Preschooler Fun | picklebums.com

August 24, 2010 | Filed in: Preschooler Fun

It seems we have come to that point in time when I can avoid it no longer.

The only pair of pink sneakers in a size big enough to fit Izzy have shoe laces. Yes, laces… not velcro, not stretchy elastic things, but real, need to be tied, laces.

Now I have to teach Izzy to tie her shoe laces.

Ah if only it was the blue sneakers that only came with laces. Zoe is much more patient and will stick at a task like this. Izzy, on the other hand, will have half a go and then crack the poops because she’ll ‘never get this right’.

It is going to be a hard lesson to learn for all of us.

So today, while the girls were home from school with kennel cough, I stole the laces from my husband’s boots, stabbed some holes in a shoe box, and we let the fun begin!

It is hard to tie laces. It is hard to figure out how to explain it. It is hard to get your hands and fingers in the right spots. It is hard to learn to tie laces.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks? Is there a magical easy way to teach the girls how to tie shoe laces? Can someone come to my house and do it for me???

Oh and for the record.. the hands in the photo above, actually attempting to tie the laces… those hands belong to Zoe!

I’m throwing this post into the We Play hat at Childhood101 today! Head on over and see what everyone else has been playing!

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While I helped with reading activities in the Twindaoes’ class this morning, Muski spent the time taking out every little thing from the maths manipulative shelf. After he and I had packed away all the counters and dice and quesenaire blocks we went home and were inspired to get out some of our own little bits and pieces to play with.

Not quite as impressive as the prep class’s collection of goodies, but we still managed to find a good collection of little treasures to keep us busy for a while. We sorted and then arranged the items in various patterns. We counted them together and then I tried making some simple repeating patterns to see if Muski would cotton on to the concept, which he did.

When the big girls came home they got into the fun too, making more patterns and using the testing each others addition and subtraction skills.

Who’d have thought a tray of tiny treasures could be so much fun?!? I’m going to have to collect some more bits and pieces I think.

These are some of the things we had in our collection –
Large plastic threading beads, buttons and cotton reels
Shells
Gum nuts (we need to collect some little ones too)
Small pony beads and wooden beads.
Glass buttons
Large sequins

We’d like to add some more bits and pieces too, perhaps some marbles and buttons in various shapes sizes and colours. Can anyone think of anything else that would be good to add??

It’s We Play day over at childhood101 today – head on over for some ‘freash, fun, family play ideas’.

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My kids generally have very limited access to the internet, both through circumstances (crappy country net access) and my personal views on kids and technology and boundaries we’ve set. But with the school holidays almost upon us, winter weather keeping us inside more and the uncertainty of exactly when this baby will arrive making big excursions a little more tricky… well I’m relaxing our net rules a little and I’ll be letting all three kids enjoy a little more computer time than they’d normally get.

Some of things we’ll be enjoying online over the holidays…

Story Nory.
This an awesome site full of free downloadable spoken stories. They have a fabulous selection of traditional stories and fairy tales as well as other stories and when we have the chance we stock up and load up the kid’s MP3 players with stories for bed time, car trips or just chilling out.

Starfall
Starfall is my girls chosen free reading activities web site. They’ll be very pleased to hear they can use it more than once in a blue moon!

Crick Web
Crick web is another favourite free access website, this one has literacy, numeracy, science and more activities in a variety of age ranges/developmental stages. Muski’s fav is ‘scary spuds’.

Do you have a fabulous online resource for young children that you’d like to share?

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