Marshmallow Experiment

I think just about everyone heard of the famous Marshmallow Experiment and the theory of delayed gratification. I admit that I would have probably failed this experiment – I don’t think that I have very good self-control. My husband, on the other hand, can be amazing in his ability to wait, to focus and to see the task through. Anna’s birthday party and the ridiculous amount of presents she collected gave my husband an idea – he suggested to me that Anna should open them slowly – one or two a day. I laughed in his face and said, Yeah right. Hey, I wanted to rip into all those brightly wrapped boxes myself and to see what kind of toys she got! To my huge surprise Anna relatively easily agreed to this approach… as long as she could open the first two right away. It’s been a week after the party and unwrapping is still in progress with Anna hugely enjoying each present and actually having time to play and explore them. There were days when she didn’t open any of her presents – she was busy enough with the ones she already had. Thinking about her behavior, I realized that she always displayed an unusually high ability to wait for something (I am not talking about waiting to speak, however :)). I totally credit my husband for this trait of her character – both for the genes that he shared with her and also for character development that started in infancy. He spent first 2.5 years of Anna’s life as a full time stay-at-home father, and she started 2 mornings of preschool after that. He still takes care of her more than 50% of the time, and his “stamp” on our daughter is extremely obvious to everyone who knows our family. He is a very involved and a very loving father, but he is also extremely consistent in enforcing rules and dishing out much needed discipline. And one of the rules always was patience. We had some disagreements over years when he told me that I am too quick to accommodate every whim of our daughter while I felt often that he is too strict. I see now that he has always been very fair in every interaction with her. Patience is based on trust – on the ability of the child to know that whatever has been promised to her will be delivered, and he has never betrayed her trust. I am proud of my husband for being such a great dad and a good role model for our daughter.

Here is an interesting (but long!) article about Marshmallow experiment – the secret of self-control. And here is a question: How do you encourage patience and self-control in children?

What My Child Is Reading – October 30, 2010

We had a great reading week. Since I usually read Anna two books before bed, I tried to have them go together, so she could get more of “a story time” experience. Our geography topic was Australia, and we read several good books about Australian animals. And this brings us to Anna’s picks of the week:

A Kangaroo’s World by Catherine Arnold was recommended by Ticia from Adventures in Mommydom. I was a bit skeptical looking at the cover and illustrations in the book, but I was wrong. Anna really liked the book, and both of us were fascinated with its facts. I have never known that baby kangaroos are born incredibly tiny and spend the first 6 months inside the pouch. The book also gave basic facts about kangaroos’ diet and their natural enemies.

Both of us also enjoyed I Like Your Buttons by Sarah Lamstein. I found this from this list. It’s a nice story where a sincere compliment of a girl to her teacher sets off a chain reaction of positive events and eventually comes back to her. Anna was working out the story in her head for several days to figure out how the beginning and the end of the story belong together. I thought that the book teaches the message of random acts of kindness without being overly didactic about it.

Since we just had a beautiful full moon, we read Possum’s Harvest Moon by Anne Hunter. It’s a very nice seasonal book and also pretty good for hibernation topic in science. Possum wants to have the last Soiree before long winter sets in, but at first his animal and insect friends are too busy to accept the invitation. Eventually they change their mind and come to say “goodbye” to summer. It’s a nice calming story, and Anna was fascinated to learn that all these animals are going to sleep through winter (well, we didn’t discuss the fact that some of the insects will die instead). I was also surprised when she launched into discussion about the animals who don’t sleep through winter and was able to name quite a few of those. 

I like to discover unfamiliar books by familiar authors. Practically everyone knows Jane Yolen from How Do Dinosaurs… series, but Baby Bear’s Chairs is just as good. It rhymes well, and it has subtle humor for adults and for children in it. It was Anna’s favorite for independent reading in bed this week together with the first book I reviewed. I found her sleeping on these two books every evening when I came to check on her.

What are your children reading? Link up and share – linky is open all week. And a friendly reminder – you can earn an extra entry for my CSN stores giveaway if you are interested, but you need to add it yourself.

Week in Review – October 29, 2010

Anna is 4 years old 

It was a week that started with Anna’s birthday party. She had a blast and absolutely enjoyed every minute of it. Then next day we had the biggest meltdown in recorded history over nothing. I guess all the excitement finally caught up with her. Luckily, crankiness blew over, and she is back to being her mellow self again. Anna was very busy with her presents to have any desire for structured activities, so we spent time playing inside and outside. Her theme in school was letter C and Halloween. As can be expected, she did a lot of cute crafts there, so we did almost nothing at all for Halloween at home this year (except reading books, of course).

Another exciting thing that happened this week is that we flipped Anna’s IKEA bed, and now she sleeps in the bunk upstairs. She is very excited about it and her sleeping habits didn’t change at all. She has everything she needs if she wakes up in the middle of the night – a light within reach and a water bottle. She doesn’t have a habit of roaming the house in the night, so she is nice and cozy in this new setup, and we finally have more space in her room!

One of Anna’s many presents was Playdoh Cake Making Station. I didn’t see it in action yet, since Anna opened it with her papa, but apparently she really enjoyed making all kinds of sweet creations. My husband said that he would have designed this set differently, but apparently it was good enough for a 4 year old user :) We didn’t have other arts or crafts this week except Australian animals game for geography. Anna still colors more animals on her Australian map every night.

Share your weeks in review with Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.

StArt Project That Didn’t Happen

As I was picking Anna up from school today, I had a plan in mind – we will take advantage of the last day of the good weather (it’s supposed to rain for the next few days), go to the park, pick some leaves, read Leaf Man by Louis Ehlert and make some leaf art, so I can write about it on my blog on Thursday. Anna, however, was a lot more interested in swinging, "flying to Australia” on a seesaw, pretending to hunt panthers and wolfs and collecting “wood for winter”. Then when we finally got home (with one leaf), she insisted on taking her trike for a leaf-collecting ride around the block). It was a ride of never ending whys and what-ifs as she inspected Halloween decorations of our neighbors. All the while I was trying to hurry her along thinking about the project that I wanted to do with her and knowing at the same time that making anything with a cranky child in the end of the day is a sure recipe for disaster. And then I asked myself – why am I stressing over this? Who cares if we make this leaf project today, tomorrow or not at all? Am I so wrapped up in the blog world that I will interrupt her enjoyment of the beautiful late afternoon just so I can take some pictures for my blog? At least I was able to catch myself and watch my daughter do what children do best – play with no agenda, no goal, no guidance. And that made our day special and memorable a lot more than any project could have.

Question: Do you feel sometimes that you make specific plans just so you can blog about this activity? I admit that I’ve been guilty as charged. I am still linking this post to StArt because I am interested to see what other people think about this problem.

Geography Track – Australian Animals

I decided to extend our country studies for more than one week going forward after some casual talk with Anna about our previous country visits. It transpired that they fade into her memory a little too quickly replaced by the next activity. So I am doing an experiment with Australia where we will spend more time in one country. This week is about animals. We read several good books already – both fiction and non-fiction. We talked about different Australian animals, what they eat and how they live. Then I gave Anna this page of animals (I put it together from Internet resources) and told her to find one animal that doesn’t belong. She promptly said, Dingo, because he has a word over him. I said, Eh, try again. She said, Still dingo, because he is a meat eater. D’oh – I was going for an elephant :). We then rolled a dice and picked that certain number of animals to place on the map of Australia. Anna insisted that her map will have an elephant – I guess the question on why elephants don’t naturally live in Australia will have to go to our question box. Anna was not at all interested in the map itself this time, but was happily cutting her animals and even expressed an interest in coloring them next. Apparently, her Australia has red koalas and blue emus :)

We will continue learning about Australian animals this week. Next week we will learn a bit about aborigines and their art. In the meantime – perhaps someone can recommend good movies (documentary or non-scary fiction) about Australia that would be interesting to preschoolers? And share your adventures in time and space with History/Geography exchange at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

Tiny Talk Tuesday

• While playing “a guessing game”: I am thinking of something that is round, bounces on the ground and starts with letter B.
• Me: Ball!
• Anna: Nope
• Me: Baseball? Basketball? Bouncing ball?
• Anna: Nope
• Me: OK, I give up. What is it?
• Anna: A baby brother!

During a giant meltdown over dinner choices and through sobs: I will NOT eat soup! I vote “No” on soup! And by the way - my sobs are playing baseball in my head hitting my skull. It can’t be healthy, because skull protects my brain!
Out of the blue: You are my best mommy in the world, and my babushka is the greatest grandma in the world, because you guys spoil me most.
Join Tiny Talk Tuesday at Not Before 7. And, by the way, we are featured on Tiny Talk Tuesday today, so have a look :)

CSN Stores Giveaway - $100

I am very pleased to work with CSN Stores again. Their variety of stores and products is amazing from bar stools to toys and games. I’ve bought products before for myself and friends, and I was happy with delivery speed and customer service.
I am offering a $100 giveaway to CSN Stores to my readers through generosity of CSN Stores. Here are the rules:
MANDATORY ENTRY:
Tell me how you would spend your $100 at CSN Stores
EXTRA ENTRIES:
* Become a follower of my blog or comment if you already are  (1 entry)
* Become a fan of CSN on Facebook (1 entry)
* If you participated in the last What My Child Is Reading linky, give yourself one entry
* Participate in the next two What My Child Is Reading linkies, and earn another entry for each (you have to add them to a giveaway post).
Giveaway is limited to US and Canada and will close on Monday, Nov 8.

Dinosaur Dentistry (and Math)

Sometimes Anna asks us questions that we don’t know how to answer or need time to prepare the answer. So last week I introduced “A Question Box”. It’s nothing fancy – I cut the hole in the small box that was floating around and told Anna that we will be putting this kind of questions into the box, so we can investigate them “when we have time”. The very first question that went to the box was How big were T-Rex teeth?

We have visited Museum of Natural History in New York in the summer, but interestingly Anna had very vague memory of it. So we read My Visit to the Dinosaurs by Aliki (we own this book), and looked at the pictures from New York. Anna was very fascinated to see the pictures of herself touching dinosaur teeth and posing next to the skeletons of dinosaurs. That visit came back to her at least to some degree. Then we did online research by typing her question into Google and it came back with the answer – T-Rex teeth were up to 8 inches including root (some other sources say 9 inches). Anna measured 8 inches on paper and I helped her draw a line across. Then she drew teeth of that size and drew her own tooth for comparison. We then talked briefly about what “drawing true to  size” means in comparison to drawing to scale, because she keeps pointing out that continents cannot possibly as small as they appear on her globe. She cut her tooth and stuck it into her mouth to see if it was true to scale (it ended up to be too big). I also had an idea to see how many of her teeth fit into one T-Rex tooth, but at that point she was already off to another idea – starting a science journal. She took one of her notebooks and wrote a note in it T-Rex teeth 8 inches long (I provided her with spelling). She didn’t want to draw a picture – she said that her science journal will only have notes. I am excited that suddenly she is more interested in keeping a journal – all our previous attempts led nowhere.

I am linking this post to Science Sunday hosted by Adventures in Mommydom and Math Links hosted by Joyful Learner.

Race to Nowhere

Last Sunday my friend and I went to see Race to Nowhere. I wanted to see this movie since it is created by a SF Bay Area film makers and raises the problem that seem more typical for our area than failing schools - the problem of overwhelmed and stressed kids trying to succeed in competitive environments where stakes seem to be raised every day. It’s about parents pushing their kids because everyone else seem to be pushing too. It’s about childhood without any downtime, about children who don’t have time to chill out or play because they are running around from soccer practice to piano lessons and then come home and spend hours on homework. It’s about teachers who cannot teach the way they want, because their success is measured not in how engaged their students are but in the scores of standardized tests. And the interesting part is that private schools are affected even more with this drive to success than public schools. Even though I was not in full agreement with all the points of the movie, it’s definitely worth checking out if it plays somewhere near you.

It made me think of how we view “success” in our own family. Both me and my husband are educated professionals, and we definitely want quality education for our daughter. But we also want her to learn that she doesn’t have to be the best in everything she does and she doesn’t have to be constantly busy. Right now we deliberately avoid extracurricular activities because we want to have the time to spend together as a family. I am sure that eventually she will start doing something, but I just don’t want her to be on this merry-go-round of endless classes  and to spend hours in the car being shuttled from one activity to another. I am hoping to raise a healthy, kind, respectful and intelligent child who has time to pursue her own interests and to try different things without feeling a pressure to perform.

Question: Do you feel that your kids, especially older kids, are overloaded with all their obligations? How do you define success in your family?

What My Child Is Reading – October 23, 2010

We read a lot of good books this week. Anna was mostly interested in fact-based books – probably her reaction to too many Halloween books. It was definitely Lois Ehlert week in the house – two of the three books are making to the list of Anna’s favorites.

Growing Vegetable Soup was requested every night this week, which is somewhat surprising since Anna could easily read it on her own. But she had a lot of questions about vegetables – why some of them are planted as sprouts and some of them are planted as seeds, why some of them need stakes, why some of the stalks seem to bend while others are straight. I definitely feel that we need to have a vegetable garden of our own next year, so she can observe all this for real. She was a lot less interested in the last part of actually making vegetable soup – sadly, she is not a fan of eating vegetables.

Lots of Spots is a very recent book by Lois Ehlert – we picked it on the “new books” shelf of the library. While I really enjoyed the illustrations (very colorful collages that just ask to be made into a StArt project), I didn’t care much for the story because of its “SAT words” and forced rhymes. I was also somewhat confused with the flow of the book that started talking about camouflage and then suddenly switched into birds and mammals.  Anna, however, really enjoyed the book and read it many times – both with us and on her own.

The Pigs Picnic by Keiko Kazca is a story that will make both adults and kids laugh. Mr Pig is eager to impress Ms Pig, and his animal friends are very willing to help. The illustrations are very detailed, and Anna was fascinated by one of them where a zebra span out of his stripes and gave them to Mr Pig. Of course, as expected, Mr Pig only succeeds when he learns to be who he really is. The book made it to Anna’s bed several nights, so it was obviously very comforting to her.

I stumbled on Usborne Young Puzzle Book series accidentally and decided to try one out from the library. I wasn’t sure about it even when I looked through Puzzle Ocean, since my daughter is not really interested in look-and-find books at the moment, but she was quite interested in this book since it also came with the story line. It’s not a book to sit and read in one sitting. We are still going through it, but I thought I will bring this series to the attention of my readers. It’s definitely worth a try.

My “honorary mention” goes to Out of the Ocean by Debra Frasier. Anna enjoyed the book as well, but she was focusing on tangible treasures that were found by the girl telling this story. She now keeps asking me when we can go “treasure hunting” at the beach. I almost wish the author didn’t include abandoned toys as possible beach finds. The main message of the book is that nature can give you anything you want if you know where to look, and the illustrations (combination of cut paper collages and photos) are beautiful.

What are your children reading this week? Link up and share – linky is open all week. My apologies to the participants of the last week whose blogs I didn’t get to visit – life has been very hectic here this week.

Week in Review – Oct 22, 2010

It was a very special week, since Anna turned 4 on Tuesday. I worked from home, so I could enjoy seeing Anna blowing the candles on her cake and opening her presents. Both the cake and the birthday crown were made by her papa who adores his big girl just as much as he did when she was a baby. Of course she enjoyed her presents from family, especially this dollhouse from her German grandparents. According to her, it was “the biggest present in the world”. It certainly arrived in the giant box. We gave her a family of dolls for the dollhouse, and they all moved in nicely. Apparently this dollhouse represents Little House in the Big Woods, since “stacking food for winter” already began.

Math. We didn’t do any formal math this week, but plenty of playing games and baking. Papa and Anna baked cupcakes for her playmates, and there was measuring and counting the needed quantities. Anna was also in charge of reading the recipe and identifying the right spoons and cups needed for mixing the ingredients. She also had to count and add the kids who will come on Saturday to her birthday party.

Arts, Crafts, Motor Skills. It was not particular crafty week considering that Anna had so many new toys to play with, but we did a fun StArt project and she also wrote her first letter to grandparents. It said simply I wot dis (I want this). She attached the page from Fisher Price catalog to it. Uh-oh, my daughter discovered the joy of toy catalogs, I’d better make sure they don’t get into her hands too often.

Outside. It was a nice week of play for Anna. The weather is expected to turn for the worse in the end of the week, so we were trying to take advantage of the sunny afternoons and visited a couple of new parks. Mostly Anna loves to swing. She became a lot braver on the swing and finally learned to keep herself moving by pumping her legs. She also loves to collect things – we always have to negotiate just how many acorns or stones she can bring back.

I am linking this post to Preschool Corner at Homeschool Creations.

Children Around the World

Anna first read Children Around the World by Donata Montanari when she was visiting grandparents. I thought that the book sounded interesting, so I got it from the library here too. Each spread has a picture of a child from a certain place and a little information about the child’s everyday life told in the first person. It was interesting to have spreads from less common locations, such as Bolivia and Tanzania.

Since Anna liked to decorate paper dolls last week, I decided to link geography and art together and make a couple more paper dolls that would be dressed like children in this book. She chose a Tanzanian girl and an American boy. Both kids have dark skin in the book, but Anna was not interested in painting their skin brown. She really enjoyed “making clothes” – I drew outlines on the paper and felt and she cut it out. She said that these two are parents of “a child in a colorful coat” that she had made last week and has a lot of fun playing with her international family:

I am linking this post to StArt hosted by A Mommy’s Adventures.

Exploring the Globe

One of the presents that Anna got for her birthday was this VTech Globe. In fact, it was a present from our friends from her last birthday, but at that time we deemed that she was not ready for it. One disappointing part about this particular toy is that it’s rather difficult for a young child to control the plane with a remote control and at the same time the amount of information provided is limited. Forget countries – all the landmarks are given on the continent level. I also really don’t like that the globe doesn’t rotate vertically, so it’s not possible to see Antarctica unless you flip the whole thing over, and it’s next to impossible to see Australia. I was also upset not to see any Russian landmarks, but considering that the whole North America only got Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls I shouldn’t be complaining much.

Despite these complaints, Anna is very interested in her new “talking toy”. So far she is exploring it in “free flight” mode – it has other “quiz” modes where she is supposed to navigate the plane to a certain landmark, animal, etc. Considering how hard it is to navigate the plane precisely, I don’t see it happening any time soon, but I think we will plan some geography studies to learn more about some of the landmarks on the globe. Ishtar Gate, anyone?

Come and share your adventures in time and space at Geography/History exchange hosted by Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

Happy Birthday, My 4 Year Old

                                 

I can’t believe that four years passed so quickly. It seems that only yesterday we brought home a tiny sleepy bundle, and now we have a healthy, happy, funny, and bright child that is a joy of our lives. Yesterday we got together for little mini-interview. I used pretty much the same question as Elise from Inspiration Surrounds, Creativity Abounds, but we didn’t get nearly that far.

• What are your favorite things to do?
• I want to have my dinner and my treat right now!
• Sure, but what do you like to do except eating treats?
• Hmm… drawing, playing… I want to play that brown box game we played yesterday (Yatzee) – I scored so many goals with it.
• What makes you happy?
• Writing!
• Really? Writing makes you happy?
• Yes! See, I used to not know how to write, and now I can write.
• What makes you sad?
• Let’s not talk about sad things, mama…. Having to nap in school.
• What is your favorite color?
• Blue
• What is your favorite toy?
• Kitty
• What is your favorite book?
• All the books in the world
• What is your favorite food?
• IKEA chocolate
• Who do you want to be when you grow up?
• There are so many things… I want to be everything… But I also want to be me. Can I just be me?
• Of course. It’s the most important thing. I want you to be you and to do what you love.
• I love books and I love to write. Maybe I will be a writer. I will write books for libraries, and I will also sell some too. And I will want people in all countries to read them. Maybe I will write a new Little House in the Big Woods and new Little House on the Prairie.