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?

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

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.

Toy recommendations for a 9-12 month old

I always love seeing what toys and materials other families recommend, so I thought I would share the toys that Lucy tends to favour. As a Montessori-inspired household, she of course has access to all of her toys on low shelves. She also has access to some of Cameron’s toys as well as general toys like blocks, musical instruments, our play farm and various animals and cars, etc.

Her absolute favourite toys that get played with daily are:

- a wooden postbox toy from the Early Learning Centre
- this ball tracker which I was lucky enough to find 2nd hand (apparently called a ‘GoGo Toys Clogging Track’)
- her DIY Montessori object permanence box
- this music box by ‘U Wood Wooden Toys’ that I got from ebay

Some more toys that get regular play and I would recommend are the peg stacker, advanced ball return (she’s only just started to work on this at 11 months), pop-up toy, increasing circle puzzle and the windmill stacker (which mostly just gets pulled apart at this stage but she will consistently choose it).

Lucy’s birthday is this month and aside from some clothes and books, she will be getting the above from us. The cabbage patch baby doll is a soft toy. The wheely bug, colour sorting stacker and lock box are all from Classic Baby.

Most of what she plays with are more open-ended toys and ‘un-toys’ and she spends a lot of time crawling through our play tunnel, following Cameron and I, playing peekaboo & climbing everything.

What would you recommend for a 9-12 month old? What would you suggest for a gift for a one year old’s birthday?

Easter Gift Inspiration

Have a look at my Etsy Treasury ‘Easter Gifts Inspiration’ for some gift inspiration for your 0-5 year old. Beautiful quality gifts made with natural materials. (I’m not affiliated with any of these sellers, I just like the items. I have purchased from a couple of them in the past)

Rainbow Nest – Coun… MamaMayI $19	Wooden Easter Bunny… KeepsakeToys $24	Gumnut Gnome Baby -… Rumpelfeltski… $6	Wool Easter Egg Pla… newtknees $22
Easter Sale – Waldo… TheEnchantedC… $12	My Stone Collection… todaysunshine $22	Wooden Egg w/ Hole … sevenacretoys $30	Easter Bamboo Velou… BrightLifeToy… $12
Rainbow Draw String… colourbazaar $9	Miniature Bunny Ra… Puzzimals $12.49	Wood play eggs and … laughingcrick… $26	Wood Toy – Easter B… CeadarHillHei… $26.08
Wood Teether Bunny … littlesapling… $12	wooden knitting for… indigoinspira… $23.5	Wooden bunnies, wal… Halushka $12	hand felted wool fe… masajesaf $22

Treasury tool by StylishHome.

Blogs I Love

I have created somewhat of a blogroll at the top of my page. We’re in the middle of moving home (feels like limbo) at the moment, & I thought I would show you which blogs I frequent & get inspiration from.

Lately, (aside from the usual parenting and organising the move) I have been working through and drawing tons of inspiration from the Playful Learning Ecademy. I have been a big fan of Mariah’s and have her book. Needless to say I was over-the-moon when I found out that I had won a giveaway on her blog which included free access to her Ecademy.

I can’t wait to move homes for many reasons but a big one right now is so that I can use all of the ideas I’m learning through her course.

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Lucy is now 10 months old. She is a handful! It’s amazing how different your children can be! Lucy is determined and more than happy to voice that she isn’t pleased with something you are doing. By voice, I mean grunt and throw baby tantrums. Yes, really.

We have made the venture back into cloth diapering.

Lucy is constantly pulling up to stand, standing without support and scaling furniture. She’s a climber too and makes her way onto our mini trampoline, the couch and anywhere else she fancies.

She is still only signing ‘milk’, ‘food’ and waving (Cam knew 6 signs at this stage, Lucy is too busy exploring to sign anything beyond food hah!). She’s only just started to give kisses. She says Mum, Dad and ta, and understands a bit more.

Cameron is doing great. I’ve decided to keep him home this year (I was going to take him to a Montessori-inspired kindy two days a week but decided – for various reasons – that it can wait). Hopefully when we find a new rental, move home & settle in, I will be able to get him into kindergym & do more fun out-of-home activities.

Cameron is currently loving duplo. He’s always building and playing out scenarios. It is his go-to thing to do inside. He is so proud of his work too, asking me to take a photo as he is constructing a piece.

His artwork is developing and he often tells stories about his work.

Cam still adores books. Our bookshelves are constantly being added to (with early childhood education and parenting books for me, and various children’s books for him). We currently have been adding relevant Australian children’s nature guides (alongside anything by Steve Parish. Cam loves seeing animals/plants/insects that he knows and finding out a bit more about them.

Cam is still obsessed with riding his bike (with training wheels at this point) and has been very interested in tools (thanks to his new workbench and tools & his Dad of course).

Hopefully next time I update, we will be in a new home!

Some of what we have been up to

Sending off packages for the cultural exchange:
Mike made a Montessori object permanence box for Lucy:

She loves it. She concentrates so hard!

Lucy has been exploring a variety of treasure baskets with all kinds of goodies. Pants optional

Cam’s shelves at the moment:

Cameron started a Montessori-inspired kindy once a week and is loving it:

Mike also made a pull up bar for Lucy. She is pulling up to stand on everything but this is just a tad too high at the moment:

We have been doing endless activities. Cameron is at the point now where his attention span is really growing and he asks for activities often. He is loving everything Christmas related. Here he is sorting pom poms by size.

He is loving puzzles at the moment and is constantly repeating them. We have definitely found the learning sweet spot!

Matching alphabet bean bags to sandpaper letters. The letters here are the only ones he knows by name (some by phoneme) consistently. He isn’t very interested in letters at this point.

These 10-piece number puzzles (from 3 Dinosaurs printables & 2 Teaching Mommies printables – we are using some of the Christmas ones at the moment) are a massive hit at the moment. They are done several times a day.

All in all we are keeping busy and doing well. Cameron is 3 at the end of the month and Lucy is now 8 months old.

Lucy is clapping and vocalising a lot. She loves music and bops along to everything. She still has no teeth (Cam had teeth at 5.5 months! – he was working on his 7th and 8th teeth by now ) but boy can she eat!

Cameron has adjusted so well to kindy. Next year he will be doing two 5 hour days in the preschool room.

I hope to update after Christmas with my birthday plans for Cam.

Head over to Kylie’s blog How We Montessori (my all time favourite blog – a must read for Montessori mamas and non-Monte mums alike) for my review of the eco-friendly Glob paint kit.