Imagine you are at the playground with your toddler. He makes his way to a ladder leading to a slide. After considering it, he climbs up one rung and stops. He looks at you, and starts to fuss: he seems unable, or at least unwilling, to finish climbing the ladder. What do you do? From…
We are getting ready to move! We’ll be going from a tiny yard to a decent-sized garden, and I’m so excited. One of the things I’m looking forward to is creating a mud kitchen for the boys. Sensory, open-ended, loose parts play. It’s going to be awesome! I’ve been gathering ideas for a while, and here are…
What do we do with our children? Obviously we have to meet their basic needs. Food, water, clean diapers, sleep, shelter. I’d throw ‘secure relationships’ into that list, too. But what about when they aren’t eating, sleeping, or being cleaned? What do we do then? There is a lot of emphasis lately on doing enriching things with…
I like to think that I have an arsenal of songs to sing with my kids. I pull them out when they are tired of being in the car, when we are waiting in line, any time where their patience is running thin and I want to keep the mood light. Of course, they are…
There have been a few times recently when I have not heard my toddler, N, when he is speaking to me. N is incredibly verbal lately, and like most 2.5 year olds, he babbles and repeats himself a lot, so on some level, I’m simply not expecting him to address me in conversation. My husband has called…
I saw it again: another blog post with an at-home preschool schedule that consisted of a morning of indoor activities. I doubt this mom is forcing her kids to stay inside. I even bet that they spend plenty of time outside. But the outdoors deserves an intentional place in our home preschool planning. Last week, the…
When N was on the way, I started researching home education. (Can you say ‘planner’?) Blogs of home educating parents mesmerized me. I saw home education as an opportunity to have a flexible schedule, to live in any number of countries, and to protect my kids from the ‘carrot and stick’ education that I had growing up…
Last spring I went for a hike in the Lake District. Towards the end of the hike I stopped to take a few photos and watch some ducks on a river that ran near the trail. As I lingered, I heard a mother call out to her son, ‘Be careful!’. I turned to look and saw…
In the time it took for me to say hi to my friend at the playground, my 2.5 year old scaled a steep hill and was halfway up a ladder to a climbing structure intended for kids three times his age. (The ladder was a bit like this one, but much taller.) By the time…
I’ve mentioned before that I’m not always the best person at getting outside, despite the many reasons to do so. Part of this is because it is simply inconvenient. Our backyard is the size of a postage stamp. We have a patch of grass that is maybe six by six feet, and that’s being generous. We have…