books!

Zoë has just recently become interested in books!!  Ever since she has been able to grasp things and pull them to her mouth she has been interested in them as chew-toys.  But in the last week or so she has started staring with intense interest at the pages- the colors and faces in particular- and then tries to pull the objects off of the page and into her mouth instead of just gnawing on the page whole.  I am so excited!  Reading to Jonathan has been one of my favorite things over the past few years- and I am so excited to be reading with Zoë now too!

I love the way that a book can capture his imagination and permeate everything we do and talk about.  Sure we read the same books time and time again, but he is just as engaged every time and those places and characters and themes become part of his little world.  So I try to choose the titles that populate our book bins carefully- both because I know each title will be with us for a while and because I want to fill their worlds with stories that introduce them to a world that is full of wonder and laughter and love.  So with that said, here are a few of our latest favorites...

Since Zoë is at a stage where she studies faces and colors like crazy, we mostly read these two:

1) Peek-a-boo Baby by Margaret Miller. She has a whole line of baby faces books, and this is the one we have.  Bright colors and simple words on one page; close up baby faces playing peek-a-boo on the other.  Simple and perfect for her.

2)  While you were sleeping by John Butler.  A counting book with super cuddly animals going about their business "while you were sleeping".  The illustrations are great; the words are simple, but engaging and poetic.  When I pulled it out of the baby bin for the first time in about 18 months, Jonathan could recite all of the words on each page and he always wants to cuddle up and read with us when I pull this one out for Zoë.


Jonathan is starting to really love simple plot-lines and these have great art too!

Augustus and his Smile by Catherine Rayner.  We picked this one up at the library, but then I had to buy it because 2 weeks just wasn't enough for any of us.  The artwork is magical and the story about a tiger who is searching for his smile is just sweet.  

I Stink! by Kate and Jim McMullan.  He's a two year old boy, so garbage trucks are the most interesting thing on the face of the earth.  I put this one in his Christmas stocking and I think we've read it every night since then.  It follows a garbage truck on his rounds, gives us the alphabet in trash, and has ample crashing and crushing and banging.

ice fish

Almost two years ago I picked up a fish ice tray at IKEA.  It seemed like it had so much potential to be used in a creative, fun way with a toddler.  And for the past two years, I have been trying to figure out how to use it for something fun with Jonathan.  Last weekend it dawned on me to make ICE in it.  Imagine- ice in an ice tray.

But the idea, as obvious as it wasn't in my poor little brain, turned out to be superb.  I filled the try on Friday night- water + one drop of food color in each fish.  And then, after breakfast, I filled an empty plastic container (this one had spinach originally, I think) with warm water and voila- crazy fun for about 10 minutes.

He had no idea what they were at first- I just told him it was a surprise and let him explore.  Jonathan loved watching them melt and seeing the colors swirl in the water.

Seeing the moment that their tails melted off was also a hit.

He was delighted as the water got murkier and murkier and kept asking where the fish had gone.  It was like magic!

He could have thrown 100 fish into that water and not gotten tired of it.  So once we ran out, I let him fill it again with a teaspoon and we put it back in the freezer for after nap-time.  Hours went by between our fish adventure and nap time- snacks, stories, play, lunch, etc. And when he woke up from his nap?  The first words out of his mouth were: Where are the fish?!?!  Awesome.  We did this about 5 times over the course of the weekend and he loved it as much each time.

chaos

As a teacher there is something magical about the first days of school.  The gleam and smell of newly waxed floors, the way all of the pencils are perfectly sharpened, the white boards are pristine, and the lesson plans are still perfect- unspoiled by lack of student knowledge or equipment failure or pep-rally schedules.  It feels clean and new and perfect and like if you hold your breath and do everything just right, everything might turn out neat and clean and according to plan.

And then comes February.  And you look up for a moment to survey the chaos around you and think - what happened??  And I have to remind myself every year that it is OK.  The act of learning is not neat and clean- it has all kinds of bumps and hiccups and if you are paying attention to what is being learned, you miss some stuff- like the pencil shavings on the floor and the lab supplies in disarray and the fact that all 20 of the white board makers in your room only kinda still work.

Today felt like chaos all over.  I walked in the door from school and before I had my coat off, Jonathan had dumped out all of his cutting food, two boxed sets of books, and was playing a game that involved rolling tiny rings one at a time across the living room floor.  In every direction the scene looked like this:

I tried to take a moment in the kitchen to regain my composure, but was dismayed to find every counter covered with something.  I could feel my chaos welling up inside me about to explode when Jonathan ran in and said "Mommy, which one do you think goes faster, the blue ring or the green one?!?"  And I saw, amid the utter destruction of all order in my living room a tiny little scientist investigating his world.  Setting up and testing theories, wondering, discovering.  And I remembered that learning is not neat and clean- especially when you are little. So I got back down to sit "criss-cross-applesauce" with my little man and roll those rings all over the livingroom.  Tidy can come after bedtime tonight.

Snow!

Where we live, snow is a rare thing.  So when flakes started falling yesterday around dinnertime, it was a BIG deal- Jonathan and I sat and watched flakes for a long time.  And when we woke up this morning, the ground was covered with a thin sheet of snow.

When Jonathan peeked out of the window and saw it, he was so excited he started dancing wildly around the kitchen.

Then he looked me straight in the eyes and said.  "There is snow!!  It must be wintertime today!" Indeed.  With his logic, this probably our day of winter this year.  So as soon as breakfast was over, we bundled up and headed out.  

Jonathan reveled in running and hearing his shoes crunch in the still air, I reveled in the cold blue sky and the way winter makes long shadows on the new white.  Zoë was a good sport.

We didn't last long out in the cold.  But you have to seize the moment around here- because the snow was gone by lunchtime.  

new sensory bowl

This weekend I finally got around to doing some creative hands-on fun at home.  Life has been so insane the past 3 weeks, that I have really been dragging in the afternoons.  We play pretend games about hiding in bear caves and airplanes and garbage trucks and he gets his hands dirty helping me cook dinner most nights, but I haven't had the energy to pull out the paints or play-dough or do a fun project for a while.  So on Friday I treated myself to a 30 minute, $5 field trip to the dollar store to pick up some fun.   I filled my bag with mardi-gras beads, cotton balls, tiny shiny bows, colored shredded paper, and a new big bowl.  I got home, cut up the necklaces, dumped, added a cardboard tube- and viola! a new sensory tub waiting for Jonathan to wake up from his nap.

He loved it.  He immediately dumped it out on the table and began filling the tube, sorting the beads, and squishing the paper and cotton balls.  It kept him fascinated and experimenting for a full hour!! 

Just love that rapt concentration!  And he kept asking to take it out again all weekend. He referred to it as "that surprise thing that Mommy made for me".  

little portfolios

One of my favorite things about my life at the moment are the days that Jonathan brings home his artwork from preschool.  They display it all month in their classroom and then, one day, they take it down and he comes home wit his art folder jammed into his pint-sized backpack- over flowing with construction paper, glitter, googly-eyes, and pom-poms.

I love these days because when we get home, Jonathan is SO excited to show me his projects.

He takes each one out of his folder like it is an old friend and usually with an exclamation "My penguin!!"

I ask him about what is in the picture and how he made it, and I love these tiny little insights into his classroom and thoughts.  For example a lot of their January art featured cozy images adorned with batting.  Our conversation was something like:
Jonathan:  This wool makes it cozy and warm because a sheepy got stuck here
Me: The sheepy got stuck there?
Jonathan: Yes, because I glued him to the page.

I love that his classroom is a place where they do fun art projects and are creative and that his teacher integrates their reading books with their art and their songs and their play.  (In January they were all about going on a bear hunt, so we have lots of bear art- including a set of bear ears- and they built a bear cave out of a box that they would take turns hiding in and sneaking up on when they were hunting the bear). I love that he gets that at school, because honestly as much as I know how important art and messiness is, I just don't have the patience or creativity manage art projects between work and dinner on the average night.

bear sleeping in his cave

After he shows me his art, he usually decides where each one should go- a large pile on the sofa, some on the kitchen floor, some on the table.

And while the mess of that eventually drives me crazy, I love stumbling upon these little treasures for the rest of the evening.