Transportation Tuesday

Variation on a Theme

The other day I posted about Kiddo's experience playing Knock-Knock with the sandpaper letters and numbers. Well, yesterday he declared he was going to play it with his alphabet puzzle!
"Knock-Knock"Tracing the letter.Piling up his successes.
Another break (sort of) for Mom.

Root Veg Garden Update

Look! They are sprouting!

Indoor Root Vegetable Garden

One of the benefits of membership at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is that we receive their publications every so often. A few years ago their Gardening with Children book arrived in our mailbox but most of the activities were appropriate for older children. I took a look through it the other day and found something I thought Kiddo would enjoy: a see-through root vegetable garden. I am really hoping this is successful because it sounds wonderful.

I had to do some prep-work: I cut out the sides of a half-gallon carton and covered them with plastic.
Kiddo filled it with dirt.After we got the soil nice and wet, Kiddo sprinkled in the radish seeds. I'm pretty sure we will have to thin out the seedlings! I also wanted to try carrots, but radish seeds were what Daddy-O brought home for usUsing a spray bottle for watering kept Kiddo from turning the soil into mud after planting.Fortunately we have a very sunny window.
I'll let you know how they turn out!

Handwriting Practice

I have had some Montessori-type sandpaper letters for a while but couldn't get Kiddo interested in tracing them with his finger, which helps develop motor skills for handwriting. Recently, Steph posted about how her daughter plays a knock-knock game with them. I gave it a whirl and Kiddo occupied himself for quite some time, going through all the upper and lower case and all 30 number cards (when he gets on a roll he doesn't like to stop!) In fact, he pretty quickly dispensed with the "knock-knock" part and just turned the letters over.

All I had to do was sit on the floor with baby and correct his tracing now and again. Excellent.

He has also been leaving me alone engaged with these magnetic number tracers Mormor gave him.

Transportation Tuesday

I guess he found a use for his number flags.

Art Supply Round-up

In response to a previous post, a reader inquired what art supplies we keep on hand. I thought it would make a good post because 1. we don't have anything too fancy and 2. we can only have what we can fit in one small cupboard (closet space is at a premium in this city!) and a bin in the basement. I also try to find the cheapest supplies possible. There is nothing particularly original about this list. It is just what works for us.

We don't do many product-oriented crafts around here. I really don't care if Kiddo makes a ladybug out of a paper plate... unless he suggested it himself, now that would be interesting. But also, do you know how much parental involvement is required to make a caterpillar out of an egg carton? Way, way too much.

By far, my favorite source is Discount School Supply. They have free shipping if you spend $79, even if you order a 50 lb roll of paper. You don't have to buy their products in bulk but if you want to reach the magical $79 you could place an order with some friends (this is what I have done). Get on their mailing list, because they frequently have sales -- like 20% of everything red for Valentine's Day.

On to the list.

Tempera Paint. Get washable! You really only need 5 colors: red, blue, yellow, white and black.

Liquid Watercolors. This may seem exotic, but they are very useful. We use them for coloring playdough, making marbleized paper, dropping on absorbent paper, etc. You can also mix them with water in a spray bottle for some (outdoor) fun. They are better than the traditional watercolor palette because the colors don't get muddy and you can control how many colors you present at one time.

Markers, crayons, inexpensive oil pastels. Susan Striker recommends taking the paper off so the child is not limited to only using the end for drawing.

Collage materials. You don't actually have to buy these. Use bits of wrapping paper, junk mail, ribbons, buttons, beans. Anything that comes your way. It's fun to let the kids find their own. They feel more ownership that way, too.

Painting implements. A variety of brushes and rollers. You can get some at discount school supplies. The foam rollers are fun. Also check out the hardware store for cheap foam brushes in a variety of sizes. You can also use found objects around the home for printing.

Office supply stickers. I've written many times about the joys of office supply stickers. They are versatile and low tack for kids who might like to stick them all over the house. (Not that I know anything about that)

Paper. Colored construction (if you can, buy the better quality... unless you want to make sun prints), real watercolor paper (useful for very wet painting fun) and plain painting paper. When I was a kid, my mom used to get free rolls of plain newsprint paper at the local newspaper. I have no idea if this is still a practice anywhere, but you could inquire.

Glitter Glue. Oh, the joys.

White Glue.

Scissors. These are the best I've found.

We can't keep much more than this around here, although we do have the odd unusual material, like colored cellophane.

I haven't included sculpting clay because Kiddo won't touch it. I imagine this would be a good option.

Obviously there are a lot of recyclables and found objects around the house that could be used for art in creative ways: bubble wrap, egg cartons, cardboard rolls and tubes, etc.

It sounds like a lot once I write it all down, but it all fits in our small cupboard!

Today's "How-To"

How to get Kiddo to devour salad. And Mom, too. Yum!

Less v. Fewer

In the case of Less v. Fewer....

there is hope.

OK, I think I'm done with that now.

Free Art

Sometimes a good way to distract Kiddo from going bonkers inside on a cold or rainy day is to just cover the table with paper and give him some art supplies.
This session lasted over two days. I reversed the paper the second day so he could reach the blank spaces.
Next time he requests color mixing I think I will just squeeze the paint on the paper. Look at all the containers I had to wash! This is a good way to reuse all those take out containers you accumulated when you had 1st trimester nausea and stepping into the kitchen caused a mad dash to the bathroom.He broke all the oil pastels in half so he could "share" them with me. How nice.I'm curious why Kiddo's drawing has not really developed in the past 18 months. What he created here looks very much like what he has done since he was 2: Blobs, dots and circles. He doesn't even create mandalas. (he did it twice a year ago) I am not trying to say he should be creating representational drawing or anything like that, I just wonder about it.

Ahhh, the The-ah-ter!

I confess, I am a bit picky when it comes to the theater. It's the result of spending most of my life studying the topic and obtaining a PhD which I don't currently use but for which I am still paying. In fact, I would rather watch bad dangerous theater than mediocre safe theater (oh the horrors!). Of course I want Kiddo to love and appreciate the theater as much as I do so I search out opportunities, which are, fortunately, abundant in this city. Unfortunately, I can't take him to all the shows I want because of the expense, and now, with New Kid, I have to rely on Daddy-o and don't get to see them myself.

I raved before about Where is the Green Sheep, and I can't wait for him to go to The Queen of Colors. I am going to figure out a way to take him myself, since I want to see it!

Currently, Kiddo does not want to go to shows during which they turn off the lights in the auditorium. Sadly, this means no Frog and Toad but we found out that the Manhattan's Children's Theatre keeps the lights on! It's $20 a ticket so once a month should not break the bank. Plus, I view it as an educational expense. Last month Daddy-o took him to Harry the Dirty Dog and this month to If You Give a Pig a Party. Daddy-o tells me they were good (but he doesn't have my exacting standards), but even if they weren't it doesn't matter because Kiddo enjoyed them, thus his career as an audience member has begun.

So while Saturday excursions with his dad don't help me fill the days with Kiddo, at least I can take a breather one day a week during New Kid's nap time.

Moral of the Story: Go to the theater!!

Puffy Paint, do-over

Our last foray into the realm of puffy paint was not too successful. This time I used a recipe which called for equal parts shaving cream and glue. I find this confusing. Do you realize how voluminous shaving cream is? So I was supposed to use a cup of glue? That's like an entire bottle. Good thing I have 12 of them.
Oh yes, we tried adding glitter glue for color. It didn't work too well and I don't have 12 bottles of glitter glue so we used regular glitter. A lot of it.
Kiddo didn't spend a lot of time with it. Mostly he just wanted to squeeze out the glue, which is good, cheap entertainment, by the way. And after a day the puffs really deflated.I think we are done with puffy paint for a while.

Float or Sink

This is a science project that many kids have done by the time they are 4, but somehow, we missed it. Kiddo was reading a Curious George book and in the back was an experiment, which he wanted to try.
We gathered the materials to test and made our chart.Testing... testing...The results.

Unplugged Project: Water

This week's Unplugged Project theme was water.
In one of our science books I found easy water bead races. Since Kiddo gets excited at the mere mention of the word race, and I get excited at the mere mention of the word easy, it was clearly the perfect fit.
All you need is a straw, some waxed paper and water. We also used a dropper for extra entertainment value. (I didn't get good photos because the batteries died mid-race)
Not only can you blow on the water beads to race them. Blowing extra hard makes the larger ones break up into smaller beads. Also you can blow the beads together to make larger beads. You can suck them up the straw and blow them back out. Really, the possibilities are endless.This project had the added bonus of being entertaining for an extended period of time without much parental involvement. While I realize that is not the expressed goal of the Unplugged Project, I found it to be a delightful twist.

At one point I tried to discuss/demonstrate why the water beaded up on waxed paper but not on a towel but his eyes glazed over and I gave up.

Hilarity

I really have to share the funniest blog ever.

Tiny Art Director.

I mean it, tears in my eyes funny.

Rolling, Rolling, they are rolling down my cheeks.

Lemons to Lemonade

Jennifer and Sherry both gave me the latest blog award to be making the circuit, "lemons to lemonade." Who doesn't like having fans? There are rules, as always, to receiving the award. I always break the rules, but for good, not evil purposes. So instead, I would like to point you to two posts of theirs which I especially enjoyed:

Jennifer's daughter's first embroidery is delightful.

Sherry's son has the best use I've ever seen for a Barbie doll.

Thanks, and glad you enjoy joining us in our craziness.

Life Cyle of a Pumpkin

Last year we had a volunteer mini pumpkin vine in our community garden plot. We kept one of the pumpkins and it has survived since last August sitting on our shelf. A few days ago Kiddo announced that he wanted to throw it away since it was moldy. Actually it wasn't moldy, but I saw the opportunity to open it up with him to have a look inside. I wanted to save some seeds to plant this year.I can't wait for Spring planting!Extra Credit Reading: Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden

Watered Color

We had a rainy day recently so it seemed like a good time to play with some watercolors.
First we used some watercolor pencils Kiddo received as a gift.
He drew this:Instead of using a brush dipped in water to spread the colors, we put it out on the fire escape in the rain. I think I left it out a little bit too long, it had pools of water on it and took a VERY long time to dry.Next Kiddo wanted to use his watercolor palette. I hate the watercolor palette. Kiddo is more interested in playing with the brush on the palette than putting paint on paper. And the palette ends up looking like this:He did create this (I am enamored of the autumnal color scheme) which he also wanted to put out in the rain. I found a spot that was just a bit drippy so the colors didn't all run into one big brown puddle.Next we got out our liquid watercolors and did some resist painting, first with a wax crayon and then colored crayons. We discovered washable crayons don't work well for this. We just got a free box of 64 crayolas thanks to Kiddo's copious string cheese consumption and they worked okay. Next time I would like to try oil pastels.He also took the spray bottle to the paintings and sprinkled on some chunky salt.
I was impressed at how long he was interested in doing art today. That doesn't happen very often.

Science Resource Roundup

I try to do as many science activities with Kiddo that I can but it can be difficult to find the right combination of easy for me to get together and entertaining for him (also known as "instant results"). We don't talk much about scientific concepts. Hello!, he's 4. I find most science resources are more useful for either older kids or kids with patience. Also, sadly we don't get to do any of the great goopy goop recipes that are out there as Kiddo will not touch them.
However, here are a few of my favorite science project resources.
Books:
Super Science Concoctions Your standard elementary school level science book.
Color Me Science A very short book with... you guessed it... color themed science projects.
Science in Seconds for Kids Needless to say, I was drawn immediately to the title of this book. It sounded so promising and it does have a few good and easy ideas.
Fizz, Bubble & Flash Another intriguingly titled book. It categorizes experiments by elements so would be good if you were working on the periodic table. Ummmm, we're not there yet.

Internet:
I have some good websites in my sidebar but I'll mention Growing with Science Blog, which is good although I get weirded out by the bug of the week. Simply Science has ideas for science experiments to do in conjunction with picture books, but it is more geared to older kids in the classroom than for us.

I really like Kids' Science Experiments, which is a no-frills websites but has some of the most 4-year old friendly projects I've found.

I hope to be posting more of our science exploration in the future!

Must....... Remain..... Calm

"There are days when my children seem like players in some divine plan to make me a nervous wreck. ... On those days, children provide ideal training ground for developing calm -- if you can master calm around demanding children, then you're a master indeed."

-- Sarah Napthali, Buddhism for Mothers

Are you a master?

Shaken, not Stirred

Continuing on our theme of action painting... Kiddo recently did a whole lot of shakin'. (OK, that was cheesy) This is an art activity you can pretty much find in every preschool art book or website. It is frequently done with marbles, but since we just did that I thought we'd try poms and hardware (soft vs. hard).

All you need is a container (we used a yogurt container, one book suggested an oatmeal canister, which is a lot bigger), some stuff to shake, paint and paper cut to size.Drop in a few items.
Or all of them.Add some paint and Shake Shake Shake
From personal experience I can confirm that if you do not put the lid on tightly, the contents will, in fact, fly everywhere.
Voilà!