Favorite Friday - Land Art Heart

Every other Friday, I feature an activity that was inspired by another blog.  I worked with Sun Hats and Wellie Boots for The Heart Project, a compilation of over 70 bloggers' heart images to inspire ideas for Valentine activities for kids and a fundraiser for the American Heart Association.  We love spending time outdoors, and I wanted to recreate the Heart Shaped Nature Sculpture featured in The Heart Project eBook.  


Miss E and I created this heart out of sticks and leaves in our backyard. Hop on over to Sun Hats and Wellie Boots to see their beautiful stick heart, and discover other ways to create with sticks.  

If If you haven't yet donated to the AHA for your free copy of The Heart Project Ebook, please go to Hands on as We Grow to learn more about our fundraiser.  The Heart Project is only available during the month of February, so there are only a few days left to make your donation.  
For more outdoor fun, come back next Friday to participate in The Outdoor Play Party.  

Nature Collage Heart - Love Theme

As part of this month's Love Theme, we made this Nature Collage Heart.  I learned how to use contact paper to create nature collages from The Iowa Farmer's Wife when she blogged about creating nature pockets.  
Materials-contact paper-scissors-items found in nature-crayons-hot water-disposable cup
How to Make a Nature Collage Heart

• Collect items from your backyard or on a walk.  Miss E and I collected flowers and leaves found in our garden.  
• Cut out a sheet of contact paper to be the shape of a heart.  Place sticky side facing up.
• Child arranges items found on nature walk onto sticky contact paper.  It helps to press the items down a bit.
• For extra decoration, we used melted crayon on our heart.  This step isn't necessary and should only be done if a child is mature enough to be safe around hot materials. Heat water and place water in disposable cup.  Dip end of crayon in hot water, and press crayon onto contact paper to make dots.   Please closely supervise children during this as melted crayon and water can  burn children if not done safely.  
• Cut a sheet of contact paper into a square a little larger than the heart.  Seal the heart closed by placing the sticky side of the contact paper on top of the nature items on the heart.  
• Place Nature Heart Collage in a window.  

Here is a close up a view of our nature collage.  

Chores Obstacle Course - Love Theme

I created a chores obstacle course to tie into our Love Theme for the month of February.  I encourage Miss E to help around the house because I think it is important for all family members to help maintain a home.  Helping someone with chores is one way to show love for another person. With this obstacle course, we were not actually performing chores but practicing through play.

#1

Set up a pile of multi colored and white socks on one side of the room.  On the other side of the room arrange two baskets or boxes.  Label one box for whites and box for colors.  Child runs back and forth across the room to bring socks to the appropriate bin.  
#2

Put out two bowls, bottle of water, and container of pet food.  Child pours water into one bowl and scoops cat food into another bowl.  
#3

Scatter rice or other material across a length of floor.  Place a broom on other side of rice.  Create a square with masking tape to guide child where to sweep the rice.  Child tip toes through the mess to gather a broom on the other side and sweeps rice into the square.


#4

Arrange various grocery items and a grocery bag.  Child puts groceries in bag and carries the bag across a room.
Miss E's favorite station was feeding the cat.  She practiced pouring water long after we had stopped the obstacle course.  She found it challenging to sweep, but I think it was good practice.  It was difficult for her to carry the grocery bag, but she managed to figure out way to carry it by lightening her load.  
This obstacle course supports development of gross motor skills by running, sweeping, tip toeing, and carrying.  It builds upper body strength by carrying heavy objects.  It develops hand eye coordination by pouring, scooping, and sorting objects.  It helps children get physical exercise even if you are inside the home.  

Playful Parenting Tip#7 - Devote Time to Play

This week's Playful Parenting Tip for supporting unstructured play is to devote time for unstructured play with your children.  We have realized the importance of unstructured play with our daughter, and we make it a priority to play with her.  Unstructured play can happen with friends, siblings, or alone, but this post illustrates how parents and caregivers can best utilize unstructured playtime with their children.

Put unstructured play on your schedule.  We devote time to playing with our daughter as soon as she comes home from school.  We play with her for about an hour.  Not all families have an hour, so start with 15 minutes of unstructured playtime. 

Allow your child to choose what to play.   Take your child's lead what to play.  Don't say, "Do you want to play Candyland?" Do say, "It's our time to play together.  I wonder what you would like to play with me."  When this becomes a routine, your child may start planning what she wants to play with you.  

Mimic how your child plays.  This shows you notice what your child is doing, and children love when their parents pay attention to them.  For example, if your child makes his toy fly, you make your toy fly.

Avoid the use of the word no.  During your scheduled playtime with your child, avoid using the word no. Try to go with the flow of your child's play.  This is the time to let go of the "right way" and let it be the "child's way." If it's a serious matter, you will need to step in as a parent, but try do whatever the child wants to during your play hour. 

It's okay to be bored.  Almost every day, my daughter chooses to play school with her stuffed animals.  To be honest, I get bored playing school every single day, but I smile, find delight in her joy of the game, and immerse myself in the imaginary play scene.  I hope she has no idea I find it boring. 

Put down the cell phone.  Even if you are bored, resist the urge to scroll through your Facebook newsfeed.  If possible, wait till the end of your playtime, to send a text.  You want your children to feel like they are more important than a screen.   

Give your children the gift of play and your time.  

Some of the above tips, I learned from the book Parenting The Strong Willed Child by Forehand and Long.   We were going through a challenging time with our daughter, and I picked up this book I had sitting on my shelf.  The first tip in the book is "Attending to a Child's Positive Behaviors" through play and verbal reinforcement.  Incorporating the advice of attending to our daughter was one of the strategies we incorporated into our home that helped our daughter's behavior to improve.  

Devoting Time to Play is the last tip in the Playful Parenting Series.  If you have missed some of the other tips, please come back next week because I will be sharing a recap of each tip in the series.  

Joy in Minutes #6

#6 - Throw Pebbles into Water

Dandelions!! - The Outdoor Play Party

I am thrilled to be joining the Outdoor Play Party as a cohost with Mama Pea Pod, Greening Sam and Avery, and Learning for Life.  My fellow co hosts are champions of outdoor play, and provide lots of inspiration for getting kids outside to play.  We make playing outdoors a priority in our family, and I am excited to be sharing our outdoor play ideas with the followers of the Outdoor Play Party.

This winter has been exceptionally mild, and we have just started getting the first wildflower blooms here in Central Texas.  We didn't have to travel far to enjoy the the first hints of Spring because we walked down the street to our neighborhood's common natural area.

We searched for dandelions, and learned by early evening most of them start closing up for the night.  I don't encourage my daughter to pick many things in nature, but this area of grass is mowed weekly.  The dandelions would be shredded by the mower anyway.


She blew off dandelion seeds.  When blowing wasn't very successful, she waved them around in the air. 

We canvassed the area to find more flowers, and we found some dainty flowers.  

Does anybody else have trouble getting posed shots with their kids?  It's nearly impossible with my girl, and so I present the photograph entitled "Superhero in a Field of Flowers."  

A few days later, we decided to visit the area again at an earlier time.  This time, there were hundreds of dandelions in bloom.  Since it was an impromptu outing, I didn't carry my camera, but I do have a picture of the blossoms we picked.  Miss and I created a floating arrangement of dandelions by cutting off the dandelions' stems and placing them in a bowl of water.  

• I'd love to hear what you have been doing outdoors with your kids.  Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1. Here are just a few guidelines for sharing:

- Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!- If you'd like us to further share your post (e.g., on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest), please just include a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play!- Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.- Each time we will feature an activity from the previous party. - By contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.)

Sensory Story Box - Mole's in Love

For our Love Theme this month, I created a sensory story box for the book, Mole's in Love by David Bedford.  It's the story of Morris, the mole, who goes looking for love and has some trouble finding it.

Items in Sensory Box
-Characters in the story.  I made the moles using thread spools, felt, paper, markers and a glue gun.


-leaves
-beans for mud
-strips of felt and a container for the molehill
-feathers
-play dough with toothpicks and leaves for a prickly bush
-miniature glasses for moles made out of wire

While we played together with the story sensory box, I encouraged discussion about how the animals could have been nicer to mole when he tried to show them love.  We dialogued about better ways Morris, the mole, could have approached the other animals.  We worked on changing the story line since Miss E doesn't like the parts in the story where mole and the other animals don't love each other.  Her favorite elements in the box were the beans and Mini, the girl mole.  Since she enjoys the beans a lot, I plan to fill the whole box with dried beans once I buy more.



Don't expect all the sensory items to stay in their plastic containers.  By the end of her playtime, all the materials were mixed together, but they were still contained inside the large, plastic bin.  She and I easily sorted the items back into their small containers when it was time to clean up.

This story sensory box encourages children to learn the elements of the story like characters, setting, problems, and solutions.  It allows them to sequence events.  It fosters higher order thinking skills by guiding the children to create different story lines, and to perceive how characters in the story may feel.

This post is linked up with the Weekly Kids Co-Op and Made with Love.