Houston We Have a Biter

E bit T on the hand today. I have caught her attempting to do it several times before so I knew it was just a matter of time before it would happen when I wasn't there to interfere. The two of them were playing together in the cupboards while I was cleaning up from lunch when I head a blood curdling scream that took me straight back to my days at the daycare. I knew exactly what had happened before I even turned around. I ran over and sure enough there was a nice imprint of E's teeth right in his hand.

Toddler biting is an interesting subject. While it obviously isn't an acceptable behavior, it is a developmentally appropriate way for them to deal with frustration.  I have heard parents blame biting on teething, testing the limits, and various other things but from my experience the child who bites is one that is feeling frustrated and doesn't know how else to respond. Most often biting is a defensive behavior. Rarely does a toddler out of the blue walk up and bite someone. It is usually the response of feeling attacked. Working at the daycare it always surprised me how upset parents would get when their child was involved in a biting incident. Parents of the biters were appalled that their child would do such a horrendous thing and parents of the bitee were of course upset that their child was the victim. I understand both feelings but it is our job as parent's and caregivers to teach them better ways to cope with their frustrations and the best way to do that is to be understanding and sympathetic to both the biter and bitee's feelings. During our biting incident today I held the screaming T and carried him to E where I calmly explained that she hurt him very bad. I showed her the marks on his fingers so she could see that she gave him owies. She clearly understood and began to cry herself. I sat on the floor consoling T and soon E came over handing him the plate that they were apparently fighting over. She sat down in my lap along with T and began rubbing his head. In nonverbal toddler fashion she was clearly saying sorry and I believe she genuinely felt bad about hurting her friend. While biting and other aggressive behaviors are not fun to deal with, we can use them to build character and teach compassion if we just take the time to understand and relate to our little ones.

What are your opinions on the matter? Do you have any tips for helping toddlers express their frustrations in non aggressive ways?

Bubble Art

Last week's theme lead itself beautifully to some creative art activities. On our agenda we had bubble splatter painting, bubble wrap prints, and cup-of-bubble prints. The babies really enjoyed these different art projects! Here's how the fun went down.



Bubble Splatter Painting

I originally intended this to be an outdoor activity but the windy weather forced us to stay in. We set up our project in the shower instead to contain our mess and ease clean up. With paper taped to the floor, I filled the stall with the dyed bubbles we had made earlier.

As the bubbles popped they splattered the paper with beautiful colors! Both kids had a lot of fun with this interactive art project although I think they had the most fun with the clean up.

Bubble Wrap Prints

I love print making because it allows the babies to fully enjoy and focus on the process of their art while resulting in a beautiful product in the end as well! To do this project I taped a sheet of bubble wrap to the table and let the babies go nuts finger painting on the textured surface.

When they had their fill of painting I pressed a piece of white paper to the surface to make a print. Easy as pie!



Cup-of-Bubble Prints

 * I forgot to take a picture of our finished product but here is Aussie Mum's version of the same project

To do this project all you need a few cups of different colored bubble solution, a straw with a whole cut near the top to prevent kids from sucking up the bubbles, and some paper. Using the straw, blow bubbles into the mixture until they are overflowing the top of the cup and then place the paper on top to make a print. Repeat with various colors. As much as E has been into blowing bubbles in her water cup lately I was sure she would really be into this project. She did give it a try but both babies preferred to pop the bubbles as I blew them.

Either way they had fun getting into the project and making neat designs!

Billions of Bubbles!

To avoid hyperventilation from all of the bubble blowing we have planned I went out and bought a cheep little bubble guns. Truthfully, I was a little skeptical that this thing would produce the mass amounts of bubbles I was hoping for but my inner cheapskate refused to shell out $15 plus dollars for a bubble machine. We had terribly windy weather yesterday but I could not wait to try our our new toy so we all gathered in the kitchen to put it to the test. Sure enough it lived up to it's claim of blowing billions of bubbles!
As the kitchen filled with swarms of iridescent spheres, the babies apprehensively observed from the corners of the room. One bubble is cool, ten bubbles are awesome, but a billion bubbles? They were a little overwhelmed for about 2 minutes but curiosity quickly overcame them and before I knew it they were right in the middle of bubble stream.

Perhaps the best part of this activity was that the kitchen floor got a nice scrub down when we were done! I'm loving all of this good clean bubble fun!

We Play : Bubbles!!!

Following E's current interest, we have chosen bubbles as our theme for the next week (maybe two). What a better way to start our unit than by playing with a whole bucket of soapy bubbles.  We put a big squirt of dish soap in the bottom of our tub and turned on the water full blast until bubbles where overflowing. We then poured out most of the water, leaving just the bubbles to play with. To make this activity different from our nightly dishes/ bubbly play I decided it would be fun to take it outside. It was a bit of a windy day which added an exciting element as the gusts blew the mounds of bubbles off E's hand and carried them high into the sky!

This was a great non-messy sensory activity and turned out to be a nice little science lesson as well demonstrating the force of wind! Check back for more bubble fun later in the week!!!

WEEK - end Wrap Up : Stream of Consciousness Style

The 70 degree weather this week has brought with it a welcomed change of pace. Our lesson plans fell by the wayside as we gladly exchanged them for some much appreciated outdoor time. We practically lived outside all week, only venturing indoors for an occasional meal and nap.  It is no nice to be able to let the kids loose to climb, run, and explore nature in a way that no indoor play area can replicate. The options for outings this time of year are limitless with so many parks, trails, and lakes to explore. In fact, we have invented a new past time in attempt to do it all this summer, park hopping. Every day this week we visited a different park in the area. Here are a few of the highlights:

I wish E was old enough that I could claim she dressed herself in this picture. Mismatched everything, unsnapped onesie coming untucked, ginormous sungglass that take up her whole face, and  a crookedly sewn hat made by momma. Despite the fact that people called her a boy all day I think this fashion disaster captures her little personality perfectly. She definatley owned the look!

So excited to find a park with a Merry-Go-Round!!!!

This is typical E when we are out walking - stopping every other step to discover and examine something new. I just love her sense of wonder and curiosity!!!

And this is typical T. See that tiny speck of a child in the distance? "So long suckers!". Imagine the fun of keeping up with these two very differently paced toddlers!

Here we are doing a practice run in the backyard for the giant hill we ran down at another park last week! Well, some of us ran down hills. Others of us snacked on spaghetti that was intended for sensory play. I guess taste is one of the senses after all.

Anyway, that was our fabulous week of outdoor fun! Hopefully you are enjoying weather this nice where ever you are. Have a great weekend!

Featherd Friends

There have been lots of feathers flying around here lately as we have finally made it to blue heron in our work with the book Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? We started our feather exploration by dumping a whole bag of rainbow colored feathers in the middle of the floor. The babies had a blast running through them and feeling the softness on their bare feet. We threw them in the air, tickled our toes, and watched them float about as we kicked them all around. It was really a blast! We then sorted out all of the blue feathers and collected them for an art project for later in the day.

While the kids were napping, I set up the kitchen for art. I barricaded off a work zone to contain the mess, taped some paper to the floor, and filled the sink with soapy water. I love messy play but I have learned the hard way they it is absolutely essential to be prepared in order for things to run smoothly and be enjoyable rather than chaotic. When the babies woke up they were delighted to find this activity waiting for them. I stripped them down to their diapers and let them have at it, dipping the feathers into the paint and making neat designs on their papers.

 

 

 

As expected,  feather painting quickly turned into body painting, thus the sink full of soapy water

Feathers are always a hit with toddlers. Combine that with a little paint and you have yourself a surefire hit according to these two!

I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham...

But bring on the green Jello!!!

In spirit of St. Patrick's Day we have been greening things up around here lately including our food. For a fun way to explore our color of the month I prepared a green snack for the babies the other day. I selected foods with a wide variety of tastes and textures to incorporate a sensory element to the activity. On the menu we had green apple slices, avocado slices, diced green olives, and green Jello. I was also planning on serving cucumber spears but when I went to cut it, it was oozing brown liquid so I opted to serve it to the garbage instead.

There were mixed reactions from the crowd as they each decided what to make of this very different snack. Apparently T's current strike from green vegetables extends to all green foods because this was the look he gave me when I placed his plate in front of him.

He proceeded to flick the food around his plate, eventually trying a tiny taste of the Jello only to push the plate away in protest. E, my little eater, tried everything on her plate. She devoured the Jello, of course, and ate a few bites of everything else. I was surprised that the green olives didn't even phase her, but then again this kid will eat anything.

   

   

This activity was great not only for exploring colors, tastes, and textures, but for lifting us out of our snack rut! Mr. T's reaction made me realize that I need to do a better job giving the babies opportunities to try new things instead of serving the same foods day in and day out. How about do you, do you have any fun ways to introduce new foods to picky eaters?

Montessori Monday : Introducing Letters

The babies have really shown an interest in letters lately so I decided last week to begin introducing a letter of the week. The Montessori approach for teaching letters is to focus on letter sounds rather than names. I really like the idea behind this way of teaching. Letter sounds are much more useful in early reading than letter names. I must admit that it has taken some getting used to for me to call an A, /a/(sound) and not "a"(name), but the babies are picking up on the sounds rather quickly so there must be something to it.

In Montessori teaching, letters are introduced with a sandpaper letter activity to provide a whole body experience, associating the sound with the shape. Eventually I plan to make a set of these sandpaper letters but for now we are using a set of textured foam letters to simulate this activity. As an extension of working with our textured letters, I decided to add a little artistic element! I taped the big A down to the table, dipped the babies fingers in paint, and helped them trace the letter while saying the sound. I then let them further explore the letter by freely painting on the textured surface.

When they were threw painting I made a print of the letter on a piece of paper which I plan make into a custom alphabet book for each of them.

 

This activity was a huge hit and we will definitely continue painting our way through the rest of the alphabet!