learning ideas

[kokonutmama]

I personally have been feeling much better about being the parent of a Little Explorer, I guess I just had to catch up with him a little bit.  Anyway, I've been building teaching and development activities into our days and thought we could share what we do with the kids to sort of build the well of ideas. 

[JenBerry]

Well, if y'all ever feel like you want to get some activity ideas for this age, especially if you want something specific to a "theme", I'm totally willing to help out.  Like if you were going to the zoo or aquarium and wanted to do crafts of some of the animals you might see there, for example.

Also, I get many craft ideas from these sites.  Some are for older kids, but doing them one-on-one you can make it easier for our toddlers.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/coloring.htm
http://www.coloring.ws/coloring.html
http://www.kidsrcrafty.com/

Some are better than others, but it may give you some fun things to do.  I also have recipes for homemade play-doh, cornstarch goo, etc.  I just can't post everything or I'd be here for days.

Jen

[moogie]

We've been taking a much more relaxed view on learning lately.  MIL was always doing the learning thing with C and if i did it too, i think it would be too much for her.  We have a series of alphabet books that c loves me to read to her and she loves to identify the letters.  Otherwise when we go out we do nature education, so that when c finds something or we find something we have a bit of a discussion about it.  so we might talk about cicadas or the rainforest.

[ShannonandDel]

We havn't been doing much with Delaney, but she seems to pick up a ton on her own anyway. 
We are going to plant a bunch of veggies at the ILs this summer........does that count?

[kokonutmama]

Shannon, I think you're teaching her, you cook with her, right? 

I've been doing nature walk things now that it's spring, too.  K can identify deer vs dog tracks and has an idea that big people make big footprints, what a root does, what a leaf does, bugs and worms eat rotten wood, that we avoid pricker bushes and wet feet make us cold.  We also planted some seeds the way I did when I was a kid, in a glass jar between the glass and a paper towel with the soil inside the paper towel.  they're just now getting roots and we're both excited to watch them grow. 

On the other hand, while he can spell his name out loud his visual recognition of letters is practically nil and he can't count to ten without help.  I figure he has tons of time to get that stuff down.  I really think he's red/green color blind, too, so I'm not pushing colors.

[moogie]

Charlie certainly hasn't got numbers yet.  she is up to 4 now, but can recognise them sporadically on their own.  So you still think he might be colour blind? 

[kokonutmama]

I think just red/green, it runs in the family (my grandfather and brother).  he sorts his blocks by color without help, but if I point to something red half the time he'll say it's green, even though he can tell the difference between a hippopotomus and a rhinosaurus every time. Who knows.

[skeettafic]

I wouldn't say that we do anything that is really "teaching" but Jocelyn asks questions about everything so we are always talking about something.  Tonight we went to the bookstore and I told her she could pick out a new coloring book.  She went past the My Little Pony, the Care Bears, the farm animals, the princesses, etc (all very flashy and colorful) and picked out the plainest looking dinosaur coloring book that has life-like (not cartoonish) pictures and the names and descriptions of all the dinosaurs and had to have it.  We had to read all the names tonight at bedtime!  I'm sure that within a few days she'll lnow a few more names than the couple she already knew.