Traveling with Young Children

  Traveling to family gatherings can be stressful, or it can be fun.  Snacks, drinks, a favorite blanket, drawing materials, books, storytelling, and games keep the family happy while riding along. 

What To Do:

  Young children love to hear about family member’s childhood.  It is their first exposure to history and stories of people they love.   Most important these tales are passed on and not lost.

  Think of some lessons of kindness, perseverance, courage and triumph over difficulty. Perhaps your grandparents told you some funny or scary stories you vividly remember.  Retelling the story with exaggerations, descriptions, and sound effects will make it come alive for your children, too. When you reach your  destination, children will rush in and tell all about what they heard on the way.

   Children can play Tic Tac Toe and Dots game with a hardcover book for a desk. To play Dots make ten rows and columns of dots equally spaced. Each player has one turn to connect two dots.  The object is to connect dots to enclose a square, put your initial inside, and earn another turn. The player with the most squares wins. Preschool children catch on to these two games quickly.

  You’re about an hour into the trip.  Now what? Take a few verbal games out of your bag of tricks.  One game is called “What Do You Know?”  The adult asks simple questions and children take turns giving their answers.  Questions are based on children’s age, interest, and vocabulary.  For example for the younger child, “How many colors do you know?  What foods are red? What do we call people who take care of us when we get sick?”

  For older children the questions could be related to geography or history. “How many states begin with the word New?  Now many bird names can you remember?

Can you name a holiday for each month?” 

   Another car game is called “I just saw it.” One person begins having noticed something just passed—for instance, a telephone pole. “ It was tall and thin. I just saw it.”  The others begin to guess.  If they fail, the person adds more clues until the object is guessed.

 “Colors” is played by naming a common color.  When two things are found you take turns switching to another color.

  How does this Help My Children?

  A recent study compared the vocabulary of children entering kindergarten from the 1950’s and 2009. It found that children in the 1950’s had DOUBLE the vocabulary entering school.  Family games and conversation help build vocabulary used for reading and success in school.

For more ideas about traveling with children go to our previous blog: Are We There Yet? and also check out our WNMU Learning Through the Seasons podcast about traveling. For more ideas check out the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons.” 

Illustration: Mark Nowicki
Photo: Photo: Norman, Steve. nat143.jpg. . Pics4Learning. 22 Dec 2012

Pop! Bubbles are Fun

Dry spring days are good for playing with bubbles:

What you will need:

 The ingredients for the following bubble recipe which you will mix gently:

1/4 cup liquid dishwashing detergent

 3/4 cup cold water

5 drops of glycerin (available at most drugstores or cake supply stores) or light corn syrup. This helps the bubbles be stronger. The solution gets better with age!

You will also need some objects with holes (or create your own) and a container for mixing as well as a flat shallow container.

What to do:

  Using the recipe for making bubbles, Gracie and I poured the ingredients into a container and stirred gently. We let the solution sit while we hunted for objects that had holes in them. We found a fly swatter, a colander, a slotted spoon, an apple slicer, a straw, and a spatula with holes. I dug up some pipe cleaners that we bent as well as an old hanger.

   Gracie helped me pour some of the bubble solution into a cake pan so we could dip the objects into the solution. We covered the container with the extra bubble solution to save for another day. Together we carried everything outside to the back yard. We dipped and waved each object. It was fun to watch Gracie as she experimented with each object. We made guesses as we used each object as to what size bubble or how many bubbles we would see as we waved the objects in the air. Then we wondered if we twirled would we get different bubbles. So then we experimented with that idea.

  We discussed the idea of trying to catch a bubble on an object or our soapy hands. We studied it until it broke. Gracie and I talked about the colors we could see in some of the bubbles. That led Gracie to ask if we could add color to the solution and so we added some food coloring. Different colors appeared. We played until the solution in the cake pan was gone. Clean up was easy as everything just needed water to be clean again.

How will this help children?

Experimenting is a great way to explore the young child’s world. It allows for mistakes, as well as successes. Experimenting also allows for rich discussion on what might happen, what did happen and why did it happen? That is science, after all. It is a great way to problem solve as well.

What else can I do?

You can visit the local library and look for books about bubbles. A few suggestions are: “Bubble Trouble” by Margaret Mahy and Polly Dunbar, ‘Bubble Trouble “by Joy N. Hulme and Mike Cressy,” Benny’s Big Bubble” by Jane O’Connor and Tomie dePaola, and “Bubble Bath Pirates” by Jarrett J. Krosoczka. 

For more great educational activities visit Grandparents Teach, Too web page and listen to WNMU Radio 90 Learning Through the Seasons Podcasts   

Photos:
Enright, John. 20121001_161951.jpg. 2012. Pics4Learning. 13 Jun 2013
Bonsall, Dawn. img_2127.jpg. June 25, 2007. Pics4Learning. 13 Jun 2013

Healthy Children have Fun with Exercise

Superheroes, fairy tale and cartoon characters can be an inspiration for imaginative play and large motor exercise with young children. Just think up a story and go outside for an hour of daily exercise.

  What is needed:

 park equipment, nature path, beach, YMCA, or children’s museum

What to do:

 Young children enjoy exercise more when it’s a fun game or imagination is involved.  They can imagine being stiff legged robots, galloping horses, soaring birds or characters with magical super human powers.  Phil, a personal trainer from Superior Fitness and volunteer in the Big Brothers program, sent these exercise ideas to promote heart health, balance, strength, flexibility, and endurance.

   To prepare, Phil suggests doing a some stretching first.Then act out a story your young children know from a book, legend, fable, movie or tv show. Perhaps there is an animal to rescue, but there are all kinds of obstacles in your way. There may be an invisible line, overturned log, or 2X4 to walk on. Play “Follow the Leader” to avoid getting stuck in the muck or some other danger. Throw a magic stone or stick at a tree to break through an invisible barrier.  Jump over a large stone or climb on a tree stump to look around. Gather sticks to make a safe path to hop on, or write a secret message with shapes and letters in the sand. Jog from one object to next, crouch behind it, and jog again.

  Grandpa Scott takes his grandchildren to the beach to skip stones in the water. Sometimes they pick up large rocks to make towers. They walk along the beach and hunt for rocks, sticks, and other beach treasures for art projects. While walking along a river path, children can drop a leaf in the water and race it down stream.

  Just about anything can be arranged for an obstacle course young children can walk, run, or ride around the yard. Set up a board as a balance beam. Roll a beach ball around, play soccer, catch, shovel in the garden, or sweep the sidewalk. Lay a rope on the ground for children to jump over or walk between.

   There are many active games to play. Young children love to play “What time is it, Mr.Fox,” “Red Light/ Green Light,” and many kinds of freeze or flashlight tag games.  When someone is tagged, the person says a cartoon or story character, color, letter, names a state, spells a word, counts, or anything else you’re working on.

How Does this Help my Child?

  Healthy children exercise for one hour every day. They use the large muscles of the arms, legs, and trunk to jump, hop, skip, kick, throw, catch, dance around, balance, push, pull, or jog.

For more math activities see the authors’ book “Learning through the Seasons” online at: http://www.grandparentsteachtoo.org/ and listen to this and many other activities at WNMU Audio Podcast 

Illustration: Mark Nowicki
Photo: Kock, Matthew. img_0929.jpg. June 15, 2010. Pics4Learning. 5 Jun 2013