Our baby, Ember, got a toy for Christmas that plays music and blows out air which makes various things spin around. She enjoys it - especially the music and will stay with it for several minutes. My boys (ages 5 and 3 1/2), on the other hand, spent two hours with it yesterday.
They examined it for awhile trying to figure out how it all worked and what they could do with it and then they started experimenting. Using the little plastic heads of their lego figures they would toss them in to the "air track" (the part where plastic balls spin around when they toy is set up normally)to see how many they could make spin, what would happen when they tossed them in as a big group or individually, how to make them go faster and so on. They were so engrossed that there was very little talk between them. I looked in on them several times to see what they could be doing with the baby toy for so long and was surprised and impressed with what I saw. Voila! A science lesson and they did it all themselves!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Creative Power
From If You Want to Write: a Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland.
You know how all children have this creative power. You have seen things like this: the little girls in our family used to give play after play. They wrote the plays themselves (they were very good plays too, interesting, exciting, funny). They acted in them. They made the costumes themselves, beautiful, effective and historically accurate, contriving them in the most ingenious way out of attic junk and their mothers' best dresses. They constructed the stage and theater by carrying chairs, moving the piano, carpentering. They printed the tickets and sold them. They made their own advertising. They drummed up the audience, throwing out a drag-net for all the hired girls, dogs, babies, mothers, neighbors within a radius of a mile or so. For what reward? A few pins and pennies.
Yet these small ten-year-olds were working with feverish energy and endurance. (A production took about two days.) If they had worked that hard for school it probably would have killed them. They were working for nothing but fun, for that glorious inner excitement like it and it was something never forgotten.
You know how all children have this creative power. You have seen things like this: the little girls in our family used to give play after play. They wrote the plays themselves (they were very good plays too, interesting, exciting, funny). They acted in them. They made the costumes themselves, beautiful, effective and historically accurate, contriving them in the most ingenious way out of attic junk and their mothers' best dresses. They constructed the stage and theater by carrying chairs, moving the piano, carpentering. They printed the tickets and sold them. They made their own advertising. They drummed up the audience, throwing out a drag-net for all the hired girls, dogs, babies, mothers, neighbors within a radius of a mile or so. For what reward? A few pins and pennies.
Yet these small ten-year-olds were working with feverish energy and endurance. (A production took about two days.) If they had worked that hard for school it probably would have killed them. They were working for nothing but fun, for that glorious inner excitement like it and it was something never forgotten.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Roxie Munro
One of my favorite new (to me!) authors is Roxie Munro. Her books are wonderful for whole page exploration. We've been looking at her maze books which draw you in with a series of tasks to complete on the page. I love sitting with my boys and having them talk their way through the maze which always opens up a discussion about the place. Roxie Munro uses real places like a marina, an art museum, hiking trails, roadways, a farm, a plant nursery and more) so the "mazes" feel more like the view from above of all the paths, trails, and roads that could really be there. And when you finish there are also a few things to simply find. So fun! So far my favorite is:
Using these books gave me the idea to collect all the little maps we come across in our daily adventures - like the aquarium map we just got during our visit or the grocery store map I picked up at Metropolitan Market awhile ago. Wouldn't it be a fun game to create our own tasks using maps from our own life?
Using these books gave me the idea to collect all the little maps we come across in our daily adventures - like the aquarium map we just got during our visit or the grocery store map I picked up at Metropolitan Market awhile ago. Wouldn't it be a fun game to create our own tasks using maps from our own life?
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Toymaker
Check out this book: The Toymaker: Paper Toys That You Can Make Yourself. What fun! So many things to make and they're all so cute! The author,Marilyn Scott-Waters, also has a website where you can download for free many lovely things to make.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Usborne Books
I don't know about you, but I'm just beginning to discover some of the great books for kids published by Usborne. Beck got these two for his birthday and they have both already provided a lot of fun discussion and engaged reading sessions.
The First Encyclopedia of Our World is "internet linked" which means that for most of the articles Usborne maintains up-to-date links to bring the articles to life. So far we've custom built our own volcano and watched it erupt with simple explanations along the way - and - we've discovered the journey a river makes from high in the mountains all the way to the sea.And this is just the beginning!
And the other one is titled The Usborne Time Traveler. For each of the historical times you visit, you're introduced to a family and get to know their life and customs, their houses and pastimes, special feasts, battles - all kinds of interesting stuff! The text is simple enough for my 3 year old to enjoy when I read it aloud, but appropriate for a much older school-aged kid to read independently and enjoy. The pictures all so full of detail that both of my boys get completely absorbed just looking and asking questions and discussing it all. I love it too!
The First Encyclopedia of Our World is "internet linked" which means that for most of the articles Usborne maintains up-to-date links to bring the articles to life. So far we've custom built our own volcano and watched it erupt with simple explanations along the way - and - we've discovered the journey a river makes from high in the mountains all the way to the sea.And this is just the beginning!
And the other one is titled The Usborne Time Traveler. For each of the historical times you visit, you're introduced to a family and get to know their life and customs, their houses and pastimes, special feasts, battles - all kinds of interesting stuff! The text is simple enough for my 3 year old to enjoy when I read it aloud, but appropriate for a much older school-aged kid to read independently and enjoy. The pictures all so full of detail that both of my boys get completely absorbed just looking and asking questions and discussing it all. I love it too!
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