If my children end up in some sibling folk-rock-fusion band in their teens, I’m so bringing out this photo.  At the tender age of 4 my daughter already writes some very creative lyrics.  And my son has fantastic rhythm, not that I’m biased in any way.  I recorded them both singing and playing during an impromptu lounge room concert recently, but I’ll save that footage for now.  It could come in handy down the track…!

Is music played in your home?

PS – Speaking of music, have you entered my Justine Clarke giveaway yet? Click here to read my interview with Justine and leave a comment to enter!

As expected, she is absolutely loving it.  Here are some things she has been learning about while playing with her camera both indoors and out:

1.  Keep the lanyard around your neck.

2.  Smile, whether you’re in front or behind the camera.

3.  Keep your fingers away from the lens.

4.  Sometimes you need to try a different position to get the shot you want.

5.  Things look different up close.

6. Creative shots take time and thought.

7.  Keep your hands steady.

8.  Little brothers don’t stay still for long!

]]> http://squigglemum.com/activities/activities-indoor/toying-with-cameras/feed/ 18 http://squigglemum.com/activities/activities-indoor/we-play-with-swings/ http://squigglemum.com/activities/activities-indoor/we-play-with-swings/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:39:21 +0000 SquiggleMum http://squigglemum.com/?p=3212 My kids are right into swings at the moment.  You see, we have inherited an old A frame swing set.  Apparently it is doing the rounds of the neighbourhood and we are its third owners.  The children in the house behind us grew up, and passed the swing set onto the family beside us.  Now those children have outgrown swinging too, so the big blue A frame was passed up and over the tall wooden fence once again.  We only have a tiny patch of flat ground in front of the rock wall, and the swings take up the whole flat area, but the kids are delighted.

I loved watching my daughter take her knowledge of swings inside this week.  While her brother was napping I suggested she create something with a cereal box.  Look at what she came up with!  She did all the cutting herself, and punched the holes for the string.  I needed to tie the string on for her, and loop it over the curtain rod.

She was thrilled about pushing Buckingham (the teddy her Daddy bought for her while I was still pregnant with her… awww) but soon discovered a problem.  He fell out easily after one or two pushes.  I asked her how she would like to solve that problem, and she came up with a safety bar which you can see her attaching in the photo.

I love looking for opportunities to encourage independent problem solving through play.  I could have told her what we were going to make with the box.  I could have fixed the problem with the bear falling out.  I could have done a lot of things for her, but where would the learning be in that?

(PS – have you entered my Hi-5 Giveaway? Super easy to enter… 3 DVDs to be won!)

It isn’t a shoe rack or pot plant rack (LOL) it’s an old Waldorf Playstand.  New ones with soft curves in the timber and smooth finishes are quite expensive to buy, so I was delighted to score this second hand one for only $33.  It has obviously been loved by children in the past, and I can see it is about to be loved all over again.

A playstand is basically just a simple wooden structure which supports children’s open ended play.  It can be whatever they want it to be!  A puppet theatre, a shop, a house, a boat, a castle, a cave… you get the idea.  Often playstands are used in pairs, and joined by an additional arch.  Playsilks or other fabric can be used to make a roof.

(image from amazon.com)

Above is an example of two (expensive) playstands with a rainbow playsilk roof.  Below is how we’ve improvised with one stand and a tablecloth!

We’ve already used it inside as a library and on the front verandah as a shop.  I can’t wait to take it into the backyard for the kids too!  It is certainly going to grow with them.

If you’re interested in getting a playstand:

• but don’t want a second hand one try here (Australia) or here (US) for lovely new stands.
• but don’t have much space, these ones are collapsible!
• but don’t want to spend a fortune try these plans for a DIY job.
• but don’t want to spend on plans, just on tools try these free plans.
• but don’t want to spend a cent… use a clothes horse like I have been for the last few years!

If your kids are anything like mine, they will play with their stand until they are exhausted!!

Does anyone else have a playstand?  I’d love to hear how others use them.

“The SPORE Project is a worldwide effort developed by artist Doug Rhodehamel to promote awareness for the support of art education and creativity in day-to-day life. The project illustrates the importance of self expression, resourcefulness and creativity – specifically, how to look at one thing (a simple paper bag) and see what it can be instead of merely what it is. The project was created to build awareness, to let people know the importance of art.”

As soon as I heard about this project I knew my kids would love it, and I suspected it wouldn’t take long for other creative educators to get on board with it too!  (Check out Teacher Tom’s mushrooms here, and more gorgeous creations over at Irresistible Ideas for Play Based Learning.  Can’t wait to see who else plays along.)  Using humble brown paper bags, even young kids can participate in this international art installation.  Here is our contribution…

We made our mushrooms with your run-of-the-mill flat brown paper bags.  It took a while for my three year old to get the hang of folding the corners under (especially with her little brother “helping”) but we ended up making 18 mushrooms together.  The next day we painted our creations!

Once they were dry (and we checked about every 15mins to see if they were…) we could plant them outside!  We spent quite some time deciding where the mushrooms would be happiest, and my daughter finally settled on a shady spot beside the fence.

This project has brought us a lot of joy.  The mushrooms were easy to make and we already had everything we needed at home (paper bags, bamboo skewers, paint).  There was a good amount of problem solving involved with planting them, as our ground was pretty tough and the skewers pierced the bags easily until we worked out a method!  The overall effect of the planted painted mushrooms is stunning, and the kids have delighted in showing them to visitors.  And I smile every time I see them too, because I know that in some small way my children are connected to others around the world through art.

Want to join us?! “Turn your trash into art and take part in the largest art installation in the world!  This month, thousands and thousands and thousands of paper bag mushrooms will be planted around the world!  Show your support for art education and creativity!”

Please let me know if you decide to join in too.  I’d love to see your kids’ creations.  You can find everything you need to know about The Spore Project here.

It’s a pond, silly!

Here, I’ll help you:

Frog, rocks,

lily pads, fish,

dragonfly, reeds.

See?

A whole ecosystem!

(With night time stars reflected in the water…)

When I stop looking with grownup eyes and start looking with toddler eyes this beautiful creation comes to life.  It ceases to be a box full of junk mail and becomes the play world my daughter dreamed it to be.  Isn’t play a beautiful thing?

Come play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up…

Here are three foods we have been talking about recently in our family:

1.  Pineapple!  We live in sunny Queensland which is an area known for growing pineapple, yet when we cook homemade pizzas we often open a tin.  Tinned pineapple is very convenient, and there’s nothing wrong with using it at all.  We always buy Australian pineapple in natural juice (not syrup) which is packaged at the cannery half an hour away anyway!!  That said, there’s a lot to know about this fruit that you can’t learn from the tinned stuff.  Just look at the way they grow (they’re actually bromeliads)!  Pineapples are interesting to touch.  They have a rough exterior and spiky leaves.  Inside the textures are interesting too.  Although it’s the same colour through the fruit, the core is much more dense than the rest.  It’s usually removed from tinned pineapple, but it’s still quite tasty.  The enzymes in fresh pineapple are actually different from tinned, and the taste and smell are different too.  On the whole fresh pineapple has much more punch!

2.  Corn.  We use corn in cooking quite often… but usually get it from the freezer!  The kids love to help when we instead cook fresh corn on the cob.  The first time I cooked corn with my daughter she had NO idea what it was!  She was so surprised when we peeled off the green husk and stripped away the silk to reveal the corn kernels underneath.  At 18mths my son loves to chomp on a cob of corn too.  We steam them for a few minutes on the stove, then I run them under cold water to make sure they won’t burn his mouth.  After shucking corn together it’s great to look at the corn kernels from the freezer again, and even compare with pop corn kernels!

3.  Eggs.  My parents keep a few hens and the kids love collecting the eggs when they come to visit.  They also give food scraps and fresh water to the chooks, and let them out into the yard to roam.  The kids eat lots of eggs when they visit Nanna and Pa, and always bring a few home.  We even dyed some with turmeric and red onion skins at Easter recently.  Chooks are wonderful for city kids.  My daughter has been helping collect eggs from the chook-chooks since she was very young (as you can see from the pic!) and now carefully collects the eggs and feeds the chooks independently.

Other great food activities we’ve done as a family are shelling prawns and planting veggies.  I can’t wait for strawberry season again so that we can take the kids picking!

What foods have you been exploring with your kids?

The kids and I retrieved the sneaky culprit and put him in a box for further investigation.  We talked about the caterpillar’s colour and markings.  We watched the way it moved.  We took note of its size and the funny “tail” at the end.  We talked about what colour butterfly it might turn into and wondered how we could find out…?

So then we pulled down an enyclopedia. Oh hang on, no – that’s not what we did.  We googled it.  Here’s how I guided Little Miss 3 through an internet search:

Me:  We want to find more information.  Google can help us find information.  What information do we want to find?

LM3:  We want to find out about what our caterpillar will turn into.

Me:  That’s a lot of words.  Can you tell me one word?  We want to know about…?

LM3:  Caterpillars

Me:  Ok, let’s type c-a-t-e-r-p-i-l-l-a-r-s.  That says caterpillars.

LM3:  That sure is a big word Mum!

Me:  Do we want to know about AAALLLL the caterpillars in the world?  Or just the caterpillars where we live?

LM3:  Just where we live.

Me:  And where do we live?  In B…

LM3:  Brisbane!

Me:  Ok, let’s type B-r-i-s-b-a-n-e.  There.  So now we’re asking Google (point) to tell us information about caterpillars (point to word) in Brisbane (point to word).  Can you click here?

I’m not fussed on young kids playing heaps of computer games, but I think there is a lot of value to be had in early, purposeful use of technology.

We found a couple of useful sites and looked at various pictures of caterpillars to identify our own.  There was so much fantastic language involved in this process as we eliminated images.  Too green.  Too spotty.  Too hairy! Once we found some caterpillars that were similar we could look at more subtle detail like the four yellow spots, and the funny “tail”.  Eventually we found a match… we think!  Our best guess is that our very hungry caterpillar will become a Hawk Moth…

My daughter enthusiastically took her caterpillar to kindy today and shared her new found knowledge with her classmates.

We love learning together.  Did you learn something with your kids today?

I have missed spending special one-on-one time with her though, so on the weekend we did a girly activity together.  We had seen cute ribbon boards for hair clips at the markets, and thought we’d have a go ourselves.  To be honest I wasn’t really sure how well it would work, but I figured the process would be more important than the product anyway.

I didn’t buy a single thing for this project.  We used a piece of polystyrene from the recycling bin and trimmed it with a stanley knife as it was a little bigger than we needed.  We covered it with some fabric from the material box, pinning it at the back with dress makers pins pushed almost horizontally.  (I tried the staple gun first but that was a disaster!  Pins worked much better.)  Next we raided the ribbon box and my daughter chose colours to match.  (Ok, so I might have talked her out of bright blue and into chocolate brown…)  I cut the ribbons into lengths and let her space them out on the board.  Then I simply pulled them tight and pinned them at the back.  Super easy.  We added a little bow at the bottom to finish it off.

I was really happy with the way the board turned out.  We made it using things we had at home already and it was a lovely mother-daughter activity.  The end product is something pretty and practical, and it’s already getting lots of use!

We’ve been designing layouts for trains, and narrating our own adventures for the engines (in every story the Fat Controller has to get cross and say, “You have caused confusion and delay!”  Of course)…

…and constructing intricate buildings and block towers like this for the passengers to visit when they disembark from the trains.

On the wet weekends we’ve made inside cubbies big enough for even a Daddy to fit inside (and cushions, toys, shoes, etc) too.

But now that the rain seems to finally be clearing, we’re left with grass that looks like this…!!

What do you do indoors with the kids when the rain really sets in?  (By the way, Damon has totally taken care of the grass situation now.  It isn’t still like this!)