Revising Our At Home Day

I have observed that when Michael is engaged in a planned activity he is an angel. He is engaged, focused, enthusiastic, and respectful and has a beautiful attention span. When left to his own devices to simply play with the many available toys in his home his behavior starts out fine and spirals downwards towards a hyperactive, attention-seeking, disrespectful mess. I think he is bored. I wish he could independently choose and engage in one of the many activities available to him, but he is just not doing that yet.

Without realizing it, over the past few weeks I have been coping with this behavior by slowly increasing television time to give myself a break. I think it has ultimately been counterproductive. He walks away from the tv even more wound up than before. This week I am going to attempt a detox. We will have little or no tv this week and a significant increase in planned activities.

In order to make the planning manageable I am going to try to hit several types of activities each day: art, physical activity, music, science, reading, and a fine motor focus activity. I will fill in an activity in each of those categories on each at-home day this week.

Today, for example, art is going to be making a collage. I'll give the children scissors, glue, paper, and lots of things to cut and glue onto their paper. This particular art project will be about process rather than product. For a physical activity we will play our run-around-the-circle game (our first floor has a continuous path through all the rooms around a central staircase). I sit in the playroom holding a play golf club about 3-4 inches off the floor and each time they run by they jump over the club. Then to change things up I'll raise it several feet off the floor and they crawl under it. They can keep this up for at least 15 minutes running around the circle a good 30 times. It is great exercise.

For music we will play the piano. For science we are going to try trapping alka seltzer tablets in a small container with a cap and watch the tops pop off. We'll talk about why that happens. We'll have a reading time with as many books as they'll listen to in one sitting. They can usually do that for at least half an hour. For a fine motor activity I'm going to get out the sand on the light box and we'll do a copy the pattern game.

I'm hoping that the plan will keep everyone happily engaged all morning without anyone getting crazy (myself included). Then we'll have lunch followed by nap. Wish me luck.

Pinning Version 2.0

At the beginning of December we did a pushpin activity that was a huge success with the kids. The activity is wonderful because it is a great fine motor activity and allows work on concepts and patterns as well.

I decided to revisit the activity with a cardboard box instead of cork coasters. I took a big cardbox box and taped construction paper to it. I traced simple shapes onto the paper with stencils. Then I gave each child a bowl of pushpins and let them go to it. They loved it. Ava needed help because she was forced to use her left hand. I pushed each pin in halfway for her and then she pushed it the rest of the way. The kids loved the activity and spent at least half an hour the first time we played with it. They've revisited the activity several times since then as well.

Unintended Realism

I wanted to do a volcano experiment at home. We had played around with baking soda and vinegar before, but not in volcano form. I knew the children would really enjoy it. I just wanted to do it in a way that the model could be reused time and time again.

I had a brilliant idea. I took a plastic needlepoint sheet and made a cone out of it. I held it in shape with fishing line. Then I hot glued glass gems all over it and glued the thing into a plastic container. It was all easy to rinse, let dry, and use again.

See...here it is. I thought it turned out pretty well for about an hour of work. Note: Exhibit A

I gathered the vinegar, baking soda, and food coloring and filled a flower vase tube with some baking soda and inserted it into the top of the volcano. Note: Exhibit B

We mixed up some red vinegar and poured it in. It worked beautifully. Note: Exhibit C

I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. The children were asking to see it again and again. I knew that the whole thing would rinse easily and dry in a couple of hours. I was mentally patting myself on the back.

Then suddenly there was a loud cracking sound and one of the glass gems shot off the side of the mountain. This was quickly followed several more. And then many more. Apparently the baking soda and vinegar reaction was releasing the hot glue. They achieved a pretty surprising distance. I told the children it was like a real volcano shooting out rocks. I suppose the effect of shooting rocks fit the volcano theme rather well. And the children absolutely loved it. But my volcano was disintegrating before my eyes.

And this is what was left. Note: Exhibit D.

Sigh. Any suggestions for a better method of attaching the glass gems?