My son has been using the phrase “I can’t” a lot lately because he is so catious, but lately I have noticed that he is using it as a crutch. We went swimming in the lake on the fourth of July and when asked to go into the lake he cried out “I can’t” because he was scared. I don’t want to ignore his fears so we are going to be swimming in pools more often until he is comfortable. But, I also want to implement the “I can” mentality into his vocabulary as much as I have the influence to do so.
So, here are a few things that I have casually introduced to Sean Patrick and spent time encouraging him with in the past week.
1) We started off coloring an “I Can” book that I could read to him and encourage him to “read” to daddy and others as well.
2) We made a homemade video of him on my iphone acting out all of the “I CAN” actions from the book (I would’ve shared this, but he didn’t feel like putting clothes on for the video haha).
3) I started a little personalized “I can” book for him in a Word document:
And 4) I stumbled upon a Barney (yes the big purple dinosaur) video called “I Can Do That” featuring a group of friends playing “I Can _____” and then putting on a skit about it.
These tips are NOT a short-term “cure” for the I can’ts! All of these ideas are things I am currently teaching toward a GOAL that we can replace “I can’t” with “I can.” I’m sure there will be plenty of reminders 🙂
I can’t believe that it was about 7 months ago that I wrote about my last library read-aloud experience. I have to admit that I haven’t brought Sean Patrick more than a couple times since that day because he was such a tasmanian devil in the library that I felt like I needed more time to teach him to participate in that type of setting, especially with a new baby and a few other reasons that have overtaken my day-to-day this year.
But today was magical! haha. I brought him this morning and on the way I talked to him about how we were going act and told him about the fun we were going to have at the library with other kids and “friends.” We were going to sit together and sing along with a “teacher.” I prepared him by setting the stage and communicating my expectations. “You are going to stay by mommy and sit in my lap. If you cant listen to the teacher then we will have to leave. I need you to listen to mommy and it will be so much fun.” He said “Okay, I stay by mommy.”
And HE DID!!! haha It was really special. He participated for the entire half hour, both in my lap and nearby. Every time the leader sang a song, read a book, or led a fingerplay, Sean Patrick asked her to “Sing dat again!” It was really great and now I’m excited to go back next week.
Even if our little ones aren’t always little angels, experiences like this are truly beneficial and rewarding. This “mommy teacher” chooses her battles, and 7 months ago I felt like it was too much work in his stage at the time with a new baby to juggle the read-aloud, but I am SO glad we are in a good little season because it is a sweet thing! 🙂
I really love the Busy Bag exchange! Getting a bag full of age-appropriate activities is exciting, but, it helps to have some direction. A bag of activities will only take your little one as far as you LEAD them. There might be instructions on some of the activities, but I wanted to add my step-by-step teaching tips because otherwise your little one simply has something to occupy their time (which isn’t all bad! I am a mommy too remember?) BUT you also have a great teaching opportunity….to meet your little one in his/her zone of proximal development. Wait what? Basically….a chance to tap into their prior understandings, engage with their working memory, and BUILD onto what they already know.
I joked with my girlfriends the other night at dinner about one of the activities in the mix because it seemed almost too open-ended to even figure out what it’s purpose was. But open-ended materials can leave room for some of the most organic learning experiences, and it has many purposes for more ages than the suggested age.
1) I started by letting my little one investigate on his own so I could observe what observations he was making and so he could just get his curiousity out before I started something slightly more structured.
2) We talked about the colors (sorting them into groups for a better visual). We talked about how soft they were (texture). We talked about how they were little (size). We talked about how there were a lot of pom poms and tried to count them (one by one correspondence) as we put them inside the tupperware.
3) We pretended we were little crawfish and used our pinchers to pick up the pom poms. “Oooh, lets put the red ones in first!” (Pre-writing in mind….proper pencil grip!)
4) We practiced pushing them the pom poms in the hole with just our “pointer finger” and then just our “thumb” and later we were silly trying to push it in with our pinky finger.
5) Finally, we practiced taking turns and Sean Patrick had a blast racing me to push my pom pom in on my turn.
If you have older ones….accommodate and adapt the activity to fit what your little one is working on….estimation, graphing, or adding. You probably have the materials just lying around your house so it is too easy not to get it together.
So, my encouragement is not to take activities at face value EVEN IF the picture of the activity SEEMS self-explanitory.
After being introduced to Second Story Window’s Busy Bag Exchange concept, there is so much to share that I am going to try my best to compartmentalize my efforts. So, here is “take one” of the busy bag adventure.
Seventeen mommy teachers (myself included) signed up to participate in a toddler busy bag exchange with several activity ideas linked in a google doc. I chose one of them called “Doodle Rubbings” from the blog This Little Project with an emphasis on Shapes.
Though I read a low-rating review from a blogger who has a toddler blog (a blog that I like a lot though), I chose the activity intentionally because it is a GREAT activity to teach and to experiment with fine motor and sensory development. This activity is not going to reap the same outcome as it would for a five year old, however, it is still a busy bag that I want at my toddler’s fingertips. AND it can be adapted for preschool, pre-k, and even kindergarten use!
In order to make the materials, my awesome husband and brother-in-law helped me cut up pampers boxes using a razor and scissors (and by helped me I mean that they did this part for me :). Then I drew shapes onto the cardboard squares and traced over the self-made stencil with hot glue. This was NOT difficult at all….but, it was time-consuming because I was making SO many of them for the exchange.
But I don’t want to neglect the how-to! A lot of sites give you “instructions” for activity ideas but this can incidentally shotgun mommies into lessons without much guidance. So, Here is one means of carrying out this activity with a little more umph! (varying depending on the prior understandings of each child):
1) Start with one shape, unless your little one already knows all their shapes….in that case, review the shapes.
2) Talk about the shape (round, lines, what it looks like, where we see the faces of shapes like a square on a box, etc)
3) Place a piece of paper over a flat surface and color, explaining that because we are coloring on a flat surface the picture comes out a lot like I imagined it would in my mind.
4) Place the shape under the paper (emphasize over, under, and on top), and as you are making strokes back and forth with your crayon talk about the amount of pressure you are placing on the crayon (“I’m not pushing hard with my crayon, I am coloring soft”).
The triangle on the left was what appeared when I held my little one's hand to color.
5) Take your little one’s hand and demonstrate using the same shape but a new piece of paper.
6) Have your little one try it by himself/herself.
7) Talk about why it might have come out different than the first two or why the shape appears because the image underneath is raised.
And a few more thoughts:
This activity allows little ones to explorewith sensory development: texture, touch, etc. and use the little muscles in their hands to develop fine motor skills as well as the scientific observation of cause and effect due to changing the materials to produce a different outcome.
For children who need more of a challenge: This activity can be used to make tangrams (pictures made out of combining shapes). Tangrams are great for developing spatial skills!
There are A LOT of websites that give activity ideas for little ones, but my goal is to make teaching your little one such a natural part of your everyday routine….. and it helps to have some insight into the best teaching techniques.
Most parents who are “teaching” their little one spend more time “drilling” our kiddos (flash card style) than actually teaching them. This isn’t ALL bad and trust me, I am guilty of this at times!
We get very caught up in the idea that if our child has learned a skill (like letter naming) then we need to constantly ask them “What letter is this?” and then wait for their answer. Don’t get me wrong….this is a GOOD thing. You are helping your little one to recall the information repetitively for recognition and fluency’s sake! But I want to ADD that YOU still need to be reinforcing what your little one knows and not just leaving it up to them.
Here is my example of what I am trying to incorporate at home:
Sometimes when I am grocery shopping I see underlying learning opportunities in the products I buy (Alphabits, Fruit Loops for sorting or patterning, Familiar Print, etc.). But when I was picking up a box of waffles, I saw the opportunity to reinforce teaching shapes by buying a box of circular shaped waffles AND a box of square shaped waffles.
Instead of asking Sean Patrick, “Do you want the waffle that is a square or a circle?” (because I know that he knows his shapes), I talk more about it more to reinforce his familiarity with the shape vocabulary and help him make connections. “LooK! This waffle is shaped like a circle!” I said this as I held up a strawberry Eggo waffle. “It goes round and round and round like the wheels on the bus!” (I made it turn in circles just so that he would make a connection of another circular-shaped object) “And this waffle” (holding up the cinnamon toast waffle) “is shaped like a square. It has FOUR sides. One, two, three, four like a square on the floor!” Then I bent down and traced my finger on the outline of the square counting the sides. “Do you want the circle waffle? or the square waffle?”
He chose the “circle!” and he proceeded to tell me about it while he ate “I bite a circle. I bite a round and round” haha – I think he gets it.
Ignore the fact that his diaper is coming apart at the moment, we need to move into pull-ups because of all the “false alarms” that come with potty training. He cracks me up!
