Prism Colors

The other morning I noticed on the floor a little spot in which the light from the window was making a rainbow.  Apparently our glass oil lamp was in just the right spot to act as a prism in front of the window.  I drew my daughter's attention to the colors magically appearing on the floor, and we started playing with it.  When we put our hands over it, the rainbow was on our hand!  When we stood between it and the window, it disappeared!  We sang our rainbow song (from Signing Time, My Favorite Things), pointing at each of the colors as we sang their names.  It was so much fun.  It gave me the idea to look for a less fragile prism - I obviously wasn't going to let my daughter play with the oil lamp.  I can put the oil lamp at strategic places, though, at certain times of the day when the light is just so (and when she isn't looking), and we can play with the fun rainbow. 

Flowers, Trees, and Animals: Learning to Love Nature

Two questions I always am asking myself is, "What are the core things I want my daughter to grow up knowing?" and "What is she experiencing in her life right now to learn those things?"  One of my answers is that I want her to appreciate and care tenderly for this magnificent planet God has created.  And so I try to do nature activities with her frequently.  We've slacked on these the past week or so, and so today we did some catch-up.  Here were our nature activities:

1.  Throughout the Spring we have been going on daily walks/stroller rides.  I've been stopping whenever I see flowers in bloom, and I enthusiastically name them and point to them.  Today, however, we stopped to look at different kinds of leaves.  We saw long, skinny pine tree leaves, flat and broad leaves, big leaves, small leaves, jagged-edge leaves, smooth-edge leaves, etc., etc.  When they were close to the road, I'd let her touch them for a little while to feel as well as see the differences between the leaves.  This was also good for reinforcing opposite concepts (like, showing her two very different leaves and naming them "BIG/little" "jagged/smooth" etc.)

2.  I picked a dandelion and brought it home with us.  When we got home, I took a white sheet of computer paper and put the dandelion on top of it.  I rubbed the flower bud into the paper, and showed her that it made a yellow spot.  Then I pointed out to her the petals, the leaves, and the stem.  Then we took the different parts of the dandelion (all the petals, the leaves, and the stem) apart, looking carefully at each part.  We put the little petals on one part of the paper, the leaves on another part of the paper, and the stem on another (this was good for teaching the sorting concept, as well).  We pulled the stem apart to look inside.  It was very interesting exploration.  I kept reinforcing that this is beautiful and good.

3.  We went to the local nature conservation area.  My daughter chased geese, and she even came across a little family with 6 baby geese!  The mommy goose was not so happy as she kept chasing the little babies, and so I had to put an end to that (with some loud protests), but I am glad she got to see and interact with the geese.  We also saw ducks, a peacock, a turtle, fish, and a rabbit.  The conservation center had some inside rooms with interactive animal books, a bald-eagle puzzle, a life-size bear head, a life-size wooden alligator, lots of types of eggs (behind glass), and some really fun chairs to climb, objects to open and close, and colors to identify.  Check out the types of places like this that your tax dollars are paying for in your area!

4.  There was a pond at the nature conservation center, and we sat down beside it.  She wanted to throw things into it.  I made it into a game.  I'd give her something to throw in, she'd throw it, and we'd see if it sinks or floats.  It was really interesting to me that everything connected with life in some way floated (e.g., leaves, sticks, petals,), but those things not connected with living things all sunk (e.g., rocks).  I wonder if that's always the case?

5.  We spent some time in our yard with our flowers and shrubs.  I excitedly showed her the insects.  Some crawl on the ground, some fly in the air, look - that one went under a rock!, etc.   She very sweetly leaned down to pretend to kiss an insect a few times.  Very sweet.  I'm not a fan of bugs in general, and I figure she'll readily pick that up as she grows.  But I also want her to grow up knowing that we couldn't live without them, and, more importantly, that God made them and called them good.  So they are worthy of our appreciation, even if sometimes they bother us.

Homemade Counting Toys

There are tons of counting toys I could buy, and we have a few.  But as interesting as they are at first, they lose their magic after awhile, and so it creates this endless cycle of always having to buy more toys.  Since one of the things I want most is activities I can do with my toddler, and since it is less expensive and less wasteful just to use things around the house in a new way, I decided to come up with a way to create new counting toys for my toddler.  This is what we did today, and I'll record some of my other ideas, too.

I used a teaspoon as the "stick."  I used construction paper to make some little "rings," which became the counting objects.   My toddler's job in making it with me was to press really hard when I put the scotch tape on the paper to make them stay as rings.  We counted them as we put the rings on the spoon, and then as we put the rings on her fingers (her idea! - it was so much fun).  This was fabulous for developing her fine motor skills.  Most of her store-bought ring toys are wood or plastic and relatively big and sturdy.  Small, flimsy paper rings were much more difficult for her, and so it took more effort.

Other ideas for sticks:  

1.  Stick from the backyard and pasta (Mezzi Rigatoni worked really well - I found it at the store - it's a good size).  I could just use one stick and let pasta slide down it, counting as we go.  More complex, I thought about taking 2 or 3 sticks of differing lengths and then using string or something to attach them parallel to one another to a perpendicular 4th stick, which would be the base.   Then we could work on concepts like, different length sticks hold a different number of pasta pieces.   (This worked great!  For some reason my computer won't let me put a picture of it here, but you can do it really simply.  We started with just one long, thin stick and let pasta sliiiiiiiiiiiide down it, counting as we went.) 

2.  Yarn and pasta.  To keep the pasta from falling all the way off the yarn when it slides down, I could maybe tie it to something, like one of her sand buckets.  Oh, good idea!!!  And then when we're done with the counting, we can swing the bucket, she can kick the bucket while I hold the string, we can jump over the string, we can dress the bucket up like (or just pretend) it is a dog and run around with it going "rough! rough! rough!"  (This one didn't work so well as far as counting went.  But we had a TON of fun playing with the yarn and bucket.  I wrote about it in the Sand Bucket Pendulum post, and there is a picture there.  Seriously, this is her favorite toy in our house now.)

Other suggestions welcome!