Picture Charts for Training

Little ones get dirty. Often.

My latest goal is to start teaching our younger child how to wash his own hands and face.

I often get frustrated trying to teach my children a skill because I forget that I need to break it down into the smallest of steps. For example, teaching my two-year-old to wash his own hands and face actually involves at least eight steps.

1. Bring potty stool to sink and stand on it.
2. Turn on water.
3. Pump soap into hands.
4. Scrub hands.
5. Wash face around mouth.
6. Rinse hands with water.
7. Rinse around mouth with water.
8. Dry hands and face on hand towel.

For our training, I made a picture chart with blank spaces for star stickers each time he successfully does a step. After a certain number of earned stickers, I will give him a reward. (There is a toy dinosaur waiting in my closet for just such a purpose.)

When we were potty training our older son, my husband made a chart like this which was very helpful.

If anyone is interested, I have made it a public document you can view here. The images I used are mostly from www.clker.com.

A little tip: The chart my husband made for potty training worked very well; the only problem was how dilapidated it got in a damp environment like the bathroom. This time I plan to slip it into a plastic sheet protector and hang that on the bathroom wall where my child can see it.

P.S. I've already realized I missed a step in the chart. There is no step to put the potty stool back where he found it after using it. And the only reason I don't add it is because I want to keep this washing-hands thing to one page!

Unplanned Learning Activities

Some examples of unplanned learning activities that took place in our home yesterday, during what I would call an "off" day:


1. Going outside as the light grew in the morning sky, listening to the birds, (me) drinking coffee on the porch, (two-year-old) blowing bubbles.

2. Following along and helping with my chores.

3. A big sing-along of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Farmer in the Dell, and the ABC song.

www.clker.com

4. Color sorting, grouping, and free play with loops from a weaving loom set that just happened to be out on the table.


                                         


This is the kind of morning I would call a productive, happy learning time, even though I felt "off" and scrapped the usual planned learning activities.

Top Five Books I Dislike That My Children Want to Read Over and Over Again

 5. The Cars movie tie-in book Old, New, Red, Blue.

 

This book is for beginning readers and has an average of three words per page. 

4. My Big Animal Book

 

This book involves pointing (by you or your child) and endless repetitions of what animal that is and what sound it makes.

3. The Monster At the End of This Book

                                            

This book requires lots of frenzied expression and a Grover voice. Hard on the vocal cords, although a very cute and popular book. I think it was my husband's favorite book as a young child. He is very good at reading it aloud, too.

2. My First Tractor Board Book

Like the My Big Animal Book, this requires labeling everything in the picture for my son, and it is tedious.

I have to separate this from the book simply called Tractors (Wheelie Board Books), which is on wheels and has pictures of tractors on each page but not very many words. I don't mind as much saying, "tractor," on each page until we are done with the book. Pictured below, it was also the first book my toddler "read" aloud to himself when he thought no one was looking. That was somewhere around his one-year birthday, I think.

                                            

1. Mythical Beasts

                                            

This and many other similar Groovy Tube books (we have Magical Creatures as well) are relatively inexpensive and come with a tube of small figures from the books. The figures are not the highest quality I have seen, but they have lasted - with some major and minor disfigurements - for my older child for years. His love for the figures is equaled by his love for the books, which take about fifteen minutes each to read.

These books that I dislike are important for one reason: my children love them. Any books that are beloved by children are priceless in terms of the future bond they build between children and the marvelous world of reading.


What books are you asked to read a dozen times in a row?

Car Drawing

Yet another idea from 2's Experience Art was enjoyed by the boys and me. We started with crayons taped to the cars, as instructed by the book, but it was hard to get them in the right position to make a mark. Markers (washable ones) worked much better for us.

My toddler loved this activity. My almost-kindergartener was gleeful about it until we finished and cleaned up. Then he was very disappointed in the product, saying it wasn't a real picture. I assume he has entered his objective art phase: nothing abstract will do right now.

 

Soap Crayons, Not So Much

 The book I rave about, 2's Experience Art, has a suggested activity to draw with soap crayons in the water table. I tried to make soap crayons by combining powdered dishwasher detergent, a small amount of water, and red food coloring, and then packing the mixture into a muffin tin to dry out. They dried out, all right.

They crumble at first touch and don't leave a mark. Not the greatest crayons ever. On a positive note, our water table became beautifully, shinily clean after I tried applying the "crayons" to its surface and then rinsed and scrubbed with a sponge.

I ask you, readers, what do you use for soap crayons?

Hurricane Tracking with Children

Storms, maps, colored pencils, and time with Dad = Great Idea!

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/history.shtml

My husband had the idea to print out and laminate a hurricane tracking map to track hurricanes with our son this season. He found a hurricane tracking teaching strategy website here. Apparently there is a set of standards for what color to use for what type of storm.

He put the hurricane tracking map on a thumb drive and got it printed out poster-size and laminated by a printing store for $14. (It would only have been $3.50 to print out the poster, but with a laminated chart, we can use it again each year.)

We already have several colors of dry-erase markers that can be used to color-code the storms.

Using weather.com, I read off the coordinates for the tropical storms that have been seen so far this year while my husband marked them on the chart. During the process, he taught our son about latitude, longitude, hurricane trajectories, and some geography.

Next time, it will be our son's turn to help!

Preparing for Kindergarten: Milk Boxes

Image courtesy of clker.com

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.