What had originally been an icy art project, unexpectedly turned into a fascinating science investigation.
A few weeks ago we filled up my baking tins with water that we coloured with powder paint and dropped all manner of things into them. Shells, berries, leaves, sequins, buttons and even a stone were placed inside to make ornaments for our tree. The weather unfortunately instantly became warmer, so we had to wait some time before they were ready to hang. Even then, only the top layer of ice had frozen and within an hour of hanging them on the tree they had melted. We also discovered that if you colour water with powder paint it separates once it begins to freeze, so most of the ornaments were not the lovely colour we had hoped for.
The girls have been peeking outside every morning to check if there is any ice. This week they were rewarded with below freezing temperatures. The ice ornaments were finally ready! We hung them on the tree. The sun was shining and the tree stands in the sun until mid afternoon. I wasn’t sure how long they would stay this time as ‘plop’ one fell down from the tree.
Let’s put it by the door. That’s in the shade – it might make a nice present for Father Christmas.
A present for Santa
As we went inside I asked the girls to watch the ornaments from the window.
They are melting.
How do you know?
They’re wet and they’re dripping down.
What do you think will happen as they melt?
I don’t think it will fall off the string because the string is attached. It will just melt and the floor will be wet.
When we went out later there were more interesting observations
Look this one has holes in it. It might break not melt.
Can I touch one?
Yes sure.
It’s cold and wet.
Within an hour or so the tree was in the shade and the temperature was beginning to drop. We noticed that the drips were starting to turn into little icicles.
The girls thought this was really cool and the next day even more so when we saw large icicles had formed.
They rushed outside to feel them, touching them gently so that they didn’t break off.
A Winter Pirate Treasure Hunt
The weather was so cold that during the late afternoon I sneaked into the garden with a jug of water and some pirate coins. I put the coins in various containers and poured a little water on the top.
In the morning I invited the girls on a pirate treasure hunt. First they needed to make a map. I had some coffee stained and singed paper that in true Blue Peter fashion I had prepared earlier.
Next they needed their pirate toolkit:
A hammer
A spoon
A pot of pirate sea salt
Ready Mummy
Out they went and quickly found coins. The hammers were their first choice. They weren’t very successful so then they tried the salt. They found that if they used the spoons and the salt they could gradually get down to the coin and hook it out.
Got it!
This could take ages, if we got a jug of hot water it might be quicker.
The ice is still there you just can’t see it.
Drop it in the water
We were talking about the sea salt later in the day.
How do the pirates get salt from the sea?
Good question. The salt is in the water so how do you think they could get it out?
I don’t know.
Shall we try it?
Yes.
Little Scientists
What do we need to do to make the salt disappear into the water?
We need to dissolve it
How? Do you remember how we made jelly dissolve or the sugar water we make for the hummingbirds?
We put hot water on it. Let’s be scientists and do an experiment.
The girls helped to stir the mixture until all the salt had dissolved. We poured the mixture into a pan and put it on the stove.
What happens to water when it gets cold?
It turns to ice
What about when it gets hot?
I don’t know.
Watch. What can you see.
steam
If I put this spoon over the steam what can you see on the spoon.
It’s wet – water.
Yes the water is turning to steam. Now look what’s happening in the pan. What do you think the white stuff is?
I don’t know. Is it steam.
No. The water has gone now so what is left?
salt.
We had another idea for an experiment. If we put the salt back in water and then left it outside would it freeze?
As an outsider ‘Thanksgiving’ is a bit of a mystery. My basic understanding is that is a time to say thank you, get together with family and eat a big turkey meal and is associated with harvest festival.
However, as a young child you might be forgiven for believing that it is a celebration of turkeys. Whilst browsing Pinterest a few weeks ago, I was overwhelmed by the amount of turkey crafts. There were a few posts about ‘trees of thanks’ but every other Thanksgiving activity included turkeys. I asked my 9-year-old
You’ve learned about Thanksgiving at school. What do turkeys have to do with Thanksgiving?
I have no idea.
Did they eat turkey at the first Thanksgiving?
I think so.
I know that turkey is eaten at Thanksgiving but then we eat turkey at Christmas and we would think it a little weird if everyone started making turkey crafts for Christmas.
I did a bit if searching on the internet. The origins of Thanksgiving come from the arrival of the pilgrim fathers to America from Plymouth, England. The journey across the ocean on the Mayflower was dangerous and many lives were lost. Coinciding with the European Harvest Festival the pilgrims decided to hold a feast to thank God for their safe arrival and invited the native Americans to join them. It is suggested that 4 turkeys (a native American bird) were killed for the feast (though it is likely they ate many other local fowl, game and seafood too). The turkey came to be known as a symbol of affluence (even in Victorian times only the very richest Europeans could afford to eat turkey at Christmas) . I assume therefore, that the turkey at thanksgiving symbolises a way expressing thanks for prosperity.
I was interested to find out if my-5-year old knew what Thanksgiving was.
I know what it is. It’s when we give lots of stuff.
She remembers her friend across the road bringing her pretzels last year.
Why do we give stuff?
To say Thank You
I wondered if she knew anything about the first Thanksgiving. I told them about the first settlers here from Europe.
How do you think they got here?
On a boat.
I think it would make a lot of sense to help their understanding of Thanksgiving if they could understand how difficult it is to travel on a boat without an engine for thousands of miles across the ocean. I looked for a book from the Library to help explain. None of them seemed quite right until we found this one, a simple description of the pilgrims journey from the point of view of the children.
I decided to take the idea to a free build play session where we began by reading the book.
The children were very interested in the fact that the pilgrims could only eat certain foods on the boat like hard biscuits.
“But I like hard biscuits” said one child.
“Yes but not if you ate them all the time.”
” How did they manage the journey without getting scurvy?” asked another.
“A good question, many of them didn’t”
We brainstormed some of the reasons the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving
A parent had donated large cardboard boxes for us to make a replica of the Mayflower. Fourteen children worked collaboratively to build the boat. They added a mast and sail, lifeboats, steering, roof, a plank and loaded the boat up with food from the play kitchen.
It has been left up for the children to continue to play with and develop their own stories.
I think that makes more sense than making a turkey out of a pine cone.
I used to love frosty days when I was a kid because we could play on the way to school pretending to ice skate or breathe like a dragon. The same sense of wonder came over my girls when they looked out on a clear frosty morning. They dressed quickly and rushed outside to see if they could find ice . They found ice on top of the water table and in containers that we have on the deck.
They soon learned that ice is very cold!
Later in the morning the girls put on their gloves to go out on an ice hunt.
Look there is water and a leaf is floating. The ice has edges, I think there is water underneath.
I removed the lid from the water table. The girls were very excited to find ice inside there too. We added the penguins play set and a few whales.
We made a slide for the penguins with some of the broken ice.
When we got to the front of the house we found a small patch of frost.
Why is it frosty here and not anywhere else?
Because the sun made it melt.
So, why didn’t this bit melt?
It was in the shade.
We decided to leave the lid off the water table to see if we could get even more ice the next day. When they woke up the next day the girls were desperate to get out before any of the ice had melted.
First they checked the water table.
The ice was thick and some of the penguins were buried underneath.
Let’s see what else we can find.
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We went back to the water table where the girls found 2 scoops filled with ice.
We can’t get it out.
Shall I run it under the hot tap like I do with the ice lollies?
Yes please
Next the girls turned their attentions to the animals stuck in the water tray.
Please can we get them out? Can we put hot water on them too?
Yes. I’ll get some.
We poured water onto the ice to free the animals, they could feel the hot water making holes and as we poured more on they were able to free them.
The other side of the water tray made a perfect ice rink for the penguins.
I’m so glad we are home pre-schooling on days like this. Our next project is to make ice decorations for the tree at the front of the house and using pirate treasure maps they made earlier in the week, hunt for coins buried in the ice. My pirate obsessed girls will be armed with special pirate tools and a bit of magic sea salt. Arrrr.
When I was young, Musical Theatre was my life. While my friends spent their Saturday afternoons choosing lipstick in Woolworths, I was rehearsing for my next show. When my job sent me into a frenzy of boredom, the excitement of finding out which show we would do next and what part I would play kept me going. My husband and I met doing Musical Theatre together and we had a huge network of theatre friends. Now that family life has taken over those days are long gone but I miss it.
It took me a long time to realise that my voice didn’t always need to be the one that stood out in a group and that I could enjoy singing even if I wasn’t a soloist. Once I encountered the sheer pleasure of singing in a perfectly blended chorus, I realised what I had been missing. The end of Act One chorus from ‘The Pirates of Penzance’, the nuns Gaudeamus from ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Requiem for Evita’ all send shivers down my spine as I remember the moment I sang them on stage.
Even though singing was my hobby, I never sang at school. The only avenue for singing at school was choir but choir was for geeks. My perception of choir was of singing ‘boring hymns’ probably because church was the only place I had encountered a choir. As I grew older my perceptions changed but I still felt choir wasn’t my thing.
I tried to continue with theatre once I had children but the weekend rehearsals, complicated schedule of babysitters and the week of the show nearly killed me. So now I have broken the mould and joined a choir. Choir is so much simpler, I no longer have to stand at the back of the stage silently oohing and ahhing, I don’t have to learn dance moves (or sing in the wings with the old people because my dancing isn’t good enough),I don’t even have to learn the words because we carry our music with us.
My perception has changed about the people too. Recently we went on a weekend choir retreat – a large group of women in one house, singing, eating, drinking and getting to know one another. I was quite excited about making new friends but being in new company isn’t my strength, so was also a little nervous. The choir is very diverse, there is a huge mix of ages, nationalities, cultures and backgrounds but without exception each member sees choir as their ‘thing’, their chance to be themselves for one evening a week. Fuelled with the euphoria of a whole day of singing, ocean views, relaxing in hot tubs and a few glasses of wine, we began to get to know one another. There is something extraordinarily powerful about getting people together in one place away from their ordinary lives. I used to feel it on my annual blogging conference weekends in London, the connection with like-minded people and the sense of relief that we all have the same insecurities.
I felt a connection with every woman on the retreat, many of whom were very different to me. It made me wonder about judging people by appearances; often people who we perceive to be ‘not our type’ based on appearance, become our closest friends. The openness of the choir members was refreshing and sent me home with the feeling that it is ok to be imperfect. All of the women talked of their very different and complicated lives and for a brief moment we were able to leave them behind.
In the modern world there is an immense amount of pressure to be perfect. When everyone admits that they are not it’s like you’ve been set free. Nobody is a perfect, wife, mother, career woman, friend, cook, housekeeper or icon of beauty and on the whole nobody expects you to be either. The pressure to be flawless comes from within.
I returned from the retreat with a new perspective, with a belief that it is okay to be flawed, we are all flawed, people like me for who I am and I like them more because of, not in spite of their imperfections.
We were a little disorganised this year and didn’t get our pumpkins until Hallowe’en. It seemed such a shame to throw them away almost as soon as we had made them. To avoid this the pumpkins were incorporated into our play, building on the children’s interest in pattern making and investigating some of the questions and discoveries they made when we visited the pumpkin patch.
One of the things I love about living here is that we don’t have to go to the supermarket to buy our pumpkins because there are pumpkin patches everywhere. I love that the children can find out how pumpkins grow by wading their way through the leaves and mud to find the perfect pumpkin.
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Pumpkin Play
Exploring Inside a Pumpkin and Learning about Seeds
I removed the top of one of the pumpkins and gave the girls spoons to explore what was inside.
Look at all the seeds, they look like lemons but with no other sideIt’s a slother pumpkin. It feels really cold. There are lots of stringy bits, they look like messy hair.
We talked about saving the seeds for the Spring, so that we could try to plant pumpkins in the garden next year. This lead to a discussion about how the seeds were spread.
How do the seeds get out of the pumpkin if they are in the pumpkin patch?
The pumpkin gets mouldy and then the seeds can come out.
Do you know how the seeds are spread?
No
What happens to a dandelion seed?
Where are the dandelions seeds?
The seeds are on the dandelion clock.
Oh so they get blown around.
Yes. Does this happen to the pumpkin?
No
We talked about how the animals spread the seeds – the girls thought it was a bit disgusting to talk about poo so we left it at that but later read ‘The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle to remind ourselves how other seeds are spread.
2. Scientific Experiments
How Does the Pumpkin get Soft?
I think we eat this bit because it’s all juicy but it is hard. How do we make it soft?
Hmm, can you think of any ideas?
I know we could make it wet and then dry it.
We could sprinkle it with soft sugar.
We could cover it with a bag.
We covered one half of the pumpkin with a warm flannel to see what would happen.
We sprinkled the other half with caster sugar.
After 30 minutes we checked to see what had happened.
It didn’t work, it just got wet on my side.
What about the sugary side?
It feels softer, the sugar is softer but the pumpkin is hard.
I asked the girls if they could remember how I made spaghetti squash soft (when I tried to cut it, it was so hard I cut my finger instead). They couldn’t remember. I said that they had been along the right lines when they decided to warm it.
How could we warm it?
Put it in the microwave
or?
The oven.
Yes that’s how I made the squash soft.
3. Paint a Pumpkin
We painted our largest pumpkin with acrylic paint. The acrylic paint remains shiny .
4. Make a Squirrel Feeder
With the painted pumpkin we made a squirrel feeder by removing a section at the front and sprinkling it with birdseed. We often have squirrels in the garden but this gave us a good opportunity to watch them close up.
Filling the feeder with seed
Here comes the squirrel
squirrel feeding
5. Fairy Toadstools
Our garden is full of toadstools in this damp Autumnal weather and we have been exploring them to see if we could find any fairies.
Turning the top of the pumpkin upside down made a perfect fairy toadstool for our flower-pot. We are also going to watch and document what happens as the pumpkin starts to decay. It might make a nice art or photography project for the girls.
6. Pumpkin Poetry
I helped the girls to make up a poem about a pumpkin using some of the descriptions I had recorded them saying.
Pumpkins by my 5-year old
Pumpkins are very orange
Inside they have seeds
The seeds look like lemons
And feel slimy and cold.
Around the seeds it is orange and stringy
It looks like crazy hair.
The bottom is lumpy and chunky
I call it the core.
7. Pumpkin Juice.
I sliced and peeled the pumpkin we had been exploring and we used it to make pumpkin juice.
Ingredients (quantities according to taste)
Pumpkin
Apple
Carrot
Ginger
Sprinkle with cinnamon.
8. Seed Collage
One of our current topics is pattern. We used the pumpkin seeds alongside other seeds and pulses to make collages.
9. Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
As a healthy snack we tried roasted pumpkin seeds. Sprinkle with oil, salt and pepper and roast in the oven for 25 minutes.
10. Mr Potato Head
We still have one small sweet pumpkin left to make into a pumpkin curry.
Further ideas
Use the seeds for measuring in a balance scale
Use the seeds in a play or mud kitchen
Put a hollow pumpkin in the water tray
Make pumpkin cookies
Make pumpkin drafts or checkers
Roll pumpkins down a hill and see which one reaches the bottom first.
Give children trays of seeds with scoops and containers.
Use the seeds with clay or pumpkin scented playdough.
This year I am home preschooling my 2 youngest, not something I ever thought I would find myself doing but my reasons for making this choice can be found in a previous post Why I am Home Preschooling my Children.
I get a mixed reaction from people, some give me a glazed expression as if to say really? Can’t you just send them to preschool like the rest of us? Others wonder why on earth I would want to. Some look at me as if I am some kind of Supermum and others as if I am denying my kids a normal social life. Some however, just want to know how it all works and what exactly I do with them – this post is for you.
It really isn’t rocket science, I don’t follow a rigid schedule and home schooling allows us loads of flexibility. My 5-year-old said today
I’m glad we are doing your preschool because it means we can go to the zoo whenever we want.
It isn’t entirely without structure though – I plan for the learning environment and have a timetable . I suppose it is a little like having a plan for how you spend time with your children. It isn’t an academic preschool, we play and explore together, sometimes they play alone and we share interests, questions and ideas.
What about interaction with other children?
One day a week we have no preschool the girls go to ballet class, meet with friends and help me with normal everyday things like grocery shopping.
Building a mountain with the large blocks.
Two days a week we attend a local membership based playspace, it’s a little like a toddler group in the UK except that it is a purpose-built space and is open all day. Some of the music and language games we play at home don’t work very well with only 2 children so I run music and movement, craft, sensory play or storytelling sessions here which gives us an opportunity to do activities in a larger group. The rest of the time I allow them to free play but take their learning diaries to record what they may be interested in or achieving in a different context. The girls get chance to play with other children and use different materials than those we have at home.
The other 2 days are home based but sometimes we will use one of them to go out on a trip.
Timetabling
One of the things I have disliked about many preschools is the rigidity of their schedules. There seemed to be little time for the children to become absorbed in a project or flexibility about what they might do each day. I did however feel it was important to have some schedule in place. I created a visual timetable using printed symbols. Certain symbols are always present – Snack, lunch, free play and others I add in based on what we might do that day. The symbols can be moved around and often if we don’t have time for an activity I move it to the bottom of the timetable to be saved for next time. Sometimes I let the children plan the timetable although they don’t exactly have a realistic understanding of time so we usually end up with far too many activities to get through in one day. It is also a really good way of regulating screen time, this usually goes into the timetable for after lunch followed by outdoor choosing time and if they ask for it earlier in the day I point them to the timetable. I’m surprised at how well the timetable works , the girls really respond to it and look forward to knowing what they are doing next.
How we Plan
I plan, building on the children’s interests to provide next steps in their learning. If I observe the children following consistent patterns of play, enjoying particular materials or asking questions, I record them and consider what I might plan next to enable the children to use this skill or interest in a different way or to extend their learning further. For example, my youngest daughter has just learned to cut with scissors and loves to snip paper into tiny pieces. She also loves gluing so I suggested they use the pieces to make a collage. As an extension to this we are going to look at pictures of mosaics for further inspiration and play with wooden pattern tiles. Only having 2 children to observe means that their learning experiences can be truly individualised in a way that might not be possible in a bigger setting.
Planning for the Learning Environment
In addition to this I also have a plan for the environment. How often this changes is fairly flexible. Using information from the observation into planning, I might decide to include particular materials with the sand or water, put a particular craft activity out, lay out particular toys, set up a new role play area or display materials in a certain way. For example the girls were playing cafes at the play centre so at home the next day I gave them notebooks to take orders and a chef’s hat. I laid the table and I was the customer. This also allowed them to build on some of their other current interests like emergent writing and playing picnics. Sometimes we may just try something new and see if they like it and how they play with it – they are usually good at making suggestions as to what we might do next.
The Learning Environment
There are certain materials I like to always have available to the children
In an ideal world clay and paint also but this is a little messy even for me especially in the winter when we don’t use outside as much.
All these materials however are difficult to manage. I have recently reorganised our playroom but I still feel that there are too many things on view.
Writing table. We also have a pot of pens and pencils and scissors downstairs. Glue sticks, paper etc are in a kitchen cupboard.
Loose parts
outside mud kitchen/potion making
boxes labelled with pictures and words
Our role play area. The drawers contain play food and tea sets.
It isn’t as easy to have the environment you would like when it is your own home but I’m constantly re-evaluating how we display things and adding new ideas to the outside area.
Autumn is a time for woodland walks, collecting interesting things along the way and looking out for animal homes and habitats. As a child we had nature tables at school and we were encouraged to bring in conkers, sticky buds, acorns and leaves. I used to love to walk in the woods and collect things. We’d put nuts and conkers in their cases in the airing cupboard until they opened. I used to lie in the grass scouring the leaves for 4- leafed clover. I found one when I was about 6 years old. I looked after it all weekend and on Monday carried it to school as the prize exhibit for the nature table. The temptation to fiddle with it however, was so great that on the way one of the leaves fell off. I turned up with an ordinary clover and a loose leaf and so no-one believed me.
We’ve been foraging for Autumn things this week. In the garden we have an abundance of Fir Cones, Maple Seeds and coloured leaves but we wanted to find other things like acorns and conkers. I asked a friend where we might find conkers.
Conkers? What are they? was her reply.
I found a single, solitary conker that had managed to make its way with us from England.
Oh, it’s a bit like a chestnut.
Yes, a rounder chestnut and the casing is different, with larger more spaced out spines and they are poisonous.
Outside the girls ballet class we found a variety of different pine and fir cones from tiny ones in clusters to great big narrow ones. We walked in the woods to see what else we might find. We found….. more pine cones, …. more maple seeds,… more maple leaves but nothing different. I suppose we often take the things we have in our environment for granted – I love the towering Evergreens we have here, mixed in with the colours of the Maples but I do miss conkers and acorns.
Wild animals on the other hand are extremely varied. We watched huge salmon jumping in the river, saw enormous yellow butterflies and watched a small snake basking in the sun. Our favourite visitors are hummingbirds. The first time I saw one I thought it was a dragonfly but when it rested on a flower I was so excited to discover it was a hummingbird. I had no idea hummingbirds were native here. I read up about attracting them to the garden and bought a hummingbird feeder that we fill with 4 parts water to 1 part sugar. We now have regular visitors outside our window.
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Of course there are also the more scary types of wildlife. The ‘ballet moms’ were talking about finding bobcats, cougars and coyotes in their garden and black bears on woodland walks, especially near the rivers now that the salmon are spawning.
RSPB Get Outdoors
As I was musing about our appreciation of the natural world and the things we miss from home, a new report from the RSPB was brought to my attention. Connecting with Nature presents the findings of a three-year RSPB research project measuring just how connected to nature the UK’s children really are. Connection to nature is measured in 4 areas:
Enjoyment of Nature
Empathy for Creatures
Sense of Oneness
Sense of Responsibility.
You can take the questionnaire to see how connected your children are. If you are outside of the UK, the report also gives you the criteria used for the questionnaire so that you can investigate how connected children are in your area.
I think the sense of oneness is an interesting one. How young was I when I first felt a sense of oneness with nature? I know my youngest daughter will always choose to go outside collecting sticks, pouring rainwater and arranging stones – is this an early sign of oneness with nature? My eldest daughter emphatically announced that she felt peaceful when she was in a natural environment. In a household with 2 noisy pre-schoolers her favourite haven is reading a book in a tree in the garden.
I know for me, I feel at peace by the sea or in a woodland, both places I spent a lot of time in as a child. I can’t wait to visit the National Parks here in the US, to see the amazing diversity of the natural world here.
Connecting with nature has many benefits from physical activity, mental health and a sense of well being, education, social interaction, empathy and the impact on the sustainability of the natural environment. The study found that only 21% of children aged 8-12 in the UK have a connection with nature at a level that is realistic to their age.
“ There are statistically significant differences between children’s connection to nature at a national level across the UK, as well as between boys and girls, and British urban and rural homes.”
Surprisingly girls are more likely than boys to connect with nature and urban children more likely than rural children. Further studies will be undertaken to determine why this might be. Looking at the questionnaire I think it may be that the questions are angled at more feminine pursuits, feeling peaceful in nature, collecting shells, listening for sounds and taking care of animals are not exactly cool for young boys.
The research will add to the growing evidence base about children and nature. This includes a study by Natural England which suggested that factors contributing to connection are in decline. It reported that only 10% of children in the UK played regularly in natural places in 2009, compared to 40% in the 1970s.
Getting children out in the natural world when they are young won’t guarantee a continued interest once the world of school, clubs, homework and computer games takes over but it will certainly put them on the right track.
The environmental identity developed by children between the ages of 3 and 7 is an emotional affinity towards a specific aspect of nature which had been strengthened by providing positive experiences with nature on a regular basis. (Karls and Ittner 2003).
Some researchers also believe that there is an optimal moment usually between the age of 6 and 12 which form a person’s attitude to nature; perhaps the 4 leafed clover was mine.
We haven’t played with ‘goop’ for a while. Usually we play with ‘goop’ in the garden so that the girls can make as much mess as they like and explore it with their whole body. Today there was an indoor ‘goop’ session at Romp so we decided to visit to see what was in store.
For those who don’t know what ‘goop’ is, it is a mixture of cornflour/cornstarch and water and makes an interesting consistency that is half solid and half liquid.
At the session today the ‘goop’ was arranged in trays with food colouring, paint brushes and sticks for mixing and scraping. The girls were in their element – messy play, scientific exploration and colour mixing all rolled into one.
I gave the girls permission to explore it with their hands, yes they had coloured hands for a while but the comments and questions were far richer once they got their hands dirty.
Look at my pattern
What colour will this make?
Look at the colour I made
Look I’m a frog all in green
when you squeeze it and put a lot of pressure on, it drips.
Whenever I run my fingers through it the bits under my fingers go hard.
Can you build with it?
If I drizzle it really close it goes solid.
I made a poppy
It’s too watery. How will I make it unwatery? I know put lots of flour in.
When you sprinkle it, it sinks in.
How did you make it colourful?
Do you think that if it was really dry it would make a track? No it just drizzles back.
Maybe it would work if you open up a big enough area.
Look at this. It’s dark on the top and light underneath – sort of neon.
Why is the cornflour always blue whatever colour you mix?
I love the questions that arose from the play. I’ll definitely be putting ‘goop’ in the water tray soon to see if we can work out any answers.
We have had hours of fun with the endless possibilities of pirate jokes around the dinner table. My youngest daughter’s recent addition is
What is a Pirate’s favourite fruit?
An arrrringe.
Pirate jokes are a great way to practice oral phonics and rhyme.
My middle daughter is beginning to learn to read and write so I decided to use International Talk Like a Pirate day to introduce the ‘ar’ sound.
What Sound does a Pirate make?
arrrrrr
What sound does the letter ‘r’ make?
rrr like rrrabbit and rrred.
So even though it is called an ‘r’ it doesn’t make an ‘ar’ sound. We need more than just a letter ‘r’ to make a pirate sound. We make a pirate sound with a and r together.
I gave her a magnetic ‘a’ and ‘r’ on a board along with a number of consonants. We used the magnetic letters to make as many word with ‘ar’ in them as we could exaggerating the ‘arrrrr’ sound in a pirate voice.
My daughter moved letters around to make different words and blended the sounds to read them out.
I wrote down the words for her in a list
jar
mars
bar
star
tar
car
Martha
arm
art
far
farm
Martin
She then dictated a story using the words and I underlined the ‘ar’ words for her to read .
Once upon a time there was a pirate called Martin. He loved to eat a jar of pickles. He also loved to go to the scarecrow farm which was far away. He also like to do art. He had a pet wolf called Martha. One night there were lots of stars. He went out in the car to see his cheeky friend. He always called his girlfriends funny names. Martin threw a bottle of tar on his friend’s arm. So he ate a Mars Bar.
As we read the story we said all the ‘ar’ words in a pirate voice.
As we were walking around the museum at the weekend she said
Mummy, I’ve thought of another pirate word ‘guitarrrr’
In my previous post about using clay with young children , I mentioned a project where the children had closely observed their faces, drawn self portraits and then created clay models from the portraits. It was a really successful project at nursery and the level of detail in both the drawings and models was astonishing. Children love to look at themselves in the mirror, exploring expressions and actions. I thought my children would enjoy examining their faces in this way.
The girls like to make a present for their dad on his birthday and as this was a special birthday, I wanted to them to make something that he could keep. When I suggested the self portraits to the girls, they thought it was a great idea.
I gave the girls small hand mirrors and we looked at our faces in them. We talked about the shape of their face, the shapes of their features, we looked closely at any marks or scars they may have and then they began to draw.
As they drew I prompted them with further questions such as
What shape are your glasses?
Don’t forget your eyebrows.
Does any of your hair go on your face?
Can you see your ears?
What shape is your chin?
Can you see any scars or freckles ?
Would you like to draw your teeth or have a closed mouth?
I would recommend doing this activity on a 1-1 basis to help the children to make the drawings detailed. My 9-year-old became really frustrated. She felt that the drawing didn’t look like her and worried about the shape of her eyes, nose and mouth. I suggested she take a break and come back to it later. My 4-year-old had no such anxieties. It is interesting that in the development of children’s drawing anxiety about realism in drawing occurs from the age of 8, and this dissatisfaction increases as they get older. I assume this is why most adults believe they can’t draw.
The Portraits
The girls used the portraits to create their clay faces
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The most difficult part was their long hair because it kept breaking.
When the models were dried, I asked the girls if they would like to paint their models or leave them as they were. They really wanted to paint them. I helped them to mix skin tones, hair and eye colours.
I’d love to find a way of displaying them alongside the portraits. Making the faces on a tile might make this easier.
Next Steps
The girls love exploring expressions. We have a series of photos of the girls copying their dad’s expressions. We could extend this into a photography project about expressions.
Read the book ‘Making Faces’ by Nick Butterworth and explore some of their favourite expressions from the book.
Draw portraits of their own or one another’s faces making different expressions.
The ice is still there you just can’t see it.
Drop it in the water
Right from the Start 