Sea Shells

This past weekend my husband, daughter, and I were at the ocean as leaders for a youth retreat.  On Saturday morning I took a break and went for a prayer walk along the beach.  There was almost no one around, and the ocean was so beautiful.  I looked down and suddenly noticed that there were all these beautiful shells!  Not, like, super fabulous big shells, but there was quite a variety in terms of size and shape and color, and so I gathered a number of them to show to my daughter.  Today we played with them.  She broke some of the neater ones, but that's okay.  I'd rather them be used and broken than sit uselessly as clutter in some box.  We put them in and out of the sand bucket.  I started a game where we scooped the smaller shells with the bigger shells to put them in the bucket.  She liked the game, but she liked it best when I was the one scooping the shells, which wasn't exactly what I was going for.  We sorted them according to their similarities.  We looked at their colors, we felt their smooth texture against our fingers and cheeks (she thought the cheek thing felt a little weird), and I made up a song that she loved (to the tune of 'I'm a Little Tea Pot'):

I'm a little sea shell, I come from the sea.

Little fishies swim there and they live inside of me.

When the water rises I go high on the sand.

The water goes back in the sea, and I am left on land.

We just basically handled the shells and put them in and out of the bucket, singing the song, for quite some time.  It became today's favorite game.

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.

Coins, Size, and Puppets

Today my daughter pointed at the floor and said something almost indistinguishable that sounded kind of like "pen."  I didn't see a pen.  But when I looked closer, I saw a penny.  I was surprised - I didn't know she knew what a penny was.  So I thought, maybe she's ready to learn to recognize the different coins?  She was.  This is what we did.

I got out a bunch of coins of different kinds and let her just fiddle around with them for awhile, while I identified them.  I showed her the bird on the quarter, etc.  Then I started a game where we put them through holes into various containers.  Then we'd shake them like music shakers.  The most helpful container was the plastic water bottle.  It is big enough for all the coins except the quarter, and that is when she figured out how to distinguish the quarter from the nickel.  At first she was distraught that the quarter wouldn't fit into the bottle no matter what we did - there were almost tears over this - but I turned it into something funny and it became a game.  She'd put coin after coin into the bottle, and every once in a while, looking at me with a grin, she'd pick up a quarter and go to put it in, shaking her head and saying "no, no."  I knew she could identify the nickel when she systematically picked up just the nickels and put them into the bottle.  (If anyone can think of a common household container with a top that is big enough for a dime but too small for a nickel, please let me know.  I can't find anything.)  We developed a ritual where, after all the coins were in the bottle, she'd dump them out over her head.  It started when I put the bottle with the coins on top of my head like a hat, and then I slowly tilted forward until the coins poured out.  She made her own version of this.  It was very, very silly.

Next we made sock puppets with the coins.  I used Scotch tape to attach the pennies for eyes, the dime for a nose, quarters for ears, and nickels along the upper lip of the mouth.  She helped put the coins on the tape and then onto the sock.  Then we played a game where she tried to take the coins off the puppet but the puppet kept running frantically away from her!  Eventually she caught him and we rearranged which coins got to be what body part.  And then it was back to the bottle!