I am working on some low-effort (large baby bump = need for small effort) learning notebooks that Carter will be able to use over and over for the next few months.  The first one will be based on the movie Cars.  This little guy is crazy about the movie and with Cars 2 coming out at the end of the month, the excitement continues.  What does any great teacher do with excitement and interest?  They turn it into an opportunity for learning!

We’ll be using this Cars Preschool Pack for many of our activities.  I don’t have this one ready for use yet, but once it is, pictures will follow.

I didn’t find any calendar pieces, so I made my own.  The clipart came from “Free Disney Clipart”, so I’m going to assume that it’ll be fine for me to share them with you.  I’d be glad for you to print and use them, but never to sell them or claim them as your own.

Cars Calendar Pieces

Don’t have a Cars-crazy little boy in your house?  Check out all the Preschool Packs here.  There are some fun themes – even one for Princesses.  These look like great, easy-to-assemble activities that will keep Carter learning while I am caring for a new baby in the house.

And here are the blank calendar pieces if you’d like to try your hand at making some to fit your theme.

I found some great planning forms here that I’ll adapt to work for me, but they make work for you just as they are!

The day before we were to leave for NY, my father asked my son, “What are we going to do tomorrow when you wake up?”

Carter’s response: “Well, first I’m going to go to the potty.”

One of the first things you’re taught as a teacher of young children (or you learn the hard way) is that preschool-age children love, thrive on and need predictability.  This is one way of giving them the control that they crave at this age.

The first and easiest way to make your preschooler’s life predictable is through their Daily Schedule.  For those of you who are not fans of schedules, bare with me.  I am not at all suggesting that you do the same thing constantly and totally take the fun out of life.   I am suggesting that you allot the same blocks of time in your day for certain activities.  For example, mornings always occur in the same order.  Days have a flow that is easy to follow.  Meals at home have the same rules and expectations each time we sit down.  Bedtime is always the same.

Wake up
Use the bathroom
Eat breakfast
Watch 2 shows
Get dressed
Play
Have Lunch
Run Errands

Because there are certain times in your day that will always be changing, it helps to have a “What Are We Going To Do Today” conversation over breakfast.  Certainly, this would require not eating breakfast in front of the tv, but at a table.  It takes only 15 minutes of your time, and I promise that it’s worth the effort.  I have a job that requires me to often go several places each day.  With a preschooler in tow, this can be a huge challenge or a big adventure.  Each morning I tell him where we’ll be going after lunch that day.  If I don’t initiate the conversation, he will.  Children like to know your plans for them.  When they do, they are more likely to be cooperative.

Running errands and going into stores can be a challenge all it’s own.  One thing to make this easier on yourself and your child is through a little Proactive Discipline.  Before getting out of the car at a store, talk about how you expect your child to act in a store (and why) and the consequences that will certainly happen if he does not follow those expectations.  This can be as simple as: “When we go into the store I need you to stay close to me so that I know you’re safe.  If you walk away from me, you will need to ride in the shopping cart until we leave.”

When Carter was much younger he went through a (very trying) time of screaming whenever we went into a store.  Though it was difficult for me, no amount of talking or punishment helped his behavior.  My discipline was Reactive rather than Proactive.  He would scream and I would get embarrassed and start with the threats and harsh tones.  However, once I told him that it was not ok for him to scream in a store and doing so would mean that we had to leave the store immediately, the behavior stopped within days.  I tell you this to stress that if you tell your child there is a consequence, go ahead and steel yourself to follow through on that promise at least once.  Once you become predictable and your child fully understand that you say what you mean and you mean what you say, consequences will have to be used less and less often.  They will know there’s no need to test you.  If you back down or “forget” even once, they’ll remember and you’ll be going back to square one.

When your child behaves correctly, thank him and praise him.  Do yourself a favor and never use the “if you…then I’ll…” method for managing your child’s behavior in a store (or anywhere else).  Always strive to teach your child to do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because of what they will get as a result.  Once the reward becomes external, it is very difficult to teach them to internalize it again.  And, it gets expensive!

Each child is different and each child comes with their own set of challenges, but adding a little predictability to their days can go a long way!

I was expecting some direction on how to keep these children challenged, but what I read was something that I found surprising.  Their perspective is that, because these children naturally excel at academics, there really is no need to focus on them.  They will be drawn to learning without any push from me.  What is worthwhile to teach them is: good character.  Because they’re likely to outsmart you sooner than you’d hope, parents of older gifted children agree that they wish they’d spent more time developing their child’s character at a young age.

Character development?!?!  Again, my mind reels and wonders, “WHAT DO I DO WITH THAT?” where a three-year old is concerned.  Self-control, discipline, respect, kindness, love, caring, compassion, responsibility, cooperation and dependability all come to mind.  Those are all big, heavy words – even for me at times.  They are all things that I want for my child – and more.  I know that if I expect him to learn them, then I must strive to be those things and openly communicate about them as well.

One thing I realize is that character development will certainly not be fully taught within the bubble of our home.  Yes, you can read it in a book.  Yes, you can have a great conversation about them.  However, the true test of character comes through social interaction and relational challenges.  I’ll definitely need to be getting my (fairly big now) pregnant self out of this house a bit more.

How do you teach morals and good character to your child?

I woke yesterday to find Carter at the couch making words.

First, Easter week happened.  I work for my church and in the church world Easter is kind of a big deal.

Then, Carter went through a terrible bout with salmonella poisoning.  It began a few days before Easter and persisted and persisted and persisted.  During the week he was showing symptoms, we had NO idea what was wrong with him.  It was pretty pitiful and the kind of thing that drives a mother crazy.

Here he is trying to have fun on Easter, but ended up pooped in his Daddy’s arms.

Thankfully, he got better just a few days before we were scheduled to leave for NYC to visit my brothers.  As far as Carter is concerned, NYC = Subway trains.  He wants to ride them every chance he gets and he makes it his job to learn all the trains that we need to take and the stops where we need to get off and transfer.  He’s quite the conductor.  Here are a few images from our time in the Big Apple.

Tickle Time!

Carter Bug at the Staten Island Children's Museum

Preschool Art at Rockefellar Park on the Hudson

There are some great parks in NYC!

On the "Shakey Bridge" with Uncle J.

Life is good when you're 3.

Admiring the fountains at The Met before going inside.

Central Park

Enjoying an amazing view from a highrise in Brooklyn.

During all this time away from our daily “school” routine I came to some tough conclusions.  The first is that I’m totally missing what Carter is ready for with the activities I’m planning for him.  I realize that this may not come across as a problem to some of you, but it is one in my eyes.  If I am planning activities for my son to learn letter sounds and match uppercase and lowercase and the like when he is ready to read books and write, then I am wasting both our time.  If I am having him count items to 10, when he can easily count from 1-100, identify those numbers and write them I am totally missing the mark.  The larger problem is that the things I am teaching him now have been the things I have been teaching him since before he was 2 because those are the things I taught my students in PreK. It’s my comfort zone, so to speak.  Teaching a child who is reading and teaching a child anything past pre-math skills is a little beyond my area of expertise.  I can now see that keeping a bright child challenged is just as difficult as teaching an at-risk child to recognize their name and learn academic basics.

I’m going through a bit of a redo myself.

I have started to research some more things to challenge Carter from a language standpoint.  I read over this Montessori Language Scope and Sequence to find some jumping off points.  I’ve purchased some early readers: Miss Rhonda’s Readers and Bob’s Books.  I have purchased the moveable alphabet and will be assembling it today.  I am swinging by my library to pick up The Read Aloud Handbook and Reading Magic to take our read aloud time to the next level.

I have not yet started my research on math and beyond.

I say all this to say that I’m pausing to reevaluate and the site may take on a different direction, since it is just documentation of our learning journey.

If you have any suggestions for resources, I would greatly appreciate shared links, books titles and materials that will spur us forward.  I’ll showcase anything I get in a new post to make it easier for others to benefit as well.

Some days are just exceptionally wonderful.  They begin with your child sleeping until 10:00 then waking up and proclaiming, “I want to make blueberry muffins for breakfast.”  So, we printed our recipe, tossed out some ingredients and dove right in.  I’m sure you don’t want need me to say how easy and healthful it is to make your own muffins and how many bad, bad things are in box muffin mix.  I mean, you may as well have a candy bar for breakfast.  Moving on.

Here’s the original recipe.  Here’s our fun with it:

We started with the part where Carter hides in his room with the door closed while I process the oatmeal into a fine meal.  He can’t. stand. the sound of the food processor.  Once the unpleasantness is over, he pops right back in.

Carter helps measure out and mix together the dry ingredients: oats, 2 flours, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and brown sugar.

Then the wet ingredients are mixed in a seperate bowl: buttermilk, canola oil, eggs and lemon zest.  Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and then stir, stir, stir the wet stuff in.

Last comes the much anticipated blueberries.  This recipe came with a great little trick: toss the frozen blueberries with some flour to keep them from coloring the batter all blue.  It worked like a charm.

Pour them in your own Lightning McQueen baking cups and sprinkle a little sugar over the top.  Wait 20 minutes and then you get to do this:

Yu-um-y.  They are pretty fantastic.  Because of the ultra-hearty ingredients, 2 of these will do you for about 4 hours.  Seriously.

Enjoy and thanks for your comments!

I hit the jackpot with this first resource: the Garden Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations.  There were so many great activites included.  These are my favorite.

Pre-Writing cards for tracing.  There are some easy ones and some more difficult ones.  Laminate these first for repeat use.

Sequencing cards – How a Seed Grows

Memory game with rhyming words.  Hint: some of the pictures are tough.  Write them down for yourself and go over all the names of the pictures with your child before you play.

A nice, simple introduction to the parts of a plant in puzzle format.

Sorting flowers and vegetables.  I haven’t cut these apart yet.  My only gripe with these is that they are TINY, but hey – they’re free!

Practicing beginning sounds.  I used clothespins for Carter to clip on the cards.  He calls this the “Clips Game”.  Below is a video that I captured while he was cleaning the game up.  He explains how to play it in his own words.

The next three activities are from Montessori for Everyone.  Once again, I LOVE, LOVE their gorgeous, real photos.

Sorting, Plants and Food.  Once Carter got the hang of sorting into two groups, we talked about which food was made from which plant and he paired them up.

The Life Cycle of a Pumpkin.  We haven’t done this one yet (you can see it’s not cut apart), but we’ll work on putting them in order, then we’ll try matching the words to the pictures as well.

Matching – Whole and Half Fruits.  Carter had a lot of fun with this one!

These last 3 are from KidsSoup, a (very cheap) subscription site for activities grouped by theme.  These were both from the Plants Unit.

Flower mini-book.  This one is simple enough for Carter to read on his own and has some great information about the parts of flowers and how they grow.

Word Families Game.  There’s a picture in the center of each flower.  Put the leaves with its correct word family.

Cutting practice.  I made a couple copies of these.

The “mouth of concentration” says it all – this is not as easy as it looks for a 3 year-old.

Enjoy and thanks for your comments!

The characteristics that were mentioned in this article are ones that I would love for my child to possess:  following his curiosity, knowing the joy of discovering things on his own, questioning the world around him, being self-motivated, learning on his own terms.

“…most highly creative achievers don’t begin with brilliant ideas, they discover them.”

Be encouraged.  Just know that the efforts you put forth to teach your child means so much more that you or I could ever know.  It is worth it all.

There are so many great books and authors on the list for this month and topic (descriptions not mine).  Enjoy!

The Enormous Potato by Aubrey Davis

Davis uses a potato instead of the traditional turnip in this retelling of a familiar folktale. When the eye of a potato grows into the biggest potato in the world, a farmer must call for reinforcements to pull the vegetable out of the ground. Help comes in the form of the farmer’s wife, daughter, dog, and cat, and finally a mouse, who adds just enough extra muscle to get the job done. The potato, when it finally appears, is huge, taking up most of a double-page spread and almost burying the folks who pulled it out. It’s big enough to feed all the people of the town, who completely devour it.

Flower Garden by Eve Bunting

A comforting, richly illustrated story about a birthday surprise. An urban African-American girl and her father buy plants, potting soil, and a window box at the supermarket, ride the bus to their apartment, and put together a colorful gift for the child’s mother. Rhyming verse carries the brief story, while wonderful, warm, full-color illustrations present scenes from novel angles, and depict a loving family with a sense of intimacy, sincerity, and joy.

Jack and the Beanstalk by Steven Kellogg

Kellogg has streamlined Joseph Jacobs’s version of the classic story, keeping much of its vigorous language. In the illustrations he has provided a story within a story. On the front endpapers, the ogre steals the gold, harp, and hen from pirates as a wizard floating by in a hot-air balloon watches; this has the effect of enlightening readers about some of the moral ambiguities of the story. The wizard is shown writing down the actual events that follow and provides Jack with the beans that set them all in motion. Kellogg’s riotous, swirling pen is perfect for the energy of the tale; this is not the neat, contained English countryside of some previous editions. The ogre is toothy, warty, and a rather putrid yellow-green. His wife breaks the mold as well; she is tall and slim, fond of lipstick, and adorned in a necklace of skeletal shrunken heads. Colored inks, watercolors and acrylics throughout are similar in palette to Kellogg’s recent work–lots of orange, yellow, and green–at times bordering on the garish. There are many humorous touches to delight children, who will also be happy to see Pinkerton accompanying the princess’s entourage. Jack himself is irresistible.

Jack’s Garden by Henry Cole

A great way to show how the parts of nature connect and grow together… Cole is an elementary-school science teacher, and his nature drawings in colored pencil on colored paper make for joyful learning, both precise and lovely.

*This free online resource is based on this book.  It contains a lot of great activities and story sequencing cards for you to print.

Mrs. Spitzer’s Garden by Edith Pattou

Mrs. Spitzer is a wise teacher who knows many things. She knows about gardens. She knows about children. She knows how similar they are. And how they will flourish if tended lovingly.

One Bean by Anne Rockwell

What do you get when you take one bean and add a handful of soil and a splash of water? With patience and a bit of sunshine you get a full-grown bean plant that makes beautiful flowers and grows a whole new crop of beans. Packed with facts and featuring activities kids can do themselves, this book is perfect for blossoming botanists and growing gardeners alike.

Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert

Mother and child plant bulbs in fall, order seeds from catalogs in winter, eagerly anticipate the first shoots of spring, select seedlings in summer, “and watch the rainbow grow,” reveling in the opulence of color. The power of this book lies in the glowing brilliance and bold abstraction of the double-page collages.

Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! by Nancy E Wallace

Buddy Bear gets a package from Grandpa that contains five bags of different activities with seeds. From them, he learns how seeds grow, plants some, glues down and labels some others in a collection, decorates a picture frame with beans, and feeds the birds. His collection grows through the week as he saves seeds from various foods that he eats. The artwork consists of cut-paper collages with shadowing and life-sized photos of real seeds that look as though they can be picked right off the pages.

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle

This picture book admirably conveys the miracle of a seed. Flower pods burst and dispatch their seeds on the wind; the air-borne seeds are subject to myriad disasters; and the ones that make it through the perils of the seasons to become mature flowering plants are still susceptible to being picked, trod upon and otherwise damaged. But nature allows for survivors, and so the tiny seed grows into a giant flower, releasing its seeds and continuing the cycle

Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens

Easily recognizable as a trickster tale, this features appealing, contemporary cousins of Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear. Here, Bear and Hare are involved in a gardening partnership, with industrious, clever Hare reaping all the vegetable profits. As usual, Stevens’ animal characters, bold and colorful, are delightful. Hare, decked out in a lively gardening shirt and surrounded by mischievous offspring, is the image of determination. It’s Bear, however, who wins the personality prize: he snoozes away each planting season squashed in his favorite chair, changing positions with each flip of the page. It’s all wonderful fun, and the book opens, fittingly, from top to bottom instead of from side to side, making it perfect for story-time sharing.

This month I tried my first sensory tub.  It’s meant to be like a mini garden for Carter to explore.

Our tub contains:  a variety of dried beans (large and small limas, black eyed peas, black beans), sunflower seeds, smooth stones, mini terra cotta pots, plastic flowers and greenery and a butterfly.  I added tongs and a small rake for him to “cultivate” his garden.  

It’s been a big hit so far.  He has to show his garden to everyone who visits.

I also made sound eggs for Carter to match up.  Inside the eggs are: kosher salt, mini beads, pony beads, large buttons and google eyes.  He spreads them out on the table, locates matches by shaking the eggs and puts them back into the carton after the matches are found.

Enjoy and thank you for your comments!