This was a book that we used for our pumpkin potion in Tinkergarten. I have not written up an activity for that yet but it is basically Stone Soup, in a pumpkin, with baking soda and vinegar. This book is all about a witch who keeps losing things and every time she goes down to look for the lost item she picks up a new critter.
This is a super cute book about a little mouse who gets scared of things in the dark. It lets you know what little mouse perceives to be scary and then shows you that its something "not so scary after all". The only problem I had with this book was that the kittens little mouse ran into were "not so scary after all" but mice should be scared of kittens! Over all the book was adorable.
Have you ever met Little Blue Truck? If not you should check out his series! Normally I don't like flip books because of the ripping risk and how long it takes Chloe to flip the flaps, but this one only has one flip per page and is pretty sturdy. Also a lot of books that talk about animal sounds can be pretty dry, but mixed with the Halloween theme it blended nicely.
I was really up in the air with this one. I ended up adding it to this list because I love Stone Soup so much, This is the same story as stone soup but it is a hungry monster dude who goes looking for food in a town full of different types of monsters. The part that bothers me is the annoying little Werewolf who pressures everyone into giving up their things by embarrassing them. So I just skip when he talks and the story sounds fine.
This is one of those books that gives you short parts of a "poem" and then adds them all together as the story goes along. In the end you have a cute poem all about Halloween!
This book was one of my favorites. It doesn't talk about Halloween at all but it is about an adorable monster! This book gives you a peek into the bedtime routine of a monster and is perfect for those kiddos who need a little less spooky before bed.
This was Chloe's pick. Its about a baby Mummy and his Mama Mummy who are playing hide and shriek. The little Mummy gets tiered of waiting for his Mama Mummy and goes in search of her in the woods, running into other monsters along the way.
If you have not read Goodnight Moon do that right now. This is a parody of that classic. It doesn't have the simple pictures that we all know and love from Goodnight Moon, but it is still an adorable parody. I may be biased because I LOVE Goodnight Moon.
This book has nothing to do with Halloween, but I think it works well because he is a master of disguise and that's what costumes are. He dresses up as different things to try and catch his prey, but has a hard time until the pizza...
This book is another cute book about monster love. It talks about all the ways that his monster mama shows that she loves him. Monster world is such a fun spooky world.
So there you have it, the top 10 books I found for Halloween. I am sure there are a lot more Halloween books out there that are wonderful and I would love to hear about your favorites or see pictures of you reading some of these books!
We love Halloween and all of the spooky things that come along with it. We don't follow any particular religion, but we do find it fun to join in on the celebrations! Plus how else am I supposed to get free candy for the rest of the year? Its not child labor if shes having fun right!?
Chloe is a bit obsessed with words and letters, lucky me! If your child isn't that is totally fine and please do not force them to do this sort of activity. Your child will show interest when they are ready to learn about it, don't rush them.
Spooky Words
Originally I was looking for those little plastic spiders that you put in the fake webs but I could not find them anywhere! So I ended up getting a pack of spooky rings and cutting off the ring part. I told her we were going to trace some spooky words and she got super pumped. I let her pick the word to trace and we ended up with skull.
We put one letter on each sheet of paper, and because there were two l's we did one upper case and one lower. We sounded out the word and said each letter before she got started, then I just let her have at it. She didn't feel like doing anymore words that day but we will bring them back out again when she feels the urge!
When we ran out of pieces we just took some from the other letters and kept going.
Spooky Word Ideas
Bat
Owl
Witch
Mummy
Ghost
Spider
Moon
Spider
Scary
Mask
I could go on and on but that should be enough to get you started!
Chloe loves science! Do you know the best things for toddler science? Baking soda and vinegar of course! We all know of the typical explosions, but did you know that they can inflate a balloon as well!? What you need:
2 Tbs baking soda
1/2 cup vinegar
Some sort of bottle a balloon can fit over
Balloon
Marker
So to make this experiment Halloween related we blew up the balloon ahead of time and drew a monster face on it! You can't really tell from the picture, but it was super spooky.... After we had our spooky face drawn on we let the balloon go to deflate it and chase it. We couldn't find a 2 liter bottle so we used Chloe's water bottle, it worked ok.
The first round Chloe poured everything in super slow and we ended up with a HUGE explosion mess because I couldn't get the balloon covering the hole before the reaction happened. The next 100 times she wanted to do it we were much quicker, although with pouring so much vinegar into a tiny hole we still had a bit of a mess. After the first two rounds we stopped measuring all together and just went at it, It worked about the same.
I thought it was a bit disappointing how little the balloon blew up, but Chloe thought it was AMAZING. Know of any other cool things you can do with baking soda and vinegar?
We made the Mush! We made the Monster Mush! Don't most holiday things have a bad pun somewhere? Now that we have gotten that out of the way lets make some monsters!
Need:
Pipe Cleaners
Googly Eyes
What ever other junk you want to use
Play Dough (recipe below) Play Dough Recipe: Need:
2 cups of flour
1 cup salt
4 tsp cream of tarter
4 tbs oil
2 cups cold water
coloring (green food dye)
Good smell (if you want to use a spice to add the smell)
Mix dry ingredients
Add wet ingredients
Cook over medium-low heat stirring non stop until the dough holds together. It will happen just keep stirring! You will know when to stop. You should be able to stick your hand in with little stickiness.
Knead a few times and let it cool
If you want to save it keep it in an air tight container. It should last about one week in the refrigerator and three days out.
Activity Time!
This part of the activity is easy! Take all of the materials that you have and put them out. Let your child explore them how ever they want but have fun yourself! Maybe show them some of these pictures first or just start building your own and see if they follow your lead. This is about the process not the product! If you do this please send me your pictures I would love to add them!
One of my favorite things about Tinkergarten is how much we work with nature treasures. Nature treasures are anything that a child likes the smell, look, or feel of. Depending on where you live and how much supervision you apply taste can also be added to this. PLEASE DO NOT EAT anything you can not identify 100%! Nature treasures help to build a sense of wonder and preciousness with children. Being able to pick up and keep what ever they want?!
Every trial class I do, which tends to be Stone Soup, and for the first class of every season, our opening activity is to collect nature treasures. This really helps the kids to get to know the area and what it provides. Whenever Chloe and I go to a new place we go around and check out how the nature treasures here are different from the ones at home. In future blogs you will notice that many of them start out with a hike where you will be collecting nature treasures, but until then here are a few ideas:
- Talk about how they feel. Try rubbing them on different parts of your body, do they feel different on the inside of your arm then on the bottom of your foot? Your cheek? Threw your pants?
-Smell them. Compare the smell of a wet pine cone to a dry one. A fresh flower to a dry flower.
-Taste them. PLEASE only taste things that you are 100% sure will not harm you or your child, we tend to leave the taste out of it in Tinkergarten.
-Sort them into piles. Big and small. Colors, Type.
There are so many ways to play with and learn with nature treasures, I am sure you can come up with a never ending list! If you want to share the way you play please leave a comment below =]!
After reading about how important it is for humans in general to hone their senses, I decided that while I work on mine I should help Chloe work on hers to. Have I ever mentioned that one of the things I love most about home/unschooling is that I get to learn right along with her?
While I plan on going pretty in depth into each of the senses, I wanted Chloe to have a basic idea of what they all were. That and there are SO MANY things to do with kids and their senses that I wanted to split it up a bit. I did the following activities over the span of two weeks.
While I was looking for books that included all of the senses for this lesson plan, most of them seemed to forced. We like stories that show not tell. This book is very colorful, but the pictures are kept simple. A group of hodgepodge animals are awaken by a noise. They cant see anything and they cant hear what it could be so they each venture out to touch. Each animal touches a part of elephant (they don't know what it is) and comes back thinking its a giant version of what ever animal they are. In the end all of the animals, including the elephant, go back to sleep in their hammock until the elephant hears something.
Rain is about animals in Africa who are waiting for the rain. They know that its coming because their senses tell them. I love how they mention smelling rain, I love the smell of rain! The words are switched from present tense to past tense which added an element of learning that I wasn't expecting. It mentions the effects that the rain has on the environment and eludes to it coming full circle back to dry again. This was a fun book with lots of description words.
If you have any book recommendations for the 5 senses please let me know! Most of what we read were not that great. Maybe you want to write us a story!
Poem
I know that I love to talk about books and how amazing they are, but I also think that its important to expose our kids to different styles of writing. All we do with poems is read threw it a few times during the week. I wont focus to much on poetry with her unless she sparks an interest in it, but I do want her to know what a poem is.
The first half of this episode is something about Valentines day, but the second half is all about our five senses. Curious George is trying to find a way to keep the deer out of the garden. He tried building a scare crow, he talked with his friend about using smell but decided it was a bad idea, he made loud sounds but kept everyone up all night, and finally he remembered that the deer didn't like his cinnamon oatmeal! They sprinkled cinnamon on the plants and the deer stayed away. Not only do I love how well they integrate the senses into this show I also love Georges use of the scientific method. Way to go George!
The number one thing that we use technology for is dace parties! Below are the senses song we added to our dance party routine for the past two weeks. We keep the ones that we like best in the rotation for future weeks. As with all dance parties funny motions are a must!
Hands On Activities
We tried many activities for our five senses and picked the best to share with you!
Scavenger Hunt
Most of us have been on a scavenger hunt at some point in our lives, but how many of you had to use all your senses for it? This activity can be great to do inside or outside just make sure to tailor it to your location. I will provide you with a small list of ideas to get you started but there are just so many that it could be a blog in itself!
Floral
Stinky
Spicy
Smooth
Slimy
Sticky
Sweet
Tart
Gross
Red
Small
Square
Jingly
Loud
Calming
I tried to provide three for each sense, please leave a comment below with more ideas to share!
This was a bit more direct than I normally go but she loved it so much that we even did another version as you will see below! While this way is a bit simpler we decided we wanted more than one word to describe each sense. We described it before we ate it and after. I attempted to draw an apple and write neat...
Its not about the product its about the process right?
Chloe LOVES to trace letters and she was so proud when she was done with this work sheet. She insisted on showing it to everyone! Remember, your child is going to learn best doing what they want to do, if your child does not want to do the worksheet, or any other activity, it would be counter productive to force them.
Mystery Sense
Ironically in Tinkergarten this season we are also learning about our senses. Its like fate! For our opening activity I took: peeled grapes, cooked and oiled noodles, rocks, pine cones, pine needles, cinnamon sticks, toy elephant, and a smashed banana, and put them in different types of containers.
I had kids smell the cinnamon sticks and touch/smell the pine needles and mashed banana.
I had them feel and attempt a smell of the noodles, pine cones, toy elephant, and grapes
The rocks in a metal container got a nice listen!
Under different circumstances I would have had a few up for taste as well, but in Tinkergarten one of our rules is that we don't put anything in our mouth except for snack! Although a few of our edible items did end up in some little mouths anyways!
We use our senses all the time when we hike around but this brought out more of a focus. It also makes a really good journal entry if you are trying to instill that habit. Make sure that you point out what your senses are noticing as well! We added taste in for the things that we could identify like tree sap and dandelions. This can also be a great activity to do as each season is changing, you can compare past journals to this one.
The last, and personally our favorite, was the popcorn chart! We started off by making four different types of popcorn: Plain, Tex Mex, Ginger Bread, and Mystery. For our mystery I had Chloe go into the spice cabinet, pick three random spices, and put it on the popcorn along with butter. With so much popcorn we had to share!
I made a little chart for each of the popcorn flavors and went threw our senses for each, Remember to do smell before you do taste! We are lucky to have such a wide range of ages in our family so we started with the youngest and worked our way to the oldest. This gave the older people a chance to challenge their vocabulary as well. I think that this type of community learning is not only the most beneficial to all parties but also the most fun! I don't expect Chloe to know the same words as our older players, but its good for her to experience those more descriptive words in a fun environment!
That's all I have for this lesson plan! Look out for the more in depth lesson plan we will be doing for smell! As always please send us pictures of you trying the activities and any other ideas you have!
Have you ever been called a stick in the mud? Well in Rede, Tanzania this might not be such a bad thing! Children in this area of the world have a popular game involving a stick, dirt, and kids. I always love finding games where all of my materials can be found in nature, even better when it can involves mud!
First thing you need to do is find a nice straight stick. If you want to make it a bit more challenging you may want to find a few different shapes of sticks and switch them out between rounds. Take your stick, shove it in what ever type of dirt you have, and pile up more dirt around it. You want to make the dirt pile big enough to hold the stick steady for a few rounds.
Sit in a circle around the stick and take turns moving the dirt. When we played I would specify if it had to be a big hand full or a little hand full. You can also change the amount of handfuls that a child takes if you want to up the challenge level.
When the stick drops you are supposed to either run around the circle or get to base before someone tags you. The person who gets tagged four times loses. We on the other hand just wanted to play that whoever made the stick fall loses. We were relaxing a bit after the hard work of making mud pies.
I have to say that this game was a HUGE success. I didn't expect the kids to get as into as they did. It was a lot of fun and built up our sensory skills at the same time!
If you decide to give it a try send us a picture! We would love to feature other people playing this game. Think you have some cool new rules we should try? Leave a comment!
Congratulations! You have made it to the video portion of your application process! If you are anything like me I bet you are stressing out a bit. I felt really nervous about doing this part. Things like: How am I going to get that many kids to show up? What if my activity is a flop? What will they think of me? and so much more! I slept so bad the night I found out about the video and the night before I did it, jumping into something new can be very scary.
Lucky you that you found this blog post to help chill your nerves. Its not that bad I swear! They really don't expect much, they understand how scary this is and how hard it can be. I believe that they just want you to show that you can try. That you will be able to talk to people, lead a lesson, and not be creepy. Below I will post a few of my videos and hopefully videos and advice from other leaders will also be added over time. Tinkergarten will also send you a sample video that shows they don't expect anything beautiful, just an effort.
I think that I was most stressed about getting people to show up. I had a few friends with kids, but not the amount they wanted. How was I ever going to do this? People can be so flaky how do I know that anyone will even show up? Was I going to do all of this work to be left embarrassed? Fear not! Facebook is your friend and everyone LOVES free things!
So first things first you need to pick a lesson. I wrote a nature activity blog about the one that I did, but I feel like I may have put more effort into it than I needed to. Tinkergarten has an amazing selection of activities for you to pick from with great explanations on how to implement them. I suggest picking one that you can test out before hand on your own kids or any kid that you can borrow to kinda see how the flow will go.
Step two is to pick a day, time, and place. For my video an open park worked well, but keep in mind for future Tinkergarten classes an open field will not be a great choice, trees and water can be very helpful, but that's for another time. When picking your location make sure its a place you can easily explain how to get to, or leave signs for them to follow. I recommend not having it near a playground because that can be very distracting! As for the day and time try to make sure that it wont interfere with any other events going on and try to work around typical meal and nap times as well.
Now for the part I found the most stressful, getting people to show up. I created a public Facebook event and shared it on as many local Facebook pages as I could. I explained the activity that we would be doing and why I needed some help. I also sent personal messages to the people who were interested, maybes, and going thanking them and letting them know how much I appreciated that they would help me out. I feel like its harder to ditch out on someone who is depending on you. Of course I also sent private messages to all of my friends with kids explaining to them what I was doing.
If you make your video and want to add it to the ones that I have here or have any extra advice please let me know!
GOOD LUCK
Amber
I've talked a lot about fostering a love for things, so I wont go off on another rant about it haha. You can read my rant here if you want to know why its so important. Remember my blog about cloud watching? Well lets take it a step further and star watch!
Henery's Stars is a story about a pig who sees a great pig constellation in the sky and rushes to the barn yard to tell his friends. His friends all see something different in the stars and it causes an argument until Henry can't see his pig anymore. This story is a great way to introduce constellations in a way that shows that we can create our own.
Another great book is Star Climbing. This book is full of beautiful art work and a sleepy story. It introduces constellations in a way that promotes love over education. We loved this book so much that we renewed it three times! I am a sucker for good art work. There is also a section in the back that briefly explains the story of the constellations in the book if your child is interested.
Now on to the activity. I kinda like to do this one on the same day I do the cloud watching because they go together so well! On a camping trip is the perfect time. I get really excited to do these activities for the first time so while we are waiting for it to get dark I like to do some connect the dots, and Chloe LOVES connect the dots. If you can find one about constellations all the better!
The activity part of this is pretty easy. You can lay out a blanket and look up at the stars. If you lay out at the end of sunset you can watch as more and more stars come out adding to the educational experience. Start saying what shapes you see in the stars and allow your kiddo to join in when they are ready. It can also be fun to have a telescope and a phone with the star app ready for further fun!
Have you ever let your child watch a little (A LOT) to much TV? I'm Guilty. It is so easy to get in the habit of setting your child in front of the TV when you have something to do. Many of us feel guilty about it later when we realize how much of those "things I need to get done" add up for our child and their TV time. I am not going to preach to you about how to much TV is horrible for your child, there are already plenty of people much more qualified than I already doing that. What I am going to talk about are a few different tools you can use to break the habit.
1. Fun Shelf: I don't know about your kid, but mine is obsessed with learning. She loves to trace things, color, search and find, and look at picture books. So we have a book shelf full of things just for that. Every morning I would put her on a show while she ate so I could get something done. I realized that I was making a bad habit for her so now we sit at the table for breakfast and do a sticker book together or color. I am still able to get things done between my turn or I get up for a few minutes and then come back. Always make sure that you come back so that they learn to trust that you will and wont bother you to come back all the time, you will get a lot more done in the long run trust me.
2. Basket of Exploration: Cooking can be one of the hardest things to do with a child up your butt. I let Chloe help as much as she can but there are a lot of things that she just cant do fast enough or at all yet. So I prep ahead of time with a basket of fun. All you need to do is go threw some old toys that your little hasn't played with in a while and present them in a new way. For example: put a bunch of legos in a basket (if you already keep them in a basket put them in something else), add a few other things in there that could possibly enhance the play like toys to play on the Legos, and leave it somewhere that they will see it or make a big deal about it when you bring it out. You will be surprised how much more use you can get out of a discarded toy. This also works in a pinch. When I was filling this basket for a picture Chloe jumped right on it!
3. Table Top Design: This one can be really fun for many different occasions. Get a bunch of paper, tape it to the top of your table, put some markers out, and watch the master piece come together. When your child starts to bother you and you need some space, ask them to go add something to the table for what ever reason pops into your head at the time. If you have older kids or adults who want to join in the fun encourage them to write things on it as well. This can be a quote, poem, made up story, funny words, anything really.
4. Theme Box: This one takes a little bit of prep work, but the fun also lasts much longer. Pay attention to what your child is expressing interest in, although I am sure you are already doing this, and create them a box with that theme. For example a doctor themed box could have doctor tools, lab coat, patients that need mending, books about doctory things. If your child is older then it could be a bunch of old broken toys and the materials they would need to fix them. Your child is interested in space? Pull out those star stickers! Pinterest is a great resources for this one.
5. Shadow Tracing: So you really want that space? Shut your kid in the closet, or a room without windows, well unless its dark... and give them some paper, a flash light, and things to trace with. Show them how to put a object in front of the light and trace it on the wall (don't forget to put paper there!). Teach about shadows as much or as little as you like and let them have at it. For extra time encourage them to color in the shadow and not just tracing it. (This ones picture just never turned out right)
There are so many things we can do with our kids that will allow them to grow more than a TV will allow. We just have to get creative and break our own habit. What do you remember from childhood, was it the things you did or the shows you watched?
What do you do to keep your kiddo busy when you need some time?
I think that we all have at least one thing in common, we want our kids to be happy. I talk a lot in my blog about how creating a love for something is more important than teaching the facts. For example in my blog about cloud watching I say "This isn't about learning the cloud names, its about promoting a love for the clouds that will later inspire them to learn the clouds names and so much more."
When you love something you want to explore it and learn everything there is to know about it. Think about something you were/are passionate about. For me it is early childhood education, I have 5+ books on my shelf about children and another 15 about other things that I am interested in. I have never learned so much in my life. In school you are taught how to get all the right answers, to learn what they say you should know, and it really can turn some people off from learning. Look back onto your school experience, what do you remember learning about the most? What knowledge did you retain? I bet it was about something that you loved.
You are responsible for teaching your child how to love things and how to explore those passions. Teachers can only teach so much about any one thing, they cant focus just on what your child is craving to know about.
So next time your at the park and want to throw in a bit of education, lay down and make a story with the clouds. Someday this love for clouds could grow into so much more.
What do you love? How do you promote passion in your life and the lives of your family?
