane. I love how so many of the STEAM subject matters overlap each other! This project is clearly engineering AND art… as is our next idea!

I’ve mentioned previously how much Becca LOVES the Amazon show, Creative Galaxy. She watches it on her Kindle regularly. She has seen each of the 9 episodes at least 9 times, if not 20. In one of the shows between the shows (where real kids make art), they use recycled materials to build items. One of the ideas they mention but don’t build is a fire truck. So, Becca got it in her head that she wanted to build a fire truck! She told me the materials she wanted to use to make it, and I obliged. I held the hot glue gun, but she placed each item where she wanted it, and did the art work to draw the windows and headlights. She even determined she wanted the ladder to stick up like it was going up to a house to help someone. So, we figured out how to do the glue so that it would dry sticking up into the air.

I loved so much that she came up with this project on her own, and that I took the time to make it possible for her. So many times it’s easy for us to hear an idea that our kids have and say there isn’t time, or we don’t have the supplies. But this was a project that really benefited us both – I was amazed to see what she is capable of and how her brain works, and she was given a confidence boost because Mommy believed in her idea and helped her make it a reality!

What we used: an old puffs container, fruit pouch lids, straws, hot glue, Sharpee marker, scissors (she cut the straws into pieces – fabulous fine motor practice!)

I’d love to see your kids make items from recycled materials! Please share your finished engineering feats on my Facebook page anytime and label them #engineeringrocks!

Looking for more engineering ideas for your kids? Each month on the 2nd Thursday I post Mini Engineering Challenges! Check out my Engineering page for links to my previous months, and visit next month for more new ideas including a Lego game your family is gonna love!

Measuring with Duplos

$marvelous math header$

I’m excited to share that our Tuesday Mini-Series for April is “Marvelous Math!” We do so many fun math activities that I just never have time to share them all on STEAM Thursdays… so this month every Tuesday will have a different fun math activity! I definitely have a little math lover growing up under my nose… so I’m learning to really encourage that by doing some fun activities with her! I hope you’ll enjoy this month of Tuesdays!

Quite a long time ago, I was super super active on Pinterest. Like an every day, multiple hours a day user. So I have a vast library of pins (over 4100) that make an awesome resource for me when I’m willing to take the time to sift through and find what I’m looking for. (That’s why sometimes I just tell you – I know the idea came from someone else, but I just can’t find the source.) Well, so anyway, a couple weeks ago, I sat down and sifted through my Lego Learning board, where I saw this idea from Anna at The Imagination Tree (I love her blog!). I stored it away in my brain, and shared it with a dear friend. So one day when I had very little inspiration to do anything with “school,” I texted Naomi and said “tell me what I should do!!! I’m lost!” And she gave me some ideas. Measuring with Duplos was one of them, and it was perfect for that moment.

So, I whipped up a little worksheet for us to record our findings on, gathered up some items for us to measure, and the activity began! Becca had so much fun with her Duplo ruler, that she kept wanting to measure more and more! So, I made another recording sheet – this time to take a longer ruler outside to measure things in our yard. She LOVED getting outside, and was soon trying to measure all kinds of things that weren’t on our recording sheet. So, I created another recording sheet for her using more household items found in our kitchen. And we went to town once again. I’m telling you, folks, this girl LOVES to measure! She’ll be ready for a real ruler very soon.

She was so funny about measuring the swing, though. I purposefully put something on there to measure the width… that I knew was longer than her Duplo ruler. I wanted to see what she would do. She got frustrated. And just told me to record “too many” as to how many Duplos wide the swing is… We have since talked about other things that are longer than her ruler and how to place her finger or another object to mark where the end of the ruler is, and move it to continue counting. That’s still a concept that is fairly challenging for her. We’ll continue to work on it!

The best part about all of this? I’m sharing my recording sheets with you! Obviously, feel free to record your own, and please share with us in the comments what your kids love to measure!

Click here to download the FREE PDF document with three recording sheets.
Please note – all of the photos used on these recording sheets were just copied over from Google images.

Did you like this activity? Please pin the photo to your own Pinterest boards, share this post on Facebook, etc! I do these things with Becca to enhance her learning, but I share them with you to hopefully inspire you and your kids to keep learning! If it does inspire you, please pass it on and inspire someone else! 🙂