So...Homemade Activity Book!

Once upon a time Bear used to love puzzles, and he was very good at them! By the time he was 2 he was doing 36 piece puzzles with no issues and even some bigger.
And then he stopped!
Since then he claims he can't do them and if he asks to take them down it's just so he can watch you complete them yourself.
Sigh...

I mentioned this to a friend and she suggested that some children get bored of puzzles once they figure out how they work. For them it's not so much about the picture, but rather how the pieces go together, and once they've worked it out that's it, they're no longer interested in doing any more. I have no idea if this is true or not but it made sense, especially as once he's mastered something Bear usually has no interest in revisiting it.

She did however suggest we try some mazes with him, and so I printed some off and voila, he loved it!
I couldn't keep up with the printing demand though, so I came up with the idea of putting together a little activity book for him that he could reuse whenever he wanted.

I got onto google and even found post of someone who had done the very same thing who already had already had a nice list of links to various activity sheets and mazes. So if you want to print off your own head over to The Best Toys for Toddlers for some resources.



Once I had a variety of mazes, connect the dots & some exercise sheets for preparing to write, I printed them all off onto brightly coloured paper, and then borrowed my sister's laminator to laminate them.
How cool are laminators??? Oh how I'd love my own, definitely one for the wish list!
Then all I had to do was punch holes in them and put together the book using 2 keyrings. Add some whiteboard markers and a cloth and there you have your very own reusable activity book!









You can try find yourself through the maze as many times as you like...










....and if you went the wrong way or made a mistake you can just wipe and start again!





Bear really impressed me with how quickly he understood how to do everything. Here's one of the follow the dots completed all by himself.

Follow the dots is also great for them to learn numbers and sequences...or even help with learning the alphabet if the dots are marked with letters instead of numbers.




And here's bear trying out some the exercises which are to help prepare them for handwriting skills when they're older.

This was the first attempt...and the second line was my demonstration, after this he did them all again and did fantastically well!








And finally I put in a blank page just for him to draw on. And here's his portrait of his Dad. Isn't it just perfect?










And what has our Evie been up to? Well she's a little under the weather with a cold at the moment, but we kept her busy during this with her favourite activity...eating!!!




And when we were finished look what we found lol
















"Huh...What do you mean I have something on my face?"

So - Wax Repels Water

So, what do you get if you cross Connect the Dots, with Art?
Why you get our latest lesson in Maths and Science of course!
It wasn't an intentional lesson, but it was a fun one to stumble upon, so let me show you what we did!





First I printed some Connect the Dots off for Bear, choosing a theme I know he likes "airplanes".
Please also note the shotgun he built out of his wooden workbench (the one he was so desperate for here)...which is also helpful as a pointing device!
I will add I had no hand in creating the said shotgun, but admired it greatly when he brought it to show me :)









Then we spent some time connecting the dots, following the numbers, counting as we went.


Hello Maths!


I'm hoping doing more of these dot to dots will help with number recognitions, but if not that's ok too!
We just happened to use wax crayons, they were the closest thing to hand at the time!








Once we were finished with our pictures Bear enthusiastically suggested painting them, so I pulled out his new watercolour set from the other day, and away he went!


Hello Art!









Suddenly we noticed that the wax crayon reappears through the water colour paint.
It just pushes the water away, how cool is that!!!


Hello Science!












And while we were busy Evie took advantage of her occupied brother to rummage around in the duplo box and build.
He usually comandeers any pieces she tries to use and incorporates them into his creations, which she is not allowed to touch...so this was a treat indeed for my poor girl.
She sat building for ages!


Hello Contentment!

So - Just Do the Math

So how many people do you know that "can't do math", or just aren't good at it?
Chances are you may just think you're one of them, especially if you're reading from my beloved homeland of South Africa, where sadly our students repeatedly score in the lowest ranks of all the countries in the world in our maths & science understanding, according to the WEF (World Economic Forum)

Our schools seem to be doing a dismal job at teaching math and an even worse one at fostering a love of it.

The vast majority of people I know proclaim to hate the subject, which is kind of odd cause their daily lives and their favourite activities are littered with it...think about it, sports, baking, or even decorating your home.
So perhaps we can all do it, even if our schools & teachers told us we couldn't?




I personally am starting to think that you can't fail to learn math just by living your life.
OK so perhaps it's not hight level stuff but you learn the math you need to get by when you need it.


Recently I read an interesting article on learning maths.






Basically the article talks about a child directed learning centre whose students typically learn the entire math curriculum, from Grade K to Grade 12 in 8 weeks!

It seems incredible at first but these aren't wunderkinds and the article goes on to explain there's no magic involved, it's all just maths.









When the teacher achieving these results contacted a math specialist friend regarding his finding the response was

“Not surprising,” mused his friend.

“Why not,” asked Greenberg, having had the wind at least temporarily removed from his sails.

“Because everyone knows,” he replied, verbally stomping on Greenberg's ego, “that the subject matter itself isn't all that hard. What's hard, virtually impossible, is beating it into the heads of youngsters who hate every step. The only we way we have a ghost of a chance is to hammer away at the stuff bit by bit everyday for years. Even then it does not work.”

But why don't you head on over and read the article for yourself here


And as an aside - once again I've found myself led back to the concept of unschooling
Because these children from the article learnt their maths when they decided it was time, and when they were ready!