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…
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…
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…
[sc name=”Disclosure” ] I don’t know about you, but I have spent a fair amount of time envisioning what my boys will be like when they are older. Who they will look like, how tall they will be, their interests and hobbies, and, in particular, their relationship with one another. They are sixteen months apart…
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…
[sc name=”Disclosure”] Before my oldest son was born, I took to the internet to figure out what age I might need to start formally home educating. I assumed it would be around the age of three, for preschool. There were, and still are, lots of home educating bloggers sharing their home preschool curricula and schedules…
[sc name=”Disclosure”] Outdoor Learning in the Early Years by Helen Bilton takes a broad look at outdoor play in early years settings (affiliate link). Bilton’s book starts from the increasingly familiar premise that outdoor play is quite often neglected: Outdoor play spaces are often either small or non-existent, exclusively tarmacked hard surfaces with few natural elements….
The question is not how we can “teach” an infant to move well and correctly, using cleverly thought up, artificially constructed, complicated measures, using exercises and gymnastics. It is simply a matter of offering an infant the opportunity – or, more precisely, not to deprive him of this opportunity – to move according to his inherent ability. Dr Emmi Pikler, The Development…