Numbers Video

Here is a youtube video on how to teach the numbers. Here is the associations we use for teaching the numbers Learning the Letters and Numbers. This video doesn't show the very important part of learning the numbers, which is having your child find each of the numbers for you. Don't forget that you need to do a lot of this before they can tell you what they are!

Art Explosion!

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A few weeks ago Jake got his hands on a Crayola marker and had a great time drawing with it, first on the table/his body, and then on paper, when I spotted the new activity… He seems to have a new level of interest for drawing now and really sticks to it, doing a few pages at a time. He enjoys me drawing with him, showing him how to draw animals or shapes and the likes. It is all very basic scribbles at the moment, but drawing is still a fantastic activity because he is developing his hand strength, coordination, concentration and pencil hold. Drawing and colouring is an activity that can help your child pick up writing so much faster and is a really worthwhile activity to incorporate into your day, not to mention a lot of fun.

Mess!!

I recently saw an advertisement for Crayola Colour Wonder, a set of markers that only show up on special paper so that they can't stain other surfaces. I scoffed at the mother proudly announcing that she had allowed her four year old to draw with markers for the first time, as the ad pans across a child lying on a fluffy white rug, drawing happily. However, I have to admit it does seem to be a messier process than I expected. He is compelled to draw on the floor, table, his body etc! It takes time and reinforcement to really make sure that they understand that they are only allowed to draw on paper. We talk about it every time we get the pens and paper out and he is getting better. At school after we have someone drawing somewhere they shouldn't we quiz the class on places they can draw, ‘Can we draw on walls? (no)  ‘Can we draw on jobs? (no)’ ‘Can we draw on paper?’ (yes) ‘Can we draw on books? They are paper’ (no), ‘Can we draw on other people’s drawings’ (No, just your own paper, from the craft shelf). Etc…

What to buy?      

                                         

I think for young children who are starting out, thick Crayola markers are probably the best product to go for. The thickness means they are easy to grip and even if your child wants to bang them down on the page (Please discourage!) the nibs don't seem to get wrecked or pushed in very quickly. In my mind one of the great things about an early childhood education is that the child starts primary school being good at everything, which in turn encourages them and empowers them to tackle any learning opportunity without the fear of failure. We all love it when we are great at something! These markers give an instant result, they can fill a page with drawing without needing to have the hand strength to push down hard or really control the pen well and that gives them a lot of satisfaction. The downside to the markers and the reason we try and use pencils in the classroom with older children is that they do need constant help/ reminding to put the lid on and they are messier. The lids are a bit hard for Jake at the moment, he can get them off and put them back on, but doesn't quite click them all the way shut. I think for now, just putting the lids on is a good start and I can click them in for him when he is finished with the activity.

      

 

 Painting is also lots of fun, we are just using a little water colour set at the moment because it is so easy to get out and doesn't need lots of prep/clean up. I think the easier, the better, so that you can feel happy about them getting it out whenever they want it. I tend to put a bit of water on each colour when he isn't looking just to get the colours loosened up and ready to go. A big favourite at school is for us to fold a piece of paper in half and then draw the outline of half a butterfly on it. The children cut along the line and then paint on one side of the paper, before they fold it in half and rub it together. It creates a great symmetrical butterfly. With Jake we have just been trying it with folding the paper and creating symmetrical pictures, like the one hung in the left frame below, so do some experimenting.

Stop bad habits in their tracks

It is a lot easier for your child to learn the right pencil hold right from the start than to have to unlearn bad habits later on. I have so many children start preschool with an ingrained way of holding their pencils with their hand upside down, with a fist or right at the top of the pen, rather than close to the nib. Jake is generally good, but started turning his hand upside down recently. I just quickly swap the pen around to the correct way and tell him to ‘nip nip’ his pen and he seems to have realised that it is easier and has gone back to holding it right. If your child is in the habit of holding their pencil wrong, get onto it as soon as possible, helping them to hold it right every time they pick up a pencil, until the correct hold comes naturally to them.

You are now an art gallery manager! 

  

                                    

                      

​You are quickly going to have a large pile of ‘artworks’ so think about ways to display it that will encourage your child. I really love how children’s drawings are transformed into serious art, by being framed and hung on the wall. I think Jake's scribbles look fantastic, framed on the wall :) However, at this point I think Jake’s art is in the quantity, rather than quality phase and he will be able to more independently display large quantities by having a string to peg them on. So I have started with just a few frames on his bedroom wall and hung a little rope along our hallway with some pegs on it. I used the removable stick on hooks because I thought it would be good to be able to move the string higher as he gets taller, but possibly I should have drilled some hooks in,  I have already had to rehang one of the hooks as he pulled it down while rearranging the pictures… I am working on teaching him how to not pull on the rope and hanging up his pictures carefully, so do what you think will work best for your child. 

Talking about colours

Jake hasn't really been very interested in talking about colours up until recently, everything has just been yellow when we have asked him! However, over the last month or so it has started to sink in. I think talking about different colours while we are doing painting/drawing has really helped, so use this time to get some colour practice in. We find having little associations for the colours, like 'green like the grass', 'pink like a pig', 'brown like chocolate' etc. is a good way to help them remember the colours, so try using the same phrases each time you talk about it to help them remember the colour. 

Sign it

 If you want to start increasing your child’s recognition of their name, start writing their name on their pictures and spelling out the letter sounds as you go. If they have a combination sound like sh or ch, underline those and sound them out as the combination so that they start to become familiar with it. With Jake I draw an arrow to show him that the ‘e’ jumps on the ‘a’ to make it say it’s name instead of the sound.

 Demonstrate

 In the classroom we are amazed at how the children can draw pictures that are so much more advanced when we show them step by step how to draw the creature they are wanting to draw. There is a vast difference in skill between different four year olds and the ones who are fantastic usually have parents who can draw and do it with them regularly. Don't worry if you aren't fantastic at drawing, keep drawing lots of very simple pictures that they can observe and copy and you might just improve as they do! With the young children at school and even Jake, the first step we are trying to help them achieve is to be able to form a circle. Once they can do that they are well on the way to being able to draw a lot of things so try and teach them a circle and then see what you can do with it. 

Freedom

I recently spent a week in China on my summer holiday, which was lovely, but also very frustrating. Frustrating because I seemed to have no freedom when it came to what I wanted to do on the internet. I couldn't check my work or Gmail emails, couldn't share photos or videos from my trip on Google Plus or Facebook etc. It reminds you of how important freedom and the ability to make your own choices are, when your freedoms are taken away.

Freedom is a big part of a Montessori classroom, having this freedom allows the child to develop self-control and self-regulation.  The children are encouraged to seek out activities of their own interest, to engage with these activities for as long as they need, and to manage their own daily routines and activities. Rather than being herded from one activity to the next in groups, children individually choose activities that spark their interests. This individualized approach enables children to control their own choices, movements, and activities.

Another great thing about your child having the freedom to choose what they would like to work on is that it means they will be doing something that they are interested in, something that captures their full attention, which in turn develops their concentration span. It might look like your child is just playing, but they are developing one of the most important skills that they can. In the classroom everything we do is geared towards developing their concentration span or dependent on the child being able to work away and concentrate for extended periods of time.

To ensure your child is extending their concentration span, make sure your child has plenty of activities available to them that spark their interests and capture their attention. Montessori said that at this age children have a tendency to be fascinated by small objects and that they seemed to capture their attention, so fiddly little activities seem to be a great option, the popularity of Lego is evidence of this.

I just had to take the photo below, despite his toilet training related nudity! Jake is in love with vehicles at the moment and he had spent such a long time, taking these cars off their shelf and arranging them in a line all next to each other. I have no idea why he chose to do it or what was so satisfying for him to keep taking cars out and lining them up so carefully, but the concentration and desire to work without any encouragement or direction was fantastic to see and he was clearly very happy with his handiwork! It might look like just mindless play, but I was thrilled to see him showing an interest in repetition and precision, two human tendencies that the child should naturally have. Without repetition and precision your child will not excel at things that need practice and take time to learn, so naturally it is something that we should be overjoyed to see them exhibit as well as foster whenever we can. When you see your child working away busily and so absorbed that they have no interest in what you are doing, you know you have hit the jackpot (and not just because you get a few minutes to do something uninterrupted!).

 This all said, the freedom and choice is not unlimited in the classroom. We only put activities into the classroom that we believe will help the child develop a desirable skill, the adults are still puppet masters, subtly manipulating what the children learn. People talk about 'learning through play', I believe all play leads to the children learning something, we choose what they learn through the toys and activities we make available to them. Question what is your child learning from each toy you buy. Most of the time if they love something you can put it to good use teaching them all kinds of things. Playing with a bunch of little cars seems fairly uneducating, but there is a lot you can do with them, learn colour names, sort them by colours, match colours, count them, enumerate with them, learn the names of different parts, different types of vehicles etc. Following your child's interest will always help them to be more interested in what you are teaching, so use it to your advantage. 

There are also certain skills that we would love for the children to acquire and want to integrate into their school day. We hope that the children are always keen to try everything, but often children are lacking in confidence or have insecurities about trying some things. We rule out the option for negativity by giving them a few options rather than a yes/no question. For example, if we think a child would benefit from developing their fine motor skills, rather than asking 'would you like to come and do some drawing with me?', we can tell them that we really would really like to do an activity with them and ask if they would like to do some writing with us, or some drawing? Usually with an option of one or the other, rather than the option of refusing to try, a child will happily make a choice and come away from the experience feeling like they had the freedom to choose what they wanted to work on. 

If your child seems to be worried or reluctant about trying something that you would like to do with them, try giving them some options to choose from. Even if it is a few jobs you need to do in the day like load the dishes or hang out the clothes, ask they what they would like to help you do. I think young children are very frustrated by not being in control, Jake is very much like this and desperately wants independence and freedom, resisting really strongly and showing great frustration when I try to control his movement or take away his freedom. Little reinforcements to make them feel in control should help to reduce their frustration at feeling like they are not in control. If your child is also strong willed enough that fighting it seems to be a waste of time, give it a try to make them feel like they have control over their life and have the ability to choose their own direction.