November Ends

We traditionally celebrate Thanksgiving with my parents, and I was very excited that despite my mom’s job changes they could come this year. Anna adores Babushka and Dedushka, and we were happy to let them spend as much time together with her as possible and enjoy some couple time. We went hiking, shopping, movie watching – by ourselves and with our best friend. Sadly, it’s  the only time when we have some couple time outside the house, since we are still reluctant to leave Anna with babysitters, even with friends. We are a little anal that way. But everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving break. Now I am back to work, and my parents fly home tomorrow night. I was hoping to decorate the house on Sunday, but we were too tired after spending most of the day on the hike. Instead we kicked off Christmas season with German Christmas cake – Stollen and reading and watching beloved Christmas classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

I am going to resume more or less “regular programming” tomorrow. December is a busy month for everyone, and we have a lot of home-made gifts to complete. The general December “themes of the week” are below:

• Nov 30 – Decorating House/Celebrating My Birthday
• Dec 7 – Closets Clean-Up/Donations/Home Made Gifts Making (by us and Anna)
• Dec 14 – Hanukkah/Annual Christmas Party
• Dec 21 – Christmas (and playing with all the new toys)
• Dec 28 – New Year

Have a happy holiday season, everyone!

The Art Box #2

This week the art box had some craft foam, scissors, scrap paper, bingo page from Making Learning Fun, glue, markers, stickers and googly eyes. Anna spent first 15 minutes shredding foam paper into “salad” and asking for more. Then she proceeded to trace her hands. Interestingly, generally she doesn’t like to get her hands dirty, but doesn’t mind at all when they are all covered in marker paint. Then she discovered googly eyes, and  it gave her other ideas. She put together this monster from the materials in the box, and then was done. It was definitely not as long as the first time, but she was in a bad mood that day anyway. Still – the art box seems to gain popularity here even though she still strongly prefers structured projects.

To see what others did, visit The Art Box at The Tired, Need Sleep.

What My Child Is Reading – Thanksgiving Books

We read a lot of books this week, but I wanted to focus on Thanksgiving books that we read in the past few weeks. Some more elaborate stories were way above my three year old’s head, and she couldn’t connect well to the stories that were entirely set in the past. Here is the list of favorites – mine and hers.

This book was Anna’s favorite among Thanksgiving books. It doesn’t talk at all about the history of the holiday, but the story unfolds around Thanksgiving dinner table where every member of a big clan talks about their most interesting event of the year. A lot of them are children, and Anna was fascinated with their stories. I also think she could link it to our own celebrations best.

I felt that this book by Anne Rockwell was the best in covering the history behind the holiday without going into too many details that are beyond the grasp of a three year old. In this book the story of Thanksgiving is presented in the context of a school play. There are some nice craft ideas too. The illustrations are bright and playful, and the text is short. I would say that this book is my favorite from non-fiction fare we read this year.

I will be honest – I didn’t expect this book to be as religious as it turned out to be. On the second page there is a reference how Pilgrims couldn’t have their own church in England, so they left for a new land. The word God is printed in big red letters, and Anna kept asking, Why does it say God all the time? Still, it’s also a good overview of the first story in a board book format with beautiful illustrations, and I think that Christian homes will enjoy it.

This book was way over Anna’s head, and I am not sure if we will read it when it’s older, since again it’s highly religious, but delivers Judaism point of view on this holiday. We read it in the library, and Anna listened to it patiently, but didn’t ask any questions. I thought the story was rather clever, since it shows how Thanksgiving is not just a Christian holiday, but a holiday for all Americans grateful for a new land of freedom and opportunity.

What are your children reading? Please link up and share. The linky is open all week, and I love to visit other blogs and learn about new fantastic books.

School Corner Reflections – November 27, 2009

We didn’t have much “school” done this week. It was mostly Thanksgiving crafts and books (books post will come on Saturday). I am writing it on Tuesday evening, because I am hoping to enjoy some couple time with my husband while my parents are visiting us. I am sure that Anna will have a lot of fun with grandparents and will learn simply from interacting with them. I also want to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work in what we do.

Phonics. Obviously, Progressive Phonics works great for us, and at her 3 years one month Anna reads at least at the kindergarten level. But I don’t want to continue to push it. Lately, it became more of a chore – read two pages, then you can watch Sid the Science Kid. Read two pages, then I will read you one extra book before bed. I don’t want to create association that reading is hard work, so I am going to stop Progressive Phonics completely and wait for Anna to want to come back to it. I think she will, since she does enjoy the program and proud of her successes.

Math. I was all excited about Beginnings of Mathematical Reasoning book, but Anna is not in the mood for worksheets lately. She refuses them completely, and our school doesn’t have fixed times and defined program. We do what she wants, and mostly she just wants to play – with puzzles, Lego blocks, sometimes with her ruler and measuring tape. She plays board games, plays shopping, counts for fun. I really don’t think that she needs more formal math at this point – she seems naturally inclined to it anyway.

Fine Motor Skills/Prewriting. Anna doesn’t seem close to being able to form letters. She gets frustrated with any kind of tracing exercises and doesn’t really try to do them well. Again – my intention is not to offer her any worksheets in December, but concentrate instead on crafts, lacing, cutting, playing with clothespins – anything that would strengthen her fingers. I am pretty sure that as her fine motor skill mature she will find writing enjoyable (or at least not frustrating).

Arts and Crafts. Arts and crafts are hit-or-miss in our house. First of all, Anna does a lot of arts in her preschool (this is one of her preschool creations). At home she enjoys guided crafts best and sometimes loses interest in the middle of the project. No matter how hard I try to introduce more open-ended activities, she is only mildly interested in them. I really like Open-Ended Art idea, but somehow it’s always a struggle in our house. I will still try to join Open-Ended Art, but only if I have a good idea and Anna really wants to do it. I am still shooting for doing something creative a few days a week, but I have to face the reality – arts and crafts are not something that Anna really passionate about, and that’s OK too.

Lacking: Gross Motor Activities. Luckily, we still have decent weather, but we don’t spend enough time outside. By the time I come home it’s getting dark, and in the morning of non-school days my husband and Anna have playdates or run errands. After New Year I am going to sign daughter up for dance classes to give some outlet to her energy. We will also play more physical games at home – she enjoys chasing and playing with balloons. And lately Anna rediscovered yoga – time to get out those yoga DVDs again.

Lacking: Science. I want to try and do more hands-on science. Ticia hosts a Science Sunday linky at Adventures in Mommydom, and she has some great ideas. Another awesome place for science ideas (geared to slightly older kids) is The Exploration Station. I just need to get more organized to actually try my own ideas and learn from others – same way I do with crafts.

Lacking: Cooking. It’s not that we don’t cook at all, but one of us usually cooks while another does something with Anna. I have a couple of books about cooking with toddlers, and a lot of ideas are floating in blogosphere. I want to allocate a day when Anna and I will make something together. She loves pretend cooking and always eager to help in real cooking. It’s hard to pass up on such an enthusiasm.

To see what others did this Thanksgiving week, visit Preschool Corner.

Bob Books Getaway Winner

SANDRA said...

We participate in your weekly linky: What my child is reading.
I wish to be entered in this giveway.

Congratulations Sandra!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Both myself and my husband are first generation immigrants, so Thanksgiving has special meaning for us. We were not taught from the cradle that America is the best place in the world. In fact, both of us don’t think that there is one place in the world that can be called the best place to live. We had choices and we have made them. We are grateful to America and Americans for many things:

1. Still being a land of opportunity for immigrants, at least for those who enter here legally like we did.
2. Accepting us as equals
3. Appreciating our non-American education
4. Valuing intelligence and drive
5. Respecting differences in opinions
6. Giving us friends from all over the world – Americans, Indians, Israelis, Chinese, other fellow Europeans from many countries.

There is no other country in the world that is so diverse and peaceful in the diversity. Let’s be grateful to America for what it is, but let’s strive to return to what it used to be – a symbol of hope, freedom and justice to the rest of the world.

Secular Holidays

I was raised non-religious. We didn’t celebrate Christmas back home in the Soviet Union. We celebrated New Year the same way Christmas is celebrated here. There was a New Year tree, a family gathering and Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost). My husband was raised a German Lutheran, but he officially left the church long before we met. I wouldn’t call us atheists. We simply don’t believe that we need “a third party provider” in our relationship between us and God, and there is no church that represents Him accurately. Anyway, we don’t celebrate Christmas as birth of Christ. We celebrate it as it was way back when – a Pagan holiday of nature rebirth and a start of a new year. So what exactly will we do in December?

• We will put up a Christmas tree and decorate the house.
• We will celebrate my birthday in early December with our friends.
• We will go to a dessert party that our neighbors host each year.
• We will throw a Weihnachtsmarkt party – we host it outside and invite everyone we know. There will be hot wine and German sausages galore.
• We will have Advent calendar – we put sweets and small toys in ours.
• Every Sunday we will unwrap and read a new Christmas book with our daughter.
• We will watch classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas many times with her.
• We will do many seasonal crafts (I hope)
• We will listen to Christmas music all day and watch our favorite Christmas movies in the evening after Anna goes to sleep. We have quite a collection to choose from.
• We will give food to Second Harvest and donate toys, books and clothes.
• We will have Feuerzangenbowle – another German tradition. And we will offer our guestroom to our friends who want to enjoy it fully :)
• We will celebrate Hanukkah too – with lights and books, latkes and crafts.
• We will talk to our families a lot. They will not be here for Christmas, but we will be thinking about them.
• On Christmas Eve our closest friends will come to our house, and we will exchange presents. We will enjoy Anna’s excitement on Christmas morning when she opens hers.
• I will have a holiday shutdown at work – yay! We will not travel anywhere. Instead we will take time to relax and enjoy this special time of the year.
  Happy holidays, everyone!

I am adding this link to Advent Roundup at Adventures of Bear.

A Thankful Turkey

Between her preschool and her home Anna probably ended up with half a dozen various turkeys this year. My absolute favorite, however, was the one that we made yesterday. It was based on several projects I have seen in the blog world that I sort of combined together, and it was fun for both of us. Anna painted the plate while I cut the leaves. She dictated for me the things she is thankful for. I have no idea why wiggling leggs and an egg made it to the list – she wasn’t willing to explain them to me. But I liked her including every day in her list of things to be thankful for. Actually she said, Every day we all sit together and talk about our day and what was the favorite part and what we are thankful for. I like that. It is our new family tradition that I hope to keep up as she grows up. I am feeling very thankful too right now – for my healthy and beautiful daughter, for my supportive and creative husband, for my parents coming over for Thanksgiving, for my health, my job and my friends. Now, thinking about it, one more thankful turkey is in order :)

I am linking this post to The Weekly Unplugged Project with a theme of Thanks and to Mommies Little Artists where the theme this week is Turkeys.

The Toys My Child Plays With – Ravensburger Puzzle

We have our fair share of $1 Target puzzles, and Anna likes them OK, but still struggles with the concept of frame pieces, especially for the puzzles that don’t have a frame around them. This Ravensburger puzzle, however, is special. We got it from our friends visiting from Germany. In the beginning it was a little difficult for Anna (the puzzle says 4+), but surprisingly after a couple of guided efforts the concept really clicked with her. The back of the puzzle has outlines of the puzzle pieces, and each piece is very unique. I think Anna likes the fact that she is not forced into selecting frame pieces first, but can attempt to match any piece to an outline instead. She puts this puzzle together now in no time at all, and I keep an eye open for Craigslist offerings, since the puzzle is quite expensive if bought new. Of course, German relatives have been notified of Anna’s love of this puzzle (hint, hint).

To see more toy reviews, visit My Bilingual Boys.

Our Art Box #1

Nicole at Tired, Need Sleep opened up a new linky that is kind of a sister to Open-Ended Art. The difference is that in this case the art is truly open-ended. The kids are given variety of tools and materials in the box and left to their own devices to explore and create at will.

I admit that I tried this in the past with very little results. Maybe it’s boy-girl difference, but my daughter definitely prefers the projects where she can see the completed project beforehand. For example, she enjoys doing things from $1 craft kits that I sometimes get at Target or Michaels. Still, I decided that it would be fun to try an art box again. Here is the picture of what was in her art box. As you can see, I was hoping for some sort of fall-related project. Instead I got this horse. I was reusing some of the printouts that I’ve done long time ago hoping to do Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See activity. I wanted Anna to use the other side for drawing, but instead she made a feeble attempt to color the horse, and then announced that it’s colorful enough and she is done. However, the thought that I pretty much predicted came to her – cookies!  Every time when she has scissors, scrap paper and stickers she makes cookies. She likes foam stickers a lot more than she likes flat stickers, because she can make “cookie layers” with them. She spent good 30+ minutes making cookies, “baking them”, cooling them down and feeding them to her dinosaur puppets.

Overall we both enjoyed this activity, but I am not going to keep the Art Box available to Anna at all times. I tried it before, and it didn’t work here. She always reacts better to something that appears new and special. She has constant access to her magnetic board, some scratch paper and crayons, but she doesn’t use them all that often. We are going to make Art Box an activity for the day of the week when our papa goes to visit his friend in the evening, so she can create something to surprise him when he is back. I hope that as her fine motor skills mature, her desire to create her own art increases too.

To see the other undirected art of young children, visit The Art Box at Tired, Need Sleep.

What My Child Is Reading – November 21, 2009

I already covered some of our dinosaur books here, but we also read other books this week. In fact, only one of a dozen dinosaur books made it into top four.

Anna really enjoyed this creative counting book. It has a lot of humor as exhausted parents try to get their wakeful baby to sleep – something well familiar to every new parent. This was one of the books that Anna easily memorized and then read to herself by really trying to decode every word and match the words on the page to the words in her memory. I also liked whimsical illustrations by Viviana Garofoli.

I was looking for Dora book Follow Those Feet! that Growing Up Our Style used to learn about animal tracks, and found a book that contained four more Dora reading stories. We don’t watch Dora any longer, but Anna loves books with her (still not a big fan of Swiper). This book is done in rebus style – a lot of high frequency words have a picture and a text under it. Anna didn’t attempt to read it by herself yet – we just got it on Wednesday, but she asked for it repeatedly every time we sat down to read. Now it moved to her “reading in bed” shelf – she sometimes looks at the books during the time when she is supposed to be napping.

As you can see, we read a lot of character books. I resisted them at first, but Anna enjoys them, so I am trying to pick those that are related to something she is interested in. Her fascination with all things dental continues, and she requested this book a lot. There is no real dentist in the book, but Blue goes through steps explaining Green Puppy what to expect in the dentist office. Anna enjoyed playing dentist with me this week.

Halloween is over, but Anna enjoyed reading this fun book about four dinosaur friends going trick-or-treating. The dinosaurs in the book coexist with modern kids who are not exactly thrilled about their trick-or-treating competitors. It was fun to read about T-Rex who wanted to wear something scary for Halloween, but ended up going like himself wearing a big frown. As I mentioned, Anna enjoyed books that made dinosaurs more human, so that was the one that she requested most.

What are your children reading? Please link up and share. This linky is open all week, so you can link up on the day that is convenient for you. And… you will get three additional chances to win my Bob books giveaway.

The School Corner – November 20, 2009

It was a relaxed week here. Anna was very cheerful, but not really in the mood for sitting down and doing any kind of worksheet activity. So we didn’t do any of that – we had fun learning about dinosaurs instead – by playing, reading, watching Dinosaur Train, building them and acting out stories with them. We even pretended to be them, as you can see from this picture. 

Phonics. We didn’t do much in Progressive Phonics this week. Anna got some new bath toys as a belated birthday present from one of her buddies and didn’t want anything to delay her from getting into a bath and playing with them. But I noticed her taking the books that she knows by heart and actually reading them – looking at the words and trying to match them to her memorized version. A couple of times she asked me for help when she wasn’t sure that she is “reading” the right word. She always acts very proud when she finishes the book and, of course, I provide a lot of positive feedback to her.

Math. We played shop a lot. I have set up the prices to make sure that she runs out of money (erasers) before she buys everything in my shop. She was very shocked when it happened. She kept saying that she wants to buy everything in the store. It was a good moment to explain to her that we have the same problem in real life – we only have so much money and that’s why we are not buying everything we like.

Science. This week was all about dinosaurs. Here are the basic facts that Anna really digested – dinosaurs all died out, some were big and some were small, some were predators (as wolves and foxes) and some were leaf eaters (as cows and elephants), and their babies came out of eggs. The only dinosaur name she remembered is T-rex (no big surprise here, I can hardly pronounce them myself). And she began a big fan of Dinosaur Train.

 Arts and Crafts. Almost all projects were dinosaur-related. It was a slow start of the week, but we made up for it on Wednesday when we spend about two hours making something. We also did The Art Box activity – I will write about it on Sunday.

 

Prewriting/Fine Motor Skills. I introduced Anna to sewing using the $1 felt craft kit from Michaels. Anna was extremely fascinated with sewing. Of course she cannot do it yet, but now she is more interested in lacing – especially if it’s done using the same needle and yarn that came with the sewing kit. I didn’t realize how hard sewing it until I watched her being very perplexed with a needle and a thread.

To see what others are doing, please visit Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.

Toys My Child Plays With - Tinkertoys

We got this Tinkertoy set as a present for Anna’s birthday. Up until this point Anna only had Lego and cardboad blocks as building toys. Overall we try to “standardize” on something rather than have our space taken by various toys that don’t work well together. However, I made a point to my husband that having different building sets is important since they use different principles. For example, knowing Lego didn’t help Anna build from Tinkertoys, since they work very differently. We are actually looking to extend her building blocks collection at Christmas as well, and we will be rotating her building sets when she lost interest. So now on to Tinkertoys.

Pros:

1. Very different from Legos
2. Good fine motor skill practice for little hands
3. Allows to build moving things
4. Allows to build very tall or very long structures
5. Grows with a child – one can build ever more complex creations as time goes on.

Cons:

1. Sadly, the quality of our set is very poor. Maybe we are unlucky, but both my husband and my daughter managed to split one piece each already, and they are both rather careful builders. I am pretty sure that classic Tinkerytoys of the past were built better
2. Honestly, it’s too early for a 3 year old, at least for my girl. She likes it, but she doesn’t want to build independently with it. One of us have to help her quite a bit. I hope that she will play with it by herself when she is a little older.

Please visit Toys My Child Actually Plays With at My Bilingual Boys for more toy recommendations.

StArt – Dinosaur Puppets

I am wondering if I will be the only American on StArt carnival not doing something Thanksgiving related this week. We are having fun with dinosaurs instead, and we read lots of dinosaur books. Here is the short list of fiction books that we read:

I felt that Anna is getting sick and tired of dinosaurs, but thought that making stick puppets for her theater might be a good idea. Unexpectedly, today she was very excited about doing a dinosaur craft. It’s almost as if she took a couple days to digest all the information, and now she is genuinely interested. I am surprised, because I was going to write the theme off as unsuccessful. I printed dinosaurs from here and here. Anna painted them, but, of course, I helped to cut them. We also made a turkey out of $1 Michael’s craft kit (see, we did something Thanksgiving related after all). There are no pictures, but Anna and I had a lot of fun modifying Goldilocks and Three Bears to become Three Dinosaurs and a Silly Turkey. In our story a turkey wanders into dinosaurs’ house, falls asleep in baby dinosaur’s bed and then dinosaurs chase her saying, Come back! You are now our Thanksgiving Dinner! Anna found all this hilarious – she generally likes me to modify the stories I read after she learned an original version by heart. 

To find more book-based projects visit StArt and A Mommy’s Adventures.

Building Dinosaurs – Part 2

We read several non-fiction dinosaur books from our home collection. This one gives a good overview of dinosaurs and fossils, but… Anna was scared. She is not a big fan of skeletons. After reading the book she delivered the following speech, I don’t like bones. They make me crumble and sleep on the floor and do things I don’t like to do and especially things you don’t want me to do. I have no idea what she was talking about, but it’s clear that paleontology is not on her list of top 5 career choices :) I was slightly disappointed since I planned the whole day of pretending to be paleontologists and building dinosaurs in different ways. She was still interested in building them, just without all that paleontologist nonsence. This Lego dinosaur was obviously not built by her. In fact, I personally think it’s a dog, but Anna assured me that it’s a dinosaur, and he is a horse for her plastic dinosaurs. She enjoyed making her tangram dinosaur best. She really likes playing with classic tangram, probably because it only has 7 pieces – a manageable number for a toddler. She managed to build this dinosaur with very minimal help, and was very proud of herself.

This activity was a flop. Despite cheerful smiles Anna was absolutely not interested in building with her magnetic blocks following the pattern that I got from here. It’s funny how she strongly rejects some of the activities that look like fun – coloring and pattern block building definitely fold into this category. My guess – they require precision, and she gets bored quickly.

She enjoyed TinkerToy dinosaur a lot more. In case you can’t guess, it’s pteranodon. We didn’t have a lot of pieces available, because my husband build an elaborate working pulley to demonstrate her concepts from Sid the Science Kid episode about pulleys. She was not interested, but wanted to keep the pulley, so we built with what was left. I helped a little, but mostly it’s Anna’s creation.

Overall, I have to admit that despite wanting to learn about dinosaurs, Anna is not really fascinated by them, not at all like her interest in human body topics. She is mostly interested in activities and books that humanize dinosaurs – picture them like human kids, make them participate in activities that she can comprehend. And she didn’t display any interest in making any dinosaur craft – clearly this week is not a crafty week for her. I might do some more academic dinosaur fun in the afternoon today – I’ll play it by ear.

Dinosaurs – Part 1

This is our first experiment with child-led learning. Anna chose dinosaurs out of nine options. Of course, we started our Dinosaur week with a visit to the library. We took a bunch of dinosaur books by Bernard Most. I highly recommend ABC T-Rex – it’s an interesting take on alphabet books, and each page has variety of items starting with that letter.

Electronic edutainment. We also recorded a couple of episodes of Dinosaur Train and visited PBS site for Dinosaur Train. I gave Anna a set of plastic dinosaurs that I got at $1 section of Target some time ago, and we attempted to find them in the Field Guide for Dinosaur Train. As far as we could tell, we have two ankylosauruses and two diplodocuses (or maybe those are apatosauruses, I cannot tell them apart). Anna was disappointed that she didn’t get any pteranodons, since those flying creatures are her favorites in the show.

Crafts. I showed Anna DLTK page of dinosaur crafts and asked if she wants to make any of them. She chose to do this triceratops, but it was a pretty lame craft. Anna didn’t want to color the dinosaur, and I had to help her quite a bit with all the steps in making it. Usually she is a lot more independent in this kind of projects, but her motivation was clearly not there. However, she enjoyed playing with a completed TP figure and was sending her plastic dinosaurs through a “triceratops tunnel”.

We will be doing more later this week, I hope. In the meantime visit Adventures in Mommydom. Great minds think alike – she just had great week with her kiddos and has some links to share.

Being Thankful for Food

Thanksgiving approaches – a time to celebrate harvest, a bounty of Earth, a gift of food. I visit blogs of my virtual friends who prepare their happy American homes for this traditional holiday, and I look at the crafts made with food. It doesn’t sit well with me. I didn’t experience hunger, but my father and my husband’s parents were children of WWII (ironically, on the opposite sides). They knew evacuation, being torn from their homes, not knowing where the next meal comes from, and they knew hunger. When I was young, I read a book that was based on a diary of a 10 year old girl Tanya who happened to be in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) when fascists blocked all the roads into the city and bombed food storage facilities in the city. The siege lasted for more than a year, and in the meantime almost a million civillians died of hunger. She described in her diary the situation in the city, burning furniture and books for warmth and slow death of everyone in her family. The last one to die was her mom. Tanya was one of the children air-lifted out, but her body was too far gone, and she didn’t survive. The sad part is that even today every minute someone in the world dies of hunger while we are happily playing in our sensory bins and making rainbows out of fruit loops. I am not saying that I can solve the world hunger, but at least I can teach my daughter that food is precious, and not to be used in crafts. Maybe she will not be as advanced in her fine motor skills and not as creative, but it’s OK with me. I just want her to know that food is a terrible thing to waste.