I wish I had taken a picture of Madalynn putting on the flag today with Russ. However, I was jumping in my car for a long 9 1/2 hour work day. I worked at UVU from 9-1 and I taught piano from 2:30-8pm tonight. I don't get much done on Tues. However, like I said before, I work long hard days so I can spend time with my kids on the other days.
I learned about 6-9 months ago a fascinating thing about my son. When I am near him and sitting on a piece of furniture he is constantly trying to get into things and quickly moving from one activity to another. However, if I sit on the floor...even if I am not paying attention to him, he can sit and play with the same toy for an hour. Crazy huh!!! I can't believe I even figured this out. So, we started closing his bedroom door and playing on the floor about that time. Well, on Tues nights I put the kids in his bedroom...with a door knob child proof handle on the inside. I can watch them from my video monitor while I am teaching, but they stay out of my way. I only do this for the last two lessons. Russ has to leave for his calling at church and I still have to finish my last two lesssons.
Recently he has taken to emptying every box in the closet during this time. It is driving me NUTS!! Seriously!! Well, last Tues he got the train tracks out. He has loved trains since he was really little. When he first started talking, one of his first imitations was a train whistle. We live by lots of train tracks so he sees them a lot. It never ceases to amaze me how he can spot a train anywhere when we are driving. Well, I cleaned the floor last Sat and moved the kitchen table and let them build with the train tracks. It is amazing the skills that are used...just to create a track. The small motor skills to put the pieces together. The logic that a child needs to use to get the pieces to turn and line up. As I watched Madalynn trying to get a bridge to stand up and watching her decided how many supports it needed, I was just amazed at her patience. Usually if something doesn't work, she gets super super angry and won't try again. Well, she tried a few times until she got the bridge to work. Simple play moments, really create huge teaching moments. I talked to her about how to add tracks to help the trains turn around, how to make quick turns with tiny pieces and how to make large turns with the longer pieces. I could really go on and on, but it is not necessary. We had to clean up all TOOOO soon because I had to get to a family party thing. There is a certain time frame that my kids seem to need to have ample child play and I probably cut it an hour short.
Well, tonight my son dumped out the Lincoln Logs. There are two sets combined in this box. The ones my dad played with when he was a child in the 60's and a newer set my grandparents had purchased when we were kids. The newer set has an instruction booklet on several different forts you can make. I had Russ show Madalynn how to do one of those about 2 months ago. When I came in from teaching, she had made this one.
Well, she wanted to know more about building tonight and I decided this was going to be our playing/teaching time for the day. I told her that first she had to clean his room before we could build. I told her our limited time period, since I got in there at 8:15 and she needed to get ready for bed a 9. Clean up is an important part of play, and they did it super super quick. Remington is constantly amazing me with his ability to understand how to play with building/boy toys. He started stacking the small pieces with no problem. I talked to Madalynn about height, directions, windows and doors, stability at the base, strong and weak points based on how wide or skinny a tower is. I showed Remington to how to put on the roof and let him line up roof pieces. I let her talk through several design ideas giving input as needed. We were all fully engaged. We talked about hitting, as Remington of course just wanted to destroy after 20 min and they started hitting each other and crying. We learned about how to put the piece in the box with long and tall pieces stacked and little pieces just falling around them. Etc. It was the perfect end to a very very long day. I look forward to some playing/teaching moments tomorrow after I pick them up from the babysitter.
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| Building a castle tower |
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| Tearing down and rebuilding the wall |
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| Learning how to take turns as they build a larger and larger tower |
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| He is watching Madalynn take her turn |
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| Putting on the roof |
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| Determined to get the roof finished. |
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| Mom, take a picture...and she smiles. |
I can't find the exact quote, but in the book I am reading it states (paraphrasing), that the more a child sees you taking pictures and notes about their work, the more it validates their ideas. I take LOTS of pictures of each activity that we do. I want my daughter to know her work matters to me and her ideas are strong and important. So while each picture may not have been necessary to view, it meant the world to her as she moved through each stage of building. She would yell out when she wanted a picture and after the whole night, she wanted to look through them again and discuss what she was doing in more detail. So, if I post a ton of pictures this is my reasoning for taking them.
Hope you enjoyed.
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