Protect Your Child With Education

Protect Your Child With Education

As a parent you try to filter out anything that you think your child is too young for. As son as you turn around though, someone says "monster tornado" and "shooting" and "bridge collapse" and a whole bunch of other stuff where your young child can here it.

So as a parent you have to make a decision on what to do. Do you say "it was so far away, you don't need to worry. It will NEVER happen here." or find a way to get them to ignore it? Or do you explain it? The truth is, no matter what your approach, there will be fear. Your child will be afraid, and as a parent, it is your job to help them through the situation, understand it, and let them know they are safe.

Here is what I do. I educate my child. I help him understand what happened and how we can prevent it. In light of recent events, some of these topics are really hard to talk about. I also know, that not all parents want their child to know about the details of these events (I am one of them).

So here is the most recent example....

The massive tornado that struck a few days ago. Children dead, houses destroyed danger.

So what did we do? We learned.

First we watched some videos of how tornadoes work on youtube.

We then made a tornado in a bottle

We made rain in a bottle

We then made an emergency kit and practiced going in the basement

 Finally, we talked about how our area has never been hit by a tornado, but that we have to be prepared.

You don't have to take this approach, however I can tell you that my 4yo son is no longer afraid. He understands what happened, and by learning about what happened and making him feel safe, he no longer asks why people died, he does not ask if it will happen to him, and he does not listen to what other people are saying. 

Paper Pizza

Paper Pizza

My husband is gone. Breakfast needed to be made. Kids were cranky.

Introducing....THE PAPER PIZZA

Cardboard from under a frozen pizza
Paper cut out in shapes

My order

20min of activity!

It's all fun and games until someone eats the paper pizza

Super Pizza Slice-needed a top

What I Worry About When My Husband Is Gone

20 Ways to strengthen your preschooler's hand muscles and improve handwriting

20 Ways to strengthen your preschooler's hand muscles and improve handwriting

So DS1 is 4, and he can write, but his writing is shaky and his hands get tired easy. So I have been on a kick of giving him hand excersizes. However, as you know if you have kids, you can't tell them what they are doing is good for him so.....

1. Squirt bottle-We bought a cheap spray bottle and have him squirt anything he wants. Mostly he squirts bugs outside
2. Clothes pins-Different activities like the one below, or just putting them on our clothing and taking them off  
3. Mazes-Ty loves mazes-it gets him to practice holding a pencil, coordination, and continued grip all at one time
4. Coloring (he really hates this one, but we make gifts for people)-Crayola has a great feature on their website where you can take a family photo and make it into a coloring page (you can find a code online for free)
5. Trace the line-I draw highlighter lines and have them trace them
6. Water toys-....ok SQUIRT GUNS....but we call them water toys
7. Rubber ducks-the kinds with holes. Like the thing above, but way more fun if a duck looks like it is peeing
8. Play dough- Many ways to help hands with this one. Rolling pins, cutting, squishing, rolling, flattening...
9. Rubber bands-on a geo board or just stretching them over things
10. Nails and a hammer-a real hammer, with REAL nails
11. Coloring/writing laying down-helps upper body strength and uses different muscles
12. Nerf Balls-gripping and throwing
13. Sorting money-we have money sorters and DS1 loves money...small movements over and over
14. Tearing paper-magazines are our favorite, we then make funny pictures out of what we tear out. If you use cereal boxes you can make "puzzles" where they have to fit them back together
15. Tug of war-mostly he plays with the dog
16. Hole punch-crafts mostly-using the dots, or punching out holes. I occasionally make a diagram and when he punches the holes it makes a picture
17. Cutting-Test the kid's sisors before you give them to your kid.
18. Tweezers/Chopsticks (starter chopsticks)-use them to pick up a variety of materials
19. Eyedroppers-Can use with projects like these.
20. Legos- What kid does not like LEGOs?

Out Tour of the Preservation Parks of Delaware County: Trip 1: Blue's Creek Preserve

Out Tour of the Preservation Parks of Delaware County:

Trip 1: Blue's Creek Preserve

A little about our trips: We are going to hit all the Preservation Parks this summer as well as some of the parks in the area that have had funds donated by the PP system. I love parks, and so do the kids, and this is something we decided to all do together (kids and I, SJ can come if he wants-but we usually go during the week for something to do). This is not really trip 1, we go here all the time-it is less than 15min from our house, and is really beautiful.

Looking at animal prints

Trails: This park-Blue's Creek Preserve (link at the bottom for history and information) is a nice sized park that backs up to a housing development. If you take any of the south trails, you will probably hear traffic and see some houses, but for the most part you are walking in the woods, by wetlands (small area), or on a plain. As with all the parks, the trails are marvelously maintained. We went this time when it was a little muddy-but you could walk around all major puddles. I will warn you-if you are not on a paved or gravel path the entire time-make sure you check for ticks when you get home. Although the grass paths are cut short-I discovered a few ticks on our clothing and legs.

Wetlands: There is a turtle and a blue heron you can't see in this picture.

Shelters-Wonderful-there are two nice sized picnic shelters and a bathroom with composting toilet (not the stinky kind). We ate in one of the shelters, by a pond, and enjoyed watching the birds.

Playground-I know we have a play structure in our back yard, but I love taking the kids to other playgrounds. This one is AWESOME for younger kids. There are two areas, one for little dudes with dinosaurs-and another play structure for older children with slides and such. Some of the mulch has washed away some so you may need to help really little kids up onto the dinosaurs.

Favorite things at the park: Kids LOVE the "mosquito" bridge-a nice bridge spanning a creek-if you go in the summer bring the bug repellant. I enjoy the provided wildflower and bird scavenger hunts that you can pick up at the beginning of the paths, as well as the number of paths in the park. You can get a decent walk in if you chose your path wisely. If you let your 4yo pick the path though-you will travel in circles until he sits down and refuses to get up. 

 Look at this LAZY BABY! Not only do I carry him around the walking trails in the ERGO (GET ONE) but he can't stay awake! Hahaha :)

Pony Bead Sun Catchers

Mother's Day Craft

I have seen these all over Pinterest-thought about making them, decided against it...but I ran out of ideas for Mother's Day-so here we go-here are my tips to the craft you have now seen a thousand times.

Pony Bead Sun Catchers

First- If you look around for these on google you will find that everyone lays the beads down the same way-don't. Your 4yo will freak out that you have changed his design-which is really just him throwing beads in a cup.

Second-really don't worry about using your cookware. They pop out as soon as they are cool

Third-everyone making these complained about the smell-I did open one window, however we smelled nothing. Maybe the beads I got at the dollar store were superior to theirs-ha, I win.

Fourth-really don't try to make designs. It ruins the fun. Maybe if you had a 12 year old it would work, but really just let the kids play with the beads....however that ends when your 19mo throws a handful of beads across the room (brining up a ptsd moment from childhood) ending the fun and starting a "scavenger hunt" for the lost beads-which was also fun.

Last-I want to try, because I am this cool, to make a really, really thick one-fill up an entire pie plate. I don't know why, I just do. However I am afraid I will catch the house on fire, so I need another adult to be here.

1.       Fill up the bottom of muffin cups with clear plastic pony beads-we did not try any other type, although we are going to.

2.       Heat oven to 400 and cook them for at least 20min-ours took more like 40 though. If you leave them longer they are smoother

3.       let cool

4.       Make husband drill holes in them (I realize I know how to use a drill, however I just did not want to do it

5.       Hang someway-we used fishing line and I made free hand wire hangers

6.       Give them to grandmothers and wait for them to squee

15 Mega Block activities for Young Toddlers (that helps build language development)

15 Mega Block activities for Young Toddlers

 (that help language development)

DS2 (dear son 2) is 19 months old-a difficult age to "plan" activities for-so instead most of them are in the moment activities. One of his favorite toys is Mega Blocks-here are 20 on the spot activities that we enjoy doing with them.

1. Up and Down-Make a tower, with your child, have them knock it down and say DOWN! Then when you stand it up say UP! After you do this for a bit, do up and down with your bodies
2. Feed the Animals-Use puppets or stuffed animals and feed them blocks. Make chomping sounds, animal sounds, and encourage language-Open and Shut (for mouth), more, food
3. More-Build a tower but each time your child wants another block have them say more and please
4. Colors-Easy...say the colors as you build-point or touch the colors to build the connection between the word and the colors
5. 1,2,3-build towers with 3 blocks-count 1, 2, 3. You can also count the dots on the blocks
6. Patterns-make simple patterns-color patterns, ABAB patterns for this age only, and work on saying colors
7. Hide and Seek-Hide a cheerio under a block and have your child find it. Use words, hide, seek, found, more, cereal, cheerio
8. Painting-Have your child paint with blocks by stamping. Put each color of block in each color and say colors as they paint
9. Playdough- Playdough and blocks is always fun. Have child say on and off as they play with the clay. Make clay into balls and count it as you put it on the dots on the blocks. Match colors to block colors.
10. Block Wash- Tub, soap and blocks-Words to use: water, soap, bubble, pop, wash, clean
11. Car Smash- Take cars and smash them into one block or towers. Use words such as Go, Stop, Crash, Uh oh, etc.
12. Block Animals-I get bored playing with blocks so I like to make animals out of them. We then make animal sounds, have them eat, and point out eyes, feet, mouth, etc
13. Brush Your Teeth-Pretend blocks are teeth and use an old tooth brush to "clean them." Sometimes we put paint on them, or toothpaste, to scrub off. We use the words brush, teeth, clean, mouth, dirty, etc
14. On Off- Put a block on, take it off, left, right, you get the point
15. Clean it Up-My favorite. Any activity can be a chance to build language development-As child throws blocks away-and you are praising the heck out of them-say things like in, out, all done!

Thanks for the photos mega bloks

123 Magic

123 Magic

So today we started this program. Not because the kids are out of control, but because Ty's back talk is becoming a problem. This was recommended by a friend and Amazon. As with any discipline program, we are putting our own spin on it, but mostly we are following the instructions.

Anyway, last night I got through the first part of the book-stopping the obnoxious behavior-and "stop" behaviors. These are any behaviors that you want your child to stop doing-not something you want them to start doing (like cleaning up, eating vegetables). So far, so good, although someone is testing.

So the biggest part of this was we designated a new "time out" spot. It used to be where we could see him and make sure h was being calm. Now it is in a chair in the dining room-which we rarely use. He can do whatever he wants on the chair, but he has to stay in contact with the chair. I am getting less upset at him now because I cannot see him fooling around.

The point of the time out is not to punish, it is for him to calm down.

So here is how it works....the most recent example: (3 time outs today, he is testing it....see if we do the same thing every time)

Me: Ty stop (was throwing stuff at the glass door while we were doing multiplication with blocks)

Ty: No-throws something again

Me: Strike one

Ty: No....a few seconds later....throws again

Me: Strike two

Ty: I hate everything. I hate this house.....tosses a block very gently at window (see the testing here)

Me: Strike three, 4 minutes, go

See that...no response from me. No emotions, no talking, no nothing. Ty gets up, goes to time out. Spends all of time out calling me a "mean-y" head, but I can't see him, and I pretend I can't hear him. Because he got 4 min he does not ask how long his time out is-always the same length unless he does something horrible-like hitting-which we have not had to do yet.

As soon as he is let out of time out, he forgets how mean I am and goes and plays with us again.

I will say, I prepped him pretty good. This morning we went and saw the time out spot. I explained every step to him. My husband also knows about the procedure and grammie will know tomorrow.

Tonight I hope to get into the "start" behaviors...I will update again. 

The biggest thing we have changed is we are not sending him to his room. We don't want to associate the place Ty sleeps with being bad, in addition we really only send him to his room when he is overtired and needs to rest. The time out spot works best for us.