I'm Just Not Creative!

I'm not going to sit here and tell you how to write a lesson plan with an anticipatory set and all that other lingo that teachers have to use. What I would like to address is the comments I've heard like, "I'm just not creative," "I don't know where to start," "how do I make learning fun?" etc. How about "My kid likes ____. How do I plan something for that?"
Okay, calling all non-creative, road-blocked, well-meaning non-teacher parents! (And all the rest of you!) What do you do to help your child get interested in learning? What about the wiggly toddler? The "I only want to play" kid? The "Mommy is talking. Time to glaze over" kiddo? (And by the way, my child is in ALL of those categories!!)
It may not be the right way, but here's a few pointers to get you going:
1. What do they like? Cars? Animals? Princesses? Bugs? The Solar System? If you can't name anything specific, what gets you excited? Enthusiasm is contagious!
2. Start with a book. It's the easiest way to start. Go to Google, Barnes and Noble.com, Amazon.com, or your library's web page. Start searching for books for kids in that subject area. Try to get some fiction AND non-fiction. Don't run from the non-fiction...it can end up being a favorite. Take the list and go to the library and check them out!
3. What letter can you associate with this topic? Does a number go well with it? Start simple! Don't try to get your 18 month old to write the letter S. You are setting yourself up for frustration. Show them an Ss, show them pictures of things that start with Ss, and get silly making sounds, but don't expect them to be able to recognize it tomorrow. They might, but don't get set on it. If you are reading the Three Little Pigs, try the letter P and the number 3!
4. Can you think of even a simple craft to go with this? If animals, how can you make an animal face? If a bug, can you construct one together? What items can you use instead of paper? Look in your cabinet!! If you can't think of one, GOOGLE! No one said you needed a teaching degree when you became a mom. :)
5. Snack time! How can you incorporate food? KIDS LOVE FOOD! Even if it's a simple as making a letter out of pancake batter to make capital T for breakfast, they will love it!!!
6. Math: Is there a color, counting, graph, or patterning activity I can make out of this topic? Three Little Pigs? Use the color pink! Sort out all the pink jelly beans! Do a color hunt for the color pink!
7. Trips! Any place you can take them to get a better hands-on experience? Museum? Zoo? Library? Pet shop? School? Planetarium? If not, how can you make it more real for them? My daughter LOVES it when I print off pictures from the Internet of whatever she's curious about. We were in Panera Bread on evening and she heard some music she despised. It ended up being the saxophone...a word and sound she's never heard before. And she certainly had NO idea what it looked like. So we printed one off and now she's practically an expert. Okay, I exaggerate, but she knows a lot about them. That leads me to...
8. Teachable moments! I would never in a million years thought to teach her about the saxophone. But a random outing sparked her curiosity. I had a choice...let it die down, or run with it. Watch your child, listen to questions, and think about how you can show them something that they are really interested in.
9. And I almost forgot: Gross motor skills and games! What kind of large movement can you have them do?Walk like an elephant? Spin like a planet? Think think think!

Okay, so now that you've been overloaded, I'm going to post on Tuesday an example of what I mean. We studied bears this week (another random teachable moment I ran with) and I'll give you a step by step plan of what we did during our bear unit. :)

In the meantime...what topics or questions do you have? Are there specific activities you want to see covered on this site? Let us know! We are here to help! Do you want more specific topic ideas? Do you want more book recommendations? Gross motor? How-tos? What needs do you have right now?

Library Day!

It's hot here. Sooooo hot. 95+ degrees for the past few days, humidity above 80% with very little rain. Heat index around 100-110. Is it hot at your house? I don't know about you, but there is only so much outside time I can take with merely a kiddie pool to relieve us.
To help beat the heat without being holed up inside, we've instituted Library Day. After my daughters AM nap, we head off!
If you don't utilize the library in your city/county often, chances are you are missing out! On a grading scale, our library is probably a C, maybe a C+, so it's not as though we have this fabulous resource that would leave you green with jealousy. Even if you live in the country (which is how our part of the city would be described), the library is still a great tool.
The Pros:

• Tons of books that you and your kids likely haven't read
• Free membership!
• Low fees if you keep track of the books (free is a pretty low fee, right?)
• Books you don't have to pay for!
• The possibility of good computer programs you can supervise but don't have to purchase
• A play area, possibly. Ours has a table set up with bins of blocks.
• Usually a separated children's area
• Free videos/DVDs
• A/C! Did I mention it's hot outside?!?!
• The possibility of online "shopping" for your books, or online renewal
• Exposure to lots of new books, genres, and authors

The Cons AND Solutions:

• You need to keep track of your books! Forgetting just that one can end up being an expensive slip of the memory. My solution: Keep all library books in ONE location, separate from other books. We have a special library book bin. I keep the printout list given in the bucket with the # of books circled at the top. That way it's easy to check to make sure all the books are there!
• Not a great selection of books. My solution: Keep digging. I usually check out about 2-3 "duds" each week. But what is a dud to me someone else may love. People donate books to the library weekly, so keep looking! You never know...that retired school teacher with a copy of every Caldecott book may have just donated this week!
• Noisy kids in a quiet library. I've been there. You can hear my daughter's squeaky voice all the way across the library. Even people in the restroom knew my daughter was looking for a Fancy Nancy book. My solution: Practice! If they don't have to use a quiet voice anywhere else, why should we expect them to all of a sudden know how to use one in the library. We practice quiet voices in the car. And if she doesn't listen? It's also important to note if the voice level is simply forgetting (you know, just being a kid) or disobedience to what you've asked them to do. If it's forgetting, I remind her. If it's disobedience, we pack up and leave, not checking out any books. But how you handle it is your decision....you are the mom! I will say that I've found that how I react to her behavior usually determines the tone and behavior of the next library trip. If I let her slide with being loud, she'll probably be loud again next time!
• More than one child to watch makes a trip difficult. This was the challenge for me, too. Sometimes it can be hard to look for books and watch your kids at the same time. You can't exactly handcuff them to the stroller to keep them from pulling off every book they see on the shelves. With that in mind, I have to have a game plan for trip out of the house. Where will they sit? What are the possible behavior issues? How will I handle them? What tips/reminders can I give them before we even get in the library? Is it close to nap or a mealtime?

Here's how I handle it with a 3 year old and a 1 year old:

I use the double stroller. My 3 year old is allowed to walk, provided she holds onto the stroller until I give her instructions to do otherwise. Before we go in, I talk with both girls about using quiet voices and keeping their hands to themselves (we practice this at home). We do a practice run of using quiet voices and what it sounds like. I have snacks packed in the bag because at 1 year, it's rare to find a time of the day that isn't close to a nap or snack/meal. I give myself a time limit. (Ex: We will stay for 30 minutes. If it's your first time, have a goal of checking out one book. Yup. Just one. It'll make it less stressful for you). If my 3 year old abuses the privilege of walking or cannot control her hands, she has to sit in the stroller or in a chair for a while. If you have aisles you have to go up and down, you can sit your child on the floor and give them a book or 2 to look at while you look, too. Or you can pull out a book and involve your child in the decision making process of choosing a few books.

Okay, younger kids. My 1 year old sits in the stroller with a book or toy while I choose a book. Then when I've chosen a few, she can walk around, holding the stroller. Then I give them a few minutes to play with blocks at the table. We clean up together. If she gets antsy (especially due to being hungry) I plop her in the stroller and give her a small, non-messy snack on the tray.

The biggest tip I can give? Don't give up after one hectic, tear-jerking experience at the library. I've had parents tell me that the library is just too stressful. In my mind, and perhaps I'm off-base, the solution is to minimize stress. Well, other than eliminating visits entirely. So instead of rarely going, try going weekly. (Sound crazy?) The library is a safe place to practice some of the skills you've been working on at home with your child. You don't really want to see if they'll stay with you while you walk through a crowded mall. And I don't really like to practice a skill when I'm grocery shopping. That's multi-tasking at it's best (or worst, in some cases). Keep practicing at the library (Remember, you can always leave!) but most importantly for us...practice at home. Teach the the skill ahead of time. Quiet voices, control over hands, waiting patiently, respect for others, sharing, sitting and reading when asked to, and listening to specific verbal commands are a few skills to practice. Don't feel like you have to tackle everything at once, either! As my husband says, "We're just trying to give them tools in their tool belts". If you don't give them the necessary tools ahead of time, it's hard to expect them to pull out the right tool when needed. Yes, even a 1 year old. :)

Have fun! Let the stress free outings begin!

It's all about perspective...

It's been a little while since I've been able to post. Blame it on my crashed (and possibly soon-to-crash again, so I've been warned) computer. For those of you that don't know, let me tell you a little about my background. I taught Kindergarten and First grade for years, and I am certified to teach Pre-K through 6th grade. My goal as a teacher was to make learning fun and challenge my students in any and every way possible while instilling a love for learning. As a stay-at-home mom, my craft and learning bins overflow. Cottonballs, pompoms, pipecleaners, texture cards, glue, every kind of marker/paint/drawing utensil known to man, string, ribbon, rope, and tons of homemade games. My bins literally runeth over, as do the learning ideas that pop in my head. But guess what? Yes, I'll say it...I have a child that despises crafts. Read a story? Yay! Pretend play? Whoopee! Have Mommy pretend to be a dwarf from Snow White for the 800th time today? Bliss!
Glue? Melt into a weepy puddle. Even look at a letter of the alphabet? Chin quivering dispair.
I had in my head before she was born all the wonderful things we'd enjoy crafting together and, well, I'm still hoping. I'm thinking, hey, I'll teach her early on in life what she needs to know way before she needs to know it. Reading by Kindergarten? Of course! Pre-school, probably. Never did I think learning activities would be the equivalent to plucking out her nose hairs, one by one.
Why do I mention this? Because sometimes as parents we need to remember that it's about perspective. She just turned 3 this month and hasn't read War and Peace yet. It'll be okay. I felt so ill today this entire week that we haven't touched our learning activities. No harm. It looks like a tornado wrecked my house. Fine, but I spent some quality time getting to know the heart of my girls.
Sometimes as a parent I need to put activities and all the learning activities on hold long enough to learn about my little ones. And I need to remember that she's still learning even when she gets to make her own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That's when it hit me today, as she loaded her PB&J with an obscene amount of jelly, exclaiming "It's just like daddy's sandwich!" (so true)...she hears me when she pretends not to, she watches when I think she's not, and she's learning about her world by watching us.
So if today you are feeling guilty about not having homemade games galore, that the kid up the street knows more letters than your kiddo, or that you skipped learning time today for no real reason at all, or your child aches to get away from your activity that you spent all night cutting out, don't worry. It's a process. Sometimes we just need to change our perspective.

Save your containers!

You probably end up with tons of empty containers week to week, right? Yogurt, baby food, sour cream, ricotta, ketchup bottles, gallon jugs, spice jars, coffee creamer...the list goes on and on. Don't throw them out unless you have to! I have a large container to, well...contain my extra containers. :)

Before you toss, clean them and consider the uses:

• All are fun and new dumping toys for the bathtub! The ketchup bottles are really fun for squirting.


• Containers for water play or pouring


• My girls use them in their sandbox outside to dump, build, and make a nice mess.


• Stacking, like blocks


• Pom Pom stuffing (cut a hole in the lid). My 15 month old loves this!


• Clothespin games


• Smelly jars


• Spice jars with colored sand for art (I use them like glitter shakers, too).


• spice jars- Glue a shaped sponge on top. It's much easier to sponge paint with grip something to grip!
  
• Parmesan cheese container- Pipe cleaner game!
• Store homemade playdough, bathtub paint, finger paint, bubble solutions, etc.
• Make musical instruments!
• Then the obvious, like storage.

Painting Tip

My children love to paint. Being the OCD mother that I am, painting day causes me more stress than about any other activity we ever do.

I used to put a little bit of each color of paint on a paper plate. A couple of months ago, I had the idea to use some empty baby food containers. This made painting much cleaner. It also made it so the children could pass the paint to each other with less mess. I really liked it and thought I would pass it along to you all in case you are like me.