Frogs and Toads - A Lesson in Differences

“What’s the difference between a frog and a toad?” my son asked me one day. I had to admit, I didn’t know.

Thankfully, one very smart author does. Mary Firestone wrote a wonderful book that’s full of great facts about these amphibians and, not only was it instrumental in answering my son’s question, but its painted illustrations captivated us both.

Reading Firestone’s book taught us the following:

• Frogs have a slimmer body than toads.
• Their legs are longer too.
• Toads have bumpy skin, whereas a frog’s skin is smooth.
• Frogs can be found in water, trees, and on land. Toads stick to the ground.
• Some frogs have webbed toes on their back feet; toads don't.

After I finished reading to him, I handed my son some cardstock cut-outs and asked him to compare. Which body was fatter? Was that the frog or the toad then? Which legs were longer? Are they the frog’s or toad’s legs? (Download my templates here.)

Once he got it all straightened out, he painted each. To make the frog’s body slick, we covered it in packaging tape. To make the toad’s body wart-like, he sprinkled lentils over white school glue. The legs were attached with brads.

Lastly, I gave him two pieces of cardstock that said “A frog lives ….” and “A toad lives …” and asked him to finished the sentences. Then, he painted their habitats.


My son refused to glue down his frog and toad because “then they won’t be able to jump, Mom!” A sticky dot of Velcro behind each was the perfect solution!


When Daddy got home from work that night, my son showed him the pictures and pointed out all the differences between his frog and toad. Now no one in our family is clueless about what sets these two amphibians apart!

It’s a Stick Up! (Counting Money Role Play)

Lately, my son is fascinated with money. I know, you think I mean spending it, right? Nope. He wants to know who’s on each bill and loves the ‘secret’ watermarks you see when you hold the newly designed bills up to the light.

To give him a little practice counting bills, though, I decided to make some funny money for him. (I wasn’t about to risk him losing all of our Monopoly money.) 

I printed several sheets of each denomination (1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, 50s, and 100s) on cardstock.

Once I cut the bills apart, it was time I put on my acting hat. I admit; I was pretty rusty (the last time I acted was in an 8^th-grade school play). Thankfully, my son isn’t a tough critic.

Download the clown-faced funny money here.
If you’d rather add your child’s picture to the bills like I did,
e-mail me and I’ll send you the Microsoft Publisher files to adapt.

I told him to pretend he worked at a bank and gave him a (shuffled) random amount of money. He needed to sort the funny money into piles and put the piles in order from smallest to largest denomination. Next, he counted each pile.

I made three columns in his notebook. Down the first column, I wrote each denomination. Over the second column, I wrote “how many?” And under the third column I wrote “how much $?” His task was to write down the number of bills he had in each pile and figure out how much money that amounted to (essentially how much money was “in the bank”). I added all his subtotals up for him.

Then, I held a stick up with a small toy squirt gun (don’t worry, it wasn’t loaded). My son thought I was being funny until I took some bills from each of his piles; then, his jaw dropped.

Now it was time to count the money again, recording the values once more in his notebook. After counting each denomination, he’d look at the previous numbers and tell me things like, “You took three ten-dollar bills.”

After he’d recounted his money, I told him that the police had caught the crook and recovered the money; however, he needed to count it to make sure that they got all the money back.

This was SO much fun that my son never complained about all the counting and subtracting. It really put his skip-counting skills to the test, too. Success!

For the Grownups: Breathing In Calm

Its been a busy week for those of us on the east coast. Not only are we preparing for a new school year, but now also a huge hurricane. This followed by an earthquake a week ago. Nerves are being rattled as Mother Nature seems to be testing us at every turn.

Tempers are rising and stress is increasing as thousands are evacuated, businesses are boarded up, ball games and outdoor events are cancelled, gas stations run out of fuel and long checkout lines and empty shelves greet us at the grocery store. We are emptying out our basements and ground floors of valuables & family artifacts in case of flooding. We are glued to the TV, radio and Internet weather channel. Fear & panic sets in deeper with every news report. We are told to prepare & stay calm...

Stay calm?! You've got to be kidding me!!

There are many tools for creating and maintaining calm in the midst of chaos, but one tool in particular is by far the simplest, the most effective and the most overlooked: your breath.

As adults, we take on average about 22,000 breaths a day. Within all of those breaths is tremendous potential for creating a relaxation response that will not only physically relax the brain and body, but will empower you mentally & emotionally to handle any situation with a calm, deliberate demeanor. The 3 tricks are to practice daily, practice often and practice before chaos strikes. I know what you are saying: you  are saying that you are way too busy & stressed & don't have time to practice anything.

If your & your family's well-being and quality of life depended on it, would you make time? It does, and you will.

We tell ourselves (and others) about how busy we are and that we have no time to learn anything-even relaxation techniques that will help us-we can't make 15 minutes a couple times a day-but this just the story we tell ourselves. If you are telling yourself this story, then you need to learn this technique.

Calm is our natural state. The truth is, we tend to get used to and then even begin to like our stress. It makes us feel temporarily 'important', and gives us something to identify & connect ourselves to others with. We try to outdo each other with how much more busy & stressed we are than the next person. I like to call this the language of  'stress-ology' and its really odd & illogical behavior  if you think about it. But we all do it to some degree, even if you are denying it to yourself at this very moment.

But if you have time to read this post, or time to update your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter status then you have time to learn this.

I want you to think of a color. The first one you think of is the right one.

Now imagine on your next breath, as you breathe in slowly, your whole body fills up with this color-starting down at your feet. The color is carried into your entire body on your breath. Picture this in your mind.

Exhale slowly and release this colorful breath into the air.

Repeat 14 more times.

If you start thinking of all the stress you have, 'breathe it out' with your next exhale. Keep 'breathing it out' until you can inhale-exhale 10-15 times and just imagine that colorful air filling up your body and the atmosphere.

When you can do that, Imagine you are breathing in 'peace' or 'calm' or 'strength', etc. and exhaling the thoughts & stress you don't need in the colored air.

Practice 3 times daily in a quiet place and as needed. (sometimes the quiet place is the bathroom or in your car. This will work.) Practice until you can do this for 10-15 minutes. After one full day of conscious effort, you will start to feel calmer about everything going on around you. After one full week, others will act more calmly when they are around you, especially your family. After 2-3 weeks this will become your new habit. After a month, you will know instinctively when and how to apply this technique in every situation.

We cannot help our kids or those who need our support, through rough situations unless we know how to stay calm & cope ourselves. Take the first step now to lead by example, by making the time & committing to practice 'Breathing in Calm'.

For yoga-based stress management techniques for children and adults visit: http://www.bodylogique.com/



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Nuts and Bolts Game

Can you imagine asking a 6-year-old to pick up Cheerios one at a time and place them in a bowl? Me neither. I can just hear the “bbbboooooorrrrrriiiinnnnggg” coming out of his mouth. When my son’s perfectly delightful reading summer camp teacher told me this would be a great way to increase his fine motor skills for writing, I simply nodded. Then I went home and brainstormed. There had to be a more fun way to give him some fine motor practice, right?

That’s when I came up with the nuts and bolts game and ushered my husband off to the hardware store to pick up the necessary supplies.

Supplies

8 1/2-inch x 2 1/2-inch carriage bolts

8 (or 16) 1/2-inch hex nuts (8 nuts for quick play; 16 for longer play)

Labels (download a PDF from Google Docs here)

Cards (download the front and back printables from Google Docs)

Sticker paper to print the labels on

Cardstock to print the cards on


How to Play

1. Each child selects one bolt and draws a card.
2. Depending on what that card says (either ‘rhyme,’ ‘opposite,’ or ‘shape’), he/she must look at the word/shape on the bolt and find the nut with the appropriate word on it and then screw it on.  For example, if a child picks the bolt with the word “head” on it and draws the “opposite” card, they must find the nut with the word “feet” on it. (The cards are color-coded to make this easier.)
3. If the nut a child needs has already been used, he/she returns the bolt to the pile and play continues with the opponent taking a turn.
4. The game ends when either all the bolts have been matched with nuts or no more can be matched.

This game is great for practicing rhyming, shape names, and opposites! To make it challenging, I purposely picked rhyming words which had different spellings (e.g., sun and done instead of sun and fun) and a few shapes I was sure my son wasn't familiar with, such as parallelogram and pentagon.

Note: The first time we played this, I only labeled eight of the "prolonged play" nuts. It was pretty discouraging when my son couldn’t make the matches from the cards he drew, because the nuts he needed were already used. Adding a second set fixed that and prolonged the game.

While these nuts and bolts are probably too big to technically give my son the fine-motor experience he needs, they definitely provided a little afternoon fun!

September = Yoga Outside

September marks the beginning of my favorite time of year. With  the start of school & end of summer there are many new opportunities to move & be outside in the cooler fall air!

I love taking my yoga practice outside whenever I can, and September is a time for me to do this in a more quiet and reflective way that summer does not allow me.

September is also a time when I like to teach my children's programs outside to not only change the scenery, but to have a natural backdrop and "props" for teaching such as flowers, leaves, rocks, sticks and an occasional interesting bug. (Besides, its just so much more fun!)

September is also the official observance of  "National Yoga Month"  as designated by the Department of Health & Human Services.

This campaign was designed to build awareness of yoga's proven health benefits for everyone & provides children, youth & adults everywhere with instruction, education, guidance and holistic tools to empower them to take control & responsibility of their own physical, mental and emotional well-being.

National Yoga Month focuses on prevention and healthy lifestyle choices & introduces yoga to individuals by offering a 'One Week Free' new student program at participating studios across the country. (To find a participating studio in your area see link at end of article.)

Since my program is mobile, I cannot offer a free week of yoga.

However, to support this national effort to continue to promote healthy lifestyles and movement education for children of all abilities, I am participating by offering a limited number of free children's classes (ages 5 & up) to *local  public & private schools, daycare centers, learning centers, libraries & other venues for the entire month of September! 

*(Local area within 40 miles of Quakertown, PA. 1 hour classes-Adaptive and non-adaptive programs available.)

I bring a specially designed children's program (age appropriate) that uses creative kid & teen-friendly stories that engage the imagination & come alive with movement games & art to make yoga fun! This is a great opportunity to introduce, preview & share a healthy, dynamic children's program with your students, indoors or out, and learn some tricks & tools to reduce anxiety, stress & keep them calm & engaged during the upcoming school year!

Interested?

Please post in the comment section below OR send me an e-mail at: Barbara@bodylogique.com briefly describing how many students in your class or group, their ages & why you'd like to bring a yoga program to them.

Please don't forget your full name, tentative class (city) location & contact information!!

Your entry will be printed out and your name placed in an entry box. I will randomly select 9 entries on September 3, 2011 and then contact you for a schedule! (If selected your free class must be scheduled between September 7- October 15, 2011 or be forfeited.)

Do you live outside of the local (40 mile) range? You can participate too!

Send me an e-mail as described above & in the subject box type: "Free Yoga Booklet" and I will send you a copy of  "The Sun Stretch" - (A beginner's Guide to children's Yoga that will allow you to facilitate  fun yoga based activities for your students, even if you have no prior yoga experience at all! )

(*E-mail must be received by September 30, 2011 to receive free booklet.)

Questions? Please contact Barbara@bodylogique.com

The Yoga Month campaign is produced and administered by the Yoga Health Foundation, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization registered in the State of California.

Spinning a Spider Web

It’s late summer and the spiders are out in full force. To learn a little about these amazing eight-legged creepy crawlies, I hit the library and checked out Dana Meachen Rau’s Spin, Spider, Spin. This simple non-fiction book was a breeze for my son to read and taught us some interesting facts about arachnids (did you know they have eight legs AND eight eyes?!? YIKES!). After my son finished the book, I told him that it was time to spin his web.

I gathered the following supplies:

Old bulletin board (a few plies of corrugated cardboard would suffice)

Push pins

White school glue

Yarn

Waxed paper

Print-out of a spider web (I used this one.)

2 Pipecleaners

I put the spiderweb print-out underneath a sheet of waxed paper on top of the bulletin board and told my son to add push pins wherever the lines intersected, but not push them down all the way.

Then I watered down some white school glue and dipped the yarn in it. Then he wound the sticky yarn around the pins in spiral. Lastly, we added straight pieces of gluey yarn radiating out from the center. Then we waited. And waited. And waited.

The next morning, I removed the pins and used an aluminum grill spatula to gently detach the (now stiff) yarn from the waxed paper. Our web was complete!

Later that day, my son made a spider to go with his web out of two pipecleaners (I helped a little). We followed this amazing YouTube tutorial.

Now I have spiders outside and (one) inside the house, too!

Mind Over Body

This weekend I was out with my daughter looking for a baby shower gift. In our travels we came across one of those blood pressure machines you see in pharmacies. (She has always been fascinated with those for some reason! ) She asked if she could take her blood pressure and told me in a very authoritative way,  "You should check yours too mom!"

I decided to use this as a teaching moment.

Although my daughter (soon to be 12 years old)  is a fun loving free spirit, on occasion she tends to get stuck on memories of upsetting situations. I have taught her imagery techniques to help with this, but as she gets older she is becoming resistant to my help. I don't think she really 'believes' that these techniques can really help or that they have any scientific validity and that I'm just another grownup trying to gain 'compliance'. I decided I would show her how well imagery works so she could see it with her own eyes.

I let her go first, (Her reading was 'normal' but her heart rate was slightly high, most likely because we had been walking for a while. )

Then I sat down and told her that I could control my blood pressure with my thoughts. She laughed. So I  told her to push the button and start the reading. First I just sat there quietly & did a regular reading - 120/75. (She understands what 'normal' blood pressure is.) I told her this is a 'baseline' reading. (120/80 or lower is normal blood pressure; 140/90 or higher is high blood pressure.)

I removed my arm, sat still a moment & told her to repeat the test. This time, I talked about every person who irritates me & every upsetting memory-past and present- I could think of off the top of my head, like she does sometimes when she comes home from school. (She started laughing because apparently I was making my angry face too which she finds not only unnatural to me, but hilarious!)

The machine finally stopped. The reading was 146/90. She knew this was high & she was concerned. (Side note: I am 46 years old and going through biological changes and have been working to maintain a healthy weight. She was concerned because she hears other people & family members taking about 'getting old' and she associated this high reading with me getting 'old'. She has lost close family members when she was very young & now at the age she is this is all very scary. When someone says 'old' and she hears 'sick/death'.)

I reassured her and told her that I am not 'getting old' - and that I was not sick. I made my pressure go high with my thoughts. I told her to remember the first reading & compare.

I took my arm out, walked around for a moment and sat down again. This time when she started the test I spoke in a quiet voice about all the fun things I've done-many with her-and I imagined our favorite place-the beach and resting in the sand (Much like my Starfish Imagery.)

When the test was finished, the reading was 111/72. A significant drop. She was speechless.

I realize that this was not exactly a controlled experiment or ideal environment, but for my purposes, my point was made. With daily practice, you can feel calm and relaxed, and keep your body's reactions under control no matter what is occurring around you. Most children can learn these same relaxation techniques and how & when to apply them when they need to.

Your mind-your imagination- is the most powerful tool you have. It can and does have control over your body.

The good news is, you have control over your mind.


Find the Starfish Imagery  here to start practicing!


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Complete-A-Clock Printable

My son can count by fives, so why is it such a struggle for him to figure out the minutes on an analog clock, I wondered. To help practice telling time and reinforce counting in increments of five around a clock, I created a printable inspired by a wall clock arrangement that Mrs. Lemons posted on her blog, Step Into Second Grade (Isn't that clever?!).

Download a PDF of the Complete-A-Clock template here.

I laminated the Complete-A-Clock printable so my son could write on it with dry-erase markers. (I have a feeling this will get some heavy use throughout the year.)

For our first exercise using the blank clocks, I had my son read Is It Time Yet? by Lesley Jane. (Any children’s book with clocks would work great, such as Jenne Abramowitz’s adaptation of Hickory Dickory Dock or The Clock Struck One by Trudy Harris.) Before I handed over Jane’s book, though, I used small post-it notes to cover the clocks on each of the pages.

As he read sentences like, “Kelly woke up at 8 o’clock …” I had him write the time in the blank digital clock and then draw in the hands on the analog clock above it. When he’d read the whole page and filled in both clocks, he could remove the sticky note in the book to see if he got the time right. He was so excited with every clock he drew right and only made one error doing the whole book (that’s progress, for sure!).

When he has advanced past telling time on the hour and minutes on the fives, I’ll add some marks between each of the numbers and start challenging him with times like 8:23 or 11:47. Hopefully with enough practice, he’ll be ready for this sooner, rather than later.

Only time will tell ...

Tornado in a Bottle

So far the tornado sirens have only gone off twice this Spring/Summer season. This is a reality of living in the Midwest; tornadoes are the worst kind of severe weather we experience here (although one could argue that flooding and copious amounts of snowfall are no picnic either).

To give my son the closest glimpse of a twister that I hope he’ll ever get, we decided to make our own tornado in a bottle out of two, 2-liter plastic soda bottles. This is a pretty popular science project and after doing it, we know why: it’s SO cool!

Simply fill one of the bottles two-thirds full with water. Add food coloring if desired. Place the second, empty bottle upside down atop the first and apply duct tape liberally to the neck of the bottles. Expect the bottles to leak some.

Once taped, flip the bottles and swirl them in a circular motion. Watch the water spiral from the top bottle to the bottom bottle in a tornado shape. (Even little brother thought this was awesome!)

After we finished, we read Charles and Debra Ghigna’s Step-Into-Reading fiction book Barn Storm. In this book, a twister moves farm animals to unexpected new homes. The cows now sleep in the children’s bedroom at night. Super silly!

Finally, my son watched a short montage of video footage of tornados on WeatherWizKids.com, the site with the tornado-in-a-bottle instructions we used.

Our conclusion … tornadoes are cool to make and cool to watch on video – but NOT so cool to experience.

Let Me Introduce the Grassheads Family

They come from humble beginnings – just trash and dirt and some old pantyhose. Oh, and grass seed too. I’ve been dying to blog about this activity for two weeks, but growing grass takes patience and until our family had enough hair, you just wouldn’t have gotten the full effect.

When I stumbled on Ms. White’s First Grade classroom blog and saw her class’ adorable grass-headed fellas, I e-mailed her straight away to find out how she’d done it. I knew my son would think this was cool. (He'd be crazy not to, right?!?) She kindly pointed me to Disney’s Family Funsite for instructions.

To teach my son about growing plants from seed, we read Joanna Cole’s book, The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds: A Book About How Living Things Grow. Then we got our hands dirty.

What you need:

Pantyhose foot (ones without reinforced toe would look better)

Soil (1 c. per grasshead)

Grass seed (2 tbsp. per grasshead)

Googly eyes

Recycled yogurt cups

Scrapbooking papers, embellishments

Double-sided tape

Permanent marker to draw a smile

School glue and/or glue stick

What you do:

Use double-sided tape to add decorative papers to your yogurt cups for “shirts.” Glue on additional embellishments.

Then cut the foot off of your panty hose (I found this to be quite liberating!). Fill the toe with 2 Tbsp. of grass seed. Top with 1 cup of soil. Tie the excess pantyhose in a knot and leave a 1-inch tail. Add a smile and glue on googly eyes.

Fill each cup half full with water. Set your grassheads on top of the yogurt cup shirts, making sure the pantyhose tail is dipped in the water (it will act as a wick and soak up the water).

Monitor your grassheads daily, adding water up to the half-full mark when needed. In seven days, you should see some grass beginning to sprout. After about 2 weeks, your grassheads will have a full head of “hair!”

These were just as much fun to make as they were to watch grow! Not only did my son learn about growing plants from seed, but he was responsible for checking them each day to see if they needed to be "watered."

Fun. Educational. And, pretty darn cute too, I'd say.

Under Construction (a Greater-Than Less-Than Game)

Rather than just doing drills to practice greater than and less than with two numbers, I thought I’d make a little construction game for my son. I was pretty sure that using LEGOs would add just the fun my son would need to be enticed to play learn. I was right.

I made three cards: two of a front-end loader whose scoop formed the < and > signs, and a truck whose grill made the =. (Download the cards I made here.) Then I created a game mat with two piles of dirt and space in the middle where one of the cards would be placed.

 To download this game mat, click here.

All that was left to do was grab a small bowl of LEGOs. Before my son played, I explained that some workers needed help constructing a building. Building blocks were being delivered to the construction site.

It was up to him to determine which pile of LEGO blocks was bigger; place the greater-than, less-than, or equal card in the middle; and if he added the correct card to the game mat, he could use the biggest pile of blocks to build with. If the piles were equal and he added the pick-up truck card, he could use both.

I explained that the front-end loader only wanted to pick up the biggest pile, so its scoop should be facing towards the largest number of blocks.

He grabbed a small handful of LEGOs and placed them on each of the piles of dirt. 

After tallying each pile and placing a card, I had him write the equation in his notebook. Then he could get building. He completed about a dozen problems. The last round of play, there were three LEGOs on one pile and none on the other.

My son LOVED this. When it was done he said, “Finally, you made an activity with LEGOs!” If only I’d thought of this sooner …


Check out other great math ideas and activities at Love2Learn2Day's Math Monday Blog Hop!

Word-Family Trees

We’ve been having so much fun with math and science, that a reading-related activity was LONG overdue. Identifying word families is a great way to advance your child’s reading. To practice these, I drew up a bare tree and added some word endings to the three main branches.

Then I used a big leaf-shaped punch to make small maple leaves, on which I wrote the beginning sounds. All that was left to do was have my son match up the letter leaves to the right word family!

My son concentrated so hard on matching up the beginning and ending sounds and would exclaim with excitement each time he made a word! I simply spread some Elmer’s glue on each branch and let him add the leaves. If children work on one word family at a time, you might want to make some extra leaves so the final family is still a challenge. (I neglected to do this and when the first two families were done, it was no work at all for my son to place the remaining six leaves on the last branch. Oops!)

For a little writing practice, I had my son write each word in his journal as a list.

I made five Word-Family Tree worksheets; download the free PDF via Google Docs here. A list of the word families is also available here.

Wouldn’t this be awesome to do with leaves punched from papers in fall colors? Or to make flowers with beginning sounds written on the petals, circular tentacles on an octopus … ok, ok, ok, I’m getting a little carried away. But, seriously, this idea could be repeated with SO MANY variations and if you’re a teacher, wouldn’t a forest of these trees hanging around your room or on your bulletin board be super cute?!?!

Bird Feeder and DIY Printable Field Guide

We’ve seen some amazing birds lately – goldfinches, orioles, and doves to name a few. Each time, my son (who is constantly in motion and lips are always moving) has frozen in awe. So I knew when I happened upon Frank Mazzola, Jr.’s wonderful book “Counting is for the Birds” at the library, it was a must read.

This book has everything I love about children’s books rolled into one: Educational? Check. Rhymes? Check. Beautiful illustrations? Check. Naturally I headed straight for the “check out” counter with this treasure in hand. When I read it to my son, he loved it just as much as I did. I know this because when we were finished, he asked if we could keep it.

Banking on Mazzola’s book sparking my son’s interest, I had made a printable field guide for my son to color. The pages contain generic looking birds that my son could color to mimic the foul we see in our area. I pulled out a bird guide book from the library and asked him to tell me about some of the birds he remembered. He rattled off descriptions of a robin, cardinal, blue jay, etc.

I found pages in the book with photographs of these birds and handed my son a bunch of colored pencils. He colored the birds to match the pictures and wrote the names at the bottom. I was amazed at how much care he took with his coloring and how many birds he wanted to add to his book. (Download your own bird book pages here. Simply cut in half and staple along the left side.)

Next we transformed an empty soda bottle into a backyard bird feeder with instructions from GreenKidsCrafts.com. Visit their website for complete instructions. While I did the cutting on the bottle, my son screwed in the eye hook and added the wooden spoons (purchased at a dollar store) where the birds can perch. We filled it up and hung it under a tree in our backyard.

Now the only thing left to do is wait for the birds … oh, and add any new visitors to my son’s bird book of course!

Fireflies in a Jar (Glow-in-the-Dark Addition)

With more than a dozen plaster beetle shapes left over from our Friend vs. Foe Beetle Tic-Tac-Toe activity, I was determined to put them to use. Having bought some glow-in-the-dark acrylic paint for another activity, I channelled my inner Picasso to make 13 fireflies. I had saved the excess plastic laminate cut from the Nature Scavenger Hunt cards; On it I drew wings with a fine-tip Sharpie, cut them out, and super-glued them to the back of each firefly.

On their glowing lanterns, I used a permanent black marker to write the following numbers:

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 11, and 12. My husband cut me two, 2-inch wood cubes to use as dice. I painted these with the same glow-in-the-dark paint. For the dots, I printed a large black rectangle on sticker paper and used a paper-punch to make tiny circular stickers which I stuck on each side.

Lastly, I printed a jar shape on sticker paper and cut out the center. I measured the outside dimensions of a quart-sized freezer sandwich bag and cut the sticker paper slightly smaller. I peeled the backing and stuck it to the bag. Of course, you could use a real Mason jar but since I didn’t have one, I improvised. To download the jar graphic, click here.

Now it was time to play. My son rotated the dice under a lamp to “charge up” the photoluminescent paint. We placed the fireflies on a paper plate under a lamp for the same reason. Now it was time to head into a window-less room.

How to Play

The game is simple. And so clever. And so not my idea. I have to give credit where credit is due. This activity was inspired by Little Miss Kindergarten’s “Roll the Dice” printables (download them here).

To play, I had my son roll the two dice, add the numbers together, “catch” the firefly wearing that number, and put it in the jar (um … I mean bag). The point was to see how many fireflies my son could catch before the light from the paint faded (and, truthfully, to test my son’s addition in the dark when he wouldn’t be able to count on his fingers).

As you can imagine, capturing pictures of the game in the dark was impossible. The one you see here is lit by a flash and doesn't do justice to how fun (or cute) this activity was. My son loved it and did so much better adding in the dark than I’d imagined (Woo Hoo!).

To learn about fireflies, my son read the following two books:

Flash, Firefly, Flash! by Dana Meachen Rau

Firefliesby Cheryl Coughlan

Did you know fireflies are beetles? We didn’t. But we do now!

Like the game, NOT the craft?

The glowing insects are not necessary and DIY insects aren’t either. To simplify this activity, just buy one of those tubes filled with plastic bugs, stick number stickers on their backs and give your child two dice and a jar. Voila! It’s time to catch some bugs!


Find other great math activities, book suggestions, and ideas at Love2Learn2Days' Math Monday Blog Hop!

Making an Undiscovered Planet

If the Milky Way Galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies in outer space, it stands to reason that there are probably other planets out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered. Based on that notion, and my chiropractor’s account of this amazing craft her daughter did at the library’s story time, my son made his own planet.

Supplies:

Styrofoam ball

Old CD

Toothpick

Glue (white school glue; hot glue is optional)

Paint, glitter, etc.

Instructions:

I cut the ball in half and gave my son some acrylic paints to decorate the two halves. Then I inserted a toothpick in the center of one ball and had my son thread the CD through. Next, I added some hot glue and then topped the toothpick with the second half of the ball. All that was left to do was hand over some white glue and glitter. Once we had glue and glitter everywhere, our ringed planet was complete.

Now it was time to write about our new “discovery.” I created a short book with fill-in-the-blank sentences so my son could describe his planet. Download the “If I discovered a new planet …” book I made for free here.

Once we’d finished writing about (and drawing) the very cold and sometimes invisible “Planet Laser Gun,” I read my son an amazing National Geographic Kids book. When I say amazing, I mean it. A lot of the books at our library were WAY too detailed and scientific for my son’s understanding.

Becky Baines’ Every Planet Has a Place: A Book about Our Solar System provides text that is basic, but informative. The combination of real pictures with doodle-like art keeps the heavy subject-matter playful, too. It is a wonderful introduction for kindergarteners and first graders; check it out!

No One You-er Than You

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”  ~Dr. Seuss

So this evening at yoga, we misplaced one of the children's name tags. (The child happens to be the only boy in the class. ) The others were helping me look for it and we couldn't find it. So I apologized & jokingly offered him MY name tag and asked him if he wanted to be me for the night.

He shook his head, said "No way!" and quickly gave me back my name tag.
 
One of the other students said she would like to be me-because I know so much about Yoga. Then another said she'd like to be me too because I'm kind of funny. Another said I'm very funny and then another argued that I am silly rather than funny.
 
The banter went on until the young boy spoke up again. He said "I want to be me-but I still think you're cute!" ( As you can see, this one is a charmer-he knows just when to give a compliment. Its not easy being the only 6 year old boy in the yoga class!)
This exchange was so telling. It tells me that first, they are really paying attention even when you think they are not. It also re-enforces how important an adult's influence can be on a young child, and that we as educators cannot ever take that responsibility lightly.
 
It also drives home the importance of allowing children to develop self-confidence & to be their own person. The way that we do that the most effectively? By allowing them to do things-to succeed- and also to fail-and to learn from their mistakes. This helps build not only confidence, but characteristics they can identify with.
 
Too many times we are quick to "help" our kids avoid pain or circumvent uncomfortable situations. We let them win at games, do not allow them to experience consequences and do not effectively teach them how to handle anger & conflict.
 
The truth is, the world is not always a friendly place. There is competition, corruption and lots of frustrated people running around looking for a target to vent on. We can implement all the Anti-Bullying and Character Ed programs we want-but this will not ever teach them how to be confident in themselves. It will teach them the concepts-but not the lesson. The lessons are learned and character is built only through experience.
 
We cannot protect our students & children from or isolate them from every last bully, bad influence or friend who will use them. Instead, we have to be right beside them & give them skills to confidently navigate through the unpleasantness they will experience; we have to let them know we trust them to make choices and to set boundaries and if they make a bad choice they can change it. At the same time, we need to remember to show them how to still embrace, appreciate and look for the fun, adventure & beauty of Life.


They need to know that we are there to help if they need it and we will come to a point where we will have to be brave enough to let go and let them fly. If we show fear & frustration they will only learn to be afraid & frustrated. If we show confidence, then they will learn to be confident.
 
Tonight, every child who said they'd like to be me, for the reasons they perceived to be fun, or as good qualities, also told me that they would only want to be me for maybe just the class or maybe a day, and then go back to being themselves. I'm so glad they said that. That shows that they are supported & that they "get it."
 
And I'm thinking I would like to be more like them when I grow up.
 



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If I Was A Constellation

There’s something fascinating about the night sky. To help my son see more than just a sky full of “twinkle, twinkle little stars,” I checked out some great books on stars from our local library. First, we read Star Climbing, a fiction book by Lou Fancher. This dreamy book talks about a child who falls asleep imagining what it’s like to play among some of the most popular constellations.

When done, I opened Jessica Dowling’s Glow-in-the-Dark Constellations book to the page showing late summer star formations like Hercules, the Little Dipper, and Cygnus the Swan. We headed into a window-less room to see just what exactly these stars would look like in our night sky.

Finally, I handed my son a full-page photo that I’d snapped of him sprawled out on the floor the day before. I gave him another piece of plain white paper and told him it was time to turn himself into a constellation; he was intrigued.

Because we don’t have a light table, he put the plain paper atop the photo, paper clipped the two, and taped them to a window. Since the photo was printed on regular (i.e. thin) office paper, the sunlight shone through enough for him to make out his picture through the white paper covering it.

Like the constellations in Dowling’s book, he added star stickers to the main points on his body. Then we removed the tape and he used a ruler to draw a straight edge connecting the stars. The final result was awesome!

To wrap up our night sky-inspired activity, I gave my son a 100+ piece puzzle picturing constellations that glowed-in-the-dark. (I snagged this at Tuesday Morning for just $1.99!!) We love doing puzzles together!