Dino art and fossils

Today, we made some dino art, which was guided, yet flexible. My son has tended to shy away from completely open-ended projects and so, I try to get him interested by giving him a starting point. This time, I drew an outline of a T-Rex and wrote T-REX on the paper. RJ recognized all the letters (even the X, which he sometimes mistakes for K) and painted his T-Rex. What I found most exciting was that he really engaged in the activity, starting with painting the dinosaur's bones, then adding "skin" and an eye. I have observed that he tended to shy away from creating things. He has typically wanted an adult to draw something for him. I found this frustrating, because I have always focused on the process, rather than the product, and continually encouraged his creative work. However, his cognition has always been ahead of his motor development, so it's possible that he was frustrated by his inability to create the images that he wanted to. It appears that for him, having the realistic outline today was enough to get him engaged in the activity without sacrificing the open ended creation too much. He even painted a second dinosaur (brachiosaurus), without an outline and I was impressed that it actually resembled brachiosaurus with its long neck. Perhaps, his fine motor development has allowed him the control to feel like he's making what he wants to, which made the process more enjoyable for him.

We also talked about fossils today as we used the dinosaurs to make prints in clay. RJ loved this activity and when we were done with the self-hardening stone clay, he asked to bring out his play-doh to continue. Tomorrow, his fossils will be hardened and on Thursday, when his co-op buddies come over, we will excavate them from the sandbox with paintbrushes like paleontologists.

A note on Sesame Street...

This morning while I was nursing the baby, my dear three-year-old figured out how to turn on the TV in the other room. This is problematic because a.) he has not figured out the TiVO yet and who knows what might be on the TV when he turns it on (although that TV is set to record mostly PBS kids shows, it would probably still be on that channel and appropriate for viewing) and b.) he's a couch potato wanna-be (we limit his viewing, but it's never enough for him), but this morning, it sort of worked out because there was a clip on Sesame Street about Dinosaurs.  Here are the points the clip in Elmo's World made as a little girl narrated a trip to the American Museum of Natural History:

• Dinosaurs are not alive anymore
• We can learn about them at museums like the American Museum of Natural History.
• Paleontologists dig up the fossils and bones and put together skeletons to see how big dinosaurs are
• Barosaurus has the longest neck in North America
• Triceratops has three big horns and a big collar
• Dinosaur eggs are small, even though dinosaurs get really big
• Tyrannosaurus rex has tiny arms and big legs and sharp teeth to eat meat with
• Stegosaurus has plates on its back
• Apatosaurus is humongeous and made of 350 dinosaur bones

Then, Elmo spoke with a dinosaur muppet, who told him the following info:

• Dinosaurs lived 150 million years ago 
• During that time the dinosaurs saw asteroids, watched the sun rise and set, comets, trees with leaves, lakes, and both small and big dinosaurs
• Elmo asked this Dinosaur muppet if he had birds in his neighborhood (you know, like Sesame Street has Big Bird) to which the Dinosaur replied that they had a pterasaur that flew in the sky (not a bird).  Then they did the ridiculous part where Dorothy (Elmo's fish) imagines Elmo morphed into a fuzzy red pterosaur while the dinosaur continues to tell Elmo that Dinosaurs lived alongside frogs, turtles, mice, and crocodiles.
• He went on to tell Elmo that some dinosaurs ate leaves all day long while others ate meat, including other dinosaurs.  

This is all appropriate information, however, it was rattled off so quickly that I wonder how much of it really sank in. If I need to rewind twice just to type notes (not type verbatim) and I'm a decent typist, it's too fast for a 3 year old (Sesame Street's targeted age). While the quick pacing of Sesame Street's clips has been studied (Anderson, Levin & Pugzles Lorch, 1977), it is not implicated as a factor contributing to hyperactivity and/or poor attention spans in preschoolers in the short term. However, in 2004, Christakis found that each hour of television watched (on average) between the ages of one and three years old increased the probability (by 10%) of a reported attention problem by age 7. Sesame Street has actually slowed down and went from the non-sequitur educational clip show that it was when I was growing up to its more narrative format now. This change was to shift the target age down from 4 to 3, since younger kids were now watching tv. But even "slowed down" in Elmos's World (which was CREATED for toddlers), this seemed really fast. While Sesame Street has documented school readiness outcomes (largely the three R's, e.g., Wright et al., 2001), I think they fall short on creating organized thematic knowledge in science. It is perhaps a first exposure to an area, but not interactive nor well-organized in terms of its presentation. It is entirely passive. Watching this really made me miss Mister Rogers. His show left time for children's responses and he presented the theme of the day in an organized fashion, where knowledge was built up slowly for the children to digest.

The plus side, is that my son now wants to go to a Natural History Museum to learn more!

Saturday Observations and Thoughts

While playing with my son, we touched on a few concepts, but I largely followed his lead and noticed som interesting trends.
Here's what happened:  T-rex and the T-rex baby (who is just popping out of its shell) kept chasing brachiosaurus and triceratops (both of whom I was responsible for) away from the trees and watering hole.  The T-rexes caught them and ate them no matter how well they hid. Then, they got covered in mud (a blanket) and turned to skeletons.  Then my son insisted that even though they were dead, they needed to play again.  Repeat ad nauseum.

What is interesting to me is that despite his t-rexes eating the herbivores, my son actually stated, while my herbivores were running away, that he wanted them all to be nice to each other. However, my dinos still died in an attack directly following that statement.  I was happy that he was playing fairly realistically despite his spoken desire for them getting along, but a piece of me was sad that he didn't break from dinosaur theory to make them play nice.

This brings up a constant struggle that I have about violence exposure.  I have VERY little tolerance for violence, and I have banned all weapons in our house.  I realized when talking about carnivores that nature is not a very kind place and that by learning about predators and prey that I was actually opening up a whole new world of potentially violent play. I do think that learning about what happens in nature (or in this case, what scientists believe dinosaur behavior to be like) is important, but we're cautiously approaching HOW to play out these scenarios appropriately so that no people get hurt.

I welcome comments about what you might have done with children to keep them playing realistically, yet kindly with others.

And we're back...for now...with Dinosaurs

My son recently used a gift certificate from his birthday to buy a set of dinosaurs and we were delighted that his selection actually printed the names of the dinosaurs on their bottoms.  This led to me starting a very loose theme on dinosaurs.  With my younger son becoming mobile and very curious about everything, AND refusing to take a morning nap in his crib, it has been increasingly difficult to actually conduct any messy or involved projects with my preschooler without interruption.  (Don't get me started on the great finger painting incident which required a whole wardrobe change and a blue/green Technicolor mouth).  Even reading a whole book is difficult, which is frustrating for both of us.  I know this phase will pass soon, when mobility is less of a novelty, and when the little one is ready for a little more than eating art mediums and chewing on the Brachiosaurus' tail.  In the meantime, we try to play with the dinosaurs a lot (while my 10 month old is "pretending" to be a carnivore "eating" the herbivores) while I embed facts about them.  We also read books when we can (even if by the page as we did with "An Alphabet of Dinosaurs"), and try to utilize some weekend time to have one-on-one big kid projects.  Also, we have started allowing a little TV time on a regular basis, so PBS's "Dinosaur Train" is appropriate and fits the theme.  Although now I have to explain that Dinosaurs do not really travel by train, nor do Tyrannosaurus Rex babies EVER end up in a Pteranodon nest and make friends with them.

The assessment materials for this theme are available here.  I do hope that someday I will get some long stretches of uninterrupted time to transcribe and code all the assessments, but at least for now, I have them recorded.  

Theme Hiatus

Nothing is more regular in my life than being behind on something (usually something for me).  Whether it is being behind on the housework, posting blog entries about my kids' development, or not getting a project done around the house (hello $5 hot pink bookshelf that I haven't painted yet!), being a stay at home mom of a 3 year old and a 7 month old means that everything seems to take a back burner to whatever the immediate concern is.  Some of my faithful readers have mentioned that reading my activity plans exhaust them  (the thought of what I'm doing, not the ACTUAL reading of the blog.  err..I hope!).  It is exhausting, but it's only happening because I have put the curriculum above a lot of other things in our lives, which is one reason why I can't seem to find time to write more on this blog. However, in the grand scheme of things, actually planning and doing the activities is the point of this whole thing.  Documentation would be fabulous (and I will eventually get there - I have the videos and pictures, it's the processing that takes time.), but actually doing these things with him is the key.  With that said, we're taking a couple week hiatus since the next few weeks are a little busy and I'd like to catch up. 

Why are they busy? 

Well, for one, I have a first job interview this week, so if all goes well, I might have additional interviews and if those go well, I might not be a stay at home momma much longer.  This makes me sad, but I do need to go back to work eventually, and a couple of potentially awesome positions opened up now, so I didn't want to miss the opportunities at the risk of not being able to find a job when I need to go back.  If either of these positions works out, we might get to move closer to where my husband works, which will help our work/life balance.  

Also, we're trying to organize our closets full of random, unorganized stuff, which will help immensely if we have to move, and will make room for the boxes that came home from my office in June AND we have family coming to town at the end of the month (and the office boxes have been scattered all over the guest room!).  I really didn't want to have to stop and start a formal theme multiple times, because that can hinder learning and is frustrating for everyone.  However, this does not mean that I will stop spending quality time doing activities with RJ - only that nap times will be used for going through closets rather than planning specific activities and preparing them!  During this time, we're doing some more informal thematic curriculum that isn't as far removed from our everyday routine - focusing on Healthy Living.  We'll cook together (which we have to do anyway), and exercise together (perhaps spending more time at the park now that the heat has subsided a little). We'll still work on letters and do art, just more basic stuff than I had planned for the last theme.  Some of the things we touch on might lead to a more formal theme after things settle down a little bit. During this hiatus, I want to document my son's pre and post assessments from the Transportation theme and post some documents describing my philosophy of early childhood education.  Hopefully these posts will tide you all over until we get going again.

Transition Tuesday: Ending the Transportation Theme

This week we will be easing out of Transportation - I don't have any major plans, but do want to do some webbing with RJ to go over what we've learned.  Interestingly, he's already asked, "What are we learning about next?".  Over the weekend, I hope to conduct the first post-theme assessment.  Then I want to take a short hiatus to regroup for the next theme, which will be a healthy living theme.  We do a good amount of this anyway with our weekly CSA crate and talking about what new foods the baby is eating, as well as getting exercise at the playground, but I want to delve a little deeper.  This will also work out great to kick start some daily yoga into our routine, which we can even get the baby involved in. 

Terrific Tuesday

Today we remembered that we had an aircraft carrier with a bunch of supersonic aircraft, which is an excellent connection between aircraft and boats.  My husband built it with his father when he was in elementary school.  This turned out to be a great find, since RJ played with it ALL DAY and we used it to explain what the bow, stern, port, and starboard were.