Preschool ideas

Looking for alternatives for TV for your one- to five-year-old for these cold, wet days? Got a kid who's over the usual coloring books and fort-building? Here are some ideas to get you started! You might keep some of these things grouped together as workboxes or busy boxes.

1. Pouring and transferring: Gather up assorted little containers, and little items to play with-- craft pom poms, beans or lentils, uncooked rice, or water (if you're brave enough, get out the food coloring). Set them on a table and let your little one try it out. Little tongs, tweezers, spoons, or scoops add to the fun. Make sure your child helps you clean up!
2. Magnets: Do you have little alphabet magnets and/or magnetic trains? Paperclips? A cookie sheet? There you go.
3. Lacing: Punch several holes in a piece of heavy paper. Provide a length of yarn with a button tied at one end or a child's shoelace with a knot in one end and show him/her how to "sew."
4. Stick stuff into things (yeah, technical educational term): Raw spaghetti through the holes of a spice jar, pipe cleaners or straws into a colander or through toilet paper tubes, etc.
5. Make sock puppets.
6. Find a dance or yoga video you can do together. I do recommend previewing and bookmarking any YouTube video before showing it to kids, or you may already have a DVD that will work.
7. Make playdough or slime together. Google for easy recipes.
8. Write a letter to send to a friend or family member.
9. Try order games. Cut out the letters in your child's name or the numbers in your phone number and have your child unscramble them. Play Simon Says with a whole sequence of actions. ("Simon says hop twice on one foot, tickle someone, and then touch your chin.")
10. Bake something together. Muffins are easy for a young child to help with.
11. Drive the alphabet. Use a Matchbox-sized car or truck. Help your child learn the correct way to form letters by driving the correct path--on big foam letters if you have them, or with the letter just written on paper on the floor. Use alphabet printables to save time if you want to do all fifty-two (uppercase and lowercase).
12. Play with light and dark. Do you have a flashlight? Maybe a glow bracelet left from Halloween? What about a prism, suncatcher, or LED candles? A hand mirror?
13. Read a big ol' stack of books together. Go to the library if you're tired of the same old stories.
14. Make a yarn maze by running yarn around and through furniture.
15. Make music. Put beans into plastic Easter eggs or empty jars. Let your kid try blowing into the empty teakettle. Pretend the flyswatter is an electric guitar. Set out assorted pans, lids, and wooden spoons.

What should I be doing with my preschooler?

Many parents with young children ask, "What should my child know before starting kindergarten?" or "What should we be doing now?"
Here are some helpful skills for the under-six crowd, in approximate order of importance:
Independent toileting, including good hand-washing;
Using good manners, especially with regard to keeping one's hands to oneself and sharing objects;
Following simple directions;
Recognizing and avoiding hazards (e.g., putting away an item that could be tripped on), and observing one's environment in general;
Waiting quietly for a moment while the teacher pays attention to someone else;
Listening to a story and talking about what happened;
Being aware of time and routines (not necessarily telling time);
Putting things back where they belong when finished with them;
Putting on one's own coat, shoes, hat, etc.;
Expressing choices and preferences;
Playing cooperatively with other children;
Eating and appreciating nutritious foods, preferably with a willingness to try new things;
Recognizing basic shapes and colors;
Using/manipulating classroom objects (such as crayons and blunt scissors);
Recognizing letters, especially one's own name, and saying/singing the alphabet;
Recognizing numbers and counting to ten;
Categorizing items (by size, shape, color, etc.).

Beyond that, enriching experiences are great. If you can take your child to the beach, the forest, a big city, a farm, and so on, these activities will provide background knowledge that gives him or her context for stories as well as subject-area learning. But there's a lot you can do in your own home! Cook together. Plant some seeds and see what happens. Ask your child to predict what happens next in familiar and unfamiliar situations. Talk about the reasons behind some of the choices you make. Cuddle up and read library books on a rainy day.

It's Giving Week!

We hope to celebrate Giving Week each year by giving both time and money to those in need. We can't give as much as we would like, but we know that it is nonetheless good to give what we can.
Our donations will benefit fourteen different organizations this year. We hope that by choosing to make our gifts now, we can help these groups to provide their services while the need is high and donations are low.
Of course, older children can take a more active part, but we believe in including little ones as much as possible. Even a very young child can help pack bags of food and clothing to donate.

Thought for the day: "Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you." ~Robert Fulghum