Learning to Play and Playing to Learn

This is what part of our school day has looked like for the past several days:

And it's awesome. The Boy loves building with LEGOs, and I love seeing how his creations evolve. He learns so much from those little blocks.

When I try to build with LEGOs, all I get is a headache. The Boy can build for hours because he loves it--that's how his brain works. I'm a firm believer that every child has an interest (or two or ten...) that lights them up, and that as parents and teachers, one of the most important things we can do for a child is to let them pursue that passion.

And yes, we still read and do chores and go outside each day. It's not all LEGOs all the time around here, although I'm sure The Boy would be all for that.

Kindergarten Art: Playdough Bugs!

[This project was inspired by these Play Dough Bug Sculptures.]

We were learning about bugs a couple weeks ago--you know, head, thorax, abdomen, that kind of thing--so I thought we ought to do something buggy for our art project at the end of the week. Thanks to Pinterest, I found something SUPER easy and open-ended.

Here are our materials:

You can use whatever you've got around the house.

And here's one of my first bugs. As we all know, I'm really good at lots of intricate details and stuff.

Not. But at least he's cute, right?

The Boy spent most of his time on this Dangerous Bug:

I would die if I ever saw a bug like this in real life.

We also made some ladybugs, a caterpillar, tons of made-up bugs...we tried a butterfly, too, but it just looked lopsided and weird. Oh, well. I guess that's why God makes bugs, and we don't.

Anyway, we didn't do anything scientific or overly realistic with this. Just fun with odds and ends. It was a good wrap-up for our buggy week.

Let's Play a Game: Blokus

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Have you ever played Blokus? [That's not an affiliate link. I'm just tryin' to be helpful.]

Each player has a set of colored shapes, and they have to try to fit all of their pieces into the game board. But your colored pieces can only touch at the corners. [See above. The pieces kinda remind me of Tetris.]

Little Boy loves it. But here's the thing: we've never taught him the rules. He doesn't actually know how to play the game. But he loves trying to fit all the pieces onto the board, and he likes stacking up the tiles to make different colors [like the blue and the yellow to make green].

And that's why I'm posting about it here. I wouldn't have even thought about giving it to Little Boy when I first played it, but it's turned out to be a good open-ended toy for him. He'll spend a good hour, sometimes, messing around with it.

So take a look around your house. You might have something lying around that would be a great toy for your kid. Be safe, though. I don't want any little ones choking on Blokus pieces as a result of this post.

Geography: United States Puzzle

Little Boy got a puzzle of the United States for Christmas. The best kind, with state-shaped pieces.

He had a hard time with it, but knew he would. And I figured that he'd grow into it later this year.

Well...he did.

He looooves it. (I know I talk a lot about Little Boy looooving things. But those are the funnest things to post about. And yes, I just wrote "funnest.")

The day I took this picture, he put that puzzle together five times in a row. Haha, I love that I'm raising such a nerdy kid.

Arts & Crafts: Puzzle!

This one was fun. We made a little puzzle out of one of Little Boy's drawings.

I gave him some cardstock, markers, and stickers, and told him to draw whatever he wanted. So he drew...a ball. I suggested that maybe he'd like to, y'know, color it in. A bunch of white space = not a fun puzzle.

Anyway, then he stuck stickers all over the paper, and I cut it into biggish puzzle pieces. He was really excited about putting it together.

After trying it once, though, he said that it was "too tricky" to get the pieces to fit together. Meaning, the pieces slid around too much. We'll try it again another time, I guess.

Play-Doh Balls

We don't play with Play-Doh very often. I kind of forget that we have it. So when we do get it out, it's a big occasion.

Little Boy tends to get into a Play-Doh rut. He'll learn how to do something new with it, and then do it over and over again. I don't really mind that, but sometimes we need to shake things up a little.

This time, I tried to teach Little Boy to roll Play-Doh into a ball. See those little wormy-shaped things? Those are the "balls" Little Boy made.

And then we stacked them up, just for the heck of it. Turns out that the wormy-shaped Play-Doh balls were good for sticking into the little spaces in the Play-Doh pile.

Dominoes!

Isaac's brother had the best idea ever for a Christmas present for Little Boy:



Little Boy loves to count and loves to line things up. And isn't that pretty much what dominoes are all about? Yep, turns out that Little Boy also loves dominoes.

The dominoes box says that it's for age 8+. I guess that's for really playing the game--strategizing and all that. Little Boy's pretty far away from there. But it's a great game for a four-year-old to work on counting, matching, and...

...lining things up. Heh.

I'm Cheap: Pattern Blocks

Y'know those pattern blocks that you played with in elementary school? The ones I played with were wood, but my younger siblings told me theirs were plastic.

Anyway, I've been wanting to get some for Little Boy for a long time. Preferably wood, but plastic would be okay. I haven't been able to get any yet, but when I saw Confessions of a Homeschooler's Pattern Block Cards, I had an idea.

See, I've had some craft foam (from the dollar store!) hanging out in the bottom of my craft bin for a loooong time. I keep forgetting it's there. When I saw the Pattern Block Cards (which are supposed to be used with the real blocks), I thought maybe I could cut them out and let Little Boy play with those until we get the real thing.

But cardstock "blocks" didn't seem like they'd last very long...but craft foam "blocks" would! So I used the Pattern Cards to trace the shapes onto the foam, and cut the shapes out of the foam. They're still not super durable, but they'll last longer than paper.

Little Boy likes playing with them, but he spends more time squishing them in his hands than making patterns out of them. He starts making patterns, but he just can't resist their foamy squishiness. Can't really blame him, I guess.