Thanksgiving and Christmas and other holidays are just around the corner. It’s often a time when we look for ways to volunteer and give to others in need. Young children usually love to volunteer. They love being active and helping others. If you think closely about what they love to do and tap into those…
Tag: young children
10 Spooky Halloween Homeschooling Activities
For the past two weeks my son has tried on his skeleton costume. He plays in it for hours. My daughter hasn’t touched hers, but it’s hanging up in her room, and she loves to look at it. Every night we light up our jack-o-lanterns right before bed and sing spooky songs together. During the…
Tips for Learning When Mom’s Sick
On Monday, I woke up to a house that was messy, laundry needed to be done and the kids were begging to play with me. Little by little that gnawing feeling of tension started to well up inside; how was I going to get it all done today? Of course, I already knew the answer….
Living & Learning – Tips for Including Your Young Child in Your Daily Life Part 2
Last Saturday I started a post where I shared tips for including your young child in your daily life. To read the first part CLICK HERE Now on to Part 2 3. Task – Doing the laundry. * Categorizing and separating clothes into separate piles *working together to load the washer and dryer *folding…
Learning through Living – Tips for Including Your Young Child in Your Daily Life Part 1
Young children learn by doing. Actually, we all learn best by doing- it’s the best way to create the neural pathways in our brain that allows learning to really “stick.” But, young children especially need a lot of time to use all their senses in learning. Young children also want to do real things. I…
10 Unusual Ways to Explore Literature
Literature is pretty straightforward the way it’s taught in schools. Usually kids are read to, or read to themselves, a story or novel. Then they usually take a quiz on what they’ve read, or write a book report or paper. Sometimes a teacher gets a little creative and throws in a movie tie-in, lets the…
Unstructured Play & The Structured Child
My daughter ran shrieking through the house, saying something about Zeus, and the Cyclops, and I think she mentioned Hercules in there somewhere. As she bounded up the stairs, my son zoomed past me, too. With a sword in one hand he yelled, “We’re the bad sea monsters, and Shaggy and Scooby are going to…
10 Unusual Ways to Explore Art
My memories of art in kindergarten: cut and paste creations, detailed instructions of how to color inside the lines and reminders to “follow directions.” High school art wasn’t much better. I wanted to create art and often had pretty cool ideas of what I wanted to make, yet I often felt frustrated. While the three dimensional…
Obama expects kindergarteners to sit still….What?
I was blown away when I read an article that was published on CNSNews.com a few weeks ago about a $500 million Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge endorsed by President Obama. In the article, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made this statement…. “You really need to look at the range of…
Raising Curious Kids
Most people say they value curiosity, especially parents. Parents want their children to be curious, creative and imaginative. But, if we look at what most adults view as “appropriate” outlets for children’s behavior and learning, are those qualities really valued? Here are five qualities almost all curious kids possess: inquisitiveness, imagination, inventiveness, messiness, and fearlessness. …