Naturally Curious Tots - Looking For Animal Tracks

I wasn’t sure if we will participate this week in Naturally Curious Tots. We live in an urban sprawl of Silicon Valley, and we don’t get snow. The only chance to see animal tracks would be on wet ground, but we didn’t have rain for a while either. So… no real animal tracks. However, we discussed the fact that everyone leaves their track even if it’s invisible. Our neighbor likes to hunt, and I talked to Anna how Sport (his dog) can smell the animal tracks even when we cannot see or smell them. She was quite fascinated by it. We also read this delightful book from the library. It was not really about animal tracks, but Anna really enjoyed it and requested it many times. Finally, we played with salt and flour mixture making tracks with fingers and with a straw. Then we used this mixture in a puffy paint. I hoped that Anna will draw some tracks with a puffy paint, but as always, she was more interested in color mixing. She announced that she is painting Elmer and that he is so big that we only see a very small part of it on her paper. In the end Elmer turned out to be muddy brown.

To read about other Naturally Curious Tots hunting for animal tracks, visit Sharon at Mommies Wise Little Bookworms.

Progressive Phonics

A few people have asked me of my opinion of Progressive Phonics. Let me state upfront that this post is not endorsed by Progressive Phonics in any way. I write it, because I really like this comprehensive reading program. I am not saying that every child is ready to learn to read before 3, but my daughter was definitely interested. We did starfall.com since she was under 1 year old, and it’s a wonderful site. But Anna was getting bored with the same games, and I was looking for something a bit formal. Then I stumbled upon Progressive Phonics and immediately liked what I saw:

1. The program is completely free.

2. There are several starting points. Children that are not very solid on their alphabet yet can start with Alphabet Books. More advanced pre-readers can immediately jump to Phonics books. We started directly with Phonics.

3. I like how this program makes reading a truly joint effort between a parent and a child. Each book has many short stories with fun illustrations on each page. The child is expected to read red words, and the parent reads the rest to make up the full story. As the difficulty level increases, the number of “red words” increases until the child is expected to read the whole story. Anna is not a big fan of those pages :)

4. Activity packs that come with each book have different things that appeal to different learning styles. There are memory games, handwriting exercises, etc.

5. The program can be used with any age, and you can go as fast or as slow as you want. My daughter just turned 3, and after about 5 months we are in the middle of intermediate section. Specific books can be used to help struggling older readers as well.

Cons: Printing the course consumes a lot of paper, and I don’t like sitting in front of the computer while learning to read. I read somewhere on the site that they plan to offer this program “in the box” for a fee, and in my mind it would be a good investment. The neat thing is that you can really “try this program” before you buy anything.

If you check out Progressive Phonics, please come back and tell me what you think. I hope to see other moms using it with the same success that we had here.

Toys My Child Actually Plays With – Lego Blocks

Maybe this post should be titled, Toys My Husband Actually Plays With. He loves Lego, and he could very well become one of those professional Lego artists. He has amazing 3D imagination, and he can build anything out of Lego blocks. We have quite a collection of Duplo (probably about 300 pieces), and also a giant collection of regular size Lego that my husband’s parents brought from Germany. By the way, they only brought half of it so far :) It’s amazing that Anna has some toys inherited from her papa and uncle. Unfortunately I didn’t have space to bring any of my old toys when I moved to US.

Sometimes I think that my husband’s skill in Lego building is a little overwhelming for Anna. She rarely plays with Lego herself trying to build herself. She likes to help papa build complex projects – the same way she might be helping in the workshop or in the kitchen, and she likes to play with end result – castles, bridges, merry-go-rounds or houses. I wish she built more herself, but I hold the hope that she is learning as she watches, and one day will become a competent Lego architect herself.

To see other children favorite toys, check out My Bilingual Boys.

Thoughts on Discipline

A lot of people comment on how well-behaved our daughter is most of the time. Some of the same people comment jokingly that she gets a timeout once she blinks at the wrong time. This is definitely not true, but I admit that we are on a stricter side of average, and we enforced some rules very early on. We never used physical punishment with Anna, but we used restraining, timeouts and privilege withdrawal. My husband also has a very effective discipline technique that I nicknamed The Voice. It’s not yelling, but, trust me, it makes even adults jump. I remember only two tantrums that our daughter threw. In both cases, we just let her go at it until she was exhausted and wanted a hug. She learned pretty quickly that tantrums don’t work, and whining aggravates both parents. I heard that three is more challenging than two in testing boundaries department, but so far I feel that all unpleasant work of discipline that we suffered through in the second and third year has paid off. Of course, she has her moments, but overall she knows how to negotiate appropriately for what she wants, and she also knows that she cannot expect to always get what she wants. Here is an amusing exchange in the middle of me being angry with her. I was explaining something to her. And… she also knows sometimes how to get herself out of a tight spot. Just a couple of days ago we had a funny exchange:

Me: Anna, you know that you are not supposed to swallow toothpaste!

Anna (putting her little finger on my lips): Mama, you still love me. You just don’t like my behavior. I will listen to you… tomorrow.

What My Child Is Reading – November 7, 2009

We had some fun books to read this week. It was hard to pick four to review, since our opinions differed at times. However, after some consideration, I narrowed down the “winners”. All the books in this review are library books. I just love our library.

This was definitely a hands down winner for Anna. I swear that I read about this book on one of the blogs who link to WMCIR, but despite my heroic efforts I couldn’t find who it was. Anna was enthralled with this book, and we read it untold number of times. Obviously we read it on the toilet, and she was very pleased when she managed to go #2 while reading this book. I believe now what I heard before – young children have universal fascination with their body products. At least she doesn’t want to investigate it up close since her papa totally freaked when she did it as a young toddler.

The author of Bear’s Day Out is Michael Rosen, who also wrote We Are Going On a Bear Hunt. I like Bear Hunt more, but Anna fell in love with this book. To her eyes it’s better, because there is no conflict and no mad running from the bear. In fact, Bear visits the city and listens to city sounds as he walks around. Again, we read this book so many times that Anna memorized it and was reading it to herself.

I have never heard of this book by Audrey Wood before. As I found out later, it’s actually the second book in the three book series. I loved the story and beautiful illustrations. Anna didn’t request the book as much as I thought she would. It turned out that she is afraid of Monster M even though later in the book he becomes quite nice. My gentle soul here really prefers books without even a slight hint of a conflict.

I was hoping to get An Empty Pot by Demi that was featured on several blogs lately, but my library didn’t have it. Instead they had this book by the same author. It was way over Anna’s head both in language and in subject, but I truly enjoyed it. The message of the book is very powerful, and older children will like it. Interestingly, Anna asked to keep this book for another week. Her reasoning was, It’s long, and I like long books.

What are your children reading? Link up and share:

Top 5 – Christmas Wish List

I join this week’s Top 5 at Superheroes and Princesses with my Christmas Wish List. Why now? Because my parents are coming for Thanksgiving and want to know what to bring for their only granddaughter. It’s 6 and not 5, because Amazon Widget has the minimum rules :)

Note to parents: Don’t even think about bringing more than one. I think Anna would love Constructables or Polly Pockets best :)

The School Corner – November 6, 2009

It was an uneven week. Anna was not in a bad mood, but very fidgety. Because of the time change she now goes to bed at around 7:30, so it leaves less time for us to be together. She didn’t have much interest in arts and crafts this week, and so our Open-Ended Art project and StArt project were sort of forced. We still managed to have some learning fun together on good days.

Phonics. We are going through long Y book of Progressive Phonics, which unexpectedly proved difficult for Anna. She expected y to say i, and not ai. She surprised me one day when she was “rediscovering” her magnetic alphabet set. I went to another room to get something, and when I came back she spelled the word food – it was shortly before dinner. The she added the word hot, and announced that she made a surprise for papa. He was duly surprised :)

Math. We played Addition War again, now without removing any cards. Anna’s counting really improved, and addition doesn’t faze her at all. The book that I read some time ago Einstein Never Used Flashcards explains how math progresses in young children, and I definitely see it in Anna. She was also very excited about her new Kumon Book Of Numbers 1-120.

Field Trips: Sailing in San Francisco Bay, but surprisingly she didn’t mention it even once since we came back. Maybe she is still “digesting” this experience.

Arts and Crafts. As I mentioned, Anna was not really into arts and crafts this week. Maybe she just has too many of them in school – her teachers constantly tell me that she loves art time in school, and they do a lot of different crafts there. One thing that she enjoyed and did several times during a week was a very open-ended paper plate decoration. I got an idea from The Fifth Street Academy. As I expected, Anna thought that she was making a cake.

Science. After a brief trip to the Moon, we returned to human body and health yet again. Anna is very interested in everything related to this and constantly asks questions about blood, muscles and bones. Here she used a flashlight to look at the blood in her hands, and then she just got silly with it. Sid the Science Kid helps too – we went through series on human body and moved to health. I wish Sid the Science Kid had mentioned something about not putting one’s hands in one’s mouth. I am fighting a losing battle here, since I am not setting a good example. I am afraid that with two finger biters in the family our daughter is pretty much doomed.

Fine Motor Skills & Prewriting. Anna loves to punch holes with leaf hole puncher. It was the first week when she managed to punch the holes all by herself, and she was quite proud. She also practiced cutting and attempted to grate potatoes, but quickly realized that it’s not as easy as it looks. I am looking forward to when she is actually able to do her favorite “potato pancakes” herself.

Please visit Learning through Love and Preschool Corner for other weekly wrap-ups.