Kids Art: Rubber Cement Masking

Thanks to Winter Break, we had a lot of time to try different art projects. My primary aim has always been to expose my 4½ year old to the tools and techniques available these days and to allow for her creative energy to find a release.

Continuing our study of masking, we tried the Rubber Cement masking technique.

Rubber Cement comes in a nice little container with its own brush. Its gummy texture is such that it can be dribbled over the paper by holding the loaded brush in the air and swirling it about. Of course, it can also be 'painted on' with the brush. Ana tried both techniques to understand that whereas one requires more control but forms nice curly lines, the other creates blobs.

I like rubber cement for certain applications. It's texture and the fact that it can be removed easily after it dries makes it an interesting material to play with.

Items Used: Watercolor paper, Rubber Cement, Tempera paints diluted in water (we were running low on watercolors), paint brush.

1. Apply the rubber cement on the watercolor paper in any arbitrary pattern.
2. Allow to dry. We placed it by the heating vent to speed it up - took about 5 to 10 minutes depending on how thick the application is.
3. Then, paint over the dried rubber cement using favorite watercolors or diluted tempera paints. Allow to dry completely.
4. Then, either using the fingers or a pencil eraser simply rub the rubber cement off. It peels off easily, leaving the white of the paper that it masked.

As always, my 4½ yr-old decided to make a few as she experimented with the technique and tried it to her satisfaction.



[cross-posted at The Joy Of My Life]

Kids Art: Waterecolor and Cling Wrap

Continuing the theme of art projects we did recently, here is another.

I was browsing for simple activities with stunning results that can be easily done at home during the Winter Holidays and came across this. I had to try it with Ana.

Items Used: Watercolor paper, Acrylic paper, diluted tempera paints or watercolors, large paint brush, and plastic cling wrap.

1. Simply apply blobs of color on heavy-weight paper.
2. Place a Cling Wrap sheet on top while still wet, and crinkle it to form patterns.
3. Allow to dry.
4. Remove the cling wrap.
5. Voilà!

We left it by the heating vent, of course, to speed up drying. And proudly showed it to Appa when he got home!

Heavy-weight paper works best, and, the nature and quality of the paper makes a difference, as we would expect. Acrylic paper had a more smooth finish with fractal-like formations.



Whereas, Watercolor paper had a coarse textured look with an interesting cracked crystalline pattern.



Usually, I talk about interesting things we could try with materials at home to gauge Ana's interest on any particular day. And, when she zooms in on one, I try to describe the steps first. Typically, I keep it to 4 or 5 steps. Ask her what she thinks the result of such a process would be.

When she expresses readiness to try it out, I assemble the materials, describing them, repeating the names of materials that are new to her. Sometimes I demo the technique/method that she seems to have trouble with. If possible, I show her pictures of the process and finished results to help her work independently.

I showed her the finished results from the web for this project early in the day and talked about it to her and told her that when she is ready to choose that activity, she can help me assemble the materials. It worked like a charm. I didn't have to wait too long before she put away Enid Paapaa and her clothes and was ready to start.

And, as usual, we weren't satisfied with doing just one, so we created a few, playing with colors and textures, some of which weren't as stunning as the others as we found out. But then, 'stunning' is quite subjective anyway :)

[cross-posted at The Joy Of My Life]

Kids Games: Würfel-Zwerge

This charming little kids game, Dwarves and Dice, is quite popular with my four year old, so, I thought I could share it here... and hopefully get fellow moms to let me know about other simple kids games that is a hit with their little ones. Also known as Le jeu des nains (French) or Würfel-Zwerge (German) the game is made by Selecta^™.

It is a very simple game: 56 little wooden cards have pictures of dwarves wearing pants, shirt and hat of various colors. Three dice are rolled at once. The resultant color combination starts the race to find the one single card among the 56 in which the dwarf's pants, shirt and hat matches the colors from the dice roll. Whoever finds the matching card first gets to keep that card. And the next player takes turn to roll the dice and so on. The game has a few variations for older kids, but in the simplest version the game ends when the dice-roll results in a color combination already played (and therefore the card is not on the table anymore).

I fell in love with this game right away and haven't turned down an invitation from Ana to play so far. Ana is pretty quick if she is into the game, so, initially I take it slow and let her 'win' a few cards so she doesn't get frustrated...

This is not really a memory game, just needs sharp observation and quick processing.

The pictures of the dwarves on the cards are terribly cute with interesting facial expressions and poses. The first few times we played when Ana was three, she would just stare at the pictures and study them, not really getting the hang of the game. The colors are vibrant and eye-catching.

If there is one thing I would change about it, it is the same issue I had with Candyland: the red and pink tend to blend together in indoor light; I would make the red a little deeper and leave the pink closer to pale baby-ish pink. Invariably D confuses the pink and the red, and Ana and I have to help him relearn his colors :)

How to organize a play group ?

(posted by Pallavi)
Now that its going to be warm pretty soon, I am trying to think of exciting new activities for my 2 yr old. Taking him to the park and to the pool are a couple. I am considering a playset for the backyard too. Most kids in our friends circle are much older than him.. Right now he goes to an in-home babysitter(while I am at work) where all the other kids are younger than him and he plays all by himself. We are planning to find a good daycare for him pretty soon. But meanwhile, .. I want him to be able to play a lot more with his age group kids, learn to share etc.

I looked at some moms groups but none are for working moms. So, none of those are working out. There are many kids in my neighbourhood about his age. Ideally, it would be great if all of us get together and the kids can play. Since we live pretty close meeting on weekdays at parks or just at someone's house or backyard would be much easier I think. Also, the kids will grow up together and I think that will be great !

But the issue is that our subdivision is kind of new and every couple of months a new family is moving in. There has not been an opportunity to even meet and talk to everyone yet. So, I am not sure how to approach people and organize a playgroup. I wonder if anyone would even be interested or even care.. Has anyone been in similar situations before ? Ideas/ Suggestions please ?

Kids Crafts: Hand-print greeting cards

[posted by Sheela]

Hand prints are a simple way to engage the little toddlers in creating something fun. I am sure there are several ideas around the web, but, I wanted to share a couple that Ana and I enjoy -viz., hand-print peacock and hand-print butterfly.



Items used: acrylic paints/finger painting paints/tempera paints, glitter(optional), black marker, card stock paper, and of course, enthusiastic baby hands

I load the wee hands with paints of my choice sometimes; but, at times, I allow myself to be guided by Ana's whims and let her mess with the colors she likes.

It barely takes a minute to make the actual hand-print, but, the anticipation and preparation seems to build up the inspiration :)

Once the hand-prints are fairly dry, I just sketch the required body parts to suggest the creature we intended to present through the hand-print.

Around the holidays last year, we made hand-print turkey and hand+foot print moose (sorry, no pictures handy at this time).

KUMON: How and why it works for us

[Crossposted at My Two Cents]

(Note: I haven't been able to post for this month's theme or for the Kids' Food Festival. Things are sorta crazy at my end, so please bear with me. I read all the posts, but don't get to comment on all of them for the same reason.)

Some time back I wrote a post on how parents sometimes push their kids unnecessarily to achieve academic excellence. In that post, I also mentioned KUMON - a chain of individually owned math and reading learning centers. One reader left a link in the comment section for an article that discusses a few drawbacks of the KUMON way of teaching math. I read that whole article twice - I swear! I agree with parts of it and there are parts (regarding trigonometry and calculus etc.) that we haven't gone through yet so those don't apply to us. Yet. I highly recommend that you read this article if you are thinking about signing up your kid(s) at KUMON. I am not going to discuss the article here. I am merely writing what works for us in the KUMON method. I am not saying it will, or should, work for other parents too. Every kid is different and what works for S might not work even for M, a few years from now. So, please take everything I am going to write with a grain of salt. Research the options out for yourself and then decide.

S started KUMON math program in August 2003, just before she started Kindergarten. I came to know about it through a friend who sent her son to a center for a brief time. S was a quiet kid from the beginning and we thought being good at something, like math, will give her self-esteem a boost. In the long term, we HAVE been proven correct. Also, I had heard that due to various factors, girls here lose interest in math and sience by the time they get to middle school. I was determined to prevent that from happening to my daughter. I wasn't going to let math become a "monster" to be afraid of. So, this is why our KUMON journey started.

Soon after she started, S began struggling with the homeworks. She would do all correctly, but would take 45 minutes or more to complete each homework. We began worrying if we pushed her in it too early because there is no way 45 minutes of homework is going to be good for a 5 year old. Thankfully, the owner of the franchise that S attended agreed with us. She said it should only take a child 5-7 minutes per homework, and no more than 10-12 minutes even if they take too long. So she reduced the number of pages that S was getting per homework. Once the load decreased, S also began taking more interest in doing her homework again. So, it has been this way ever since - we reduce the number of pages in her homework if she starts taking too long to finish and slowly increase it again once she finds a balance.

Another thing we always made sure of was to never push S into finishing a level fast. We let her take her own time and even let her repeat a level if she takes too long in that level's test (the objective is to complete one page in 1-3 minutes). After all, she is the one who will benefit if she masters the concepts at one level before advancing to the next one. Also, having to repeat a level has never been associated with failure in Kay household. It just indicates that some more time is needed to master the concepts. We do, however, try positive reinforcement to keep her motivated. So, every time S completes a level at KUMON, she gets to buy a board game or a book of upto $15 dollars in value. We are very rigid in enforcing the "board game or book" part. No soft toys, no video games or anything of that sort. She really looks forward to these opportunities. She only gets this gift if she has finished the level for good and doesn't have to repeat it. There are no penalties for repeating a level except that she has to wait longer to buy her gift.

Every year, when we mention that S is in the KUMON math program, her teachers ask us the same questions. How do we keep her interested (because it does tend to get repititive)? And since she is clearly ahead of grade level in math, how do we keep her interested in school work? For the first question, our answer is "Because we never gave her an option. KUMON homeworks are not optional, and she knows that. And, since she can herself see the progress she is making, she willingly does it now." As for the second question, we have noticed that the math that she learns at school is usually complementary to the math she does at KUMON. So, since KUMON math program doesn't really have many word-problems, the school curriculum helps her practice that part. KUMON math does not cover money math concepts while her school curriculum did. And, school curriculum also helps her revise the parts that she did long time ago at KUMON and has forgotten by now. For example, when she was doing multiplication in KUMON, her class teacher was still teaching subtraction. That helped because S was beginning to lose subtraction skills for lack of practice. And this year, she finishes her math classwork and then goes ahead and does extra with her teacher's permission. Which, in my opinion, shows a "will to learn" - a very important ingradient of success.

In my opinion, this is also teaching her a few other things. One - you have to do what you have to do. Meaning, even if you already know multiplication (or any other skill that is currently being taught in class), you have to do it as part of the school curriculum. You CANNOT get out of doing it just because you already know it. Two - never be smug about your math skills because though there are things you are very good at, there are some other skills that you need to work on, just like other kids. (Example - her struggles with money math last year) Three - practice makes perfect. This one she has experienced for herself and now realizes its importance (I hope!)

Almost everyone in our social circle, who has ever sent their kids to KUMON at one time or the other, has mentioned to us how their kids used to get "bored" with math at their school because they were ahead of the rest of their class. Most of them cited "boredom" as a reason for dropping out of the KUMON math program. I don't know why. As I mentioned earlier, it hasn't happened to S. And if it has, she hasn't mentioned to us - which is just as good because we would still have made her do it. "Bored" is a word I don't entertain. No way, no how! I know, I sound like a tyrant. Heck! I am a tyrant when it comes to studies. I know that is THE ONLY TICKET TO SUCCESS my daughters have. S does mention it when KUMON begins to become a burden of sorts. Then we let her take a break for a week or so. Every year, she gets a break form KUMON for one week each in summer and winter. And sometimes an extra week here or there if we feel (or if she says) it is becoming too much for her. That, I guess, prevents it from becoming a huge burden. By now, KUMON is a way of life for her. She remembers to do the homework every day without us having to remind her. I hope this will continue into her middle school and high school years. Because the skills that KUMON is teaching her reach far beyond just success in math. The discipline will definitely help her in other avenues in life. The skill to understand concepts on her own (of course she takes our help when she gest stuck) is going to prove important later in college. The perseverance she is learning in understanding tricky math concepts will pay off later in life.

Coming back to the article - I agree KUMON is not perfect. Nothing is. But we work hard at making it work for us. Like everything else in life. Nothing comes your way custom-made and ready to fit. You have to tuck here, nip there.

The author of the article suggests that parents should do every homework themselves along with the kids. I agree, but not completely. You don't need to do every single homework. You do need to know how to solve those problems and be able to explain to your kid(s) if the need arises. Having solved the problems yourself a few times does come in handy when you have to explain it to someone else.

We had signed S up for KUMON's reading program as well and she attended it for over 3 years. But then we learnt about SCORE's writing program. We liked the program and wanted to try it out. S loved it and even made some remarkable progress in her writing skills. but we had to take her off of the program. There were a few reasons. One - they weren't offering Writing as a stand-alone program. They wanted us to opt for the whole Math-Reading-Writing package. Since we were already very happy with the KUMON math and reading program, we decided not to join SCORE. Two - and this one was a biggie for me, I am not sure if other parents will feel the same way as I do - the SCORE program is COMPLETELY computer based. I mean, even the "writing" that S did was on a computer. Now, call me old-fashioned, but I believe a child should learn how to write well before graduating to typing. And, with all the typing, S was losing her handwriting skills fast. At KUMON, she is required to write everything - math answers as well as answers to the questions in her reading material. I like it that way. As I said - nothing is perfect. You have to work at making things fit you. We tried but we weren't able to compromise on these two issues regarding the SCORE program. I think we might give it another try a few years from now when S is done with KUMON (one can hope, right? :P)

Baby Puzzles

Puzzles happen to be a lot of fun and essential activity for child development. So they say, and I believe they might have a point. Each child develops at his/her own rate. So, it is not easy to know when exactly to introduce these activities... we let Ana guide us mostly.

Once baby knows to sit up steadily and has enough dexterity to pick up food and other toys items intentionally and place them at a different spot with certain premeditation, as well as have enough focus to recognize patterns, it seems like a good time to introduce the puzzles. When Ana could recognize animals, shapes, fruits and such, around 15 months, we introduced what I call Stage One puzzles pictured above.

I call these Stage One for these reasons:
1. easy for baby hands to pick up using the little plastic knobs (caution: never let the child do it unsupervised at this age - they tend to put things in the mouth and these little plastic knobs are a hazard); and if it doesn't have the knobs, the pieces are large enough to be held by baby hands comfortably.
2. easily recognizable shapes for the puzzle pieces (unlike jigsaw) like animals or fruits and only one would seem right - not a lot of ambiguity.

In the picture above the farm animals puzzle (Melissa & Doug™) was a favorite as Ana used to love stating the animal name and putting the right piece in the right spot. All wooden shapes are the same in this farm animal puzzle, but for the color and pattern which helps identify whether it is a sheep or a horse or a cow or a duck...

Next is what I call Stage Two puzzles:



These don't have knobs for easy pick up, but, have large enough pieces, not quite jigsaw, that will only fit one way, no ambiguity. But, it is a bit more challenging as the shape of the pieces are not uniform or easily recognizable. For instance the Peanuts one in the picture or the Pluto one, all the kid has to know is where the head and feet and such goes and then try to assemble them such that the pieces fit. But the challenge is in the fact that it is not easy to put certain pieces in place before the others are in place. Between 18 and 24 months, Ana seemed to like these.

Next are what I call Stage Three:



These are basic 9-piece jigsaw puzzles with very open and simple themes. Ana loves the animals one - with dog and cat and goldfish and bunny and such. In this category, slightly more challenging 9-piece is the abstract one of the multicolored elephant puzzle in the picture - which is actually 2-in-1 where front is a single elephant and rear is many elephants - aimed at introducing one and many - but the picture is abstract enough to be challenging, yet, easy enough as there are only 9 pieces and only one way they will fit. Around 22 months, closer to turning two, Ana started to focus her attention on these jigsaw puzzles which have a general overall pattern, but the individual pieces don't always seem to make sense.

In my mind, Stage Two and Stage three overlap. They seem equally challenging and interesting.

Next are the Stage Four:



These are more challenging 24-piece jigsaw or block puzzles. Ana is about 27 months now (2 yrs 3 months) and she is into these. The block puzzle is actually 6-in-1 "farm cube puzzle" where 16 blocks need to be assembled in proper order to complete each of the six puzzles.



My favorite puzzles for Ana so far have been Melissa & Doug™ wood puzzles. However, some of the ones in the pictures above are possibly 30 years old as they were gifts from my mum-in-law - apparently D, my husband (her son) used to play with them when he was little! I love the fact that she held on to those and passed it on to Ana.

What usually worked with Ana is, I used to set one puzzle out at a time - all jumbled - in her play area, very handy and at a convenient spot for her to find and assemble them. In the middle of playing with her toys, she would notice this and start putting it together and scream when she gets frustrated and needs some gentle direction or nudge.

By no means am I an expert in child development activities, but, I wanted to share some of the puzzles Ana has enjoyed doing since she was about 15 months or so. Perhaps children are ready even earlier and we can let our children guide us...

This post is completely inspired by Sandeepa's thoughtful comment left on one of my posts. Thank you Sandeepa for giving me an opportunity to share one of my favorite activities with my baby.

Learning Activities

(posted by ramya of www.ramyascuisine.wordpress.com)

I want to know how u plan Ur 2yr old daily activities and learning.Any suggestions that u can give me.As for me i make her do the ABC's in starfall.com in which they spell and teach.First i used to do her this but within 2 days she learned it.She is doing this from past 2-3 months.Now i just sit beside her and she does everything except some which r difficult for her.I observed she is thinking and using common sense and brain.I don't want to believe this but i am observing this.Ya.......she really figured out what to do and how to do.Yuppy............i gave her a kiss.I was awestruck by this performance.But i make sure she is not over obssesive regarding this daily i allow her to do for 1/2 hr.I don't like watching tv's also alot,but sometimes they don't listen.I make her draw something she is intrested or hear the Rhymes,dance or whatever she want.She loves playing in our balcony,if its sunny i allow her to go out.Before sleeping i read her a story.I have 2-3 books i repeat them,now-a-days i stopped but i like reading to her.once we move i will again start the routine.She even brings a book of her choice to me.Even in the morning she likes to hear about pooh and pigglet.I appreciate any suggestions so i can improve.Hear i miss my parents if they r around they used to tell lot of stories.My dad had a daily routine with her when we were in india.She used to llaugh laugh and sleep.Even i do the same but anyhow i too miss them.