Fall Days - Preschool Tree Time!

One of my all time favorite times of the year is the transition from fall to winter, the leaves changing color, the chill in the air, the holidays looming and coming and looming and coming, the children's crafts, the excitement, the giggles.... I could go on forever.  

Yesterday I wrote a post about taking advantage of every learning opportunity you get, but I should also admit that I do have a formal "preschool" time with my daughter, we attempt one to three times a week, sometimes we'll get in all five days and sometimes we'll skip a week entirely.  It's flexible because she is young, and because we're busy!  But I do have an entire binder that I have started to accumulate awesome homeschooling things within, things like free printables (http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/worksheets/) and crafts like the one we did yesterday which I also got from an amazing blog called Housing a Forest and a rough week-by-week schedule.

Anyways! On to the fun!  While these trees look awesome, and took a while, they were incredibly easy and the kids (ages 2 1/2 and 4) had a ton of fun every step of the way.  

The first thing I did was to shred up about 3 pages of each color of construction paper and put them in about 1 to 1.5 c. water.  This will start the paper pulp, but they need to have a good while to really absorb the water.  As we were doing a fall theme we chose red, orange, and yellow (like the example.) we loved it so much though we might do it in the spring time and do it with green and pink and make apricot tree blossoms.  

While the paper was soaking, we made the "Salt dough hills."  Salt dough is the easiest thing to make, 1 c. salt, 1 c. water, 2 c. flour.  If its a little too wet or dry add more flour or water.  Now I didn't know how well these would hold up, and I wanted ours to go on the mantle, so I used wide mouthed pint sized jars and we shaped the dough to fit into it.  (I will say when you bake there's a slight bit of relaxing, so make it a little smaller than the cup's diameter.  I ended up having to rip off some of the edges of their hills to cram them inside.)  The dough once baked however did appear to be strong enough to hold up the single branch trees,  I had also thought about putting them in little tins from the dollar store, but liked the mason jar look.  You can use whatever you want for the base. 

The kids helped with every step of this process from pouring flour to mixing to rolling and playing.  When they had the basic shape of their "hills" we stuck in our branch (just pulled from my own back yard.) to give it the general fit for the branches.  Then I stuck them in a 250 degree for about 30-45 minutes.  I wanted them to be dry enough to paint, but still moist enough to force the tree into.

While the dough was in the oven we worked on our ground covering - what else but a pile of leaves?  We took the colors and put them in the blender, (lightest first) and blended up the paper.  I found that I needed to add extra water to make a good pulp of each of the colors.

Once the pulp was finished I let the kids each have a color and we started pinching out paper.  I covered a plate with paper towel (to help with the mess and to absorb the extra water) and we each started pinching the leaves out.  For individual lives simply squish the water out and set them on the towel.  My daughter did this for a bit, before deciding she didn't like the individuals much and decided to roll it into a big ball and crumble it and squish it, honestly, it looked just as awesome and resembled more a raked pile that the kids had played in then the perfect ones.   

Baby B (though not much of a baby any more!) was much more precise and preferred to only take a few fingers to squish the leaves individually.  Both of them ended up getting some beautiful leaves and a good pile by the end because neither wanted to just leave the paper to dry, both wanted to play with the pulp a bit, and as it was their day I wanted them to do what they wanted to do.  

When they were done with the leaves I pulled the dough out and let it cool while we did lunch.  Once cooled the kiddos enjoyed painting their hills "natural" hill colors, browns and greens.  This also allowed the leaves the opportunity to dry while they painted.  When they were done with the painting we did some fun time away from crafts to let them dry.  When I could handle it I put them into the pint jars and pushed the tree into the dough.  I thought I would need to hot glue this, but it was a nice snug fit, I can only assume from the expansion while it cooked.  

Once the trees were in their jars it was time to start putting the leaves on the tree itself.  The fun with this was how random and easy it could be, you could put as much or as little on as you want, it looked good with the branches in bare and the ground leaves we'd done earlier in the jar.  I had to help B a bit to get the leaves to stick in the beginning, but by the end he was figuring it out and wrapping it well.  The thing I would recommend is that the older party help squeeze some of the water out to ensure the paper will stay on the branch.  If they got too big of a wet clump it would all fall right off. Also I have to agree with the Housing a Forest author - the more erratic the better.   

She-she's Tree.

Baby B's Tree

Once that was done we tied a bit of raffia around the pint jars and I set them on the mantle to dry. If you don't have / don't like raffia, fabric, burlap, ribbon, yarn.... pretty much anything to accent it would work.

It's Gorgeous!!! It's totally a craft that I want to display in my home. :)  It may even be a yearly tradition and at $0 a tree it would be one we can always do no matter what finances look like.  :)  For sure my favorite craft of the year thus far.

Every Opportunity

My daughter is four years and one month old, and since the beginning I have believed that every opportunity can be a learning experience, even in its joy.  Play is one of the best ways for a child to learn, whether social skills like manners, sharing, and how to handle a disagreement or educational skills, like the alphabet, mathematics, history, shapes, colors, science...

I remember one day She-she an I went to the grocery store, she was perhaps five months old and certainly not speaking yet.  Despite the fact that it was just the two of us I was chattering away with her, asking her opinion on fruits and veggies, talking about the ripeness, and letting her smell and feel things like pineapples and kiwi.  After a while a woman turned and glared at me, "Who are you talking to?" she snapped and I looked pointedly at the carseat with my little angel in it.

"My daughter," I said, not certain what I'd done to upset her for talking to my child.

The woman, tilting her head and full on scowling said, "She cannot talk yet, she is too young."

I just raised an eyebrow and said, "How do you think she learns?"  Then I proceeded to talk to She-she and walked away from her.

Even though that was nearly four years ago I still remember it like yesterday, still remember her "are you stupid" tone and me thinking "you must be crazy."  The fact is every opportunity I get I talk to my daughter, I tell her about the world and what we see, I have since the day she was born.

She-she was an early talker, and she speaks well.  She knows the alphabet, can count, can sing several songs on her own.  And I believe this is because her father and I surround her with enjoyable learning.  She helps me sort the laundry, she helps me count how many apples I have and how many I need.

I believe as a mother my major goals in life are to prepare her for a full and enjoyable life, school, friends, people, conflict, self esteem, and all this comes from taking every opportunity to teach her, I do this by providing her as many learning opportunities as I can and being involved in her life.

Some tips for bringing learning into every day life:

~Teach colors, ask your child to pick clothes of a specific color, explain the difference between dark blue and light blue.

~Count everything.  Count the fruits and veggies they're eating, count the number of books they have, count the photos on the wall.

~Show them signs.  "Please walk."  "The Dollar Store."  Signs are all around us and may be the first examples of letters they ever see.  Point to the letters of their name if you can get close enough.  Let them touch if they can.

~Make up goofy songs to help them spell and learn.  She-she has a song about her name that her dad sang her when she was about a year old.  Even before she understood what the letters meant she was spelling her name.  Its also a great way to teach them your phone number in case they ever get separated from you.

~Take them to learning-full places, parks with numbers and letters, science projects, music.  Instead of taking them to Chuck-E-Cheeses for their birthday take them to The Children's Museum, an art studio-where they can do their own art, a kid's science facility, a restaurant where they can see the chef work, etc.  Its tempting when you go to these places to go with another parent, which is fine, but make sure you take advantage of one-on-one time as well.  Give your child the opportunity to ask questions and to play with you.

~Encourage questions and answer in ways they understand.  About six months ago She-she asked me how crayons were made.  Since I knew only the bare necessities, colors and wax were mixed and melted we went to Youtube and watched a video together.  It was enjoyable for both of us.

~And an obvious one: Books.  Fill your child's life with books, whether they're your own or the libraries.  There are all sorts of different kinds, and picture books can be just as informative as text books, especially to an early reader.  Read to your child, whether at night or in the morning or in the car (not while you're driving.) When they're potty training let them read on the toilet.  (It relieves the stress on them too.)  Ask them questions about what they read, everything from what color is her hair, to what was the problem ____ had?  How did they fix it, etc.

When they start learning to put their letters with what they look like start working on the sounds they make too.  Have them sound out some words with you.  In short, your child can be and is likely a brilliant person, but they don't know it until you show them.  So show them every opportunity you get!