Academics – Page 34 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Water, Sunlight, and Love

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As you know, if you’ve read many of my posts, Becca loves Little Einsteins. One of their episodes is titled “Farmer Annie,” and in the show, Annie and her friends help the three little pigs plant “Super Mystery Seeds” on their farm. When they plant them, they have to find clouds to make rain, wake up the sun, and sing love songs to the seeds so they will grow. Becca has been fascinated with this episode, and so a while back, on a whim, I bought a little $2 kit at Target – bucket, dirt, mini sunflower seeds. $2. I didn’t figure they would do much. But they have. We have given them water, sunlight, and LOTS of songs. And hugs. These seeds have received more love than I thought was possible. And they are blooming. Our little plant is going bananas. And she is so so so proud of her “Super Mystery Seeds” that aren’t so mysterious any more. What a fabulous project – never underestimate the power of simply planting a few seeds with your child. Yes, it takes time for them to sprout and grow, but it’s a wonderful lesson in patience – and learning that not everything happens in the blink of an eye, or the fall of a tear. Sometimes we have to wait for the good stuff. And there’s nothing wrong with waiting every now and then. Especially when it means I get to hear her sing love songs to her plant practically every day. Because there’s nothing cuter!

Here’s what I want to try next! (Affiliate link): Toysmith Garden Root Viewer

Sensory “Cooking”

In case you wondered, I write these posts ahead and then schedule them to post on a certain day. Well, so this particular activity that I’m sharing today occurred the afternoon I wrote the “Real Life” post (which was actually posted the day it was written… I needed to get that out.) To say that I had a rough week this past week is putting it mildly. Hormones are a horrible thing… especially ones that haven’t had any additional estrogen since 2009 and are now getting a daily dose… So, basically, it was a week where I did very little new with Becca, and we did a lot of watching tv. A lot. We love Daniel Tiger, but seriously, how many times can I watch the episodes about Baby Margaret? Seriously? And Super Why. I love Super Why. I love how she has begun to notice rhyming words, loves to spell, and wants to read everything in sight… but I’m tired of Super Why. I’m tired of Little Einsteins. I’m just tired of kid tv in general. You know you need something new when you’re begging your child, “Can’t we watch Curious George today? We haven’t seen Curious George in a week!” Sigh. Time to unplug. But when you have no energy, looking at ideas from other people can just be depressing. And, when you need an activity that is fool proof, where are you going to find it when you have no energy and won’t look at ideas from other people?

Enter the pantry. Seriously – go walk into your pantries, ya’ll. You are guaranteed to find at least one thing that is WAY out of date that you would NEVER serve to your family that can be a ton of fun for your child!! Thank you, Stove Top stuffing and HEB for not having the regular box of Stove Top I needed whatever day that was last fall when I was hungry for chicken and stuffing and peas. So, I bought this canister of stuffing and then the rest of it got stuck back into the pantry to be discovered a year later. Not gonna cook it. But I was NOT going to throw it away. Just opening the lid made the kitchen smell like Thanksgiving. (I love sage, ya’ll. It’s why I love Thanksgiving so much…you can bet that on a much more creative day than this, I’ll be coming up with something yummy for a Thanksgiving sensory cooking activity…) So, I dumped it into a bowl, grabbed a couple of items to play in the bowl with, and a sensory cooking activity was born. She LOVED it. I even let her wear my apron (hers was upstairs in her play kitchen).

The invitation to play

She ended up transferring the “baby breads” back and forth between the bowl and the canister, using the various tools I gave her. The spoon was her favorite. (She loves using the little wooden spoons from The Pampered Chef – get yours here.) Her first response was “Oh my GOODness! So many breads in there!” Then she just kept looking at me, smiling, and saying, “I cooking breads! I cooking!” “I wearing Mommy’s apron!” “Look at dose baby breads. They so cute!” “Smells so tasty!”

Yes, a lot of them ended up on the floor, but I didn’t care.. and neither did the dogs. 🙂

Total Prep Time for Mommy: less than two minutes

Total Play Time for Becca: 40 minutes, uninterrupted

A Bright Idea

The other night, a friend came over and we ended up talking about sensory activities. She mentioned a light box, and told me I could set one up for Becca easily. Then I started seeing posts from many of my favorite bloggers (see the list on the right of this page) about light boxes! And, I decided that it would be a fabulous way to occupy her and let her play in my office near me while I work! I have a desk, and she could have a desk!

So, after digging through my attic and being disappointed with my options, I decided to buy a tub at Walmart (the one I picked was $6.95). I already had a bunch of strings of white Christmas lights in my cabinet just waiting for a project, so I sat down and decided to go all out and use my washi tape for something other than to fill up a storage container. HA! Here’s what I came up with:

I wasn’t real sure what to have her do with her light box – it’s on carpet, I wouldn’t be supervising her very closely at all, so I got some colored glass stones from the floral section at Walmart (two bags – $.98 each). They have some frosted and some clear stones in each bag – green and white. Then I also gave her a bowl of paperclips – some square and some round – because she loves to sort. This is what she came up with on her own – squares go in the square, circles go on the round lid, greens go in the triangle, and whites go in the “nectangle”. I’ll leave these for her to play with for a while, and then I’ll remove the washi tape and do something different for on top. For now, it’s simple and fun.

And the best part of all, is I can look over my laptop and see this:

Life is good. Yes, yes it is.

Total Prep Time for Mommy: Maybe 5 minutes to put it all together – including the tape. It’s as easy as throwing Christmas lights in a box and plugging them in.

Total Play Time for Becca: She has already played with it several times for about 15 minutes at a time.

Colored Rice Sensory Tray

I’m not into messes. Seriously. (I whipped out the vacuum as soon as this activity was done.) But I understand how important it is that Becca interact with a variety of textures for the proper development of her senses. And she loves sensory play. So, I made some colored rice (here’s a link over to the recipe I got from Play at Home Mom – I used about 10-15 drops of regular food coloring with the vinegar) and decided to make a tray activity for her. Live and learn – it needed to be in a MUCH larger container, and we needed to have just spread the entire plastic tablecloth out on the floor so that cleanup would be easier, and we wouldn’t waste so much rice. Now we know for next time! But, she did have a blast! Here’s the scene I set up for her using little toys she already had:

She was SO excited and immediately dug in and started playing.

Then, she got tired of the toys and set them all out and just dug her hands into the rice.

For one last fun activity before putting it away for a few days (I’ve learned that she enjoys things once and then for maximum potency, it needs to get put away for a while or she gets bored with it really quick!), I got out some cups and she loved pouring the rice back and forth!

Total Prep Time for Mommy: This one takes some forethought – which is partly why it took me so long to do it even after I had bought the rice. You’ll need to color the rice and then let it dry over night. The coloring process to do a large bag of rice and four different colors and then to spread out to dry took me maybe about 15-20 mins. Then in the morning, it was another 5-10 minutes to slide all the rice off of the wax paper into storage bags. Then to gather the toys and set up the tray took about another 20 minutes. So this isn’t a project that you’re going to just throw together in two minutes. Also note that I spent probably about another 10-20 minutes running the vacuum afterward… and ended up doing most of the hard woods downstairs simply because I had already started…

Total Play Time for Becca: This one singular occasion, she played with the rice for about 30-40 minutes (well supervised), and then it went back into the storage bag and she can play with it many, many more times.

Our Love Affair With Learning Games

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Becca LOVES to learn. In fact, in the past week or two, Cody and I have begun having to encourage her to STOP playing learning games and go play with her imagination. Which is awesome, but also overwhelming since she’s only just turned two back a couple months ago. Because Mommy (and Boo sometimes too) gets tired of doing the same learning games over and over again, I found a book on Amazon and ordered it to be sent to my mom so she could make up some file folder games to add to our repertoire. They arrived from Granny last night, and Becca has already dove in head first and done about 1/4 of them. (Would have done more if I had let her!) Here’s the book (affiliate link) so you can make your own for your preschooler! One thing mom added (thanks again, mom!!!) was small clear velcro dots so that we don’t lose pieces to our games everywhere, or have to store them in a million little baggies. Thank God for Velcro. I swear, the inventor was a genius! Here’s a couple of the games that can be found in that book:

Total Prep Time for Mommy: Well, I didn’t prep these, but I know my mom spent HOURS putting them together. The benefit to file folder games is that they are easy to pull out, they cover important skills, and they can be used over and over again for years – Grayson will use these same file folder games, and then I’m sure I’ll probably pass them along to someone else! So the prep HOURS are worth it!
Total Play Time for Becca: As mentioned above, there will be countless hours that these are played with. In the moment, she played 5 or 6 of the folder games and spent about 30 minutes.. and wanted more.