Sheila Ellison
Page 18
Move houseplants out of reach.
Move low tables with sharp corners into closets or attach corner guards.
Put rubber bands on the handles of any cabinets that are unsafe for kids to open.
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Dream Supporter
As a grandparent and experienced parent, you can offer your child, who is now the parent in charge, perspective and wisdom. But don’t make the mistake of pushing your ideas or expecting your child to do things as you did—things are different, just as you raised your children differently than your mom did. You’ve probably noticed things like potty-training and manners were emphasized at a much younger age when you raised your children. Pick up a parenting magazine at the newsstand to see the kinds of things your grandkids’ parents are thinking about and doing. Know when to share your thoughts (without judging) and when to bite your tongue. Listen to your child’s idea of what he or she thinks the right thing to do might be. Part of gaining confidence as a parent is learning to listen to your own voice. And don’t forget to praise your child for all the great things he or she does for your grandkids!
Seasonal Fun
319
Flowers in Bloom
Age Range: 15 months and up
Take a walk around the garden in summer or go on a field trip to a nursery to see all the different kinds of flowers in bloom. Bring a sketch pad with you so you can draw your favorites to remind yourself what they look like. When you return home, make your own flowers in bloom with coffee filters, an eyedropper, food coloring, and green pipe cleaners for stems. Drop the food coloring onto the filters and then spray them with water. Watch the color spread. Cut the edges of filters if you want them to look more like petals. Pinch the center of the filter together and twist on a green pipe cleaner.
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Tissue-Paper Egg
Age Range: 18 months and up
Eggs are a sign of new life in the springtime. Cut a large oval out of a piece of cardboard. Cut multiple colors of tissue paper into four-inch squares. Show your toddler how to crunch the tissue paper into balls. Dip the tissue paper balls into glue and attach them to the cardboard egg. You may want to draw a design on the cardboard in advance to include specific shapes, stripes, or your child’s name. When finished, take a walk outside and look for birds’ nests and point out how they might have eggs in them. Go to a pet store or petting zoo to see if they have any chicks hatching, or get a book with good pictures of bird development inside the egg.
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Bouncy Bunnies
Age Range: 18 months and up
Materials
Construction paper or craft foam
Pipe cleaners
Cotton balls
Twelve-inch–square bulletin board
Cut out construction-paper bunnies and let the child decorate them with markers, crayons, and stickers. Or cut out craft-foam bunnies and glue on decorations. Don’t forget to have them glue on a cotton-ball tail! Wrap pipe cleaners around a pencil to create a spring. Tape or glue (use hot glue for a strong hold) one end of each spring to a bunny and wrap the other end around a pushpin before pinning it to the bulletin board. The bunnies will bounce around at the slightest breeze! Kids love blowing on them, too. You can also attach them to the refrigerator using packing tape, and they will hop around whenever you open or close the door! This works great with frog and butterfly shapes as well.
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Leaf Play
Age Range: 18 months and up
Have your toddler help you rake up fall leaves. Get her a small children’s rake so she can work alongside you.
Let her crunch the leaves under her feet, run and jump into the piles you’ve made, or throw the leaves overhead and try to catch them. Put a big carton (large enough to hold her) underneath the leaf pile to create an “underground” playhouse.
String leaves on laces or ribbons for a garland effect and hang them in the window or wear them as a necklace.
Collect colorful leaves, remove the stems, and then crush them. Cut leaf shapes out of construction paper. Sponge on a thin layer of glue. Decorate with the fall leaf confetti you made.
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Seasonal Treats
Age Range: 21 months and up
Winter: Make fresh snow cones with real snow and flavored syrups (syrups can be found at coffee shops, import stores, big all-purpose stores, and many grocery stores).
Spring: To liven up and beautify a springtime salad, add a few edible flowers—pansies, violas, marigold petals, honeysuckle, lilac, dandelions, nasturtiums, peach and pear blossoms, queen Anne’s lace, tulip petals, or rose petals. Use only petals on most flowers and be sure they weren’t in contact with any pesticides. Rinse for bugs before eating.
Summer: Make graham-cracker and frozen-yogurt sandwiches. Sun s’mores are also fun. Put chocolate chips and minimarshmallows on top of a graham cracker placed in a foil pie plate and covered in foil. Leave them in the sun for about ten minutes until melted.
Fall: Slice up apples. Peel caramels and melt them. Drizzle the caramel over the apple slices.
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Pumpkin Head
Age Range: 21 months and up
When you’re searching for a pumpkin-decorating method that toddlers can actually do themselves, try making this pumpkin head. Gather all the Mr., Mrs., or Baby Potato Head pieces you have. Set the pumpkin on the table surrounded by various eyes, noses, mouths, ears, mustaches, and hats. Mom or Dad needs to poke a small hole into the pumpkin where facial features should be. Then let your toddler try out all sorts of different combinations until he finds one he likes. You might want to keep the potato head supplies in a bowl so that your child can change the face each day until the pumpkin needs to be thrown out.
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Snow Fun
Age Range: 24 months and up
Snow pictures: Fill a spray bottle with water and food coloring. Find a smooth patch of snow and spray the colored water until you create a masterpiece.
Angel bird feeder: Make an angel in the snow by lying on top of a flat patch of snow and moving your arms and legs back and forth. Get up without making footprints in the angel. Use corn kernels, seeds, wild birdseed, cranberries, or other food birds will eat to make a design within the angel. Sit back and watch the birds enjoy your creation.
Snowflake catcher: Take two pieces of black velvet, felt, or material and sew three sides together. Stick a piece of cardboard or plastic inside and then sew it up. Sew a string with a cheap magnifying glass to the fabric square. It also works to paint a piece of cardboard black. Take it outside, let the snow fall upon it and examine flakes with the magnifying glass.
Indoor wonderland: When it’s too cold to go out and play in the snow, collect it in big buckets and play with it in the bathtub.
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Seasonal Journals
Age Range: 24 months and up
At the beginning of each new season, buy an instant camera to document the progression of nature as it blooms or fades. Take one picture every other day for two months. Write a note in the journal describing what you’ve photographed on the day you take each picture. You’ll also want to remember what the weather was like, any animals you might have seen, how you were feeling, or what your child was doing. When the pictures are developed, glue them into the journal on the appropriate pages. Make sure your child is in some of the pictures dressed accordingly; they are fun to look back on as the seasons and years go by.
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Ice Melt
Age Range: 30 to 36 months
Salt when placed on ice will melt the ice and create intricate designs. Freeze water in an empty milk carton to create an ice block. When the ice is solid, tear off the cardboard. Place the ice block on a tray covered with several layers of newspaper. Have your child sprinkle the coarse rock salt on top of the ice block and then drip various colors of food coloring on top of the ice block. You’ll see cool tunnels of color created as the salt melts through the ice and the colored water seeps in.
* Words of Wisdom *
To keep our son busy on Christmas morning while other family members open presents, I wrap up a bunch of empty boxes and let him unwrap those.
—Amy, Dallas, North Carolina
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Kiddy Pool Games
Age Range: 30 to 36 months
The backyard baby pool is a source of great fun all summer long.
Concentration: Cut flat household sponges into three-inch squares. Cut pairs of shapes—two hearts, two stars, etc.—from foam sheets. Hot glue a shape to one side of each sponge. Place them all in the water and have your child match them up.
Target practice: Float an upside-down Frisbee or plastic ring on top of the water. Have kids toss sponges to see if they can hit the target.
Will it float? guessing game: Fill a bowl or box with all sorts of items: a whole orange, a slice of orange, a balloon, a piece of lettuce, a quarter, a rock, or anything else you find interesting. Before putting each item in the pool, let your child guess whether or not it will float.
Water transfer game: Scoop water from a bucket to the pool and back with a cup. Try doing it with a turkey baster. Set a kitchen buzzer and count how many cups you can scoop out of the pool in five minutes.
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Sugar Cube Igloo
Age Range: 30 to 36 months
Materials
Cardboard
Popsicle sticks (optional)
Large sugar cubes
Homemade or store-bought white icing
Gummy penguins (optional)
Draw a four- to six-inch circle on a piece of cardboard. With fingers or Popsicle sticks, spread icing along the circle. Put the sugar cubes around the circle on top of the icing, pressing them into the cardboard. Carefully spread the icing on top of the first row of sugar cubes and stack a smaller ring of cardboard on top. Repeat this process until you have an igloo. Get creative and see if you can construct an arched doorway. Gummy penguins complete the package!
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Weather Board
Age Range: 36 months and up
Help your child be more aware of the weather around her as the seasons come and go. This activity is best to do at a time of year when the weather will not be the same day after day. Mount seven squares of felt, one for each day of the week, onto a larger sheet of felt. Then cut out a bunch of felt weather symbols: a sun, a sun with a cloud over it, a cloud with raindrops, a snowflake, or any other weather possibilities in your area. At the same time each day of the week, have your child select the appropriate symbol to reflect the day’s weather. You can also play a guessing game where you guess what the weather will be like the next day. Sit with your child when the weather forecaster appears on the nightly news, show her the pictures of the clouds moving over the earth, and explain how there are all sorts of ways to predict the weather.
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Homemade Cards
Age Range: 24 months and up
Handprint wreath cards: Use green finger paints to make holiday-wreath cards. Have the child “stamp” her hand all the way around in a circle (wrists to the center of the circle, fingers fanning out), forming the boughs of the wreath. Paint or attach a red bow.
Pencil toppers: You’ll need craft foam, permanent markers, and pipe cleaners. Cut the craft foam into a heart, shamrock, egg, balloon, or other appropriate holiday shape. Write a message on the shape. Poke the pipe cleaner through the foam to attach. Have your child wrap the pipe cleaner around a pencil to make a kind of spring. Pull the sponge up about an inch so it bobs above the pencil.
* Words of Wisdom *
Each holiday season my kids and I enjoy making recycled cards. We save holiday cards from the year before, cut off the front of each card, and glue it onto construction paper folded in half like a card. Then we write a new holiday message inside.
—Ursela, Port Washington, Wisconsin
Section Five:
Growing and Learning
Recording Your Thoughts
332
Art Storage Ideas
Before storing your child’s favorite artwork, ask him to tell you about each piece as you record his response on cassette tape. When finished, date and label the tape and store it with the piece of art.
Keep one or two pieces of artwork from each month of the year and glue them into last year’s calendar—it’s almost like a yearly portfolio.
Videotape your child next to his piece of artwork; that way you’ll see how old your child was when he created it as well as hear a description in his own voice.
Display artwork on the walls of your garage. That way you can see it each morning when you leave the house, and it will give the dull garage walls a little life.
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Books on Tape
Whenever you read a storybook to your child, record yourself. You will also catch your child’s voice on the tape asking questions or pointing out something he likes about the story. Then attach the tape to the back of the book in an envelope so your child can listen to it when you are gone or busy. Make sure to record yourself when you sing songs together, too!
* Words of Wisdom *
Always write a note in the books you give your child. Talk about why you selected it, and why she deserves it. Don’t forget to add the date.
—Richard, Level Green, Pennsylvania
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Birthday Memories
Each year on your child’s birthday, videotape him doing his usual daily activities. Show him eating his favorite breakfast, playing with toys and out in the yard with pets, taking a bath, doing his chores, or whatever else he would do that day. Also record parts of his birthday party. Store this special tape to be pulled out each year on his birthday. When you give him this tape on his eighteenth birthday or when he leaves home, he’ll have a wonderful record (all on one tape) of how he spent the everyday moments of his life.
Sit down and draft a letter to your child on the eve of every birthday. Talk about what he’s like, what he’s accomplished, and what joy he brings you.
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Everyday Things
Thank-you notes: Write little notes to your child thanking her for ordinary things, like taking turns at a game or being good at a restaurant.
Compliment your child often and let him overhear you bragging about him to someone else.
Read the paper (hand over the comics!) and have a cup of coffee (or milk!) with your child.
Sit together and chitchat on a regular basis.
Use loving nicknames that make everyone smile.
Whenever you can, live life on toddler time.
* Words of Wisdom *
One day I found my daughter covered, head to toe, in flour. She’d gotten into the baking cupboard. Instead of capturing the hilarious sight on film, I immediately swooped in and cleaned her and the kitchen up. I regret not snapping a photo first. My new motto: shoot first, then clean (or punish, as the case may be!). Those memories can’t be re-created!
—Jean, Fairport, New York
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Guest Book
Buy or make a guest book for your child’s room. Invite visitors to write little notes, hopes, and remembrances. Periodically have your child write in it to record his handwriting and drawing abilities as they evolve. Take a photograph of your child with each guest and add it to the book next to the guest’s note or signature. As years pass the same guests will most likely visit, so you’ll have a photographic record over time.
* Words of Wisdom *
I have started to keep a small journal where I make notes about when we have had really great behavior days. It’s good to review on more difficult days!
—Carrie, Wichita, Kansas
337
Say Cheese!
Follow these tips for great photographs:
Don’t be stingy with film. Snap away—it will be worth the expense to get those perfect shots!
Select places with simple backgrounds (or create plain backdrops—a drop cloth, a sheet, etc.) and, if
possible, natural lighting (bright but overcast days are ideal for outdoor shooting).
Try to look for natural “frames” for the composition (a tree branch, an archway or doorway, even a stroller canopy), and watch out for unintended distractions (dark shadows, a pole that might appear to be coming out of your child’s head).
Enlist the help of an animated partner to entertain the child while you’re behind the camera.
If you have a zoom feature on your camera, use it to get close instead of getting the camera in the face of your child, which may make him self-conscious.
Consider using black-and-white film for a classic, artsy shoot. Don’t pose children—wait for them to get engrossed in something and capture that spirit.
Get on eye level with the child for a true-to-life perspective. If there is more than one live subject (child and a parent, another child, or a pet), encourage them to engage with and touch one another.
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Through the Years