I Am Moving!

Dear readers! I have decided to move my blog to the new location – Mouse Grows Mouse Learns. There are several reasons for this decision:

1. More widgets

2. Ability to comment on other blogs under my Blogspot nickname – Raising a Happy Child

3. You don’t need an upgrade for video uploads

4. Gathering followers

I am still working on the layout of the new blog, but I will be publishing there from now on. Please feel free to drop me a comment on this blog to let me know that you have seen this notice and come read me at http://learningwithmouse.blogspot.com/

Story Stretchers

As I mentioned before, we are not doing any formal curriculum this year. We even pick up books in the library more or less at random – mostly based on various recommendations I found on the net. I think that next year I would like to become a little more “thematic” in our weekly activities, and book-based curriculum seems best suited for our daughter. That’s why I was quite interested to pick up this book in the library. Obviously, it has a predecessor, but it was checked out. Story stretchers has 18 different themes with 5 books and 5 activities per book, so there is total of 450 activities to choose from. As always, I found books and activities that my daughter would find appealing – for example, learning to wash clothes by hand (activity for one of my personal favorites – A Pocket for Corduroy) and some books appeared to be way over her head (for example, Madeline). The book is targeted more towards preschools with instructions on how to set up their housekeeping centers, drama centers, library centers, etc. for each of the story stretcher, but majority of the activities can be adapted for home environments. It did make me sad that Anna’s preschool is not set up for book-based learning, but I already complained about it previously. I am not prepared to buy this book just yet, but I put it on my wish list on Paperbackswap.com. Maybe I’ll get lucky there In the meantime I am following closely a wonderful blog – Teaching My Little Bookworm and learning a lot in process.

Dealing With Fears

A few days before Independence Day we talked about fireworks. I mentioned that fireworks are rockets exploding in the sky and making pretty lights, and Anna immediately got worried. Her verbal skills and emerging imagination come with a flip side – dreaming up worst case scenarios and fearing things that she doesn’t understand or didn’t experience before. Fortunately, we haven’t had to deal with monsters under her bed in the middle of the night, at least not yet. At the rate we are going, I think we will arrive there as well, because yesterday suddenly she didn’t want to go play in her room by herself, because “maybe the ghosts are playing there without me“. This is another of her pet fears – occasionally ghosts figure in the books that we pick up from the library (for example, a book about Letter H had a Haunted House in it). So how do we deal with those fears?

• First of all, we acknowledge them. I read somewhere that it’s counter-productive to tell your toddler, Oh, you are not scared. She is, and minimizing her fears makes her question her own reality.
• We try to expose her to a scary experience in small doses and in safe environments. For example, she is not a big fan of fire trucks, because of the loud noises they make. We had fire trucks coming over during 4th of July Block Party. First, Anna absolutely refused to even approach one. Gradually, I enticed her to climb in it with me. Suddenly, her fear lifted, and she was all over it, climbing up and down and flirting with firemen.
• Explaining and reasoning. I admit that long-winded scientific explanations don’t usually work well. Even my simple assurances that fireworks are fun and she will be safe didn’t work. Anna quite liked the fireworks in the sky that were launched at a distance by someone, because she only heard a faint boom. However, the minute our ground fireworks started she buried her face in my chest and promptly went to sleep. She slept soundly through 15 minutes of ear-splitting noise, then woke up the moment silence fell and asked if we’re really truly done yet. She wasn’t pleased to still hear some fireworks in the distance and at home I had to use the last resort:
• “Magic”. After our return from the fireworks, we had the following exchange with Anna:

Anna: I am still scared of fireworks. Why are they still going?

Me: Some of our neighbors are still celebrating American birthday. It will be over soon.

Anna: I am worried that fireworks come into our house, into my room and burn my blankie.

Me (firmly): They cannot do it. We have a big sign on our house that says, “Fireworks are not allowed here”.

Anna (interested): Where is this sign?

Me: It’s written with an invisible paint that only the fireworks can see.

Anna (sleepily): OK. Tell them again not to come.

Here is a quick reference that I found on dealing with fears in toddlers. I would be interesting to hear about the fears your children have and how you help them to overcome them.

So Much Like Me

When I interact with Anna, sometimes I am blown away by how much she resembles me in so many ways. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I married someone who is not a carbon copy of me, but has a lot of the same interests and has the same personality traits – loves books, very talkative with friends and speaks fluently the second language of his second country, doesn’t blow up in anger, conservative in personal morals and liberal on social issues. Some people even told us that we look similar. Anna inherited the best features from her papa – blue eyes and curly hair, but otherwise she looks exactly like me, when I was a child. She also behaves a lot like me, when I was a child (at least, according to the family lore). Most of the time, she is in a good mood, cooperative and reserved. She prefers adults or older kids, and she doesn’t like to stray away from us. We never had the problem of her just disappearing to be close to some action. She is not fearful or shy, but she is not adventurous or gregarious either. I think I could describe her as “an observer” – she likes to watch something rather than participate herself. She prefers to play by herself, and has yet to ask for a playdate or for going outside to see her friends in the neighborhood. She is better with children when they are 1:1 than when she is in a bigger crowd. In other words, so far she appears to be a happy introvert – just like me. She got some character features from her father too, and it’s amusing to see them shine through. She has a very strong feeling of what is wrong and what is right. Yesterday we read a Disney spoof book called Little Red Writing Pooh. At some point Pooh starts eating honey meant for grandma. Anna jumped up and said, No, Pooh, stop! This is grandma’s honey! This made me laugh, because she clearly inherited this sense of rightness and ownership from her papa. She is also pretty neat and organized for a toddler – another trademark that didn’t come from me. I wonder if we will have a teenager who likes to keep her room clean. Well, remembering myself, I am not exactly holding my breath on this one

How about you? Does your child behave like you? How do you feel, when he/she doesn’t? I admit – I don’t know how I would deal if my child wouldn’t be so much like me. Would I be able to appreciate her uniqueness or would it feel like I have a stranger in my house? I guess I will not find out, since we don’t plan to go for more children.

Another Round of Preschool Doubts

Anna started preschool in February and goes for 2 mornings a week. After the first couple of weeks of hysterical crying, she adapted to the new situation, and we were very pleased with how happy she appeared to be. She was in the class of 3-5 year olds, and she likes older kids. The program seemed challenging enough, since they were doing a lot of art projects, and Anna had a good exposure to all the new art materials that we deemed too messy for our house.

However, things have changed recently. Her favorite school friends graduated and the new kids are all Anna’s age and younger. The school is small, and it appears that they have one teacher too many for the number of students. As a result, two teachers are now “sharing’ a bigger class, and Anna has her old teacher one of her days and another teacher on the other day. For the past two weeks she cried again when my husband dropped her off (but was perfectly happy when he picked her up). What I don’t really like about the school is almost total absence of books in the room. I thought that it was temporary, while school is growing, but nothing really changed in the last 5 months. Their short story time is mostly based on repetitive songs, and here comes my biggest gripe – they actually let the kids watch TV! We already brought it up twice, and we were told that it only happens for 20 minutes between lunch and afternoon program. However, every day my husband comes to pick our daughter up, the children are stuck in front of TV. Interestingly, ours usually prefers to play with puzzles during this time, but I still think that it doesn’t reflect well on her school.

We were planning to keep Anna in this preschool at least until she is 4 and possibly move to a more “structured” preschool for the last year  before school. However, now I have doubts. On one hand, two mornings a week really don’t make a lot of difference. Most of her “preschool education” occurs at home. Our goals for the school were socialization, following the rules and learning some independence. They are still being met. On another hand, I look at some books about well equipped preschools, with dramatic corners and class pets, and feel that maybe our daughter would be better off in one. We even have one not that far away, but… it’s also huge. I think we are going to wait and see how she does in July. If I still have doubts, we might look at a couple more preschools for her fall program.

What My Child Is Reading – July 02, 2009

First of all, let me proudly announce the winner in our house. We checked out The Little Engine that Could before, but Anna was not that interested. Now she was completely mesmerized by the story and gleefully predicted how “not good” engines are not going to help the train. Since I didn’t grow up on the classic images from this story, I personally found new art in this particular edition a lot more interesting than original art, especially the drawings of the clown. It also gave us some good discussions about arrogance and believing in yourself. Anna paid great attention every time (probably 50 times by now!) we read this book. Interestingly, she asked the same  question that I also asked myself – what happened to an original engine of toy train, and how The Little Engine got it out of the train if the engine was broken.

I love the series of Jane Belk Moncure – the best proof that phonics can be fun. Anna really likes these books too. Since we are very much over learning the alphabet, I pick them up in a random sequence. This week we read My “a” Sound Box, My “h” Sound Box, and Short “a” and Long “a” Play a Game. They are fun, short and lead to some extension activities – such as finding more words with this sound. They also allow to focus not just on nouns, but on other sentence elements.

Since Anna liked Nancy Tafuri books in the past, I took this one from the library. She liked it OK, but only for about 10 readings – far from record in our house. On the other hand, she was choosing it for bedtime stories. Usually Anna only chooses extremely cheerful stories for bedtime. This book would be good if someone is into thematic learning for I Am Special theme. When I am reading to Anna, a sign of her engagement is usually the number of question she asks or the extension plays she invents. Unfortunately, she didn’t ask many questions here, only about beavers and prairie dogs, two animals that she wasn’t familiar with. I think that the book was a little too basic for her. On the other hand, she started telling me, I will love you forever and ever and always - it’s really sweet to hear this phrase coming from your toddler that just a few minutes ago threw a tantrum not wanting to go to the bath

And now let me introduce “a flop of the week”. After one reading Anna absolutely refused to touch this book. Apparently, the picture of an octopus scared her, and even though he is a positive character in the story she didn’t want anything to do with it. This was disappointing, because I was hoping to do some neat fish art projects based on this book. So if anyone knows another good book about fish, feel free to drop me a comment.

To find out what others are reading this week, visit a Well Read Child.

Independence Day Musings

The topic of the week on  ABC and 123 Summer Picnic is Independence Day. Both my husband and I came to the United States as adults, so Anna is the first generation American in our family. The situation is complicated by the fact that we are not even coming from the same country and the same culture. We are making up a lot of holidays and traditions as we go along the same way as other immigrant families approach their new world in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere. So what is it that I want to teach my daughter about Independence Day before she goes to school and learns all about Betty Ross and Declaration of Independence?

• It’s a birthday of our country. Countries are older than people, but they also have special days to celebrate and remember how they came about.
• It’s a day to celebrate with our neighbors. The street that we live on has an Independence Day bash where everyone brings out tables and barbecue, contributes to potluck dinner and celebrates together. It’s very kid oriented. It will be our first 4th of July in this neighborhood, so we are very excited.
• It’s time to remember that there are people in other parts of the world who are less fortunate. It’s a little early to communicate this message now, but I want to raise some awareness of the world around us over the remaining 2 years at home.
• It’s time to celebrate your heritage. We would really like Anna to learn more about our own cultures and why we came to the States.

While she is a young child, I truly want her to think that she lives in the best place in the world. After all, both of her parents have chosen to come here – what could be a better proof? When she is older, we can have different discussions about how democracy works, why she needs to question authority and how to distinguish true patriotism from patriotic propaganda. It will come… but for now, let her be a child and celebrate another birthday of her beautiful and proud country.

July Plans

Sometimes I am jealous seeing how organized some other moms are, when it comes to planning their time and activities with their children. Of course, I don’t exactly have a homeschooling mentality and I don’t have the whole day with my daughter. When I am with her, sometimes it feels that I am trying to fit too many things at once. I am still looking for a system that would fit our busy schedule. I like the idea of workboxes, but I am still undecided if I want to do a theme of the week, dedicate every day to something or maybe try a book-based curriculum. Also, I know very well that in July our time for any kind of “formal” learning will be even more limited. Our friends with two kids will be visiting from Germany, and we hope to have a lot of playdates and activities together. Then I will be on a business trip in Israel for a week. So, based on Anna’s interests, I decided to focus on a few themes during this month and not worry too much about the systems. Here is what I plan to do:

• Increasing observation skills. Anna is very good at noticing even very small changes in her immediate environment (like a book out of place), but I noticed that she struggles with workbook pages that ask to find an object out of four that is different than others. She can do it, if the difference is obvious (e.g. a different color or a different letter of an alphabet), but not when the difference is subtle, for example, a handle on a door is on the other side. So if someone knows of any good worksheets on “same and different”, please kindly drop me a comment.
• Understanding patterns. Again, patterning activities seem very much beyond her comprehension at the moment. I am not talking about complex 3D manipulations (those IQ puzzles are beyond my comprehension as well). I am referring to simple ABAB patterns. I am curious as to why it’s so difficult for her, since she is excellent at color and shape recognition. It seems, however, that she recognizes them as separate objects, not as sequences. This is probably why our reading is also stuck on recognizing the first letter of the word and trying to guess the meaning from it (or “reading” the pictures instead). We are going to do some beading and Lego building to promote pattern recognition.
• Tracing and coloring. Anna’s fine motor skills are OK, but she doesn’t seem to enjoy painting or coloring for long. I suspect that her fingers get tired. I saw this month that she is getting better with activities that require fine motor skills – such as peeling stickers off the sticker sheet and tracing, and I want to keep the momentum going.
• As always – book reading. I have a long list of books to look up in the library. I cannot say that Anna has a particular interest in any topics yet. If it were up to her, she’d probably read every Dora and Diego book on the toddler shelf, but I happen to not believe in reading books that retell TV shows. I also got a big lot of Let’s Read and Find Out books from eBay. Some of them are way over her comprehension level, but some are more appropriate. I think we will start with the simplest of the bunch – My Five Senses, and we will do some extension activities around it – it will tie nicely with “increasing observation powers” theme of the month.
• Empathy – sharing. We expect to have a lot of playdates in July, and since our friends are coming only for a month, they will not bring a lot of toys. I already set expectations with Anna that I hope she will be a good sharer. Usually she is pretty decent, but not with our friends’ older daughter, since they had some “disagreements” when they were both toddlers. I also hope to do a lot more emotion labeling and discussions about feelings – based both on books and on real-life experiences.

Well, you can track our progress throughout the month – we’ll see how well we will do. Stay tuned

Making of a Theater

I noticed that a lot of my posts lately have been about my husband and his activities with Anna. I am really proud of him and feel that our daughter is extremely lucky to have such a creative papa. On the other hand, he gets a chance to relive his childhood and do some of his favorite activities again. He was talking to me before about making a puppet theater for Anna. I happened to make one stick craft with her, and she brought a paper bag puppet from her preschool and clearly liked to play with both of them. So this weekend my husband got serious about his theater project. That’s how the theater looked in the beginning – a repurposed box from a  mini vacuum cleaner.

Anna was very excited to participate in making the theater. Here she is painting it:

Papa took over eventually and painted the rest of the theater. We let it out to dry while Anna “pretended” to take a nap (that didn’t work out, she was too excited about the theater. Papa also drew a background and let Anna add some stickers. He was so motivated that he already started making more stick puppets for the show. Here is a finished result:

And here is a funny picture of Anna enjoying her first puppet theater show. She was totally mesmerized. So much better than TV

Lego Creations

Both my husband and his older brother were big Lego fans when they were growing up. Their parents faithfully kept boxes of freestyle Lego in their basement for almost 40 years, but finally they saw the light of the day again. Last time my in-laws visited, one of their suitcases contained nothing but Legos, and it was only half of their collection.

Legos of today are more “specialized”. One can build an excavator using instructions on the box, but it’s not possible to build a rocket out of the same set. My husband’s Lego has a lot of wheels and some specialized parts (for example, connector for the truck’s cabin and the rest of the truck), but the rest of it is thousands and thousands small parts. Luckily, Anna is not a mouther, and so my husband opened her treasures to her. He has so much fun building things “with her” (mostly for her at this point), and she is very proud about her growing collection of toys made exclusively out of Lego. The good news is that they can always be rebuilt into something completely different, and that hopefully she will be able to build simpler things herself one day. Here is her collection at a glance: