Archive for September 2009
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Fun with Food
By creating a chart with the four food groups, I was able to highlight the difference between the food my toddler was eating and why it’s important to select food from different boxes. This activity was done over a couple week period. I focused on one food group each week, did the activity, talked about it, mentioned it at dinner etc.
Directions: Using Bristol board, divide with marker into four squares (I also left a small space at the bottom to discuss treats at a later time if I choose) Then, select which square to fill and activity to do.
Vegetables and Fruit
This was the easiest group for him to understand. The first activity we did was a fruit bowl (see the purple thing in the square!). We talked about his favourite fruits and as he named them, I cut them out of felt. He glued them onto the ‘bowl’ made of construction paper.What was great at the end, is that there was a variety of colour in his choices. We were able to talk about this as well. For vegetables, we did the activity from a preschool website here: Vegetable Basket //www.first-school.ws/activities/nutrition/veggiebasket1.htm and a Mr. Broccoli Head using this template: http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/mbigboybroccoli.html
Dairy
By far, this was the most fun activity because of the mess. I gathered all the grains I had in the cupboard (rice, couscous, oatmeal, flour, pasta etc) and put them in a container (I used an egg carton)Next, my son painted glue on a piece of cardboard (used a cereal box!)
Then, he added bits of the grains onto the glue.
This got messy but it was fun! Let dry. Shake excess grains before adding to your board!
Meats and Meat Alternatives
Instead, I went through the cupboard and fridge and found examples of meat and meat alternatives: Peanut Butter, canned Salmon, Beans, eggs (using an old egg carton) – and I drew a fish and chicken leg!
He identified the foods, and we took the labels off if necessary and glued everything to the square.
Finally, to finish off the activity we talked about cookies being a treat and ‘sometimes’ food and read a book about Cookie Monster and cookies!
Have fun and encourage your child to talk about what they like about certain foods, their favourite things to eat etc.
by Bridget Hine
On a recent morning, the day after an especially exhausting trip to the store with my daughters (Cooper, two and Piper, six months), I was enlisting the help of my husband in discussing the bad behavior of my two year old. The conversation went like this:
Mommy: “Cooper, please tell Daddy what you did in the store yesterday that made Mommy unhappy?”
Cooper: “I don’t know.”
Mommy: “Did you unbuckle your stroller straps and get out of the stroller without permission?”
Cooper: “No.”
Daddy: “Did you unbuckle your stroller Princess?”
Cooper: “No daddy.” (batting her eyes like “Baby” in Dirty Dancing)
Mommy: “If you did not unbuckle your stroller straps, who did?”
Cooper: “Piper did it!”
Right then and there, I knew I had an issue brewing. You should know this about me, I have studied and taught Communications Studies for my entire adult life. This communication with my daughter intrigued me. Why did she lie? How did she learn to lie? How do I teach her not to lie? Is this my fault? Where did I go wrong? The questions flooded into my brain. The first chance I had I went to the Internet and started searching for answers. I wanted to know everything there was to know about lying and children. Boy, did I get schooled.
Lying is as old as the human race itself. For reasons of self preservation, adaptation or deceit, human beings have been liars since the dawn of time. We have become accustomed to a certain amount of lying in our culture. Whether it is politician promises or an eager car sales person, we have come to expect to encounter a certain amount of truth bending. So, how, in our culture of shaded truth, do we raise children who have a firm understanding of honesty? Let’s get this out of the way…Lying is a normal phase children go through as part of their development. (Phew!)
Wait, we are not off the hook yet! Think about the reasons people lie…it is convenient, avoiding responsibility for a transgression (nobody wants to get in trouble) and wishful thinking (entertainment or excitement). These are some of the same reasons children lie. I know it is normal for my seven year old son, Mark, to activate his imagination on any given day and claim he is a Jedi fighting the Dark Force. It is also normal that his imaginary brother comes for a visit every once and awhile even though I do not remember inviting him. It is also normal that when I ask him if he has cleaned his room he will always say yes (our definitions of “clean room” are very different). It is also normal for my two year old to tell me exactly what she thinks I want to hear when I catch her in the bathroom painting with the soap.Not only is it normal, but lying is also a sign that your little one may be considerably intelligent. Lying is actually an advanced skill. To construct a lie, a child must understand how to develop that lie and how to convince you that it is in fact the truth. Lying actually means that your child has reached a developmental milestone. (break out the baby book!) All Lies are not the Same…
We actually encourage lying in some instances. Just the other day, my daughters and I were in a retail store when another child with a dark port wine stain skin condition, covering half his little face, came around the corner. My daughter Cooper blurted out, “What is wrong with his face?” Aside from being mortified at her reaction, I was mortified at mine. In a very hushed tone I said to her, “It is not nice to point things like that out Cooper.” I was actually encouraging her to muffle her thoughts on this child’s physical appearance. I could have easily used it as a teaching moment about how God makes everyone different and beautiful, but to my own horror I encouraged her to lie by suppressing her thoughts. (I also do the same thing when I ask my husband to tell me honestly how I look before we go out somewhere.)
We actually encourage our children to tell what are called pro-social lies. I like to think that the white lies I tell to my children are for a good cause. The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the fine art scribbles my children produce that I have framed and now hang in the family room, the fairies and gnomes we hunt for in the back yard and in our Irish house, the leprechaun who decorates for St. Patrick’s day. We tell ourselves that this encourages creativity and imagination and it does! However, it is still lying and our children will eventually come to realize that. (Ask my brother-in-law who is still angry about the deception propagated on him with the Santa Clause hoax. He will be 30 in November!) In all my research I have come to develop a list of five things I think will help me in my quest for the truth.
1. Start within…
Everyday your little sponges watch you and listen to you for cues on how they are expected to behave. If you want honest kids, be a honest person. Always telling your children the truth is important. We tend to tell white lies to spare our children from dealing with certain realities or because we just do not have the time at that moment to deal with it. I catch myself doing some transgression of this all the time. Whether it be promising a treat and not delivering or saying five more minutes and then I will take them outside, little lies add up. (I am not giving up the mythical characters just yet though.) Be consistent. If you say you will do something, do it. If you promise a punishment, follow through. Your children will learn that you mean what you say and can be trusted.
2. Frame job
This is the way this conversation is heard on any given morning in my house:
“Did you clean your room?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make your bed?”
“Yes”
“Can I go check?”
“Uh…no!”
I know when I ask my son these questions that he will lie to me. I have been through it enough times to know that this is the way it will go. I set him up. I give him to opportunity to lie. My son does not lie to be devious or deceitful. He lies because all he wants to do at that moment is to please me. He knows what I want to hear, so he tells me that, taking the chance that he will be on the bus before I actually have a chance to notice that his room looks like a couple of UFC matches took place in there overnight. Do not set your kids up to lie. If you know your child has not cleaned their room,
remind them that cleaning their room will make it much easier to find the things that are important to them and ask if they would like some help.
3. Liar, Liar Pants on Fire
My daughter is going through a biting phase that I never experienced with my son. She will bite her brother and he will come running to me to tell on her. I will immediately ask her if she has bitten her brother to which I get a resounding NO! I will then say, “Cooper, I do not like liars.” In this situation, not only did I ask her a question I already knew the answer to, but I called her a name on top of it. A better reaction may be to say that biting can hurt people and I do not think she is telling me the truth. Instead of saying, “Do not lie to me” I have taken to saying “Mommy would really like if you would tell the truth.”
4. Choices
When my son was in Pre-K his teacher established that everything the children did was a choice. They made the choice to be good and they made the choice to be bad. She gave them warnings that reminded them of this. She would say something like, “Mark, are you making a good choice by not sitting still during story time? If you continue that choice then you will be choosing to sit away from the group” If Mark continued to make that choice she took him aside and told him that he chose to continue the behavior and he in turn chose to be punished. The same thing can be applied to lying. Explain to your children that lying or not telling the truth is a choice that they make. You would like very much if they made the choice to tell the truth all the time. Tell them that there will be times when they make the choice not to tell the truth and with this choice comes consequences they probably will not like. You are giving your child the opportunity to make up their own mind. It may take a few bad choices and not so great consequences, but after they connect the two, the choices they make will start to change.
5. Focus and Breathe
Sound like your Lamaze class? Same concepts different outcome. I have had many a mommy moment where I needed to step back and take a deep breath. Sometimes I did and sometimes I did not. Those times that I did were a lot less stressful for all those involved. When I reacted badly it became about my reaction, not about the fact that my child lied to me. I have been trying to get a handle on my reaction fuse. Instead of immediately jumping to the extreme I have started saying things like, “Mommy’s patience is very small right now. Please tell me the truth so that I do not lose my patience.” I have also begun to step back and breathe. If I feel myself about to go over the edge I walk outside or I say that I need a minute or two to collect my thoughts and remove myself from my children. My theory behind it is that to deal correctly with my children’s behavior I need to control my own behavior. This sometimes works and sometimes it does not. It is an on going process. As parents there are many things that we must teach our children before we send them out in to the world. Honesty is one characteristic that I would like my children to have a secure handle on. I want them to know that the truth is a powerful thing. I want them to always have the confidence to tell the truth. Teaching my children to tell the truth is as much about me as it is about them. I have to have to strength and the courage to react in a positive way. Now, when my children tell me the truth, I will say that I admire them for telling me the truth because that is a hard thing to do sometimes. With me setting a good example and encouraging honesty instead of punishing for it, I hope that my children will recognize that the truth is a valuable commodity and that it is ok to make mistakes as long as we work together to correct them.
I won a trip to Type A Mom Conference thanks to Whrrl.com, so I will be taking a week off ! But that doesn’t mean that No Time For Flash Cards won’t be updated daily, I have lined up 6 amazing guest posts from writers that will blow your socks off. There will be crafts like today’s adorable sewing project from Kimberly of You Can’t Diaper Their Faces, posts about books and literacy, and even an essay about parenting. Do not miss it.
Sewing with Toddlers and Pre-Schoolers.
Every time I set up my sewing machine (and I do have to set it up each time I use it, oh, how I dream of a sewing room!,) EcoKid (my daughter) wants to sew with me. She’s an almost-four year old whose fine motor skills are a little delayed; I’m just not willing to risk giving her a go on the machine just yet. But I hate to say no to a genuine interest, so I developed the following craft for her as an introduction to sewing. She loves it and I hope that you will too!
Here we go!
1. Gather your materials. You will need some fabric scraps (try for a variety of colours, patterns, and textures to make it really interesting for your child,) glitter glue (or plain white glue—my daughter never misses a chance to use glitter glue though!,) brightly coloured construction paper, a black marker, and scissors.
2. Ask your child what kind of clothes s/he would like to “sew.” Draw outlines of the garments on the construction paper. (My daughter is forgiving of my terrible drawing skills; I hope you will be too!)
3. If your child can cut following lines, have her/him cut out the garments you’ve drawn. My daughter is still struggling to use scissors, so I cut them out and then gave her the paper left behind along with her training scissors so she could practise cutting in a manner that’s not frustrating for her.
4. Cut up your fabric scraps. Cut them into various sizes and shapes and talk to your child about the shapes you’re making. Ask her/him if there are any shapes s/he’d like to have for the project. My daughter always asks for triangles and trapezoids! (She’s a bit of a geometry nut .)
5. Now let your child loose with the glitter glue, fabric scraps, and the garments you’ve cut from construction paper. I like to keep it very free form, allowing my daughter to choose where and what to paste. We talk a lot about the texture of the fabrics and the colours and shapes she’s choosing. She especially likes it when I have some ribbon in the scraps; those are always chosen first!
6. Let the glue dry… and congratulate your child on some terrific sewing!
And keeping in Allie’s fine tradition, here are some great books for kids that feature sewing:
Stitchin’ and Pullin’: A Gee’s Bend Quilt by Patricia McKissack
Something From Nothing by Phoebe Gilman
Nurse Lugton’s Curtain by Virginia Woolf (yes, that Virginia Woolf!)
My Forever Dress by Harriet Ziefert
Good Families Don’t by Robert Munsch
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Kimberly Bewick is a mom of 2 and a Canadian expat living in Turkey . Her blog You Can’t Diaper Their Faces : a guide to modern mothering is a must read for any mom, modern or not.
The Faces On The Bus
I love doing crafts with pictures, it personalizes the creation that much more when your child’s face or family is on their creation. Today was the first time we’ve used a glue stick, the reason I’ve waited this long is that my son put everything in his mouth for a long long time. I was worried about him biting off the glue stick and choking or swallowing it. Now that he is over that we had a blast using it.
- Gather your materials. You will need 3 pieces of construction paper ( one yellow, black and a third of your choice) , 3 wallet size or smaller picture of your family, a marker, some crayons, scissors, glue, and letter stickers.
- Start by drawing a bus on the yellow paper, make a window for each picture you are including. Don’t worry it it’s not perfect, mine was far from it. Set aside.
- Hand your child the green ( or other color) paper, have them draw the background. My son drew our street, we have a bus stop in our front yard.
- While they do that cut out 2 large black circles for the tires and 2 small yellow ones for the hub caps.
- Hand your child the bus when they are finished with the background and let them go nuts- he’s really into using all the crayons at once right now.
- Cut a long black strip ( to go along the side of the bus).
- When they are done drawing add stickers to the black strip, I wrote out the word BUS and then my son decided to add a ripped T, cool!
- Add glue to the bus and the strip.
- Time to cut out the bus, cut out the windows. While I cut my son sung “Wheels on the Bus”- although we had some interesting bus riders, like his garbage truck, his preschool teachers and my sister’s dog.
- Before gluing it down add the cut out bus to the paper and make x’s in the window openings so you know where to place the glue and pictures.
- Add the glue.
- Add the pictures
- Add the bus
- Add the glue for the wheels and pop them on.
- Don’t forget the yellow middles.
- Let dry.
Books
“Cheech The School Bus Driver” by Cheech Marin was one of those books that you read the authors name and think , really they wrote a kids book? I am here to say this book was thoroughly enjoyable and had a fantastic message about being yourself amidst pressure to be something else. The book starts out with Cheech being funny but soon you find out the children he drives are all in a Mariachi band and in a big competition! They question themselves and how hip or not hip they are but in the end they are true to their music and themselves.
“The Wheels On The School Bus” by Mary-Alice Moore has been read over and over and over again in our house. My son loves this adaptation of the classic song so much he exclaimed that we forgot to add a nurse on out school bus today. see in this book not only are there children, but all sorts of teachers, lunch ladies, a nurse and custodian too. The bus driver even swaps out his driver hat for a principal one as the bus arrives at school! Cut book and clearly approved by my little book reviewer!
“The School Bus Driver From The Black Lagoon” by Mike Thaler is one of a very popular series that includes other school professions like teacher, school nurse and gym teacher! The book is really about one little boys anxiety about going on the school bus. He imagines the driver as a dinosaur, who races the bus and forces the children to give him their lunch money. When the bus arrives the driver turns out to be nothing like he expected! I was worried this book would be too scary for my little guy but he liked it , I think the ridiculousness of a T-Rex driving a bus made it all ok and not scary.
Comet c !
Space the final frontier perhaps but also a subject loved by preschoolers everywhere! I admit I am not sure if it was a book or somewhere else ( which means tv) that my son was introduced to comets but I wanted to jump on the introduction and teach him a little more. I think that is key with early learning, if they show an interest in something run with it, you don’t have to teach them a full unit of study, just don’t ignore the interest and their curiosity will inspire you!
- Gather your materials. You will need some black paper but in a pinch you can do what we did and color a white paper with black crayons ( but I had to go over it a few time to make it dark enough for photos – with my son’s permission , it was his art), some sticky back sparkly foam, white tissue paper streamers, markers, scissors and star stickers.
- Start by writing a lowercase c on the backing of your foam. When I teach lowercase letters that look exactly like their uppercase version , I usually make them smaller and mention it while we are doing the craft casually.
- Cut the c out and set aside.
- If you need to color a white piece of paper use your black crayon and cover as much as you can.
- Add your star stickers. Having your child peel the stickers off is great fine motor, it can be frustrating for little ones so be there to lend a hand but let them do as much as they can.
- Next cut the party streamers. This picture of my son cutting wasn’t what we ended up doing ( he’s just warming up his scissor skills here) but I’m not an octopus and couldn’t take a picture of what we did do! What we did was I held the end of the streamers still and my son using his scissors cut the middle of what I was holding. Then we repeated this a few times. You can pre cut these if your child isn’t ready to use scissors.
- Color the streamers with the markers. Yes he has 3 markers all bunched in his hand, there was no talking him out of this.
- Peel off the backing of the c
- Stick the streamers on to the sticky back to create the comet’s tail. Make sure some of the sticky back is free for sticking onto the black paper.
- Stick it on and slam it down, my son loved smacking it onto the paper.
Books
“Comets” by Melanie Chrismer surprised me. This little book was not only full of facts about comets but it also kept my son’s attention from cover to cover. The facts are simple, and presented in small bits with illustrations . The straightforward approach was perfect to support an introductory activity about comets.
“Stargazers” by Gail Gibbons is a good choice of book to teach about stars, constellations, telescopes and more. My son sat listening to this book and every now and then was engaged but it was a bit lengthy and a little too in depth for him ( he’s almost 3) however the book is great , it explains complicated scientific information in a really accessible way. I even learned a few new things about telescopes! I will be taking this book out of the library again for sure when my son is a little older.
“Our Stars” by Anne Rockwell is another wonderful non fiction book from this author illustrator. The book shares the most basic facts about stars with the reader as well as more complicated facts about constellations, comets and meteors. I love that the facts are shared pretty independently on each page, so if something is above your toddlers head you can simply skip that page, until they are . The illustrations are fun enough to grab attention but detailed enough to help explain the facts being presented
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