Author Spotlight: Audrey Wood

Audrey and Don Wood are a husband and wife team that have created some of the best loved books for our preschoolers at my school.  Audrey is the author and Don is the illustrator, so you won't always see them together.  Any book illustrated by Don is beautiful.  His illustration style is often whimsical and has a depth that I really enjoy.

For your todds and up:
The Big Hungry Bear
The Napping House
Quick as a Cricket

For your preschooler:
Silly Sally
Alphabet Adventure
King Bidgood's in the Bathtub....absolutely hysterical.

Enjoy!

Kindergarten Prep: Teach Your Kids to Use Scissors

This is a simple skill that is used a lot in kindergarten, but stay at home moms may not think about it as an activity to do with their own kids. Your child will be using scissors quite often when they get to school, and cutting is usually not the ultimate objective in the activity.  Students will cut out objects and then do something with them, like ordering smallest to largest.  If your child is already proficient with scissors, it will clear the way for other academic objectives.  Plus, kids love to cut.  Preschoolers could spend hours just cutting paper.

Get a pair of kid's safety scissors at your local grocery store ($1.88 last time I checked at Walmart).

Teach them safety rules about the scissors:

1. Stay seated while cutting

2. No running with scissors (ha ha)

3. When passing scissors to other people, hold the blades, not the handle.

About 2 1/2 to 3 is a good time to introduce scissors, depending on your child's development and trustworthiness with potentially sharp objects.

Harder paper is easier to cut, so pick up some construction or scrapbooking paper while you're at Walmart.  

When cutting shapes, kids will try to move their hand around the paper, instead of turning the paper in relation to their hand.  Help them to use one hand to hold the paper and move it as they cut.  

Draw straight, wavy and jagged lines on a paper for them to cut along.  

Let them dig through old magazines and cut out pictures of things they like.  Let them glue the pictures onto paper to make a collage.  You can make color collages, nature collages, animal collages, use your imagination!

The Wonder of Playdough

Play dough is a fabulous thing.  Buy it or make it, roll it or squash it, it is a toy and a tool that can be used for a lot more than just making pretend tacos.  Playdough can be a great way to enhance your child's learning in a lot of different area.  It is a great way to build hand strength and small motor skills.

There are a lot of different ways to learn, through listening, speaking, creating, music, physical movement, etc.  Anytime that children can use two or more different ways to learn an idea, the more quickly and more permanently the information will stick.  Think about how often we use music or hand motions to memorize something.  We are using two different avenues to get the info into our brain, and it works.

So having your child use play dough is a  great way to learn and practice new skills.  Here are some practical ideas that you might like to use with your kids:

Language and Literacy:
Use the play dough to build letters and familiar words.  If your child has trouble rolling and creating the necessary shapes, you can build the parts for them and have them put the pieces together like a puzzle.

Make capital letters and lower case in different colors.

Math:
Make chocolate chip cookies and count how many chips each cookie has.

Make a pizza for everyone in your family.  How many will you need?

Cut your pizza in half to introduce fractions.

Make numbers out of the play dough.  Make small balls of play dough to match the numbers.

Science:

Make familiar bugs.  How many body parts does a spider have?  How many legs?  How about an ant?

We use the top of a large tupperware tub for our workspace.  Even Jack joins in the fun making play dough soup (taste testing and all).

Here is a good recipe for home made play dough.  

Cooked Playdough (flour and salt)

3 cups flour

1.5 cups salt

6 tsp cream of tarter

3 tbsp oil

3 cups water

Dissolve salt in the water. Pour all ingredients into a large pot.  Stir constantly over medium heat until a ball forms by pulling away from the sides.  Knead the dough mixture until the texture matches play dough (1-2 minutes).  Store in a plastic container.

Sharkarosa!

Looking for a fun, new, and educational place to take your kids?  Try Sharkarosa, a privately owned exotic petting zoo in Pilot Point.  Yes, Pilot Point.  Who knew?

It's a small place, easily done in a morning or you can make a whole day of it.  Way better than a traditional  zoo, you get to be up close and personal with lemurs, kangaroos, zebras, and camels.  The main part of the trip is taking the safari tram around their large animal exhibits where you get to feed and pet a variety of exotic animals.  They also have informational presentations on kangaroos and different nocturnal animals.  When I went, they even brought out a couple of baby bears they have taken in.  So cute!  It's very kid-friendly and well organized (phew).

Highlights:  Kissing Rosie the baby camel for luck, riding on the bucket train, and knowing your money goes towards protecting the endangered and injured animals.

Lowlights: They are only open to the public on Saturdays, 10-5.  With tickets at $10 for adults and $8 for your 3 and uppers, it's not a cheap trip, but at least two and unders are free.

Things to know:  Bring your own lunch.  There are plenty of picnic tables and plenty of close parking.  All of the exhibits are outdoors, with little cover, so bring a hat and plenty of water and sunscreen.

Directions:
Take 377 North
Turn left on Farm to Market 455
Take the first right onto Massey Rd.  You should see signs for Sharkarosa.
Enter at the second entrance (you will see red and gray barns)
Estimated 30 mins. from central Denton

www.sharkarosa.com