Our local Botanical Gardens has a terrific children’s garden and offers special events throughout the year.  Today they had guest bugs from the Nashville Zoo, with a presentation about their characteristics.  Of course, we also spent time in the butterfly house.  There wasn’t an abundance of butterflies and moths yet, although we found some beauties.  And I noticed they’d added some other features:  a cabinet of moth cocoons, a beehive with a tube for the bees to enter and exit from outside, and flowers that would be great for hummingbirds.  We even saw two goslings with their family at the pond outside the butterfly house.

Gardens offer an great way to see various forms of life all in one place:  plants, birds, insects, reptiles (like turtles), fish, and likely more.  If your location doesn’t have a botanical gardens, use parks and neighborhood yards.

My own backyard isn’t very fancy - a tree, some hostas, some small holly bushes, greass, and a few plants in pots.  Every day we see birds.  We can even identify the robins, cardinals, and doves.  We watch them tilt their heads from side to side, listening and looking to find bugs and worms in the yard.  We have toads that live around our bushes, have seen tree frogs on the house, and listen for the different croaks.  Sometimes a rabbit hops through the yards on our street, and we wonder where is hides the most.  My daughter can tell which things growing in the yard are weeds, grass, or plants that mom has planted.  We talk about why the mushrooms I pull up are growing in certain areas of the yard, where tree roots are rotting under the grass.  She collects leaves and flower petals that have fallen, dirt, seeds, and whatever else she can find - all to make ‘cakes’ with her friends.  They’ve used sticks to drum rhythms for dancing on their cake-making pans.  They experiment to see which rocks work as ‘chalk’ rocks.

With toddlers and preschoolers, try these ideas:

1. Play I Spy

2. Search for things of a certain color

3. Collect 3 of something from the yard

4. Practice looking closely without hurting the plants

5. Smell the flowers

6. Tiptoe to see how close you can get to the birds before they fly to safety

7. Chase butterflies

8. Find a good spot to dig in the dirt and share what you see

9. Look for spider webs, yet don’t destroy them

10. Take pictures to talk about later, perhaps for scrapbooking

Does the baby you’re holding talk to you? You might not hear it, especially if they are very young. Yet watch the baby’s face, and you’ll see her talk.

We just can’t help ourselves. We have to talk to babies. And they will take part in a conversation if you pause to let them. Their mouth will move. They may move their head. Their eyes will show a new expression.

Now it’s your turn. Act like you heard them. Perhaps ‘repeat’ some part of what they asked or told you. Then reply.

Your conversation may start something like this:

“How are you today?”

“Really? Did you sleep well?”

“Oh good. I slept well too. What do you think we should do today?”

“Going for a walk sounds fun. I hope the weather stays sunny.”

In the InBrief summary titled InBrief: The Science of Early Childhood Development, from scientific presentations at the National Symposium on Early Childhood Science and Policy, researchers state that the absence of such interaction affects the brain’s architecture and can lead to disparities in learning and behavior.  http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu/content/publications.html#inbrief

Yet you’ll be having conversations and naturally teaching that precious baby that you value them and want to interact with them. If it’s an older infant, perhaps adopted or in your foster care, you’ll be promoting the bonding process. For all children, you’re modeling taking turns in conversation, facial expressions, sentence structure, and new vocabulary. All things that will enhance brain development.

I realize the school year is ending. However, teachers do start thinking about the next school year before it actually arrives. I always tried to analyze where the year could have gone better. What did the students need me to do differently?

At one point, I realized that I wasn’t giving them the predictability that all children desire. My solution was to post the day’s schedule. And I posted a different version each day rather than one set schedule. After all, we had different days and times for art and music class. I wrote my schedule on the front board, for several reasons.

1. It was right in front of them, with the times of places we needed to go.

2. It gave me a place to list the day’s assignments as well, allowing them to delegate (or learn to delegate) their time wisely.

3. I could adjust it if things came up at the last minute, like fundraising assemblies.

4. It modeled correct handwriting.

5. They didn’t need to ask me about the day, and I didn’t need to announce it.

With younger children that aren’t yet reading, the same can be done. Use pictures, along with the words, and they’ll learn what those pictures represent. A picture of people in a circle is circle time. A picture being painted is art class. A computer represents computer lab. You get the idea. Rather than drawing the pictures every day, you could use a pocket chart to list the schedule. Or what about making a chart with velcro?

If you have other ideas, please share.

When I became a mother, I started singing to my daughter. I’d always heard people say mothers should sing to their children. So I did. I remembered nursery rhymes and songs I’d learned as a child. And I found that my daughter loved music. She loved cuddling or dancing while I sang.

There were times of the day when things weren’t going quite right. You know those times - trying to get her shoes on, getting her dressed, changing a diaper. So I started singing, making up songs about what we were doing. What a difference! She calmed down and listened. I especially loved to sing about her toes.

One little, two little, three little piggy toes.

Four little, five little, six little piggy toes.

Seven little, eight little, nine little piggy toes.

Ten little piggy toes on your feet.

She loved this much more than the traditional ‘This Little Piggy Went to Market’.

What does brain research say about using music?  Neurobiologists have discovered that music stimulates regions of the brain that are responsible for memory, motor control, timing, and language.

Parents do what comes naturally, and it helps their children learn. It explains why teachers of young children find it effective to use songs and rhymes to teach counting.

Find something fun to count today, and make up your own song. Your children will love it!

Newly replanted zinnias

My daughter has been wanting to plant seeds, from packets she bought with her daddy, for over a year.  I kept thinking, and telling her, that we didn’t have a garden plot.  This spring, my thinking changed.  We have flower pots!  Let’s get those seeds planted!

We planted zinnias several weeks ago, and they have been growing quite well in a too small pot.  Today, we transplanted them into two other pots.  First, she decided which were the smallest, and I showed her how to carefully remove just those plants.  Then we put the rest, with their roots intact, into a larger pot of soil.  The smaller plants we replanted into another smaller pot.

It was a perfect chance to talk about the limited food supply in the first pot, and how all of those plants needed enough to grow.  Relate it to feeding people a pizza.  You might need to limit how many are invited to the pizza party, or you’ll run out of slices.  Or you can order another pizza to have enough.  In our case, we ordered another ‘pizza’ and separated the guests into two ‘tables’.  She didn’t look at it as hurting the plants, as she had in the past when I’d mentioned needing to remove some of the smaller plants from the pot.  We found a solution to help all of those plants survive.

She’s happy, and we’ll have two pots of beautiful zinnias!

As I work to set up this blog, I’m finding that there is more involved than I expected. I’m excited to share tips with parents and teachers, yet I want a format and design that will stay consistent. I’m definitely learning as I go!