Doctor De Soto: Going to the Dentist

I prepare my children for new experiences the best way I know how – through books, music, and games. That’s how we were able to enjoy a long road trip to Baguio City and a second first-time on an airplane.

For Little T’s first visit to the dentist last year (yes, this is a much-delayed blog post!), I filled our Learning Basket with three books, cotton balls, cardboard, a miniature wooden doll, and a triangle. Oh, and we did a science experiment too!

The Books

Our main book was Doctor de Soto by William Steig, author of the tickly Pete’s a Pizza, and the heart-wrenching Sylvester and the Magic Pebble that we really enjoyed.

Doctor de Soto is a dentist like no other. Being a small mouse, he goes inside his large patients’ mouths to work on their teeth. He uses ladders and pulleys to reach them! The good doctor and his wife have made it a rule to NEVER accept patients who are naturally inclined to eat them – foxes, especially – but make an exception one day when a fox in pain appeals for mercy. I won’t spoil the book for you but our absolutely favorite line is what the fox murmurs under gas - Oh, how I love them raw with just a pinch of salt, and a dry white wine! 

The story is one of William Steig’s best and will be a farcical introduction to what goes on in a dentist’s clinic. Its humorous take on something that is usually thought of as scary adds to its appeal.

To balance the fantasy, we also read Going to the Dentist, a First Experiences book. It shows different photographs of a child’s visit to the dentist, from waiting at the reception area up to brushing his teeth with what the dentist has given him.

Cotton Ball Craft

I can’t manage complicated craft activities, so when I found a dental craft that only makes use of a paper plate, cotton balls, and glue, I was sold! Little T thought it was hilarious to have a big mouth.

Egg and Vinegar Experiment

To demonstrate why brushing one's teeth is important, we did an egg and vinegar experiment. We soaked a hard-boiled egg (teeth) in a jar of vinegar (not brushing/cleaning teeth) for two days and noted that the egg's shell (enamel) had disintegrated.

Simple Pulley

Pulleys are of course not a part of any dental clinic, except Doctor de Soto's! Little T was curious about what it was and how it worked that we made a simple one using a triangle, tissue roll, yarn, and a small doll. We took turns being the patient and Doctor de Soto's wife who pulls the pulley in the story.

The care that we took in preparing Little T for her first trip to the dentist resulted into a stress-free visit. On our third appointment, Little T was already sitting on her own on the dentist's chair, giggling and excited. :)


Make magic!

Delighting in Poetry

I have never had the pleasure of reading poetry for pleasure. Throughout my school career, poems were just something to memorize and to recite in front of a class - "Three Little Kittens" in Grade 3, "Invictus" in high school. It was distressing more than it was pleasurable!

As a homeschooling mama, I am always challenged to overcome old fears and prejudices, to go beyond my very comfortable comfort zone, to like what I would rather not like at all – dogs, onions, and yes, poems. 

We have been delighting in Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses for more than a year now. Perhaps because we are reading for pleasure, we have indeed found pleasure in the simple rhyming verses that speak about the world of children.We have also discovered that we can make poetry come alive the same way that we do our well-loved picture books – by using it as our springboard for learning, by pretending, by delighting in it. 

I will leave you with some beautiful words from Holly Goes Lightly about why we should instill a love of poetry in children:

“Use poetry to teach history, science, and religion. Teach poetry to help your child express herself through words. Read poetry in order to laugh out loud. Whisper poetry to lull your child to sleep. Help your child embrace poetry for no other reason than that it is a stepping stone between the concrete world and that dreamy otherworld that is our imagination.”

Make magic!

Bible Storybooks for Children: A Review

We are excited about Easter Sunday around here and have been preparing for it by reading our Bible storybooks. We are still not into bunnies and eggs (and I don’t think we will be), and we are sticking with Jesus and His story.

Last year, in preparation for Advent and our Jesse Tree, I went into a Bible storybook-hunting frenzy. We now have three which we read one after the other. Same stories, different styles, valued just the same.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

The Little Children’s Bible Storybook retold by Anne de Graaf and illustrated by Jose Perez Montero

This, for me, is a perfect first Bible for children aged two to four. The highly simplified text and colorful pictures provide a fun (yes, fun!) introduction to the Old and New Testament.

What kids would love most about this book, though, are the action suggestions for each story. As we say in Kindermusik, movement is the key to learning. Children learn and remember more when words are accompanied by movement. Consider this activity for Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem:

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people cheered for him in a parade. They waved palm branches up and down. Wave your hands. Hooray for Jesus!

Or how about when Jesus rose from the dead?

See if you can find signs of the miracle of new life outside: a tiny tree, a flower, the morning sun.

I got our copy from my sister, but you can get it from Learning is Fun for P294 or from Amazon.

A Young Child’s Bible by Elisabeth Gilles-Sebaoun

I wanted a beautifully illustrated Bible storybook, and I found it in A Young Child’s Bible.  The illustrations, which look like paintings, are just lovely and make me want to jump into the page.

In my haste to get my beautiful pictures, though, I neglected to check the text. :) While the book makes for a good-enough read-aloud, the stories are too condensed that important details are left out. I was incredulous when there was no mention of Joseph’s colorful coat, a detail we needed for our Jesse Tree. The whole Passion narrative is also just glossed over in this book, making the story quite incoherent and… passionless

I bought our copy from Books for Less for P289.

First Bible Stories

My husband sighed with relief when I found First Bible Stories in a bazaar stall. Unlike A Young Child’s Bible, this one looks thick enough to contain some of the Bible’s important details. And it does. 

The illustrations are nice and clean, and the words appropriate for the 4 to 8 age-group. I like the glossy paper as well as the page margins composed of miniature images of one or two elements of the story being told. In the story of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, the page margin has the picture of silver coins. It is an interesting detail that we use as a discussion starter: What are those coins? How many were there?

This is my favorite among our three Bible storybooks. I see us referring to it again and again as my children grow. It’s a steal at P294 from Learning is Fun (though I paid more at the bazaar, hmmm). It is also available at Amazon.

Do you have a good Bible storybook recommendation? Please share in the comments. :)

Make magic!

Following a Child's Lead: A Lesson in Art and Storytelling

We make stories we read come alive by using voices for each of the characters or by singing if the words are rhythmic enough.

With Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Little T devised her own way to make the story jump out of the pages. It was a case of mom receiving a lesson in art and storytelling from her four-year-old daughter.

Making Story Play Pieces

I only thought to make a cocoon and a butterfly as a learning extension for the very popular The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a story about a caterpillar that ate and ate and became a butterfly.

The cocoon

And the butterfly

But the fun we had staging a puppet show for Ask Mr. Bear apparently lingered on Little T’s mind and made her gasp and exclaim, “Mama! I have an idea! Let’s make all the food too and put on a show!”

I wanted to head to my laptop and look for ready-made printables. But I contained myself and followed her lead instead. For the next half-hour, we quietly worked together, drawing, coloring, and cutting all the food that the small caterpillar ate through. 

A Lesson for Mama

We took turns being the storyteller and puppeteer. We sang the song we learned from a free workshop by My Masterpiece Movement and accompanied ourselves with a tambourine: He ate through an apple, yum yum yum yum!

I learned my lesson that day. As much as we want to teach our children, they too have their own learning pursuits. They know what, when, and how they want to learn. Little T has never liked coloring books; but in making the story pieces, she colored with vigor and purpose and brought her vision to fruition.

Art is a process. I am glad that I know when to step back to let my child experience it, without any expectations of a “beautiful” outcome.  What was beautiful though was our time together making a simple story come alive for us.

Make magic!

Choo-Choo Fun: Making Your Own Train Set

There's nothing like wooden blocks to make a child's imagination flourish. Our blocks have been roads, bridges, castles, a piano, and most recently, a train track.

When I put The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper on our shelf, Little T immediately wanted to "study" it. So, I put it in our Learning Basket together with:

• Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown
• Shiny Dinah by Susan James (a Kindermusik book)
• Curious George Takes a Train by H.A. Rey
• The Little Engine That Could Sticker Book
• Melissa and Doug Stacking Train
• Two sets of wooden blocks
• Egg shakers 
• Flute
• Kindermusik's Away We Go Home CD

TRAIN TRACKS     I was thinking of borrowing one of my nephew's train sets, but I remembered my fellow homeschooling mom Teacher Mama Tina's blog post about making their own train tracks and I knew that we could do it too. We assembled our wooden blocks for our train tracks, added rhythm sticks for gates, Little T's dresser for a tunnel, a wooden dollhouse for the train station, and wooden dolls for passengers. We added a tree and a rainbow, and used our legs and bodies as tunnels too!

MUSIC     While we were building our train track, we sang I've Been Working on the Railroad and the other train songs in our Kindermusik CD. We then took turns being the train engineer and the sound effects person playing with the egg shakers for the train's "chug-chug" sound and the flute for "toot toot!"

STORY     Little T then made up her own story of people climbing in and out of the train and resting under the tree, and of the train stopping to let a car pass through and going through tunnels. 


It was a lovely week that again showed us the possibilities of wooden blocks, the ultimate open-ended toy!

Make magic!
mariel

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

I found another Caldecott Medal treasure in my favorite used bookstore Books for Less: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. I did not have any idea about the story, but I was in a hurry, the pictures were beautiful, and the author seemed familiar. Well, it turned out William Steig was also the author of Pete’s a Pizza, a book that Little T and I recently enjoyed.

Sylvester is a young donkey who found a red pebble that made his wishes immediately come true as long as he was holding it. On his way home, he panicked upon seeing a lion and wished himself to be a rock. The story of his parents’ diminishing hope of ever finding him again is poignant and a bit intense for young children. It is definitely a book that we will come back to for deeper discussions, as we only tackled its surface.

ROCK PAINTING Tying up Sylvester’s penchant for collecting rocks with Little T’s “homework” in Kindermusik to collect nature treasures, we went around the garden picking up rocks, leaves, twigs, and aratiles (Jamaican cherry in English). Once we had our loot, Little T set off to paint the rocks red like the magic pebble. Of course, she chose another color and insisted to paint the leaves too for some natural stamping. 

SEASONS Sylvester stayed a rock for a looong time because the magic pebble was out of his reach. The book shows the passing of the seasons, which Little T is familiar with. We talked about how in other parts of the world there’s winter, spring, and autumn, while we only have summer and rainy days in the Philippines.

MISSING CHILD Sylvester was a missing child, and Little T and I talked about getting lost. I took this as an opportunity to remind her of our rules on safety such as staying with us when we are out and never talking to and going with strangers.

KISS WISH We made up a game called Kiss Wish inspired by the magical property of Sylvester’s red pebble. Here’s how we play it: I say out loud “I wish Little T would kiss me.” Little T kisses me if she sees that I’m holding our designated pebble and just grins when I’m not. Of course we take turns as the wish-maker and get to give and receive kisses throughout the whole game. Try it!

MUSIC As we picked up rocks, twigs, and leaves from the garden, we sang and hummed In My Pocket, a song from Kindermusik’s See What I Saw: Put a (leaf, twig, rock, aratiles) in my pocket, hmm hmm hmmm. I really must write about Kindermusik and how a great supplement it is to preschool homeschool!

Make magic!

mariel

Pete's A Pizza: Little Hands at Work

Have you ever pretended to eat, nibble at, or gobble up your child? I’m sure you have, if you haven’t actually bitten them yet! Children are just so sweet and delicious, yum!

But how about pretending to cook or bake your child? Now that’s a novel idea from author William Steig in Pete’s a Pizza. We discovered it in a treasury of classic picture books bought as-good-as-new from Booksale for Php350. (Price in Amazon? USD23)

BAKING YOUR CHILD Pete is in a bad mood because it’s raining and he can’t go out to play with his friends. His parents pretend that he’s a pizza to cheer him up. His father kneads, stretches, and flips him like pizza dough, and adds oil (water), flour (talcum powder), cheese (pieces of paper, and tomatoes (checkers). He then bakes him in the oven (the couch) and tries to slice him but Pete gets tickled and runs away. The rain finally stops and he goes out to play. What a wonderful springboard for parents and children to play pretend! My arms hurt from stretching and throwing Little T up into the air as she repeatedly asked to be made into a pizza.

PLAY DOUGH Though I wanted to let Little T experience making pizza from scratch, I didn’t have the required yeast… and truth to tell, I’m not much for cooking anything! I settled for the next best thing to practice our kneading, stretching, flipping, pounding, and slicing – homemade play dough. Little T’s little hands got busy for several mornings, making not just pizzas but also cakes and breads and “baking” her creations in the unplugged oven toaster. 

I love making our own play dough. I’ve been making it since Little T was around a year old. It’s much softer than what's available in the stores and so easy to make for something that I’m sure is safe for my child. When it gets tough or really dirty after several uses, I just whip up another batch. Here's the recipe that I use:

• 1 cup flour 
• 1 cup water 
• ½ cup salt 
• 2 tbsp oil 
• 1 tbsp cream of tartar 
• food color 

Combine all ingredients except for the food color. Mix on low to medium heat until sticky. Turn off heat. Knead the dough when you can handle it already, and add food color, liquid or powder. Voila!

PIZZA Children love to help around the house. They observe what big people do and are often excited to try things out for themselves. For Pete’s A Pizza, Little T made a pizza with her friend J who lives across the street. I just put what they needed on the table and let them spread the tomato sauce, sprinkle parmesan cheese, and put pepperoni on the pizza crust that I bought earlier. They had it for snacks and were proud of what they made with their own hands. As a treat for the family, Little T again made a pizza for dinner that night.

Our Learning Basket for the week only had the Treasury of Picture Books,another book about a pizza party, and our play dough. Most of our work was in the kitchen playing and making our pizza, and in the bedroom kneading, flipping, and baking the delicious and wriggly Little T Pizza.

You can easily incorporate these fun activities in your week. Pretend play before bed time, play dough during play time, and real pizzas for some kitchen work. It’s a nice way to have a great meal and to finally take a bite off from your Child Pizza, if you haven’t yet.

What other food do you pretend your child to be?

 I would love to know!

Plum Tree Cottage: Life Lessons from Dolls

I love playing with Little T. That’s when I see her up close thinking, learning, and being. Nothing beats watching her face light up when she is struck with a realization or when she accomplishes something.  And nothing is sweeter than seeing her beam when she realizes that I noticed.  

I was reminded of this last week when we read and based our activities on Plum Tree Cottage: A Doll’s House Story by Elaine Mills. It is not on the booklist of Before Five in a Row but is excellent and deserves the 100 plus times (no kidding!) we’ve spent reading and looking at it. The gorgeous illustrations have provided us hours of fun of just poring over and discussing the details.

STARS Peggy Doll first lived in the forest, under the trees. Lying on our bed, Little T and I imagined sleeping under the stars like her, with stars twinkling above us. We sang Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and Oh Watch the Stars, a favorite from Kindermusik, as we flicked our flashlight on and off. A wonderful memory-making activity, if ever there was one!

ART Using tongue depressors, which are bigger than popsicle sticks and therefore better for small hands, we put a house together on half a sheet of poster paper. It was supposed to be simple, but Little T’s improving fine motor skills allowed her to enjoy painting with a brush. She didn’t stop until we had a very nice version of Plum Tree Cottage. This art work is 90% made by Little T. I provided the instructions, some demonstration, and a bit of outline for the rainbow and tree. Almost all brush strokes are hers!

 DRAMA Since Little T knows the words by heart, playing the role of Peggy Doll who was looking for a home was easy for her. With a picture of a tree, blocks, two doll houses, a painting of a house, wooden dolls, and finger puppets, we staged and acted out the story.

Peggy Doll lived in the forest because she had no home.

She walked along the road until she saw a house. She asked if she could stay there but was shown and told that the house was full.

She walked further along until she came to a big house with only two people there. She was turned away because her boots were muddy.

Then, Peggy Doll walked again and finally found Plum Tree Cottage which was just right for her. Rabbit, represented by a plain red block as suggested by Little T, knocked on the door, was welcomed, and lived happily ever after with Peggy Doll.

GENEROSITY I introduced two new words to Little T: generous and selfish. The lady at the second house was selfish and mean because she turned away Peggy Doll even when she had room at her house and it was raining. She was not generous. Asked about what she thought of Peggy Doll when Rabbit knocked and asked if he could stay with her, Little T said Peggy Doll was generous and knew how to share. Then, she suddenly remembered her book Sharing: How Kindness Grows, and said that she would teach the lady at the second house how to share and be generous! I was very pleased with how she connected ideas and even got the book to read to the “second lady.”

Seeing Little T’s progress and light bulb moments makes me more determined to continue our homeschooling journey. As I told my mother, it’s not that I don’t trust other people to teach my children. I just want the thrill and excitement of being in the front row seat of their development!  

Make magic!

mariel