Water Beads

They are all over the internet on sites discussing children's activities. I couldn't find any locally so broke my internet shopping ban and ordered a few packets - they were $1.25 each.

K pours a packet of the tiny blue beads into a bowl with 1 litre of water.

 They start off incredibly small. The instructions said they expand to full size after 4-8 hours.

After 4 hours, the beads are about the size of marbles. They feel incredibly soft and delicate. They are mostly translucent and the light shines through them. Some are tinted blue, and others are clear. 

After 8 hours, all but a tiny amount of the water had been absorbed, leaving a bowl of almost jelly like balls.

With a few props, K starts to explore. The balls are bouncy, like to roll, and do pop/squish when you squeeze them too hard.

They are fun to scoop and move from container to container - they bounce around the bowl when you drop them in like excited bundles of energy just waiting to escape.

K practised some fine motor skills by scooping them into muffin tins whilst trying not to spill any. We also tried to scoop them up with a wooden spoon which was very tricky - they were slippery little suckers.

 A small number of beads grew larger than the others.

On Sunday we opened the coloured packet.

You can see the size difference now between the blue beads and the coloured ones.

After a few minutes, the beads begin to expand and cover the bottom of the bowl.

 We find some animals to add to the play. We talk about the word camouflage with K.

A few hours later, we have a rainbow of colours. The beads take on different shades depending on the colours they are sitting on and around. When we tried to separate them into their individual colour, we only found 5 specific shades. There are no greens for example, though some of the beads above look greenish.

Kristen had been waiting all day for the coloured beads to grow so that she

could mix the two bowls together.

They feel so slippery - a real sensory experience for little kids and big.

Again, every now and again a super big bead is found in the mix.

Apparently the water beads will last for few days and gradually shrink back to their original size. We will keep playing with these ones this week and see how they go. I have a few more water bead ideas to explore and a few more packets up my sleave.

Sky Smile

"Hey Mum and Dad. The moon is smiling at me".

Half

We have been talking a little bit about half after I began noticing K use the term herself in various contexts. We actually read a bed time story tonight which had the numbers 1-14 in it. I said to K, "Hey - these are the numbers we have been learning about". K replied, "No Mum, we have been learning about half".

K enjoys cutting my pictures in half by drawing a line through them.

This was a bit complicated for K. She didn't know what to do so I suggested she could draw a crazy picture - even a square eye if she wanted to.

 

Guessing these pictures and completing the half was a bit easier.

 

We had fun with playdough on the weekend - cutting sausages in half.

Our green eggs were still in tact. K cut these in half and then dished up

sausages and eggs for Mum to eat.

 

What are 4 pieces called? We introduced the word 'quarters'.

 

K put together her own activity for Mum to complete this morning. Note the pictures with the missing sides. Although the pictures are not in halves, I love the fact she is using the skills she has been practicing and reversing them for me.



 



Beach Play

Is Nature Play

K loves sunny days and beach play. They are even more exciting when a friend comes along.
The weather this Sunday was warm, but not quite hot enough to get too wet.
Our normally quiet beach had a few people sharing it, but still had stretches where Natti could roam off the leash and not disturb anybody. K and C had fun running along the beach.

It's great for K to spend some time playing with kids that are older than her. They play in new creative ways that K has not been exposed to, thereby expanding her own imagination. C collected shells and created a shell city in the sand. K watched this new way of creating and playing with shells with interest and I fully expect this learning will see new shell play from K in the future.

There is a little creek that runs into the ocean. K normally enjoys this creek even more than the beach itself. When it has rained considerably, the creek flows quite fast right up to the water's edge. Today it was still flowing, but I imagine it won't be long until it dries up. The creek has nice cool sand for building, worms and bugs to discover, stones and shells to find in the flowing water and it is fun to follow the water and the gully it creates right up to the waves.

Today a largish log laying near the creek provided an interesting tool to play with.

It was quite heavy, but K managed to manipulate it to where she wanted it to lay.

Mum was a chicken and suggested a sloping, slippery bridge might end in tears.

So the bridge was relocated to safer (flatter) ground.

Having older kids around, definitely encourages greater risk taking, which is fantastic. K has only recently tried climbing trees after seeing C so skillfully scale a variety of leafy vegetation. C showed K how to jump from the top of a small sand hill - the bank of the creek.

I'm sure K would not have tried this by herself, but boy did she have fun.

Thanks C for sharing the afternoon beach walk with us. In a short time, you encouraged new skills in K that I look forward to building upon during our next walk.

K has a lot of interaction with children her own age, both at Kindy and Daycare. Most of the families we know have children the same age and younger. I think I need to find some more play dates with children slightly older than K so that further play skills and risk taking can be role modelled and enjoyed.

Ready to Tumble

 

K has recently started learning acrobatics on a Saturday morning. She is in a mixed class with kids aged from 4 years up until about 12. Being the youngest in the class, it takes a fair amount of confidence to walk through the door each week and participate the best she can with the bigger kids. It helps greatly that she has a friend of the same age that has joined at the same time and they support each other.

 

 

 

I remember joining a new small country school as an 8 year old and every single girl in my class could do handstands and cartwheels. They would have handstand competitions at recess and lunch and I would be the judge, because I had no idea how to do a handstand. I did try. I practised at home. I just couldn't figure out how they had the arm strength to do it.

 

I really want K to have those skills. There is not a gymnastics class in our town, so I'm hoping acrobatics will help. I hope K's school in the future will support kids practising their skills at recess and lunch and promote all sorts of physical activity including handstands and cartwheels - unlike other schools banning these pursuits.

 

 

I can't yet imagine K being interested in a traditional dance class, or having the concentration to focus and learn a multitude of steps and routines. Not being a kid that is interested in pretty clothes and having her hair done, I'm hoping her interests might progress to athletics as she gets older, netball or some other physical activity that doesn't involve Mum fighting with hair pins, eye shadow and essential costumes that will only be worn once.

 

I'm hoping acrobatics might provide the happy medium of building movement skills without needing to delve too far into the dance world I dread.

Mud Play Sunday

More Rain Equals More Mud

It has rained this week, and it was sunny on Sunday. This inevitably leads in our house to some muddy weekend play.

All ready to go. Those legs clearly have not seen much sun over the past few months.

So many mud toys. Where do I start?

Carefully extracting the main ingredient for our mud pie afternoon tea.

Putting the finishing touches to the pies.

Setting up the picnic. We had to put our blanket on top of some branches as there was no dry ground to place it on.

There was a problem. We didn't have a spoon small enough to serve the pies. This wasn't however an issue for K.

Do you like the china plates with a  floral design? Just right for a mud pie afternoon tea.

Natti is not too sure what to think of the whole thing.

I think she is confused as to why we appear to be eating and enjoying our meal immensely, when it doesn't smell or appeal too much to her.

She was happy though to keep a close eye on things - just in case something tasty appeared.

We prepared our mud paint, with a dash of pink and purple paint.

Mud painting was fun. The muddy water worked a bit better on the page than the mud itself.

Originally the boots remained on. We all know however that mud is not fun unless you can feel it under your feet and between your toes.

The boots are off. Note - we are still looking pretty clean.

The biggest smiles are saved for when the boots are off.

I have no idea how something which looks so horrible, can feel (allegedly) so good. I have clearly forgotten what it is like to be a child!

K had been asking all week if she could splash. We normally walk around the block each afternoon and request that K walks carefully in the mud. This means once inside we can do other things and don't have to jump in the bath/shower straight away. On Mud Play Day however - splashing is not only allowed, it is encouraged!

Okay - I think it's shower time.

Yep. Splashing in cold mud during an afternoon that by now is getting late, results very quickly in the realisation that "I'm cold". To the shower we go...

Overall, K had a fun mud afternoon. Without other children however to observe, copy, learn from, be encouraged by and to take the play in different directions, K did rely a bit on Mum to 'suggest' how she should be playing. This encourages me more to provide further opportunities, unrestricted by time, where K can explore using her own imagination and be content that she can take risks and pursue her own ideas.