Author Archives: Janelle Durham

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About Janelle Durham

I am a parent educator and social worker, and teach music and science to children age 1 - 8.

Nature Connection Pyramid

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pyramidi like this infographic from the Nature Kids’ Institute, which gives “recommended daily allowances” style of recommendations for getting your child outside. (They have a free five part series of short videos on “Let’s Bring Childhood Back Outside.”)

They talk about free, unstructured outdoor play once a day. This is about the little stuff, like finding some tree stumps in your neighborhood to climb and jump off of, or stopping at a local plant nursery, going on an autumn leaf hunt or a scavenger hunt in your neighborhood, or walking to the store, or playing in the backyard, or weeding the garden or digging in a sandbox. In the video, they say the best thing is an empty outdoor space with no toys or obvious activities so children get creative and invent their own play.

They suggest that once a week, you make a plan for a nature outing, like a trip to the dog park (whether or not you have a dog), a visit to a farm park or petting zoo, a hike to search for wildlife. You could even just visit the same woods or park every week, and make friends with a tree. At this time of year, try the pumpkin patch.

Once a month, check out a regional, state or national park. Here are some new favorites we found this summer. And once a year, go somewhere wild.

If you find yourself making excuses for why you “just can’t go outside today”, check out my post on overcoming the barriers to outside play.

Why do this? There are so many benefits to outdoor play! Increased creativity and self-direction, decrease in ADHD symptoms, large motor development, lower obesity rates, better vision, and more… As winter sets in, you’ll often feel like your child is “bouncing off the walls” inside. Bundle them up, take them outside, and let them play!

Have you gotten your recommended dose of nature today?

Fun with Toddlers: Fall Theme

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fallHere are a collection of fun toddler activities, crafts, and books related to autumn.

Songs to Sing / Rhymes to Say

Apple Tree
[Miming gestures here; video here]
Way up high in the apple tree.
Two little apples smiled  at me.
I shook that tree just as hard as I could.
Down came the apples
and mmm they were good.

5 Little Pumpkins
http://wiki.kcls.org/index.php/Five_Little_Pumpkins
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one says, “Oh, my.  It’s getting late!”
The second one says, “There are witches in the air!”
The third one says, “But I don’t care.”
The fourth one says, “Let’s run & run & run.”
The fifth one says, “We’re ready for some fun!”
Ooooooooooo went the wind, and OUT went the light,
and five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Pumpkin, Pumpkin (tune of Twinkle Twinkle)
Pumpkin, Pumpkin on the ground (crouch down)
How’d you get so big and round? (stretch arms to make a circle)
Once you were a seed so small (pretend to hold a seed)
Now you are a great big ball (make a big circle with hands)

Homemade Toys to Make:

Play-dough: There are LOTS of recipes for Play-dough available online. Here’s one I like: Mix 1 1/2 cups water and 1/2 cup salt. Heat to almost boiling. Remove from the heat and add 2 TBS. vegetable oil, 2 TBS alum*, food coloring. Cool & knead in 2 – 3 cups of flour.

* You can find alum in the spices section of the grocery store. Or you can substitute cream of tartar.

Felt Tree: Cut a tree, leaves & apples from felt. Let your child stick them to a felt board.

Activities / Games to Play:

Sticky spider web. Use painter’s tape / masking tape to make a spider’s web across the doorway. Your child can throw things at the tape and see if they stick. Try cotton balls or wadded up newspaper or whatever small lightweight things you have handy. Source

Leaf Hunt. Go for a walk and collect fall leaves. Talk about the different colors and the different shapes, count how many points they have, compare small to large, and notice smooth edges versus serrated edges. Point out which tree each leaf fell from.

Pumpkins and golf tees: Get a pumpkin, golf tees, and a toy hammer. Kids ages 3 and up can hammer the tees into the pumpkin. For toddlers, you can hammer several golf tees in – they can take the tees out and put them back in – great small motor practice!

Crafts to Do:

Leaf Suncatchers. (See photo at top of page.) Take the prettiest leaves from your leaf hunt and sandwich them between two layers of clear Con-Tact paper. Frame (if desired) with a paper plate rim or construction paper, and hang in the window. Source

Sticky Apple Tree. Cut out a tree shape from brown contact paper for the trunk. Cut green paper leaves and red paper apples (or use green and red pompoms). Hang the contact paper on the wall, with the sticky side facing out.  Let your child stick “leaves” and “apples” to the tree, take them off the tree, and stick on again. Inspiration

Apple prints. Put some paint on a tray. Cut an apple in half. Show your child how to make prints by dipping the apple in the paint, then pressing it on to a paper. Source

Pumpkin finger puppets. Make finger puppets to go with the five little pumpkins rhyme. You could make them with playdough or felt or mini post-it-notes stuck to your fingers.

Books to Read:

  • Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. One of our favorites!! A sweet story about three baby owls who worry when mama goes hunting. But of course mama comes back!
  • Five Little Pumpkins by Dan Yaccarino. An illustrated edition of the finger rhyme above.
  • Apples and Pumpkinsby Anne Rockwell. Simple book that features fall themes like apple picking, jack-o-lantern carving, and trick or treat.
  • Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington. For kids 4 and up. Talks about apple picking, counting, sorting, baking, and selling at a farmer’s market.
  • The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. Lots of farm animal noises & repetitive lines for kids to join in on.
  • The Itsy Bitsy Spider by Iza Trapani. Builds on the classic and familiar song as the spider goes on further adventures around a house

Printable handout of these fall activities here.

More ideas (and source citations) for this topic at: http://www.pinterest.com/bcparented

For my full collection of theme-based “Fun with Toddlers”, click on “Fun with Toddlers series” in the right hand side bar. Or if you would like them in printable handout form to share with students, click here.

photo at top of page from: http://artfulparent.com/2011/09/fall-nature-suncatchers.html

Link

I will be talking about positive discipline in my class this week. Many people mistakenly believe that positive parenting means permissive parenting – always saying yes, and never saying no. I absolutely believe in setting clear limits with children.

Positive Parenting Blog has a great post on how positive parenting is not authoritarian but neither is it permissive. Check it out: www.positive-parents.org/2011/06/positive-parenting-is-not-permissive.html

If you have a hard time saying no, check out: Saying No to Your Child and No Means No.

Creative Development Lab

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I am excited that this year my son has the chance to participate in the Creative Development Lab offered by Bellevue College Parent Education. It’s a weekly arts enrichment program for ages 3 – 5. Kids attend every week. Parents work in the classroom 6 times a year and also attend a monthly parent education session.

Check out the video at the top of this post to see all the great activities we did in ONE DAY this fall.(If you want to try out any of the arts activities with your child at home, you can learn how on our Pinterest page: www.pinterest.com/bcparented/)

And there were even more great activities at CDL that day that the video doesn’t show!

  • The kids made their own applesauce by squashing up a baked apple with a potato masher and sprinkling on cinnamon sugar.
  • There was a free collage station, where they could gather their own cool materials from lots of baskets of goodies and glue them together any way they wanted to.
  • There were blocks, and puzzles, and books in the center room. They also do imaginative play and circle time.
  • At the end of class, they go outside for riding trikes, pulling wagons, bouncing balls, and playing in the sandbox.
  • This was also parent education day, so the parents were in the other room discussing temperament with our parent educator.

I’m loving this program!

Some parents choose it because their child is an art-focused kid who just can’t get enough of the art projects they do at home. I actually choose it because I have a really outdoorsy, active boy. At home he has a hard time settling in to art projects, and I also don’t offer them as much as I should because… well, no good reason really…. I just don’t always think of it. So I love having this dedicated time in his week for him to explore art and the joy of creating things.

Engineering and Preschoolers

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Engineering challengeI loved this post on “The Educator’s Spin on It” which gave an idea for an engineering experiment to try with a preschool age child, and also included broader tips on how to build Engineer-Thinking skills in your child, book recommendations about engineering, and so on. But when I read it yesterday, I didn’t expect to try the experiment today!

Then today, we had one hour before nap-time, and needed a new idea for an activity. My son asked for fizzy science experiments, and we played for a while with vinegar and baking soda. Then he asked for a new science experiment.

I remembered the post, and said: “Let’s build a rain shelter.” We made a bunny-like object out of a paper towel and talked about how we could keep it dry. First, I asked my son how to keep dry, and his first idea was to wear a raincoat and rain pants. (He goes to an outdoor preschool in Seattle, so is well practiced in this method!)  We put bunny in a ziploc bag (aka his raincoat – my son is not quite savvy enough to realize how bad a plan a ziploc would be if the bunny actually needed to breathe!). And then we ran bunny under the faucet. Sure enough the “raincoat” kept him dry.

Then we took off the raincoat, and practiced having bunny hide under a flat roof. (The lid off a bistro box from Starbucks.) That worked for a little “rain” but when we had a lot of rain the flat roof spilled over. But the “roof” we were using had “gutters”, so we cut out a section and added a straw for a downspout. (Then we had lots of chances to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider and talk about waterspouts.) We then folded the lid in half to see the advantage of peaked roofs over flat roofs.

Then we made a “tree” out of shredded up plastic bag… that also shielded our bunny till there was just too much rain and the “ground” (the plate the bunny was on) got so wet there were big puddles that ran under the “tree” and soaked the bunny.

After that we walked around our house and looked at our gutters and rainspouts. We tracked where the rain would flow out of the spout, down the driveway, out to the road and down the street to the storm drain, and talked about how it goes to the lake from there. We looked at the flat roofs and peaked roofs in the neighborhood.

In the end, it was a fabulous hour of interactive discovery inspired by a blog post I read yesterday morning. I would have never thought of this project on my own, and am so glad that I get to benefit from the shared creativity of other educators and parents!