How We're Learning About Money

     I mentioned in my recent post that we've been starting up some "homeschool preschool". In case you didn't read it I'll say it again. We're super laid back right now. Compulsory age in our state is 5 years so I didn't have any real plans to do real focused work until then (September 2015 for the regular school schedule). A lot of what is involved in preschool and even kindergarten are things we do right now anyway.

     However, I'm not taking classes this semester so I have that time to spend doing other things so we've been doing a little bit more here and there. Our library is my favorite resource. It's close. It's free. We can get as much material there in a month without paying a dime compared to what you could get in a typical year-long curriculum.

     I really like the Pebble Plus books. They cover so many subjects and they are full of vivid pictures and are never to wordy. I've also discovered the money and math books by Rebecca Wingard-Nelson. These are very similar to the Pebble Plus books. Lots of pictures and easy-to-read bold font. The others weren't available when we made our trip so we went ahead and got this. You can find them on Amazon here. They are available in paperback or for Kindle!

     This one in particular is a little beyond my kiddos (rated for 6 years old or first grade) but they seem to be enjoying it nonetheless. We're also working on counting to 100 with Bitty Bug (almost 4) and to 20 with Sweet Pea (2). Doing it at the same time makes things easier. Some people like to use cheerios or fruit loops or crackers to practice counting but . . . my two seem to be a little distracted by that! Coins work well. If you don't have any change laying around a trip to the bank is a perfect opportunity to teach them what a bank is and all that too!

     We've been doing a few different things to learn. I try to keep it interesting because I know when I was a kid I got easily distracted when things were monotonous. Learning really doesn't have to be that way so I avoid that when I can.

Counting Together
It's as simple as it sounds. We count together! Either I start and they follow or we take turns with evens and odds. At rest time, I have them close their eyes and count with me. They have to keep them closed if they want me to keep counting. It works surprisingly well to help them settle down. If I were to have them count sheep they'd probably try to discuss the life story of the sheep and pretend their hands were sheep and tell me about the sheep sleeping in the floor and so on.

Making play-doh numbers
This is simple and fun. You can form numbers by rolling the dough and shaping it OR use a knife or cookie cutters to cut out the numbers. It helps littles to learn the shapes of each number by manipulating the dough. It is also helpful for getting those double-digits (or higher) down since you can put two or more numbers side by side. This works great for the alphabet too!

For older ones: Use this for learning place value (hundreds, tens and ones). Use a different color for each place value. Give them the number and have them make the right digit with each color.

Easy example: One-Hundred Twenty-Three.

Learning about the coins
Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters! We aren't just learning the denominations. We're also learning how many of each make one dollar. I actually had to brush up on my knowledge (blushing over here) so I could properly inform my almost 4 year old when she asked "Who's that?" and "What's it made of?". Good grief. We used the I Can Count Money book to match our coins to the pictures.

(They kept asking for the bills and saying "and then we can just keep them". Ha! Smart girls. Didn't happen.)

Sorting
This combines counting with the coins. We had a little ziploc with our spare change waiting to go to the bank in the junk drawer. We just used those. We sorted all the like coins into piles, made them into stacks (great for those fine motor skills!), and then we counted how many we had.


Doing things like this is a lot more fun and a whole lot easier than just counting pictures on a page in a book. It only took a couple days of these little activities for BOTH of them to really get the hang of it. Actually adding coins together and counting is a smidgen beyond them, of course. When the time comes though all of this will help, I think!


   I'd love to hear other ideas! Sometime I'm going to buy a bag of candy and have them sort the candies into muffin pans. (I'll post about it when I do!) Maybe some pink MnMs to keep things relevant. ;)

Our Current Favorite Toys!

     What are your kiddos current favorite toys? Something they got for Christmas, maybe? An old beloved doll? Something colorful and plastic or handmade and wooden?

     I have to say, one of our favorites is the entirety of the local park playground! We don't have a yard. There's some grassy area around our home but there's nothing keeping the kids from the street. It's not very safe and our neighbors aren't always the most charming lot either. When we get a chance to go, it seems my kids are their happiest after playing at the park.

     It's been a long winter so far without it. All the nasty weather and our sweet new one has been keeping us mostly inside with the exception of errands and a few minutes here and there to see the sun or enjoy some snow. One day I hope we have a big yard with a climbing dome, tire swings, slides, sand boxes and zip lines galore. That said, this post will be focused on the sorts of toys we have inside.

     I try to keep things in rotation. I will admit . . . the musical instruments have been in the back of the closet toy box (it's just a big, transparent, sterilite box that the littles don't have access to) for quite a while. Although I do think the set we have (the B. Parum Pum Pum Drum) is adorable. We have many, many more toys and things than these I'll talk about.

     Right right now these are the ones that have kept the intrigue of Bitty Bug (3.5) and Sweet Pea (2). I think all of these toys are fantastic for their age group!

#1 - Fisher Price Little People
     These little people toy sets have taken over. We have several of the bigger sets now! They had some before Christmas but it's also the bulk of what they got this year (or .  . . last year, I guess). With a portion of their Christmas money we ordered the dollhouse and got the Disney princess castle. Personally, I don't put the batteries in the ones that make noise. The girls do all of the noise-making on their own. These make a perfect starter dollhouse set and they are awesome for pretending! I do like the old version of the people better than the new but they are all adorable. There are tons of options to match each kid's interest: the princesses, airplanes, a dump truck, zoo and farm animals, and a little family. My personal favorite is our nativity. There is also a Noah's Ark set we don't have yet that I think is too cute! The bigger things like the castle can be a pain to get together because they are essentially a plastic 3d puzzle with screws. They seem to be pretty sturdy in the end though. Did I mention they are cute??

#2 - Duplo Legos, Wooden Blocks, and Mega Blocks
     No doubt, the hubby is an avid Lego fan. He'd probably live at Legoland if I let him. I love them too but I don't discriminate on building blocks of any kind around here. The girls can't get enough. We have a huge box of the mega blocks and a great variation of wooden ones. We just started our collection of duplos though. I think Bitty Bug builds more robots than planet earth could handle. They make cities and bridges and houses. I love it!

#3 - Magnets
   Zoo animals, dinosaurs, letters, and numbers! We have quite an assortment of fridge magnets now. I found the Melissa & Doug animal magnets on the cheap at Ross one day. You can always find bags of the colorful letters and numbers for a buck or two! Sometimes they play with them on the fridge while I cook. Other times they each get a cookie sheet to put them on. I've found them to be a super tool for learning the alphabet and counting.

#4 - Play-Doh
 Store-bought or homemade. It's cheap and fun. You can anything with it. You can smash it to create something new or bake it and keep it forever and ever. This stuff with some simple plastic tools and cookie cutters keeps them occupied for a good, solid 30 minutes if not an entire hour. It's also a fantastic sensory activity.

#5 - Puzzles and Busy Gears
 Oh, we only have over 20 kid puzzles. Cheap and not as cheap. Mostly wooden. A few plastic. Even some made of foam. NONE that make noise for heaven's sake! (I can think of some scenarios where noise-making puzzles could be great but NOT in my house!) Pro tip: put the pieces to the left so they put them on left to right! It's a reading tool! I also lucked out and found the "vintage" Playskool Busy Gears set at the thrift store for a few dollars. It's going for $30-50 on eBay and amazon which is nuts! I do like the old one much better than the new version. One of the neatest toys we own is a hand-carved, alphabet, snake puzzle that we bought at a local market.


     So, there you have it. These are our current favorites. They are pretty basic and maybe that's what is so great about them. Maybe I'll write about the toy rotation system I've got going soon. It needs some organizational work but it's much easier all ready than having all the toys out at once.

Turning Everyday Chores Into Big Learning Opportunities

     My kids (3 and almost 2) love to learn. If circumstances allow us I hope to be able to homeschool them. There's a lot of emphasis on going to daycare/preschool/kindergarten for toddlers to pre-elementary kiddos these days. Whether you work at home or out, stay home part time or full time, use a sitter, or send them to an in-home or typical brick-and-mortar daycare one of the top priorities you probably have is giving your kids opportunities to learn. Not just to learn mundanely but to experience new things, discover their world, and to thrive while they do it!

   I know all sorts of parents. Single parents, married parents, military parents. SAHM, SAHD, WAHD, WAHM, WOHM, WOHD (do you know what all these mean??). There are parents who travel a lot for work. There are parents that have an in-home office. Some parents have flexible schedules and some have strict itineraries. I know that every single one of them wants this same thing for their babes: the best.

    This constant want for our kids is what drives us crazy, makes us feel guilty, and leaves us wondering if we did the right thing or did enough. It's why we've become obsessed with structured learning, book-work, and the-next-best-thing in education. There are some very easy, simple ways to incorporate learning into the every day. We just have to take advantage of these little opportunities.


#1. Just talk. Talk to your kids. No subject is too small or too big. Want them to learn a language? Talk to them. Want them to learn to read? Read with them. Talk to them about reading the books. I know when I take the opportunities to really communicate with my kids, hear their words, and use words they've yet to hear their little minds are blossoming. Suddenly, a week later they are bringing up some random conversation about how the traffic lights mean stop on red and go on green. They start to understand. That means they can start to share with me in turn their own ideas about all these things in the universe. They start to form questions.

#2. Kids are naturally curious, inquisitive little sponges just sitting there waiting to soak up every morsel available. You know all the things you just know because you do? There's a lint trap in the dryer. Our money is printed and/or minted and has inherent set value. Candles and crayons are both made of wax. Gravity makes us fall and keeps us from floating away. Light bulbs were invented by ________. Yeah, we've all ready learned. We know the answers. Kids have no idea. It's why they are so busy. It's why they test things. It's why they pick at, poke, and bang on things. They are little scientists making observations! They are so eager to know what we know and they will go about making discoveries in their own special ways.

#3. Watch them. Observe them for a while. See what makes them tick. What brings that sparkle to their eye and the light into their face?

    Take these things: communication, their natural sponge-likeness, and your observations and go with it. There are some things nearly every parent, no matter their situation, can do to incorporate opportunities for learning into the blah, every day, normal activities. These opportunities are easy to miss. I get so involved in just getting things done around the house sometimes that rather than involving the kids I just do my best not to trip over them. If they are kept involved while I'm doing a chore then they 1) are doing something productive by learning how to clean, 2) are getting quality time with me and 3) aren't somewhere else making another mess or meddling.

Before I go further let me just say: I get 100% that sometimes we just need to get things done without being slowed by sweet little helpers. ;) Sometimes we need quiet, we just need space, or we need them to PLAY ALONE in their rooms without mama or daddy or the TV entertaining them. Sometimes we do want the TV to entertain them for a half-second so for that precious half-second we can feel like we're ahead a bit. No doubt. But, that's not always the case.

Like I was saying, it's simple to turn every day things into grand opportunities to learn. Here are my favorite ways to do this with my kids with every day chores:

- You're vacuuming. In whatever words, explain how it works. Talk about pushing and pulling. Talk about how to get around and under furniture. With hardly any effort you've incorporated a great lesson on spatial concepts. This also works well as you teach them to clean up their room by looking behind the bed for toys, putting the books vertically on the shelf, and picking the blocks up and in the right bin.

- You're switching out the loads of laundry. This is another easy one for spatial concepts (in and out of the washer and dryer) but it's also great for sorting, searching, and counting. Dump that bottomless hamper of laundry on the floor and give your toddler or preschooler a task: find all the socks, find all the white (or whichever color) clothes, find all the clothes that belong to ____ (whichever person). This gets you a variety of lessons in recognition. Depending on their age(s) they can learn new item words and what those words go with (towels, shirts, pants, or socks). They can learn how to hone in their observation skills and assess a group of items for differences and similarities. They can learn colors in a way that gives them an idea of a range of shades and hues rather than just one basic bold color. (I just made sorting laundry with your kids sound fancy.)

- Take it a step further with that laundry. Have them count out 2, 3, 4 items at a time to bring to you to put in the washer. Have them help you switch the load over to the dryer counting all the way through the load whether it's 10 towels or 20 random pieces of clothing. Another thing you might try is talking about the color of every item. Make it a game of eye-spy. "Bring me something . . . green!" You're kids will be counting and learning about colors in a tangible way. 

- How about implementing some opposites while you do the dishes? Fill the cup. Empty it. Scrub the plate on the top and the bottom. This bowl fits inside the other: one is big and one is small. Turn the water on hot then on cold. Turn the water pressure up high or low. Dry the plate really fast or dry the plate really slow. Maybe some of your dishes are smooth and some have some sort of texture (rough, bumpy, etc). One that's a bit more advanced: some are opaque and some are transparent.

- You're sweeping. Instead of sweeping with the normal hurry-get-that-clean method try making shapes. We have one big broom and a slightly smaller broom (and we did have one that was actually from the toy section but it got broken . . . note to self: get another one) so the kids can "help" me. This might be something more for the older kids when it goes beyond a large circle but you can have them "draw" shapes on the floor with the broom. Make a copy-cat game of it. If you happen to have large tile trace the squares.

- OR, If you have a large enough space you could turn all this into a red-light/green-light style game. (Again, this may be more apt for the older ones.) Start at one end of the room and assign each kid a "spot" near the other end to sweep as much junk into as they can (you could even mark the spot with painter's tape). "Sweep!" and "Freeze!" If they don't freeze in time then back to the beginning. If they leave a large dust bunny or a trail of cheerios behind it's back to the starting line. All of this is a combined exercise in observation, coordination, and self-control. There are some other ways you could go about doing this. For younger ones, choose a general corner area and/or make a line with that tape. Encourage them to look under and around any furniture for trash to clean up. Show them how to manipulate the broom and make small strokes.

Bonus: your kids are learning to CLEAN. There are way too many people in the modern world who have no clue where to start when it comes to cleaning or picking up after themselves. Starting really early and making it fun is an easy way to make a habit of it. One day even if they choose to be slobs (like me) at least you know you've done your due diligence making sure they have the skills necessary to finish a load of laundry, hand wash dishes, or to tell the difference between dish soap and detergent. ;)


     You may all ready be doing these sorts of things and not even realize it. Keep it up. If you have other ideas like these I'd love to hear them!