Kids Co-op link up (#12 for me)

It time for Kids Co-op. To find out more about Kids Co-op or to become one of the host blogs please visit Nurturestore. In the mean time please link up any great kids based ideas and visit some of the others linked this week. I will be linking the following:

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(Goblin is 31 months)

In John Bowman's book "Help Your Preschooler Build a Better Brain" he takes you through Montessori activities that you can do at home with your 2 - 6 year old. One of the sets of activities is called 'transfer sequence'. He talks about getting your toddler to practice transferring things from one bowl to another with the aim of developing neural pathways in the brain and improving hand fine motor control so that the child will strengthen the right muscles for writing. He starts the series of activities with water and a sponge and moves on through bean pouring to water with a turkey baster and then a jug. As with most Montessori activities the task should be set out on a mat and isolated (ie that is the only thing the child is doing). He suggests giving your child a mop cloth to wipe up spills and to do the activities in the correct sequence over a series of days or weeks, not moving to the next step until your child has mastered the first.

Of course I am not great at doing things by the book. I like Montessori philosophies a lot. But Goblin is still young and play is a very important part of toddler development. So we combined the Montessori ideas with some Waldorf philosophies of learning through play, to present Goblin with a water transfer extravaganza!

Goblin had the choice of turkey basters, ladles, salad servers, jugs, bottles, sponges and bowls. It may not have provided quite the same amount of self discipline as a traditional Montessori approach would have done, but it was certainly provided ample entertainment. Goblin concentrated on the activity for ages.

So thats what we've been doing - What have you been doing?

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Jubilee Ice Rescue

(Goblin is 31 months)

I have to admit I have been a little bit "Bah Humbug" about the whole Jubilee thing. I'm not anti the Royal Family, its just that 60 years of someone being the Queen doesn't fill me with excitement and the need to rush around having tea parties and hanging bunting. That said I thought I ought to at least make an attempt to keep up the Brit blogger appearance and do a Jubilee related activity. As its been beautiful weather all week I thought Goblin would enjoy some outdoor ice play. So in a Starwars 'Empire Strikes Back' moment I decided to encase the Royal Family in Carbonite (ice) for Goblin to rescue. My idea was a combination of two posts I saw on the blogosphere - the first about coloured ice from Hurrayic and the second about soap dinosaur eggs from Red Ted Art.

I filled some balloons with coloured water and stuck some royal family figures from the Early Learning Centre HappyLand Great Britain Set inside. Now I made that sound super easy. But believe me it wasn't. I didn't use water balloons that stretch with the weight of water, because I didn't want them to pop in the freezer. So I used regular balloons. These didn't stretch when I stuck the water in, not even the pressure of the water from the tap would inflate the balloons past their unblown-up state. So I had to "Science that Bee-atch" as they say (actually maybe its only me and Hublet that say things like that). I blew up the balloons and while holding the neck of the balloon shut, stretched it round the top of a bottle filled with the coloured water. Then I turned the bottle upside down and let the air in the balloon displace the water in the bottle - SCIENCED!

Of course being a British bank holiday, rather than beautiful sunshine it is tipping down with rain. So our ice play was done indoors. I provided a spray bottle full of warm water, two bowls of salt mixed with red glitter and a jug of hot water for Goblin to pour on the Ice eggs.

Hublet decided it was his mission in life to free the beefeater by spraying the egg at close range with warm water. It made some cool holes in the ice. Goblin chose salt as his weapon of choice but soon discovered that it was really slow working so he moved on to jugs of warm water.

Goblin worked on freeing the Queen (in time for her Jubilee Flotilla). He was quite excited as she emerged from her carbonite ice egg. Hublet and Goblin worked away side by side for some time, 'sciencing' the ice into submission.

Finally all the humans had been freed and they waited anxiously to see if the Corgie would make it! 

If you aren't from the UK or the Common Wealth you may be wondering what on earth this post is about. For more information on the Queen's Diamond Jubliee you can check out the official website http://www.thediamondjubilee.org/

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Toddler science

(Goblin is 29 months)

This weekend Goblin and I did some science experiments. I'm rather pleased with myself because they both involved a montessori style practical life element without me having to actually plan anything. I was looking for something to distract Goblin. He was about to have a melt down because I had to stop him playing with the garden hose before the grass drowned under a foot of water. Before I turned the tap off for the final time I dashed inside and grabbed some bicarbonate of soda and a jug of vinegar. I presented it to Goblin on the lid of his sandpit. 

I poured some of the bicarbonate of soda into a pot, and gave Goblin the jug (good pouring practice). He poured it in and was instantly excited by the foaming and the hissing noise. 

In fact he was so excited that he wanted to do it again and again. Eventually we ran out of vinegar. But that didn't stop Goblin. 

Ever resourceful, Goblin decided to try and recreate the experiment with water. This was a good learning experience for him, because obviously the water did not create the same effect. 

No matter how much water he added!

Our other experiment was making a non newtonian fluid. Although I have known about this for years I have never actually done it. This again was me trying to create a diversion for Goblin. He found some food colouring in a draw (he's now tall enough to open the top draws - groan!). He was really keen to open them up and pour them into something, and rather than waste them I thought we could add them to cornflour and water. 

Getting the quantities right for our cornflour and water mix took a bit of trial and error. We ended up with two packets of cornflour and two little jugs of water and quite a lot of food colouring - about a bottle and a half before I could stop Goblin. 

And the result was amazing. It is the weirdest stuff. To be honest once Goblin had done all his pouring he wasn't particularly interested in the finished product - especially because stirring it is really difficult because it keeps going hard! I wonder whether his disinterest was partially due to him being too young to realise it shouldn't do what it does. I took a video of it doing its weird stuff for anyone who hasn't seen it. 

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Stressed out by Messy Sensory Play?

(Goblin is 28 months)

In my post about water beads I mentioned that despite them going absolutely EVERYWHERE I stayed calm and actually found the experience quite amusing. In fact I am quite calm about mess from most forms of indoor sensory or messy play but this has not always been the case......

When I first started doing messy sensory play with Goblin I found the whole experience really quite stressful. I'd want to contain and limit the mess and I'd spend my entire time trying to make sure that rice or lentils or what ever we were playing with stayed on the mat or blanket I'd put down. I'd walk round the mat with a brush and dustpan brushing up any stray bean and putting it back on the mat. I'd snap at Goblin to play more carefully. And eventually my heart would be racing and there would be a constriction in my throat and I'd just yell "RIGHT THATS ENOUGH!" and man handle Goblin out of the way so I could sweep up the mess.

 

 Poor Goblin had no idea why I went from happy playful mum who lets him get his toys out, to totally crazy mentalist mum who screams and shouts while running around with a broom.

Fortunately it didn't take me long to realise that this reaction wasn't in any way beneficial to Goblin or to me. I had two choices: I could stop sensory messy play all together or I could get over it. But as Amanda at Dirt and Boogers explains in her post The Importance of Sensory Play, kids get a lot out of these experiences. So I opted to get over it. 

Here are some tips I used to help me 'Get Over It'.

1. Prepare your area. 
2. Accept that there will be mess.
3. Assume you will not be able to reuse the play materials. 
4. Get down and play with the material yourself. 
5. If you start to stress count to ten.
6. Do messy sensory play as often as possible

Preparing your area: If you prepare your area you may be able to contain some (but not all) the mess. I have a mat that always goes down. It is pretty useless at containing all the mess but it does make it easier to lift the bulk of the mess out the way fast. 

Accept there will be mess: If you assume their either won't be any mess or that you will be able to contain the mess, you will be disappointed. Mess is pretty much inevitable and the more you can accept it will happen the less stressed it will make you.  A subset to this is 'Don't run round with a brush during your child's play' - you will start to resent their play as it creates 'work' for you.

Assume you will not be able to reuse the play materials: We reused our rainbow rice for 6 months. But if you are worried about sweeping up every last scrap and placing it carefully back in the tub you will be more stressed out by the handful that disappears under the sofa. Lets face it, rainbow rice probably only costs £1 to make, it won't break the bank if you hoover half of it up.

Get down and play with the materials yourself:  Since I started playing with Goblin (using the digger to load the dumper truck with rainbow rice or painting on a big piece of paper) two things have happened - first I'm too interested in the play to notice the mess (especially as some of it is my fault) and secondly I have really started to appreciate why toddlers like this type of play, its very therapeutic.

If you start to stress, count to ten: When I do start to get a bit stressed by the mess - which is usually on the rare occasions I agree to let Goblin play with shaving foam (I HATE SHAVING FOAM) - I try to disengage for a bit by sitting on the sofa or making myself a coffee. Just long enough to remember why we are doing the activity in the first place. Of course this can completely backfire when you return to the room to discover your shaving foam covered toddler has decided to watch TV and got foam on the remotes, the sofa, the DVD shelves and pretty much every other surface in the room. "What the what? But I was only gone for two seconds!!!"

Do messy sensory play as often as possible: The more you do this, the less stressful it will become. 

 

If you are a relatively self aware person you will know whether you will be able to make this shift in approach. There are some extra things you can do to help if this feels more like a giant leap than a small step to the side. You could:

1. Start small: Try doing sensory play with much bigger easier to clean up items (like a whole tub of magnetic letters that your child can pour on the floor and mess up - it will test your ability to control your emotional reaction to mess)
2. Find a friend who enjoys sensory play and take your child to their house: If you don't have to deal with the clean up you may find the mess easier to handle. 

However I have a good friend for whom this type of play simply would not be possible. The thought of the mess would actually make them feel physically sick. If that's how you are feeling having read this post, I think the best advice I could give is 'Just don't do it'. Yes kids get a lot from sensory play, but I suspect they won't get much benefit if you are having a nervous breakdown while they play.

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