Creativity and Creepy Crawlies

Creativity in our home is a regular but non-scheduled thing. Every once and a while I will set up a specific medium to explore or play some different music. But for the most part we do the same things everyday.

We sing our favourite nursery rhymes. We play with our musical instruments. The art materials are out and available at all times (fine tip pens, pencils, coloured pencils, pastels, crayons, plasticine, dough, molding tools, stamps, papers, glue, stickers, scissors) and something is created daily. Cam’s latest thing is making ‘treasure maps’, so we have rolled up bits of paper in odd places.

I try to take photos of Cameron and Lucy being musical and creative but they always end up looking like this:

The little maracas in that photo are Lucy’s favourite and are so sweet. We were given these by a family in Puerto Rico during our last cultural exchange.

Our messy activities like paint are done on our verandah. This was only Lucy’s 2nd time using her easel. She chose to forgo her art smock.

Don’t Cameron’s paintings look gorgeous hanging to dry. My favourite is the one of the very right. He said it is a party with people and balloons and lights.

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Now onto something completely different – creepy crawlies! Australia is the best place to find creepy crawlies! I grew up in New Zealand where you don’t have to worry about poisonous snakes or nasty spiders. But they sure are fun to learn about, particularly if you are a 3 year old boy!

Cameron found this centipede dead. It was fun to look at with his magnifying glass. Each segment of it’s body has a set of legs. Cam is great with not touching any creatures, alive or dead. I would have to watch Lucy though!

This is the second snake we have had in our yard already (we’ve only been here a month!). The neighbour swears they haven’t seen a snake in years.. I think perhaps they just aren’t outside enough and don’t have curious kids!

This one was a small tree snake and was dead when we found it, poor thing. It was good to be able to see it up close though.

What have you or your children found in your yard?

Cameron’s Room Tour

Inspired by my involvement in the Playful Learning spaces eCourse, as well as the great Montessori-inspired bedrooms I see on pinterest and my favourite blogs; I have set up Cameron’s room in our new house. It has been a couple of weeks of tweaking and observing and this is the room as it is now.

As I said in another post, Cameron is sleeping in his own bed now. He is 3 years and 4 months old. We bed share/co-sleep/whatever you want to call it. I have never forced the issue of Cameron having his own sleeping space.

This is for many reasons – firstly it was due to breastfeeding. Both my children slept in a co-sleeper or bassinet for their early months but before long they were sleeping between my husband and I. For us it was simply easier. We sleep better and there is no need for getting up in the middle of the night for anything.

However, we were hoping that Cam would have his own space and bed by around this age. I was lucky, I simply made up his room in a way I thought he would find inviting. I didn’t even bring up the possibility, he saw it and said “Mummy, is that mine?” and I replied “yes, that’s your own bed whenever you want it” and that night, instead of going into our room for a story, he went into his!

The view of Cameron’s room from the door

His toy drawers store animal figures, little vehicles and one has random play things that enhance his pretend play (an eye patch, an ID clip, a camera, a phone, binoculars, etc) and his car garage is on top.

He will still come into us on occasion but the majority of the time he is in his bed. I’m on the lookout for a night light as I think this will help him for those times he wakes up alone in the middle of the night. His door is directly opposite ours which means I can talk to him if he calls out, but I think most of the time it is the dark that worries him.

The kids light table, bookcase and drawers

Cameron chooses his clothing and dresses himself. the blue tub on top stores his underwear. The bottom shelf of the bookcase is Lucy’s, you can see she was playing with her basket of toys before I snapped this pic. On top of the shelf we store Cameron’s toys that are best kept out of Lucy’s reach, as well as Cam’s nature books and field guides.

Anyway, I thought you might like to see some pics of his space from his level. I got down on my knees for these photos! We have high ceilings in this house so it looks different from an adult’s point of view.

These drawers are low and slide easy. Lucy can open them and help choose an outfit for the day.

The light table is an every day activity for Cameron. These are some of his manipulatives.
(I store the rest in my craft drawers)

Although we limit TV, Cameron watches Fireman Sam occasionally and loves playing with these.

I also thought I would share the new fridge shelf for Cameron and Lucy. They have two cupboards too (one for bowls/plates/cups/mugs/utensils/baking tools/etc and the other for snacks) but they are hard to photograph well.

Small glass lidded pitchers and fresh washed & prepped fruit and vege

We usually have cheese cubed and yoghurt too but Cam and Lucy ate it all and I need to prep the cheese with them and buy some more yoghurt!

New lidded glass jug for 3 year old Cameron’s milk (also have another for water and juice), one of Cam’s new cups (great size, op shop find),
one of 13 month old Lucy’s cups (shot glass) & my 1L water as size reference.

What do you think? Any suggestions or questions?

Behaviour

I was asked to write about behaviour and sibling issues. The difficult thing is that anything pertaining to these topics is so individual.

They talk about siblings being like chalk and cheese. My two certainly fit this description when it comes to personality and behaviour. I see one of my roles as a mother as accepting my children for who they are – both for their talents and their flaws.

I believe an important part of my ‘job’ is to nourish my children, encourage them and help them reach their best potential. Not just academically but within their relationships, their emotional intelligence, their motivation, their ethic, etc etc.. the list goes on and on. I don’t think this is truly possible without them having self confidence and self awareness.

Cameron is a sensitive boy. He is intelligent and cautious. He has always been selective but curious. He always wants to help and is gentle and caring. Cam craves guidance and is full of questions. Even as a young toddler he was forever asking “what’s that?”

Almost any sense of danger, anger or upset (including even gentle discipline such as simply talking through an issue) is met with sensitivity or tears. This is one of my biggest hurdles as Cameron’s Mum. He is introverted and quick to fold into himself emotionally in order to deal with anything confronting. He is perceptive and clever so not much goes over his head.

As a sibling, for the vast majority, he is a beautiful role model and big brother. His sensitivity and gentleness is the perfect contrast to Lucy’s fiery passion and determined but happy nature. Cameron is brilliant with Lucy so long as he has the ability to help me take care of her and he is heard. Lucy is only 13 months old so her Lucy-centric behaviours are expected and understandable. She loves her big brother so wholeheartedly and just wants to do everything that he does. This can mean lots of tantrums, messes and general upset – from all parties!

Lucy is a happy girl with a passionate personality. She is fearless and defiant. Her determination is incredible. How headstrong she is, is the main reason I struggle moreso with her than Cameron with behaviour – even as a baby! She loves fiercely and you will hardly ever hear her cry (growling or throwing a tantrum, however, is a regularly occurrence). She is inquisitive but would much rather learn and master things on her own than have any help or guidance.

Every single one of the many traits of each of my children is completely accepted by me. I can see the positives and potential in every mannerism and characteristic. Of course, I struggle; particularly when the attribute is something that reminds me of myself (Cameron’s anxiety and difficulty socially.. Lucy’s fearlessness and determination) but that’s the beauty of parenthood. I’m forever learning.

Some resources that I have drawn upon when I feel like whatever I am doing is not working (perhaps it isn’t age appropriate or it isn’t dealing with the root of the problem) are Elevating Childcare and Aid to Life.

With respect to dividing my time between my children, we do mostly everything together. Cameron is content the majority of the time so long as he is involved and heard. Lucy is happy just to watch sometimes and they get along really well. There are times where Lucy requires my full attention but most of the time Cameron is either helping, doing an activity or independently playing. Cameron, being an affectionate child, does get jealous sometimes of all the cuddles that are involved with the care of an infant/young toddler. But a cuddle is all he needs to be off again playing or to resume an activity.

Daily Rhythm

I asked on facebook if there were any topics you would like me to discuss and a couple of you said daily routines. Now that Cameron is 3 years and 4 months (in a few days) and Lucy is 13 months old, our routine is becoming more predictable. We generally follow a morning (~6am – 10am) rhythm and night time (~3pm – 7pm) rhythm but our days between 10 & 3 vary greatly.

The morning flows naturally. In the mornings we tend to sing songs and read a book or two, either before or after breakfast. More often than not it’s while we are still in bed.

We prepare breakfast together (mostly Cam and I but Lucy will or be on my hip). For example I will get together the cereal, seeds and honey while Cammy grabs his and Lucy’s bowls and cups. I will get spoons and prepare the food while Cam gets milk and juice from the fridge. We then wash little faces and teeth. We feed our cat and change over Cam’s magnetic calendar (when we remember!). Cameron is pretty efficient at dressing himself but tends to ask for help with tricky zips and ties. Lucy is not a fan of dressing and I can see her being more demanding with dressing herself than Cameron ever was.

The rest of the morning is spent with chores and free play. I will sometimes have Lucy following me everywhere or on my hip but other times she will play alongside Cam or independently as I clean up. Cameron is great at independent play and exploration, however he loves to help me with things like packing the dishwasher, doing washing, sweeping, cleaning up spills and wiping down surfaces.

I tend to let his involvement be voluntary. I do however make a point of letting him know either directly or indirectly that we keep this home as a family and we tidy any messes we make.

At around 10am, Lucy will often sleep & our day can turn to going out (to shops or my sisters or a park) or staying in (playing outdoors, doing art, doing an activity) and at some point we will do other chores like putting out rubbish, checking the mail, hanging out washing, etc. Cameron genuinely LOVES helping to do these things and will beg to do things like take out the recyclables.

Some days I can get next to nothing done whereas others are packed full of productivity. Living in this house with our yard makes for an easier time for me if it’s one of my ‘off’ days – nature is the best teacher and entertainer!

Our night routine is the typical time with Daddy, dinner, tidy up, wind down, bath time, story time and sleep. Lucy’s sleep is still varied so if her afternoon nap ran late she may be up around the time Cameron is going to bed (which means Mike will read him his story and get him down). Cameron is now in his own room, in his own bed. This is very new and came about as a natural progression. We still co-sleep with Lucy and Cameron is welcome to come into our bed.

I’ll save the other topics (behaviour – particularly involving siblings and activities for 3 year olds) asked about for another post

Nature Exploration

At the moment I’m assessing and planning several of the kids spaces in our home. One that is clearly needed in our new home is somewhere to gather our tools and resources for nature exploration. Having a proper backyard has transformed our daily life. We spend so much time outside.

What tips would you recommend for nature investigation? Would you suggest baskets? a shelf? something else entirely? I have space (particularly outdoors undercover) but am thinking of practicality… would a basket be best? Because it is portable?

I’m thinking several baskets [say one for 'tools' (such as magnifiers, bug catchers, clipboard, containers) and another for relevant reference books/guides and another for record keeping (i.e. flower press, nature journal, photos of prior finds)] on a shelf?

As we have only just moved to a place with a backyard full of nature enriched opportunities; we have never established a routine with incorporating nature into our lives. At our last home, there was very little to discover and nature enriched experiences were planned and few & far between.

Now I want to set up an area that can hopefully inspire a more organic and frequent exploration of nature. What would you include for a curious 3 year old boy? What has made for great investigation and memories in your home? What is used time and time again?

Any advice and guidance would be so appreciated!

Farm Bingo Game

I made a farm bingo game up and want to share the printable with you! Go to my facebook page and ‘like’ (if you’re already a ‘liker’, I would really appreciate you sharing my page) and either comment or message me asking for the link to download the printable

Farm Animals, Aussie Animals & A Wild One Too!

We now live right around the corner from a nature centre. We have already taken advantage of this and visited twice since the move. Cameron is fascinated by the animals and loves learning more about them.

This matching activity is very easy for Cameron but the challenge now is learning the names of some of the animals he does not know well (i.e. bilby, echidna, tasmanian devil). We work on starting sounds of the animals he is very familiar with (‘w’ wombat, ‘d’ dingo, ‘k’ kangaroo/koala/kookaburra). Many of the matching and sorting activities I have made for Cameron are easy to develop into something more challenging and interesting for him.

For Easter I bought Cameron and Lucy some Schleich farm animals (they got plenty of other traditionally Easter related gifts from us and others too) which have been a regular play thing. Yes, Lucy is nomming a gumnut in the photo above. These figures have really helped Cameron learn the different names for female, male and juvenile farm animals.

After a lot of play with the dough and animals, we decided they needed a bath.

We had our first wild snake visit our yard! So scary, considering Cameron was downstairs playing and saw it first and screamed out to me. Our new place backs onto vacant land and a river so I sort of expected snakes. It was a good wake up call to teach Cameron about wildlife. Thankfully he is naturally cautious and respectful of animals and insects.

Lucy has started more activities. Above are some photos I snapped of her first coin activity. She didn’t even notice I was taking pictures, she was so engaged. Ring stackers are a big hit with her at the moment too. She isn’t sorting by colour or size but she loves removing and replacing the rings of her stackers:

I have been organising a few activities for both Lucy and Cameron. We went to a baby farm animal petting zoo which Cameron (& I!) loved so decided to expand on the farm animals we know and their young in a fun way. I made up this bingo game! I’m yet to print it out and play but I will share when we do!

Would anyone be interested in this Farm Animal Bingo as a printable? If I get interest I will create a file to share with subscribers

Settling in

Coming to you from our new home and temporary internet!

We are slowly but surely settling in. Lucy had a lovely but busy birthday and Cameron is loving our new space.

Cameron has been so helpful with entertaining Lucy and helping me clean the old house. He is loving having a big yard and finding his books and toys that have been packed for some time.

We have recently been unwell so Lucy has been grumpy and it’s put a halt on some of our plans, including Lucy’s party. Now that we have a long weekend we are hoping to get lots done – finish off everything at the old place and get stuck into setting ourselves up here.

Hope you have a lovely Easter!

Documentation

If you follow my pinterest, or even my facebook page, you would likely know that I am very inspired by the Montessori method and Reggio Emilia approach of learning. As both a mother, and an aspiring early childhood teacher, these methods have many factors that I agree with and value.

Documentation within the classroom is one aspect of the Reggio Emilia approach that just plain makes sense to me. It is, quite simply, pictures, recordings, notes (both from the child and the teacher), photos, videos, and other representations of the children’s work.

It might sound simple, but it is such a great tool that enables teachers, children and their parents to reflect, examine and talk about the work that is going on pertaining to an area of learning or a particular project. Having it displayed can offer various points of view, and can help solidify learning and open up more possibilities and opportunities to expand on their knowledge.

Although documentation is typically a Reggio-inspired practice, I think it resonates well with Maria Montessori’s notion of observation. It is really just a visual representation of the many elements of observation, is it not?

So here is my first attempt at documentation, with a little display of Cameron’s first representational drawings of people:

It has been so sweet finding little people like this randomly around our play area and hearing the stories behind them.

As well as merely preserving different memories of learning, I love the idea of documenting children’s projects at home for all the reasons that Reggio-inspired schools document their students work.

Lucy is ONE in a few days! Can you believe it? She’s such a character, I will definitely have to update how she is going asap.

Tomorrow is our last day in this house! We are moving this weekend and saying goodbye to our home of four and a half years! I’m so excited, our new home is going to provide some amazing opportunities (it’s much cheaper so we can save for a home) and has a lovely big yard! Next time I update (which will be a while as we settle in and get internet hooked up) will be at a new location! & hopefully with some great photos of our new space!

Art for Children

We finally have a new rental home and are on our way to being packed up and ready to move. I have been thinking a lot about the spaces I want to create for Cameron and Lucy at our new place. A biggie is our outdoor space considering we have only had a tiny square of grass outside at this house.

But I thought today that I would share some of my thoughts on art for children and some of the inspiring ideas and images that I’ve found as I have been doing the Playful Learning Spaces eCourse.

A while ago our creative space looked like this:

Missing from this picture is our document organiser full of different papers and of course their easels. Since then there have been some changes but I’m going to be making even more changes (including having both an outdoor creative area and an indoor one) at our new place.

Art, whether it’s modelling with clay, doing collage, stamping, painting or mark making, is a big thing in our home. Even Lucy, at less than a year old, can spend a considerable amount of time exploring art materials.

field journal

Consequently, I try to purchase only quality art materials. How gorgeous is this nature journal with art materials? I want to create something similar for Cameron now that he is making recognisable drawings/paintings.

all the colours of the rainbow

Variety is something else that I really try to offer to my children. Different papers (textured, coloured, sizes, watercolour paper, canvases), collage materials (sequins, googly eyes, natural materials – pressed flowers & leaves, stickers, foil, papers), crayons (soy rock crayons, beeswax stick crayons, crayon pencils), paints (poster, acrylic, dot painters, watercolour, natural pigments, homemade) just as a few examples.

waldorf art cabinet

Accessibility of materials is a big issue when children are young like mine. I want Cameron to have the freedom and ability to access any materials we wants at any time, yet I have to make it safe for Lucy.

toddler art caddy

Something that I think would really transform Cameron (& Lucy’s) art experience, that I have yet to try, is making art more portable. Whether it is an art caddy, like above, or something creative like this DIY art portfolio in a DVD case.

DIY art DVD case

afternoon art

I think sometimes, simplicity is key.

& beauty.