sense of smell part 2

how to make a good useful smell: take an orange or a mandarin and some whole cloves. If you are strong enough, just push the cloves through the orange skin, other wise make hole on the skin by using a tooth pick and then insert the cloves in the holes. Your orange will immediatelly take a new lovely smell. It is also a good exercise to strenghen the fingers and as a creative activity

the sense of smell part 1

For this sense I devise a matching game. I collected a few of the same containers over a short period of time (I chose to keep Actimel empty bottles). The important thing is that they are all identical containers. I chose some strong, quite easily recognizable smells, such as mint leaves, coffee, cinamon, cumin, dry herbs. I put the same smell in two containers to form a couple. I asked M. to have a good smell inside the containers and I told her the name of each thing she was smelling. Then I asked her to close her eyes and try and match the smell of the bottle she has in her hand by smelling all the bottles until she would find the right one. As I wanted to keep the smells for her to repeat the exercise when she likes, I covered the containers with cling film, put a rabber bend around the neck of the bottle and made a few holes on the cling film with a tooh-pick

Sense of hearing

For exploring this sense we have listened to some sounds on a tape which M. had to match to some pictures I gave her. Then I planned for two trips to explore the sounds of the city and the sounds of nature. For the sounds of the city we focused on hearing all the noises around us as we were walking to the farm and the woodland area in the park (the two "sounds of the nature" sites)

Sense of sight part 3

This time is all about using our eyes to find small insects. A trip to the local country park provided the right environment and the best excuse to spend the day outside in the sun. What we need is just a magnifying glass and a small transparent container with lid.

sense of sight part 2

Backgrounds. we explore how the picture changes when we chnage the back ground and leave the same subject. I draw three simple identical houses and coloured in the same colour. I cut out pictures of different types of holidays destinations (woodland, seaside, Australia etc). I then glued each house on a background. I told M. that that was my house and that it was going on holiday. I showed her that my house was first in the woods, than it went to the seaside and then it went to the mountains. I asked her what remained the same throughtout the house journey and what kept on changing.

I then told her it was her turn to make her house go on holiday. She was really enthusiast about the activity. I let her choose the backgrounds she liked best from a few magazines, then I let her cut them out her self and glue her houses where she liked in the picture. She then made up different stories of why and how the house went to the different destinations.

sense of sight part 1

In the next months we will focus on our five senses. I asked her to colour in where the sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell are in a drawing of a little girl. We called her our little explorer. Then in a separate paper, I let her colour in her cloths and then cut them out and glue them on the girl

For the sense of sight we made a cardboard TV which we will use to explore various concepts using our eyes. First of all we looked at visual illusions. She will understand that not always what we see it is what actually we think we see! I showed M some simple examples of hidden figures, then an example of a figure made up of small tiny same figures and she made her own. I did this by using children stamps and stamp pad and colouring in each of the tiny figures. She then made her own, wanted to make a few more: one butterfly, one bee and one snail!

I then showed her some clever visual illusions on the computer on the kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/illusions/index.htm web site. there are many, you should choose the ones more suitable to the age and stage of your child. It was an interesting experience for her and it was fun.

smells and sounds

To develop the sense of smell I always have fun with M. smelling different spieces, herbs, flowers, purfumes we encounter out and about. I tought it would be a nice activity to set out a "smells table" where there could be different and various scentes put out for her to experience. This week the table offers menthol, oregano, salvia, rosmary. Every week I will then change the objects to smell.



These are our sounds containers.Every silver container has a sound equal to an orange container. M needs to shake the containers and find the matches.
The containers are full or part full of different things: rice, sand, pebbles, lentils, pasta.

I have not been feeling great this week. Didn't do much. There has been few nice warm days and we went out to the park, and did some wild life observations. M. is really into observing animals, insects and flowers. We looked at snails, ladybirds, warms and daffodils in the local parks

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GARDENING

Also our hyacits have finally bloomed, after all the care we gave them. The tulips have still a long way to go, but we will wait.






Now I need to develop the photos of all the stages from bulb to flower and display them on a poster so that M. can remember the life cycle of a flower.

5 SENSES

I managed to put together the touch section of the 5 senses laboratory.
For smooth I used a rubber glove; for rough a scrabber sponge; for soft a dust cloth; for the uneven surface a bumpy sponge. I glued each material on a piece of cartoon board.

terrible 2 here I am!

The prophecy has become tue! What awful behaviour M. has having these last few days....it seems they are waiting for their second birthday to completely transformed themselves from little angels to terrible toddlers! Not a baby anymore but not quite a child...stuck in between and just becoming frustrated. Oh dear oh dear and I am the one who has to deal with this! It is getting quite tiring: all day moaning, crying for any stupid little thing, not wanting to play with her usual friends and refusing anyone. On top of this she is not sleeping enough during the night, going to sleep late and waking up early, and every mother knows how difficult a tired child can be!

Nonetheless I managed to keep her amused with some activities.

5 SENSES

I have finished the "smell" section. To the mixed dried herbs, pepper and coffee beans, I added chocolate powder, mixed spices and fennel seeds.

She tried the different smells and I hope she will go back to the box from time to time.

The "touch" section is under construction.

ANIMAL PROJECT

M. got interested in snails and their behaviour. She wanted to understand how they go inside their shells. We have a couple of books that feature snails in their tales, so I read them for her and explain to her that the shell is the snail's house and that it retreats inside when it is scared and as a defence from other animals that may want to eat it.

I drew a snail for her and she coloured that in for our wall poster.

ART AND CRAFT

We did some painting using the wheels of a toy car. Just going with the car on top of a big drop of paint and then make it run on top of a paper. This will result in lines across the whole paper.

M. liked this simple activity and played with the car and the paint for a long time.

We also made play dough from a recipe I got from the childen centres. It is really easy and M. could help me made the dough without much mess. The dough is actually much better than the one you buy because is softer and little hands can model it easier; you can also add some drops of food coloring to give it the colour you want or add essence to give it a nice smell. We had some chocolate powder to give it a yummy smell.

M. liked adding the ingredients to the bowl and mixing with a spoon. Later she had fun cutting with a plastic knife the sausage dough shapes I made for her.

Recipe

1 cup of flour

3/4 cup salt

1/2 cup water or more if needed

1 table spoon vegetable oil

Mix all the ingredients and knead until smooth. It can be covered and kept in the fridge for 2 weeks.

A BIT OF PLANNING

VALUES

Yesterday we finished off M. photo album. I printed some more pictures of other friends and family members to complete the album...still someone missing but we will sort this out next time we fly back home!


As last time she added some stickers and she tried to remember episodes to connect to each person...funny what she remembers!

SCIENCE

Today, during my 30 minutes workout on the stepper (!), I was thinking about a project I could do with M. about animals. Yesterday evening we caught the last part of "Life" on BBC FOUR. She was enjoying it very much and she stayed focus till the end. She was particularly impressed by the scene where an ostrich is put down by three cheetahs, she was especially curious about the ostrich. This morning she brought me her animals book where she had found a picture of an ostrich. She didn't really care about that animal before, but now she was quite keen on showing it to me and tell me all about what happened on TV.

I took the laptop and started searching for some videos on ostrich and I found a couple which she enjoyed watching.

So I thought that it would be nice to make her colour in a print out for each animal she is curious about, and also find something else to colour in about the animal, for example a huge egg for the ostrich and a butterfly for the caterpillar. I searched a bit on the Internet and I found this very helpful site http://www.first-school.ws/ where there are lots of educational resources for toddlers, and many colour in sheets of basically anything.
Tomorrow will be the first day of our animal project, which will be dictated by M.'s interests of the moment. I will anyway start from her previous curiosities which her bees,caterpillars, dinosaurs and now ostriches and chitahas.

Something that she definitely fancies is playing with her tea set and water. She is drink so much of her "tea" that I have to change her nappy so much often and sometimes I have to change her trousers and top too....
To give it an additional educational edge, today I introduced a real tea bag to her water, and then we observed how the water changes colour. This made me think that it would be a good idea to show her how water changes colour when we add some food colouring to it, I may even try to put a sugar cube in the water and show her how this also take up the colour.


COLOURS

I have also thought that I must re-enforce her colours knowledge a bit more. For now all the colours are named "blue"!

This afternoon I set out an activity in which she should have painted some pasta of the colours we have experimented before, so that, once dry, she could play with her pots and pans and her colourful pasta, this will help her see the colours during her playtime and hopefully learn the names. In reality she didn't find the business of paint the pasta something that she fancied. She just painted 2 or 3 shapes and left the table. I then finished the job to ensure the good outcome of my experiment. Will keep updating on the progress.

5 SENSES

I also elaborated something that it was in my mind for a long time but that I didn't have the time to think it through. I would like to make a kind of "5 senses laboratory", something I remember from my montessori nursery days. For the time being I will work on the sense of touch and smell. I thought to find something smooth, rough, spiny and soft and try to encase it or frame it. Then I need herbs and spices to work with for the sense of smell; probably put them in separated boxes and make holes in their lids. All of this will then be put in a big storage container that she can access whenever she likes.

I will to start the laboratory next week.