Recently there’s been quite a bit of speculation as to what might be in the holes we see on our walks. Taking my cue from the children, we’ve spent our week noticing and talking about holes. At our Gathering time on Tuesday, I read from “Animals and Their Hiding Places”, a book which features great photos of animals that live in holes and other hiding places. The children immediately made the connection between a picture of a muskrat lodge and the lodge in our “Busy Beavers” book, and enjoyed seeing the photos of critters commiserating underground in their burrows and tunnels. Later, we moved to on to using hole punches, glue sticks, scissors and crayons at the large table, creating pictures to take home.
On Wednesday, we took a look at some household items that have holes as a main feature of their function. Funnels, vegetable steamers, colanders, sieves…we talked about how these holes allowed water, steam and other things to pass through. The children played with the marble run, which is all about lining up holes to make the marbles pass through the chutes in the way each child planned. Later, we put a whistling teakettle on to boil and watched the steam pass through the small holes as the kettle made a train-whistle sound. Experimentation continued during our rice play; a marble run was brought over to see if the rice would go down as easily as the marbles. J and T tried spinning some of the whirligigs to see if this would push the rice along; S and J poured rice through tubes into containers and then lifted the tubes again and again to see the rice drop out below. Many treats were made in the rice bin, including muffins and cakes, and T tried out corking a funnel and filling it with rice, then letting the rice out. Which, of course, everyone else had to try because it was so interesting!
The holes, however, were nearly upstaged by the rain. Wednesday found us standing on the porch, marveling at the sun shining through the downpour. There weren’t just puddles outdoors; we did some large-brush watercolor painting that morning, the children heaping on color after color until large pools of paint washed over their papers. S was very interested in mixing colors as much as possible, and when her paper was filled, began dumping cups of color into each other. On Thursday, S was raring to go for a walk at eleven or so, and in the midst of a rainstorm. J and I were game, so we headed out for a spectacular puddle walk, culminating at “Lake Flanders”, a huge puddle at the end of the street caused by a clogged storm drain. So we puddle-stomped back to the house, grabbed a tool to clear the drain, and returned. Once a plastic bag and some tree debris was removed, how the water roared down into the drain! S and J waded in the receding puddle until it was quite nearly gone before heading back inside. And of course, the storm drain is a hole, too, so there was a lot of peering down to see the water sliding away.
Some other moments from our week:
Playdough…again, and again. S is excited-“Look! The playdough is flat. I’m squishing it with my hands.” She flattens the dough and then rolls it out. Flattening and rolling the dough is actually a bit of a workout, given the size of the chunk and the firmness of it. T offers an imaginary treat of chocolate, syrup and pancakes, calling it a ‘bun’. J makes a pancake. S squishes her playdough again while counting to twenty, and J makes “fingerprints with my fingertips”.
Many of us were really missing V this week; she was home with a virus. Everyone was very happy to make pictures and a get-well message to send. S was especially interested in the postage stamp I popped onto the envelope.
We played our “What’s Missing Lotto” game again. I was tickled to see that some of the new words we introduced last week were recalled.
We tried out a new cooperative game, “Snail’s Pace Race”. As simple as this game is, the real challenge wasn’t taking turns, it was having our snails move just one space at a time. Once our green snail won, S made sure that all of the snails crossed the finish line before the game was put away.
Because we had just two children on Thursday, and because they both love to work in the kitchen, we made some banana bread. S liked leveling out the scoops of flour so much that she continued the ‘leveling’ during the rice play later that day.
J showed S how to make a chain of monkeys to hang from a drawer pull. (Remember the Barrel of Monkeys toy from yesteryear? It’s a pretty challenging game for a three year old!)
We had some fun ball play outdoors on our sunny Tuesday. We also enjoyed snacking on our yellow peas. And at long last, our blue-podded peas are starting to make an appearance.
I want to note that, while we have had some disappointing “June-uary” weather, I’ve been offering other gross-motor activities in lieu of the exercise we’d be getting outside. Besides the physical engagement of playdough, we’ve also been having fun with games like “Doggie Doggie, Where’s your Bone?” and learning some new songs, including the “Hokey Pokey” and other full-body moving tunes. I’m crossing my fingers for some dry skies for our last week of school. We’ll see you next Tuesday!
