Preparing for Kindergarten: Milk Boxes

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One of the things our school district recommended to prepare children for kindergarten was a set of self-sufficiency skills: tying shoes (or wearing velcro shoes to school), buttoning, zipping, and snapping clothing, and opening lunch containers like milk boxes on their own.

I searched for milk boxes at the grocery store but it seems that they can only be purchased at bulk school supply companies or from schools themselves. They might be found at doughnut shops as well, though I haven't looked lately.

The other day I found cartons just like milk boxes filled with Tropicana orange juice. These were at my grocery store.

If you want to give your child practice opening milk boxes, you might look for similar boxes in the orange juice section of your grocery store.

And starting now, have your child open every type of food he or she eats, including string cheese, yogurt, plastic containers, and other types of drinks. The first time I had to demonstrate how to open the juice container, but from now on I will have my child do it himself.

By the way, I believe most of these preparing-for-kindergarten tips apply to homeschoolers as well. Though there may be no rush for a homeschooled child to learn some of these skills, most of them will come in handy for any child.

Three Ways to Do Better in Kindergarten

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Our school district gives out a DVD called Preparing for Kindergarten to families who have a child starting school. According to the DVD, children who do three things tend to do better in kindergarten.

1: Have exposure to games, activities, and books about letters and sounds.

Children's Learning Activities has a fantastic activity for teaching baby her letters that I used with my younger child.

2: Play outside a lot (versus staying in with TV, movies, video games, and the computer).

Think about ways to make your yard an amazing place for your child. Instead of spending a lot of money, you can create a dirt circle or garden, set up a child's picnic table and let them eat outside often, set up a sprinkler, keep children's gardening tools handy, make sure the children have raincoats and boots, or collect a set of water guns.

3: Get an average of ten hours of sleep per night.

In our case, the need is closer to eleven hours of sleep per night. We have more cheerful, cooperative, and happy moments throughout the day when we have made sure he has enough sleep.

Jam Jar Lantern

Here is a simple craft we did from this month's Parenting: The Early Years magazine:

 

The instructions say to have the children use watercolors on watercolor paper, using only two colors for best results. My children really love the water aspect of watercolors, so our colors were not as vibrant as they could be.

Cutting shapes out of the paintings could be done by an adult or a child who knows how to cut, and there is no limit other than time and ability for what shapes to use. The magazine article recommends using hole-punchers for the shapes, but we didn't have any large ones.

We used an empty, clean jam jar instead of a mason jar.

 

This is our finished product, which made my older child very excited. It now serves as our centerpiece.

Here is the link to the full craft article on Parenting's website. You will see some vibrant colors there!

Storybook Week 11: Pete's A Pizza

This week's storybook classic is Pete's A Pizza, written and illustrated by William Steig. In this book, Pete is in a bad mood. Luckily, his dad is there to help.

Image courtesy of clker.com

1. Read the Story
Language Arts
 
Read the book Pete's A Pizza, or watch the storybook video, or both.

2. Cooking Your Child

Story Interest/Dramatizing/Gross Motor Skills

Did that heading catch your attention? The second activity related to Pete's A Pizza is to make a pizza out of your child, of course. Follow along with the book or make up your own process.

In the book, Pete's dad makes him into a pizza by kneading the dough (rolling Pete), spreading it (stretching Pete's arms), whirling and twirling (throwing Pete up in the air), applying oil (water), adding flour (you just want to pretend here - baby powder can be very dangerous for young children to inhale), and topping with tomatoes (checkers, for example).

This is a great activity for children who naturally need more large body movements. It might calm down some children who need lots of physical action. Research shows that it is good for children to have "wrestling" or other physical goof-off time with their parents, especially their fathers.

Babies gain so much - even in brain development - from touch, so this particular activity would be good for babies, too.

3. Drawing Moods

Arts and Crafts/Fine Motor Skills/Music

You and your child each get a piece of paper and drawing utensils. Both of you draw a picture of a sad child. Then a grumpy child. Then a giggling child. If you like, you can play different pieces of music that have different moods (lively classical, soothing lullaby, rock 'n roll, etc.) Try to draw the music or the mood that you hear or feel.

4. and 5. Cooking Your Pizza

Cooking/Fine Motor Skills/Pretend Play

You and your child might catch yourselves feeling hungry for pizza tonight after all this pizza-type activity.

First, set up a grocery store with any play kitchen materials you have. If you don't have kitchen and food toys, see how many empty boxes and containers you can raid from your real kitchen to set up the pretend grocery store. A plastic grocery cart makes this enjoyable, but any bag or basket will do.

Set your child on a hunt for ingredients you will need to make pizza. You can get into the grocery shopping trip as much as you want to, incorporating cash register and money and making change, or just let your child play a bit before making the real dinner.

Second, make the real pizza with real ingredients. Here is a super easy and delicious recipe I often use:

Ingredients:

whole wheat pita bread (2 packs)
pesto sauce
tomato paste (1 or 2 small cans)
sliced vegetables, any you like
shredded cheese, whatever type you like or have on hand

Instructions:

Spread pesto sauce on each pita circle, then tomato paste. Add sliced onions, peppers, black olives, meat, mushrooms, or whatever you like on your pizzas. Top with shredded cheese (cheddar is delicious; mozzarella gives it a lighter taste). Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Take out when the cheese is melted. Allow them to cool and eat them as is or cut into wedges or strips for children.

Since this recipe is all about spreading and topping, children can help quite a bit.

This Week We're Reading...

Growing a Godly Girl is a blog with Montessori-style learning activities which I have just found through another blog that I love, Chronicles of a Babywise Mom.

This post about what she and her toddler are reading was cute, informative, and inspiring. In response, here is what I am reading to my toddler this week:

This is the very edition we have: I am fond of it.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I chose this book because I have been itching to read the whole Little House series to my children and I believe my five-year-old is old enough to appreciate it. They both listen very well to it when I read aloud at breakfast time.

The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

We have had this book forever but my toddler just noticed it and has taken a liking to it. Classic! I guess it goes along with his preference for playing with his train sets every day. :)

Aesop's Fables for Young Readers edited by Laurel Hicks

Everyone has to learn the morals in Aesop's Fables, am I right? These fables are short (bonus), about animals (bonus), illustrated in a way that captures my children's interest (bonus), and include questions at the end of each story that my older child can answer (bonus). Four bonus points!!

Toot & Puddle: I'll Be Home for Christmas by Holly Hobbie

I love the Toot & Puddle books. The illustrations are gorgeous and heartwarming. The stories demonstrate the virtues of adventurousness, loyalty, friendship, love for the environment (both natural and cultural), and domesticity - all without using unnecessary words. The characters' actions and conversations, both written and spoken, are the story.

So I am in love with the Toot & Puddle books. I have to say, though, that my toddler is not as interested in I'll Be Home for Christmas. He loved the book named simply Toot & Puddle. Interestingly, these books are advertised as being for ages 4-8. My five-year-old likes them fine but doesn't ask for me to read them.

My toddler also likes to look at grocery store circulars and magazines with me, because both types of publications show plenty of food. Food is the theme of his life.

Simple Water Table Coloring

A simple spring or summer activity: Transform the water/sand table into an art canvas. This is another activity adapted from the book 2's Experience Art by Liz and Dick Wilmes. A roll of paper is placed over the table and taped to the sides. I simply put the paintbrush markers in one of the smaller water compartments of the table, right underneath the paper but visible and reachable. The purpose of this activity is to liven up coloring time for little ones and show them the fun of experimenting with art venues and materials. In the book, this is meant to be a crayon coloring activity, but in our area I don't think crayons would last more than five or ten minutes outside before melting down.

The book looks very unsophisticated and, in fact, it is. It does not give academic explanations for the different activities. Many of the activities are simple. However, I love this book. It is perfect for two-year-olds, just at their level, yet keeping them learning.

I really like the beginning pages that show some different ideas for displaying children's art. With inspiration from this book, my husband hung a stuffed animal hammock in the upper corner of our toddler's room to which we safety-pin his art projects. I believe displaying children's works has a great impact on them and gives them motivation to keep learning and mastering activities.

Two Ways to Help Children Learn Faster

Some people may be a bit disgusted with Way #1 to help children learn faster. It has taken many experiential lessons for me to accept Way #1, but I have finally realized its worth.

Way #1 to Help Children Learn Faster:

Give them more time.

Most skills that we want our children to learn will be learned in time. Extra struggles come when we try to make them learn things sooner than they are ready to learn them.

Parents are not helped by state and school standards here, or guidelines and rules of thumb from experts and non-expert advice givers. When we see an age next to a skill, we want our child to have learned the skill AT LEAST six months earlier than that age. Right? Am I the only one?

Those standards and guidelines are made for a reason, and they are helpful in certain circumstances. For most children, they should be used only as a guide and not as an age past which your child will never acquire the skill and the world will come to an end.

I recently read a very interesting book called The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World. The author, Anthony Rao, Ph.D., seems to recommend two basic strategies to help boys acquire social skills: One is to simply wait for them to grow up a little! Most boys will mature in a healthy way and acquire the skills they need. The problem arises when they don't do it fast enough for their parents or teachers or school administrations.

His second strategy is to use consistent behavioral programs (such as clear rule-setting, slow progression from simple to more complicated behaviors, and rewards like sticker charts).

I'm sure many of us can share stories of working day after day, painstakingly, with a child to gain a particular skill and getting nowhere with it. Then some time later, the same child can "suddenly" do it with almost no effort at all. Laying groundwork by working on particular skills is well and good, and very helpful, as long as it done as slowly as necessary and without high emotional stakes placed on learning something right away.

Way #2: Embrace Your Child's Interests

Here is an illustration: I wanted to teach my older son chivalrous manners, though I wasn't sure how to go about it. It finally hit me that he would be amenable to talking about chivalry and manners through King Arthur's knights of the Round Table. He has an obsession with knights, castles, kings, battles, and good and evil. I began to talk about chivalry and what it meant to King Arthur. 

He said, "Watch this, Mom!" and went down into a low bended-knee bow. It was a perfect example of a knight's bow, complete with hands gripping the hilt of an imaginary sword.

Due to his passion for all things knights-related, he had already absorbed at least that much of a medieval sense of chivalry and honor. This was an easy topic to discuss.

 

Sometimes a favorite stuffed animal role-playing what we want to teach is more effective than words coming out of Mommy's mouth. Sometimes Daddy or an aunt or uncle is a better teacher because our child is able to listen more intently to them at that time.

People have always known it is easier to encourage children to do things if they are related to the children's interests. Diego toddler utensils, Dora toothbrushes, dinosaur stickers on a potty training chart...  We probably all use this method quite often. 

There are some things that family members here are slowly learning to do. I coach myself to take a deep breath and remember that, contrary to what my brain is telling me, there is not a specific date on the calendar that these things have to be perfectly learned. It also helps to look around for examples of things that I myself have taken long taken a long time to learn. And I successfully made it through all my (academic) schooling!

Learning a Phone Number

Image courtesy of www.clker.com

We are now at the point that I want my son to know my cell phone number, for safety reasons. He needs to memorize ten digits, but that won't be a problem. Young children's minds are like steel traps!

Here is what is working for us.

I wrote the first three digits on one piece of paper (a long notepad page, like what you might use to jot down a grocery list) and put a sticker of The Thing next to them.

The next three digits went on another piece of the same type of paper. A sticker of Diego and Baby Jaguar went next to them.

The last four digits - same thing. Spiderman is crouching next to them.

Over a few days, I coached my son on the first three digits.

"What is the first set of numbers in my phone number? The Thing says, '___.'"

Very quickly, my son could say the first three numbers in his version of The Thing's voice. So I added the next set.

"What are the first numbers in my phone number? The Thing says, '___,' [pause for my son to say them] and Diego and Baby Jaguar say, '___.'"

Sooner than I thought it would happen, he could recite the first six digits. Today at the pool, he made a new friend and asked him over to our house sometime. He told the boy the first three digits of my phone number so he could call us. Hmm, I guess I have to add in a little lesson about needing all ten digits of a phone number, and also whom it's okay to give the number to!

Today I introduced all ten digits in the same manner. I have no doubt he will soon know the full number. We are working on our address in the same way as well.

Storybook Week 10: Make Way for Ducklings

Make Way for Ducklings was written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey. This is one of the classics that is a delight to hold in your hands while looking at the wonderful illustrations.

1. Read the Story
Language Arts
 
Read the book Make Way for Ducklings, or watch the storybook video, or both. Take your time and enjoy this classic book.

Although, in my opinion, there is nothing that can replace a book, the storybook videos in Scholastic's Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics are well-done. What I like about them are the slow pace, the animation in the style of the original illustrations, and the use of the original text of the books. Each of these videos is more like the experience of a read-aloud than any video other I have seen.

2. Nesting

Story Interest/Dramatizing/Science

With your child, explore the house for just the right spot to make a nest. When your child has found the exact right spot, mark it with a pillow or anything else that comes to hand.

Now, together you must collect the materials for your nest. Younger children will need your suggestions of using pillows, blankets, etc., for next materials. Older children will most likely have plenty of their own ideas.

Make the nest, and sit on it, of course. If your child wants eggs to sit on and to hatch, crumpled and shaped paper works well. If you have miniature bird figures at home, they can even be inserted into the middle of an egg.

Optional: After doing the activity, watch a video of birds making a nest. Discuss the things you did to make your nest that were similar and different.

3. A Second Breakfast of Peanuts

Story Interest/Fine Motor Skills

All who are not allergic to nuts and who are old enough to eat them can have a "second breakfast" just like the Mallards'. Raisins could also be used instead of nuts.

Get out a jar of peanuts and pour them into a container with a wider opening. Give your child a  bowl for his or her peanuts, and a pair of tongs or tweezers. With the tongs or tweezers, your child should practice transferring peanuts to the snack bowl. Depending on the utensils and the child, this might be a challenging activity. A small measuring cup or spoon can be substituted for the tongs or tweezers.

4. Make Way for Ducklings Interactive Map Activity

Social Studies/Geography

Use this amazing interactive map to take the journey the Mallards did!

5. Police Officers to the Rescue

Social Studies/Dramatizing

Using rubber duckies and a road made of blocks, car tracks, or a road drawn on a piece of paper, have your ducks try to cross the road. A line of Matchbox cars or other vehicles waiting to the side heightens the sense of danger.

Have your child, the police officer, stop all traffic with a commanding hand so the ducks can safely cross. This police hat and badge printable would help your junior officer(s) a lot!

DIY Chef-In-Training Custom Cookbook

Okay, when I post Do-It-Yourself projects of my own making, you can bet that they will be super-simple and super-quick. Otherwise, I would probably fail at them.

I also dislike spending a lot of money on a craft (except knitting! I will spend more on knitting projects), so the materials must be easy and inexpensive to acquire.

This project was inspired by my creative son and took almost no extra work to put together.

Background: My five-year-old keeps coming up with ideas for creative foods to make and asking that we cook them. They are creative enough that most of the time we wouldn't be able to make them right then and there. I finally decided I wanted to encourage this creative cooking streak, so I did the following:

Image courtesy of clker.com

1.) Bought a spiral-bound index card notebook. (Like this*, although ours is 3" x 5.)

2.) Told my son the plan and got his go-ahead.

3.) Decorated/labeled the book. My son wasn't into decorating it at the time, otherwise we could have really gone to town on it.

4.) Wrote headings on separate index cards for his recent suggestions that I remembered.

5.) Planned a time to make the recipes, one by one, over time.

These are the names of a few of his recipes: Fruit Salad Pizza, Doughnuts (decorated just like Arnie - see this book*), Yogurt with Sprinkles, Chocolate Sauce Bananas.

I think this would be one of my best ideas yet, if it were my idea. Thanks, son!


 

*Afterschool Homeschool is now a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Where I have noted that I do not receive compensation for reviewing or linking to an item, that is true and means that the relevant link is not an affiliate link. 

Winter Fun In the Summertime: Movie Marathon

Image courtesy of clker.com

At the beginning of summer, I posted an idea to have winter fun in the summertime when it gets dangerously hot out there. Yesterday we put into action #5: the (Indoor) Movie Marathon.

After swim lessons in the morning and a sweltering trip to Target, I decided I wouldn't put the children out to play in this heat.

We have young children, so rather than choose a theme of favorite summer or winter movies, I allowed each one to choose a movie. I closed all the blinds, put popcorn in the microwave, and set them on the couch with the first-choice movie. Whew! An air-conditioned house feels really fabulous after a car ride.

If you start to feel guilty about plopping the youngsters in front of the TV, go all out with the theme of the movie and put fun themed props on the coffee table in front of them. My children spend just as much time playing pretend as watching the movie. Oh, and they also spend a lot of time on serious popcorn-munching.

Caution: The American Academy of Pediatrics lists popcorn as one of the foods that poses a high risk of choking among children.

Image courtesy of clker.com

It's not that my little ones aren't watching TV anyway at certain times of the day, but I always feel better when our mindless activities are scheduled in. Do you?

How Do Dinosaurs...? Puzzle Activity

For anyone doing the How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? Storybook Week (or anyone whose children love dinosaurs), this activity from Crafts~N~Things for Children is a spectacular, easy addition. I love it!

Because my children love both dinosaurs and puzzles, and because I have all the necessary materials (hurray!), we will be doing this activity posthaste.

Find the full How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? Storybook Week here, at the link above, or in the Storybook Weeks sidebar.

Displaying Independence with Allowance

My husband and I like the new allowance and chore system we set up for our five-year-old. The basic premise behind it is "practice makes perfect." Mistakes and regrets will happen; that will be part of the learning process. As the folks of Love and Logic say, it's better to make mistakes now (and learn from them) while the stakes are very small.

(Please see the disclosure notice at the bottom of the post about Amazon links.)

I love this book I recently borrowed from the library:

 Money Doesn't Grow On Trees: A Parent's Guide to Raising Financially Responsible Children. We used a lot of her concepts while setting up this new allowance system.

Chores and Money

At first I thought I would never want to tie in chores to allowance. Now I think that tying in some of them to allowance or extra pocket money is a great idea. It is very motivating for our five-year-old. He cheerfully helps around the house (for free) when I ask him to, so he already has a good spirit about helping and doing housework. The money motivator helps when there is a day he is tired of helping out or when I would like him to get the task done faster, or when the task is above and beyond what we expect of him.

We assign our son certain chores that must be done every week before he can earn his allowance. He must make his bed and pick up his room every day. Out of a list of suggestions, he chose cutting coupons for an additional chore to earn his allowance. He and I now spend fifteen minutes or so together cutting coupons out of the Sunday paper. It helps me; it's a fun together-time; it strengthens his already-good cutting skills; and he gets his allowance right afterward. Win-win-win-win!

The thing I like best about this system is how it gives him all the responsibility for completing his required tasks. He doesn't do them? No allowance. I don't have to nag if I don't want to. In fact, here is his latest independence display: when I ask if he has made his bed yet, he tells me he does not want me to say that. He wants to remember and do it on his own. My child has requested that I NOT remind him. I love it.

Allowance: What Goes Where?

He is now saving up for something specific in his piggy bank. He has a piggy bank for short-term savings, a sharing jar for giving to others in need, and a wallet for spending money.

We give five dollars' allowance every week. This means that we do not buy him treats or dollar items at the stores anymore: He can choose to pay for those things out of his spending money if he likes. In the fall, when he starts school, he may choose to buy school lunch or milk with his spending money (otherwise, we are packing lunches every day!)

Two dollars goes into the piggy bank (he is saving for a small Lego set), two dollars goes into the wallet, and one dollar goes into the sharing jar. Large gifts of money (twenty dollars or more) go straight into the savings account we set up when he was a baby.

Spending Money

The amount of money in his wallet is what he has to spend. I haven't vetoed him yet and don't plan to unless I see something very wrong or dangerous in what he is buying. As I said above, mistakes will happen.

These are the things he has bought so far with spending money that I would never have bought for him:

• Two more bags of army soldiers/police officers
• Yet another foam sword
• A light-up rubber caterpillar/worm/thingy (you probably know what I'm talking about)

The light-up worm-thingy is broken after one day of play; he says he needs to go buy another one. Oh, boy.

I should mention that his very first purchase ever was a beginning chapter book called Dragons from a Friends of the Library bookstore. It cost him $1.00, and he got every penny's worth out of that book.

Visit The Activity Mom, June Cleaver Nirvana, Milk and Cuddles, Quirky Momma, and JDaniel4's Mom for more Displaying Independence posts...or to link up!

Afterschool Homeschool is now a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Where I have noted that I do not receive compensation for reviewing or linking to an item, that is true and means that the relevant link is not an affiliate link. Thank you for visiting Afterschool Homeschool!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July to everyone reading this in the United States!

I Stink! Storybook Activity, Documented

We are doing the Read. Explore. Learn Summer Reading Challenge today. (See the badge to the right.) I'm so excited about it!
 

In Your Community
Social Studies/Story Interest/Arts and Crafts


This is part of Afterschool Homeschool's Storybook Week on I Stink! by Kate McMullan. (See my disclosure about affiliate links below.)

"Talk about your community: Do you see police officers in your community? Fire trucks? Where are the library, city hall, fire station, grocery stores, haircutting shops, and post office? Do you see garbage collectors in your neighborhood? What do they do? Where does your trash go?

Set up a play community using building blocks. Or, if you have them, use play sets. Here is one that we used for a while. And here is a great idea for building a Safety Town out of cardboard boxes, paper, glue, and markers or crayons. (The craft idea is at the end of part two of this great safety tips video. It is not step-by-step instructions, just a demonstration of what the children made. They use cardboard boxes of different sizes, glue white paper onto the surfaces, and allow the children to decorate them into whatever "safer buildings" they like.)"

We used our wooden blocks to make a town. It had a fire station, police presence, roads, and a garbage truck that was going around picking up "trash cans" (tiny Lego barrels work well if you can use them around your children without them being lost or swallowed).

 

 

The children liked this activity. What they really liked was reducing the town to this:

 

Then it could evolve into a castle (with their dad's help):

 

Which could then be joyfully reduced to this:

See the full Storybook Week on I Stink! by Kate McMullan.

Afterschool Homeschool is now a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Where I have noted that I do not receive compensation for reviewing or linking to an item, that is true and means that the relevant link is not an affiliate link. Thank you for visiting Afterschool Homeschool!

Bubble Painting In the Great Outdoors

This idea was adapted from the book 2's Art Experience, by Liz and Dick Wilmes.

 

What we did was to tape up a few pieces of white paper on our backyard fence. I used duct tape; it stayed up for a few hours.

Before we started the activity, I opened two small bubble solution containers. I put 1/8 teaspoon food coloring in each container (one for each child, different colors for fun), put the caps back on, and shook them up. After pouring the colored bubble solution into the no-spill dispensers (which I love for my toddler and even my preschooler), we were ready to go.

By the way, if you don't have any bubble solution right now, here is a simple recipe.

Tip: Have your children wear clothes that can get stained. This is not the messiest of activities, but a bit of colored bubble solution will probably end up on their clothing.

The children blew colored bubbles onto the paper, making faint circular bubble splatters.

The bubble splatters do not make a very dark "painting," but my children enjoyed doing the activity and were proud of their results. Because we were experimenting, I used paper that had already been printed on one side (as you may be able to see). If cardstock were used, this activity could make some pretty, delicate, handmade notecards.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of this activity was the way it enticed my children outdoors.