Color Obstacle Course

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For this month's Color Theme, I created a Color Obstacle Course for my daughter to enjoy moving, playing, and learning more about colors.

Miss E walked across the rainbow bridge by balancing herself across a plank of wood.  I placed colorful sheets of construction paper on either side of the wood.  If you don't have a length of wood, you can use a strip of masking tape for a bridge.

Let Her Make Lines

It's not uncommon to find objects lined up in our house because Miss E makes a lot of lines. These are the lines I found around our home today.

The lines can be found in artwork designs. When asked to describe the piece, she cannot explain it.



Sometimes she can describe the drawing with lines, and she told me this was a mandala.



She uses lines to organize things. She decided to make this poster of all her favorite things.



Lines are a part of her imaginative play. The animals are sleeping here.



She created a line of artwork to make a display for an art store.



I cannot give a definitive explanation as to why Miss E creates all these lines, but I do believe if children are drawn to a particular activity in play, it is important for them.   Lines are found in every part of our life and the academic world.

Some Places We Find Lines

• Handwriting
• Shapes in Geometry
• Direction of writing on a page
• Organization of books on a shelf
• Creating grids in math and social studies
• Number Lines
• Standing in Line
• Clotheslines
• Invisible Lines in Symmetry
• Calendars
• Seats in an auditorium

Since Miss E is given the space and time for self directed play with access to a variety of materials, she has the opportunity to create lines on her own.   Creating these lines may be her way of processing the world around her.  She may be trying to create order in her own little sphere of the world by organizing objects into lines.  It's even possible these lines are helping her brain to develop a framework that will enable her to better comprehend academic lessons where lines are important. 

Whether or not, your child is creating lines on her own is probably not important.  The importance is that  children are given the freedom to play, explore, and manipulate the world around them.  Lines are part of the way Miss E plays.  The specific and unique ways your child plays are giving him some of the skills he needs to conquer the academic world in the future.  

Hammer and Nails Pumpkin

Since it's still quite warm here in Texas, I think it's too early to carve a pumpkin unless you want to risk a truly scary pumpkin complete with moldy stench.  But I have had the itch to decorate a pumpkin, and the pumpkins at our grocery store only cost a few dollars, so we could afford to decorate few.

A hammer, nails, and a marker are the only materials needed to decorate our first pumpkin this Halloween.

Miss E drew the pumpkin's face with a Sharpie.




Since the little Miss is a novice at hammering, I hammered each of the nails along the outline of the pumpkin's face by lightly tapping the nail into the pumpkin just a bit. She hammered the nails all the way into the pumpkin. Older, more experienced children could start each of the nails on their own.






Miss E loves her Jack 'O Nails, and she has plans to paint the rest of it.




This activity is great for kids who don't enjoy the icky, gooey insides of the pumpkin. It works on the building a child's arm strength with hammering, and their fine motor skills by aiming the hammer onto the head of the nail.

Check out the Halloween Traditions Link Up at JDaniel4's Mom.

How to Make Natural Watercolors

Since we had a bouquet of dying flowers that needed to be composted, I wondered if we could use the flowers to dye water to be used as a natural water color.

Miss E helped me pick off the petals.





She ground them up with her mini mortar and pestle.





We added hot water.





She stirred it up.





We strained out the petals.





We were excited because we had a bowl each of yellow and pink water.





Miss E started painting, and right away I could see that our technique hadn't worked. There was only a slight tint of the colors barely noticeable. Ela's creation was a glistening sheet of paper.





I lamented to Miss E that we weren't able to make the watercolors and asked if she wanted me to get out her store bought set of water colors. She replied that she liked painting with these colors, and she was having fun. Rather than use up more paper for invisible paint, I suggested we paint the patio, and she heartily agreed. She enjoyed playing with the tinted water outside.  I found this interesting because she has never enjoyed painting outside with plain water.






While I felt disappointed, that I wasn't able to make a true water color paint, this activity was a success for our daughter.  She was able to see that sometimes when we experiment, the result isn't what we expected. This reminded me that the process of invention is just as important as the outcome with children because they take pleasure in the work along the way.   Once young children finish a project, they often don't pay attention to the product spending mere seconds to glance at it, but they were engaged throughout it's creation.

While we might experiment with this again, I took the liberty of including links to sites showing how to make watercolors at home.

All Natural Watercolors

Watercolor Paint with Food Coloring

Watercolor with Herbal Tea

Watercolor with Dirt

Nature Display in a Jar

Miss E and I enjoy collecting things from nature, and today we found a bounty of what we thought were beautiful seed pods from under a tree.  We collected a few and brought them home, and since I didn't know if they were poisonous reminded the little Miss not to eat any.  I did a little internet sleuthing, and found out the seeds are actually mature fruit from the Chinaberry Tree.  Birds will eat this fruit until they reach a drunken state, but they are toxic to humans if consumed in large quantities.

Well, the little Miss had already figured out she was going to paint her "seeds" and display them.  I started worrying that collecting the berries wasn't one of my finer ideas, and I knew she wouldn't just forget about her natural treasure.  I realized that this was a prime opportunity to discuss poisonous plants, and allow her to carry out her artistic plans under supervision.  I schemed up a plan to allow her to display her artistic creation but keep it out of reach from little hands and mouths.

Miss E stuck the berries in styrofoam to make it easier to paint them.  She chose the colors, and we painted each of the berries.





Thanks to our friend, Nawal, we have a stash of glass jars to use for our crafting, and we chose a glass jar to display our painted berries. Miss E added play dough to the bottom of the lid, and stuck the berries in the dough. I needed to build up the dough around the stems to keep the berries standing vertically.





I put the jar on top of the lid and sealed it shut with hot glue. Yes, I am still concerned about the poisonous, but beautiful berries.



Still cautious about the berries, we displayed them on Miss E's decorative shelves which are high out of the reach of curious tykes.



Nature displays in jar could be used with any natural treasure. You could paint the objects or not as colors in the outdoors are beautiful without any adornment, as well. With very little ones, I wouldn't try it using chinaberries, and use more caution with the unfamiliar berries, flowers, and leaves. My daughter is past the age where I need to worry as much about her exploring interesting things with her sense of taste.

Happy Collecting!

This post is featured in this week's "It's Playtime". Hop on over to the Playtime Linky Party to see other wonderful play ideas.

Better than Chocolate Cake

While I am still adjusting to life without Miss E at home full time, Miss E has taken to her first few days of preschool like a champ.  I have put on a good game face showing enthusiasm for this marvelous new adventure for her, but admittedly I am sad that this sweet and amazing phase of my life is over.  I know we will continue to share wonderful times together, but I will miss her constant presence.  
I am reassured by the fact that I know my daughter is in a place where she will continue to thrive.  I know she must really like it because she says she likes school more than chocolate cake.  

Mommy-Daughter Fun - Back to School

For the first time, Four year old Miss E will attend preschool. Understandably, she is anxious about it, and her most consistent argument against going to preschool is that she wants to stay home with Mommy forever. We both enjoy our long days together, and I want her to know that we will still share these special times.

My brain has been mulling around different ideas to ease her transition to preschool. Go Explore Nature has an excellent idea to make a back to school activity jar. It is filled with outdoor activities picked by both mother and son to enjoy when out of school. I thought this would be a wonderful activity to help alleviate the Little Miss' worry about missing out on our fun activities together.

Taking inspiration from the activity jar, we made a chart with Mommy-Daughter activities to do each day after school. Since there are only six days of school in August, I cut out six strips of paper. Each of us came up with three ideas, and I wrote each on a strip of paper with a simple drawing. Since it will be too hot to play outside after school, our activities are mainly for indoors, but I can't wait until the weather cools, and we can take most of fun outdoors.




I clipped the strips to her Ball Painting. Each day before school, Miss E will choose an activity, and in the afternoon we will make it a priority.





Of course, I have thought of how to calm her fears, but I have yet to think of how I will deal with the sadness of not having my lovely girl home all day.

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Favorite Things Collage

Last week we ended up with a large painting from our Pitch 'n Paint activity, and I began thinking of how I could make use of this grand scale painting. I realized it would be the perfect backdrop to a collage. Since Miss E's birthday is in less than a week, I decided we could work on a collage to document her favorite things.

First, we wrote her name using 3 dimensional objects, beads, popsicle sticks, twisty ties, and a cardboard ribbon holder, found around the house. I hot glue gunned the letters to the paper. We painted some of the items.

Then, we brainstormed creating a list of her favorite things. We needed more than one board to write her list.




We drew pictures using the list. At times, Miss E took out a favorite thing to help her draw. I labeled the pictures.




She pasted the pictures onto the paper.













I posted the collage in our living room.



It makes a beautiful birthday banner to celebrate Miss E's 4th birthday!  This activity support literacy skills through brainstorming, labeling, and making letters.  It fosters art and fine motor skills through drawing. 


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Simple Math - Hide and Seek

As with most children, one of my daughter's favorite pastimes is hide and seek and she especially likes to play it hiding her stuffed animals. I wrote about playing hide and seek using the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See, and this time I decided to incorporate math into our usual game.

To make it simpler for her to process the concepts, we used only five animals and the foam numbers (1-5) from our outdoor hopscotch set. You can write out the numbers on sheets of paper as well if you don't have a number set.

Miss E placed the animals in a line, and she ordered the numbers placing one number next to each animal.




I hid the animals, and she closed her eyes and counted while she waited. As she found each animal she placed them next to the numbers. The statements and questions below are examples of how I encouraged mathematical thinking. She used the number line we created to help her answer the questions.

-How many animals have you found?




-How many animals do you have left to find?




-You have found two animals, and now you found one more. How many animals do you have now?
-What number animal do you need to find next?
-When we had found all the animals, I asked her how many animals we had left to support the concept of zero.




-To encourage concepts of ordinal numbers, I encouraged her to find the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th animal.
-Once she had found the animals, I inquired about what was the first and last animals she found.

We continued to take turns hiding all the animals, and the addition of numbers to the game only heightened her interest in playing. Incorporating numbers into hide and seek fosters learning through play by using mathematical concepts such as numbers, number line, ordinal numbers, addition, and subtraction.

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Simple Math - Playing Airplane

Miss E enjoys playing airplane. When we play this together, we pretend we are both Mommies, and we take our children and luggage onto our plane. We spend time hanging out on the plane fastening our seat belts, eating snacks, and reading books until we reach our destination which is either New York, where her grandparents live, or the Savannah, where she hopes someday she will travel to see lions, elephants, and zebras. Today I decided to include additional elements to our airplane play. We added a game of maching socks to pack our luggage, making tickets, and creating a runway.

Before our journey, we need to pack our luggage which includes matching socks. This fosters mathematical skills such as same and different.








We created tickets to board the plane using strips of paper, stamps, and markers.








We made a plane out of pillows.




I assigned seat numbers using letter and number blocks. We found our seats using our seat assignment on our tickets. Matching rows and columns was a difficult concept for her as an almost 4 year old, but it is a skill we haven't explored yet. I showed her how I find my seats using the numbers and letters found on my ticket and assisted her when she had difficulty.




Up, up, and away - the plane takes off on the runway.




We hang out with our babies (aka stuffed animals) on the airplane until it lands. Good thing the flight attendants weren't strict about staying in our assigned seats.








Incorporating educational concepts into an imaginative play scene grabs their interest. Children will realize that math is something useful in their everyday lives. Using airplane seat numbers encourages a child to develop a concept of grids, coordinates, matching numbers, and counting. If the children make tickets with the same seat numbers, they can work on their problem solving skills to figure out how to assign a different seat numbers.

Assisting children in including additional features to their imaginative play scenes will model for them how to create more dimension to their play. I think this is especially important for children who don't frequently play with older children because older children will naturally be more creative in their play, but a parent needs to try to do this in the absence of an older playmate.




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A Ball, A Box, and A Lot of Paint

You probably spend a lot of time with kids if you get excited over boxes. We recently went to IKEA, and I was giddy over the possibilities of using the big, long boxes that stored the bookshelves. I informed the other household members not to tear it apart to put inside our recycling can.




I remembered seeing other examples of marble painting on the internet, and my daughter had done it with our playgroup. This box would be perfect for painting with balls because the shape of it resembles a bowling alley. Painting with balls is not my original idea because the The Artful Parent demonstrated painting with balls in a child's swimming pool.

First, Miss E chose the colors to paint the box and picked every color in the box.




I explained to her how to squirt blobs of paint across the length of the box. It was a challenge for her to open the bottles and squirt the paint, and I realized how important it was that I allowed her to help set up this painting project because she practiced fine and gross motor skills.





We sat at opposite ends of the box and rolled a small ball back and forth. Miss E loved this, and it maintained her interest for a half an hour. At some point, I created more challenge by setting goals of aiming for certain colors of paint in the box. We talked about how the ball spread across the paint, and how the colors changed when the ball rolled across with different colors.









She ended up with paint all over her hands and a little on the floor, but it washed off easily. She has been asking to do this again, and I am glad we have one more box.




Painting with balls helps support gross motor skills by rolling the ball and aiming for targets (the colors). It builds the concept of cause and effect when the children observe what the ball does to the paint and how the colors change when mixed together.



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