Tag Archives: preschool

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!

 

Your Unique Child

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Each September, as I begin a new parent-toddler class, one of our first parent education discussions is: “Your Unique Child: the Influence of Temperament, Gender, and Learning Styles on How you Parent Each Child.”

I start there, because I know that the parents in the class are looking around the room and comparing their child to the other children, and often wondering/worrying about whether their child is “behind” or if they are doing a good job as a parent.

I want them to realize that every child is a unique individual, parented by unique individuals, in unique settings. Although we should be aware of developmental milestones – the age at which the average child gains a skill, the reality is that there is huge variation in individuals.

Here are just some ideas to help you understand, and support, your unique child.

  • Children are born with distinct personalities. It is absolutely worth consdering ideas like Temperament, Learning Style / Multiple Intelligences and Gender and Introvert / Extrovert to help us better understand them.
  • However, we don’t want to “label” our children (as “the shy one” or “the wild one” or “the musician”) because that can them limit our expectations for them, which limits their ability to grow and develop into all that they are.
  • There are not good or bad temperaments. But, there are goodness of fit, and badness of fit. A high activity child has “goodness of fit” on the playground, but not in the library. A very regular, routine-oriented child might “fit” well with a similar parent, but not so well with the free-spirited parent.
  • It’s good to know your children’s strengths, so you can give them plenty of experiences that let them use those strengths to build their confidence.
  • It’s also good to know what your child struggles with. On a good day, we may gently push their comfort zones to encourage growth in those areas. But, on a day when we’re tired and they’re tired, or we’re away from home, it may be easiest to adapt to their temperament accommodating how we need to in order to make it through the day. (So, our sensitive child may need a quiet day at home. Our active child may need a day running at the park. Our routines kid needs to bring routines from home wherever he goes.)

Lots more resources on temperament listed here.

Schemas of Play

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large_7461108728 (2)Have you ever known a child who was continuously filling up a basket and carrying it around the room? Or a child who loved to take objects and line them up in long lines? Or one who had a passion for throwing objects and would do throw all objects whether or not it was appropriate? Or one who only played with things with wheels? Those patterns of repeating behavior can be organized into “schemas” of play.

What is a schematic behavior?

Schema are building blocks for the brain. When a child is able to guide his own play, you’ll often see him exploring things in a predictable, repeated method, testing and experimenting with several objects in turn. This process helps him forge connections in the brain, helps him predict what might happen, and refine his understanding based on the results. Some children cycle through all of these schema every day.

But some children will focus intensely on one schema for a period of days or weeks (or months). Parents may worry that their child is obsessed, or that she will never let go of this one way of interacting with the world, but this is normal developmental behavior.

If a parent of caregiver can  recognize which schema a child is currently most focused on, they can tailor learning experiences to appeal to those interests while still providing a breadth of learning experiences. Sometimes children will pursue their schema in ways that are inappropriate (like throwing things in an enclosed space, or climbing on the furniture) so it is helpful to have other ways to direct that “trajectory” urge or the “positioning” desire.

Activities that Support, Extend, and Re-Direct Schema

Transporting. If you have a child who continually picks things up and carries them from place to place, here are some activities they may enjoy: Easter egg hunts or other gather-things-in-a-basket games; play in the bath with floating toys and a boat or basket to load them into; let them help with putting clothes into the washer and taking them out of the dryer; or helping to clear the table after a meal. Ask them to deliver items around the house (e.g. please put this cup next to the sink). Provide plenty of baskets, bags, boxes, and wagons to move things around in. It may help to put the majority of your small toys away while a child is in this phase so they have fewer total items to clutter the house with.

Transforming. If your child mixes all their food together, and mixes paints together, and likes to get things wet to see how they change, here are some positive ways to play with transformation: containers of colored water they can mix, fingerpaints they can smear together, a container with baking soda in it and eye-droppers with vinegar they can drip in and create “fizz”. Let them help you with cooking – mixing up muffins and seeing how they transform when cooked. It may help to find ways to minimize mess – for example, instead of giving them four containers of fresh paint, you could put four dabs of paint onto a “palette” or dish of some sort where they can mix to their heart’s content without “ruining” the full containers of paint.

Trajectory. If your child throws things, kicks balls, and drops things all the time, she is exploring trajectories – how things move through the air. She’ll probably love: paper airplanes, watching you play tennis or badminton (and fetching back errant balls), blowing feathers or scarves through the air, shooting baskets (tossing crumpled paper balls into the trash can), flying kites, chasing bubbles, bowling, splash painting (go outside with a bucket of water and a paintbrush – she dips the paintbrush in the water and swings it hard so the water splashes onto a wall or fence). If you know a friendly dog who likes to fetch, it may be a match made in heaven. (Although be aware of pet safety issues.)  It may help to put away many of your breakable valuables while your child is in this phase, and/or to provide him with only soft whiffle balls to throw.

Rotation. If your child loves cars, trains, and anything with wheels, and also loves to spin around, they enjoy rotation. He may like: unscrewing lids from empty water bottles, playing with a kaleidoscope, riding on a merry-go-round, spinning in an office chair, playing with water wheels, spinning things dry in a salad spinner, whisking scrambled eggs, playing with hula hoops, and drawing circles. These children may like playing with volume knobs or other knobs, so think about whether there’s anything you need to childproof. They also may like taking lids off containers, they may even figure out “child-proof” containers, so make sure medicines and chemicals are out of reach.

Enclosure and Enveloping. Does your child love to hide under blankets, bury toys in the sandbox, and put things in boxes? Those are enclosure skills. Build forts together, save large boxes for them to hide in and to pack things in, set up tunnels, set up a tent to sleep inside, play with a parachute, give her a shovel and take her to the beach or a sandbox to bury things, save small boxes to hide things in. Play lots of peek-a-book or hide and seek. These children often hide objects, so be careful not to leave essential items (like car keys!) in their reach.

Connecting. Some children love to build puzzles, assemble legos, and tape things together. Here are some ideas for things they can connect: tape together items from the recycle bin, make paper chains, punch holes in something and let them lace a ribbon through it, loop weaving looms, paper trains, construction toys of all sorts, dress-up clothes with buttons, zippers, snaps, and more. If you have a connector, be prepared to spend time untangling, untying, and prying apart! You may find it best to keep string, tape, and glue out of sight and out of mind.

Disconnecting. Other children go through a phase of destroying things: knocking down block towers, scattering Legos, tearing apart books. Give them a bin full of paper they’re allowed to tear apart, try to re-frame your way of playing with blocks – know that it’s all about building something that they will enjoy knocking down, teach them how to use the dustbuster to clean up their messes, put them inside a big box with some styrofoam sheets to break up (the box contains the mess). Now is a good time to put away toys with lots of small parts (e.g. train set or the collection of toy food) for a while, because all they’ll do is scatter them.

Position. Some children really like order: lining things up just so, and believing that everything has a proper place. They love “sets” of things that have a certain order they can be arranged in: alphabet blocks, number magnets, planets, and pictures of shapes with three sides, four sides, etc. They like peg boards, and stacking cups, and shape sorters. Putting things in order often calms them, but having someone mess up their order can be very upsetting, so help them learn to manage those upsets.

Orientation. Some children love to look at the world from a variety of perspectives: hanging upside down, turning their heads sideways, or climbing high to get a better look. Spend lots of time at the playground, or in gymnastics / tumbling classes. Give them binoculars and telescopes or even just cut a hole in a box for them to look through, give them an unbreakable hand mirror for exploring reflections. They will often climb on things not meant to be climbed on, but rather than just saying “no”, say “I can’t let you climb on that, but you can climb on this” or “there’s nothing safe for climbing here, but later today we’ll go to the playground and climb.”

If your child is currently “obsessed” with some schema, it can get tiring and frustrating to deal with, but remember that they are growing their brain, and organizing their ways of thinking about the world as they explore this schema again and again.

Sources for more information:

Schemas in Areas of Play  – suggests several types of activities a child might enjoy while working on a particular schema, also addresses problems a schema might create for parents and caregivers

What is a schema – includes descriptions of the schema, and then for each one offers activities to support that schema and key words to keep in mind while planning activities for kids working on that schema.

Schemas – How to understand and extend children’s behavior. Includes examples of types of activities a child prefers based on schema and how to help an activity (e.g. cooking) appeal to kids depending on whether their focus is on connection, rotation, etc.

Also, click on those three links in the first section of this post on “What is a schematic behavior” to learn more about brain development and play-based learning.

Resource for parent educators:

I have made up a set of printable postcards describing these schema that you could hang about a children’s play area for parents to read while their children play.

photo credit: Megan Hemphill (Prairie & Co) via photopin cc

Stages of Play

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Children’s play evolves as they get older. Mildred Parten developed a theory in the 1930’s that is still used today, although some of the details and timing have been re-interpreted over the years.

  1. Unoccupied Play—birth and up. Babies gaze at the world and absorb information, but don’t seem to be doing anything.
  2. Solitary Play—3 months and up. Babies or toddlers explore toys and their environment. They don’t really notice other children.
  3. Onlooker Play—9 months and up. They watch other children play but don’t join in.
  4. Parallel Play—18 months—3 years. Children play side by side. They often look like they aren’t paying attention to each other, but one will mimic what the other one is doing.
  5. Associative Play—3 years and up. Playing separately but on the same project (building a block city  together). Talking together, problem-solving together.
  6. Cooperative Play— 4 years and up. Playing WITH a friend. Some examples:
  • Dramatic / Fantasy play: Dress-up, school, etc. Pretending to be characters in the same scenario.
  • Competitive play: Sports, board games, tag, hide and seek.
  • Constructive play: Building with blocks, making a fort, sculpting a sand castle.

Note: Ages given are for kids playing together with peers. If they are playing with someone of a higher developmental level, they can achieve more. (e.g. a one year old can parallel play with an adult, a 2 year old may be able to do cooperative play with an older sibling.)

When watching children play on the playground, or in the classroom, can you identify each of these types of play?