While preparing for our first family trip involving an airplane, we got to do a little hands-on math. Our kids’ pediatrician suggested we bring gummy bears along for the flight to help avoid painful ear pressure during take-offs and landings.
Independence Day
Happy 4th of July! I hope you and your children are spending some time running free today! My husband and I recently took our boys to Olympic National Park, and I had the immense joy of watching them play outside
Gardening with a Preschooler: Strawberries
An update on our three-year-old and his gardening project: We wanted our preschooler to take more ownership of our family garden this year, and as he is in a big “all by myself” phase, we decided that he needed a
Literacy Games: Bananagrams
We love the game Bananagrams, which is essentially Scrabble without a board. We come up with lots of little activities to use the letters and work on our early literacy skills. The other day, we tried something new. As we
Gardening with a Preschooler: How Plants Grow
Our seed project has been taking off! Our preschooler planted zinnias in a few pots, and he has been faithfully watering them every day and making sure they get plenty of sun. The sprouts are finally big enough to put
Preschool in the Kitchen: Hummus
My three-year-old loves to help out in the kitchen. He’s now at a point where if I get out my mini-chopper, he runs over and asks me what we’re making. This is an appliance that terrified him just a few short
If You Don’t Have It, Make It: Woodshop Edition
While we are a far cry from homesteaders, we would like to instill in our children some sense of self-reliance. Rather than run out to the store and buy every little thing, if it’s at all possible for us to
Preschool Science: The Walking Rainbow
To reinforce the color-mixing ideas we’d talked about previously, we tried another experiment with food-coloring and water. This demonstration relies on the tendency of liquids to reach equilibrium. When we connect the jars, the water will flow until it has
Preschool Science: Color Mixing with Ice
We have been talking about boiling, melting, freezing, and states of matter with our preschooler, so we tried this simple color-mixing activity. First, we made blue, red, and yellow ice cubes. We needed five of each color for this activity,
Puzzles for Baby
We loooooove puzzles at our house, but how do you know when baby is ready for puzzles and where do you start? First of all, puzzles require fine motor control. If your baby can put together MegaBlocks or something similar,