Minibeast explorers

 There are few activities as absorbing as bug hunting, so why not set up your own minibeast safari in your back yard or local park.

I'm lucky to have a few handy bits of kit, including some bug viewers and a plastic tank, but you can make your own kit very easily by using an old clean ice cream tub to observe your finds in.   You might like to use identification guides.  The field studies council has some lovely fold out guides that are perfect for surviving being taken outside where books might get soggy and dog-eared.

We started by talking about what we were going hunting for today while the kids got their boots on.  I haven't found their appetite for bug hunting ever diminishes with repetition, but just to add an extra sense of purpose we'll pick a particular creature we especially want to find.  On this day it was a millipede, so we talked about where we might find millipedes - what kind of habitat they might like and what they eat.  Millipedes are herbivorous and well adapted to wriggling down into the soil to get to roots and decaying leaves, so we decided to dig around the plants for them and look under rocks and pots.  We looked in a book to see what they looked like, and how they are different to a centipede.

Moving the plant pots around we mostly found woodlice and worms, to Toby's great delight.  I reminded the boys that these creatures like to be cool and damp so our hands can hurt them, so we gently transferred our finds to a plastic tank with some damp compost in it to observe them further.

Toby particularly liked watching the big pill bug type woodlice roll up into a ball and I talked to the boys about why the bugs did this.  Ollie couldn't quite grasp that this might protect them from predators because, in his words 'we could just swallow them whole'.  We talked about it until he decided it might help if it was a very tiny thing trying to eat them.

We did eventually find a millipede, but it was so tiny I'm not sure it was much use for the boys to see very clearly what they look like.  Hopefully we'll have better luck another day, although we never get particularly big ones here.

After we had a good hunt round the garden we went inside and did a thorough hand wash - Ollie discovered how difficult it is to wash off slug slime.  Then we sat down with a tray to look at our finds in a bit more detail.  I keep this part fairly quick as we don't want to cause discomfort to the animals.

We decided to look at a snail and a woodlouse as these look very different from each other.  In the boy's first pictures they each drew the snail and the woodlouse.  Ollie was a bit worried he couldn't draw 14 legs, but was pleased with his squiggly legs in the end.  This time the only thing I prompted Ollie to add was the segments on its body, but other times the conversation might go like this -  'first draw a long rounded body, now he needs some legs, look at him, does he have any antennae? Great, lets draw those on - do you think the antennae are on his head or his bottom?  Why?  What are they for...' until your little one is happy with their picture.  You may want to label the parts with them. 

Guiding what to look for is helpful and helps to build the vocabulary that your kids will want so they can describe to you what they're looking at, but after we've produced one guided picture I take a more hands-off approach and see what the boys want to draw next.  Ollie decided to draw the plastic tank, including leaves for 'homes for the animals'.  Toby made one lovely drawing of a snail while saying 'round a round a round a round' and also a woodlouse that surprising looks quite like a woodlouse.  Ollie's first picture is here on the blog.



Safety bit: as I've mentioned on previous similar posts, check your local guidelines for whether you have any hazardous creatures living in your local area if you are outside the UK - in our garden we might get a nip from a centipede or a sting from a bee, but most of our wildlife is pretty harmless.  I encourage the kids to only pick up familiar things that they have held before such as snails and to check with me before they handle anything unfamiliar.  Hand washing is really important too.  Soap and water is best, but I carry a hand sanitizer liquid for when we're exploring away from home.

Silent Sunday

Plant science for junior horticulturalists

 The UK has a skills shortage in the horticultural sector, despite this area of the economy being really important both to the wealth it brings in to the country and for our self sufficiency and food security.  Botany was phased out of the schools curriculum many years ago and as the current generation of horticulturalists and plant scientists retire they are not being replaced in sufficient numbers.

I'm not suggesting we start hothousing our toddlers into a career in plant science, but by providing them with lots of varied experiences we can at least give them a flavour of the huge diversity of different things they could do in the future and perhaps nurture their preferences, fleeting and changeable as these interests will usually be in the early years.

Growing anything at all with little ones is an immensely rewarding activity that you both will enjoy, even if it's cress seeds on damp cotton wool.  The bean in a jar activity was one of the very first things I ever blogged about here and a year on this is how we have extended our early investigation.

Last year we grew our bean in a jar and did some work on recognising the parts of a plant by drawing and labelling the roots, stem and leaves.  This year we transferred our bean seedling from a jar to a transparent plastic yoghurt pot filled with soil so we could continue to watch how it grew.  The pot is on Ollie's window sill, along with our tomato seedlings, so he can keep a close eye on their progress.  When the bean plants were about a foot high I pinched out the tips to see if I could encourage them to stay small and bushy.  A week later Ollie announced with great excitement that his plants had flowers on them.

We had been reading a book from the library about a beaver growing beans on his window sill, so the boys took it as completely normal that they should grow and flower so well.

We talked about what else we would need for beans to grow and I led the conversation around to bees, which we have talked about a lot before.  Ollie suggested we put the plant outside so the bees could visit, but I offered an alternative - we could hand pollinate the flowers ourselves.  So, two days later and armed with a paintbrush, I gently teased open the flowers to reveal the anthers  (male part) complete with pollen and the stigma (female part) that we needed to transfer pollen
from a different flower on to.  We talked about how every type of plant has it's own special shape of pollen so only pollen from a bean plant can make a bean grow.  Both boys had a go at 'tickling' the pollen around the flowers, waiting patiently to take their turn at it.

 Afterwards we looked in Ollie's plant book (Inside Plants by Miles Kelly, bought from Lidls for about £2).  We looked at how the pollen gets stuck onto the stigma and then sends a tube down the style to the ovary where the male information from the pollen joins up with the female information so a new seed can start to grow.  I use the words as I've written them above as it seems to be a level that Ollie understands.  We don't want to lose their interest by droning on about things that are incomprehensible, but I think we often underestimate what children can understand if we present information simply and regularly. 

Ollie used his book to draw what was happening when we pollinated his plants.  He did it a step at a time, sometimes asking me to trace over the book with my finger to show the next bit to add.  I labelled the parts for him with Ollie helping when he knew the part and drawing on yellow arrows to the correct bits. Then he drew a bee to show how it all should have been done if we hadn't been tickling his plants with a paintbrush.  As much as possible I let Ollie lead and don't fuss if things aren't quite right - the pink petals on his flower for example are the way he has interpreted them rather than being an exact copy of the picture in the book - this is good and he gets praised for lovely pink petals, not told they look different in the book!  If you're starting to over control what your kids produce stop, sit back and just marvel at what they're actually showing you about how they interpret what they see.

Note on providing opportunities versus trying to force kids to be academic:
When we looked at the book together I asked Ollie if he'd like to make a science drawing about his experiment - if he'd said no that would have been it for the day and we would have done something else. At no point should there be any pushing of a little one who isn't interested or isn't ready.  As soon as I mentioned that you can hand pollinate flowers with a paintbrush Ollie wanted to try, and pestered for two days before we actually got time to carry it out (he wanted to do it after nursery on the two days he attends, but as he was playing box forts with Matt and Toby both nights after dinner I didn't want to interrupt that time together by reminding him about the plants and waited instead until we had a morning free).  

There's a line between providing stimulating activities to keep kids entertained, and pressurising little ones into things they're developmentally not ready for.  Ollie happens to love this stuff at 4 years old, and he did at 3 years old too, but other kids this age would be happier kicking a ball or building bricks or whatever, so the activities I do are only here online as ideas to try if they suit you and your kids. 

Every child is so different, all we have to do is try to provide them with opportunities to express that.  Toby at 2 enjoyed tickling the flowers, and then when Ollie was making his picture Toby was doing his own picture with pens and stickers in a much more patient and methodical way than Ollie did at that age, so even kids raised together will have different preferences and abilities and I don't want to add to the pressure parents have of feeling that kids 'should' be doing certain things at certain times.  Lots of kids aren't developmentally ready to hold a pen comfortably by 4, let alone write words, so there is a great deal of debate at the moment about the pressures on small children with proposed testing to be brought in for very young children to test literacy and numeracy.  The only important thing kids 'should' be doing in the early years is playing, and playing as regularly with parents and with other children as possible. 

If your kids happen to show interest in science, maths, art, history and so on then that can become part of your play.  When he does his experiments and 'writes them up' Ollie is playing at being a scientist in the same way that ten minutes later we will all be playing at building forts together and chasing away imaginary invaders.  The minute you stop playing and get out the flashcards to hothouse your little one, you are in danger of turning them off to the big fact of life that so many people are missing - playing is learning and learning should be fun so we want to keep doing it for our whole lives because it brings us joy.

Thank you

March was my highest rated month for blog views - it had been increasing nice and steadily to that point.  I just looked at my stats for April and it beat my last highest views by 150 views.  I'd just like to say a big thank you to everyone who stops by, and virtual hugs to everyone who hits the Google plus button, shares and comments on the blog, my FB site and in person since taking the time to do this means a lot to me and I know you guys are all super busy.

Also thank you to the lovely folks I've reviewed for, including Macmillan Children's books, the Weekend Box Club,  and Denise who developed the BeltLock (mine is currently on visit with a friend who has a little boy with global developmental issues and making their journeys safer and happier).

Themed week - Vikings

 This week we have been exploring Viking history - this may seem a bit random to anyone who knows us as re-enactors.  I think it's easy to take it for granted sometimes though that the kids absorb the historical information just because we take them along to events and they see the warriors and villagers dressed up, doing living history and re-enacting battle scenes.  It's always a good idea to reinforce practical experiences with quieter reading and crafts at home and vice versa so that the kids get a chance to make the links in their heads between the things they've seen and participated in and the books at home.

So this week we have been enjoying an Usborn sticker book which gives a scene with a little bit of information in text and then lots of stickers to add to build up the scene.  I like it because both boys can help and it is a great way to talk through some of the concepts such as what homes were like, how people lived and, Ollie's favourite, what the toilet was like.  It's also proven to be a good creative thinking springboard as I ask what Ollie thinks a particular person is doing and then he makes up stories around the scene.  I've been strict at no more than one scene a day though as otherwise it descends into who can grab the stickers and mush them onto the picture quickest without taking anything in.

From the local library we found another Usborn book - this time 'Pirate things to make and do'.  One of the activities was making a sea picture using wax crayons, paint and salt.  I adapted it for our theme by helping Ollie draw a more Viking than Pirate looking boat.  The first stage is to draw on waves with a wax crayon, then paint the paper with a blue wash - I watered down ready mixed poster paint.  Ollie really likes covering a whole sheet of paper in paint without always seeming to have much more intention than using the greatest quantity of paint so he really enjoyed this.  I used white card because I know how wet he likes to make paper.  After the paint was on, both boys sprinkled salt over the sea which made a lovely 'watery' look that I'm not sure the photo captures.  Finally a few drops of white paint in the sky to be smudged in as clouds, and a bit of red pen to finish the boat.  

Ollie liked the way his sail was red and white like on the Viking boats in the sticker book.  He also noticed that the tents in the sticker book and that some of our friends stay in on living history camps had the same pattern, which was a great opportunity to talk about how the sail would be taken down to make the tent when the Vikings wanted to camp somewhere.  I love opportunities like this because getting an explanation for something they've noticed themselves is far more interesting for kids than just being told a load of facts. 

Finally we adapted the parrot activity from the Pirate crafts book to make a very chubby sea gull using white poster paint and Ollie's hands.

Silent Sunday

Making rainbows

This week we have been investigating the colour spectrum of light - aka making rainbows with plant misters.  All you need is a plant mister, some water and a sunny day.

Start your little one off spraying in any direction, then guide them to rotate themselves very slowly while spraying and keep looking down onto the spray until they start to see the rainbow forming.  At this point you can tell them that light is made up of all the colours of the rainbow mixed up to make white light and that the drops of water in the mist make the light separate out into the individual colours.

You can take it further by making rainbow collage pictures or painting with the colours in the correct sequence.

I am also a geek and have always sung the rainbow song using the correct colours of the spectrum of light rather than the traditional words.  Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet slip into the song fine when you've got used to it.  There are various mnemonics to remember the colour spectrum of light, but why not make up your own with your kids so that it's relevant to them and they will remember it.

The is also a fab song on the Here Comes Science album by They Might Be Giants about Roy G.Biv, a mystical man who lives in rainbows.  We have this album on constantly in the car because Ollie moans if we try to swap it for something else, so it's just as well we like it too.  Thank goodness it took over from 'the wheels on the bus'.

Playing with light in this kind of simple way and getting used to the correct colours of the rainbow with their own observations is a really good grounding for when you, or school, bring in experiments involving splitting light using prisms.  A new torch and a couple of prisms are definitely on my Christmas list.  I may even let the kids play with them ...