Preschool Science: Oil & Water, Day 2

My son had so much fun with our oil and water activity that he recently came up to me with the bottle of baby oil in his hand and asked if we could do another project with it.  Always ready to think on my feet, I grabbed some food coloring and we put together this …

Preschool Science: Magic Milk

All of our preschool science projects lately have to have a color-mixing element.  My three-year-old is fascinated by this process and will plunge with delight into any project that involves food coloring.  Here is an absolute classic we enjoyed one recent Sunday afternoon: Magic Milk You will need: a shallow dish or bowl whole milk …

Preschool Science: Oil & Water

My preschooler goes bananas for any project that involves food coloring, so this week, we dyed some water and experimented with how it behaved in a bowl of baby oil.  You can use any type of oil for this, but we make homemade wipes, so we always have plenty of baby oil on hand! We …

Cooking with a Preschooler: Fall Edition

Thanks to a big crop of Mackintoshes from my parents' house, we are up to our ears in apples at the moment.  Just another great opportunity to get my three-year-old busy in the kitchen!  Last week, he picked apples and made applesauce with my mom, so this weekend, I let him be the expert and …

Preschool Math: Compare Whole Numbers

What the hand does, the mind remembers.  -- Maria Montessori Our son is really into card games lately.  He loves "Go Fish" and "War" especially, but while playing "War, he was having a tough time looking at the cards and determining which was greater.  To help him out, we provided a concrete manipulative -- Unifix …

Autonomy and Ironman

I have written before about our older son and his naturally cautious approach to everything new.  He does not like strangers or new situations.  While his much bolder baby brother is racing to the biggest slide on the playground, he will hang back, stay on the toddler slide, not try anything too risky. I'm fine …

Preschool at Home: Scissor Practice

You don't need anything fancy to successfully guide your child through preschool development at home.  My son has been really interested in scissor work lately, so we do a very simple activity in which I draw lines and shapes and he practices cutting.  Easy peasy fine motor practice, and I have seen huge improvements in …

Gardening with a Preschooler: The Strawberry Experiment

This summer for one of his projects, my three year old has been diligently caring for a strawberry plant. He waters it, keeps it clear of weeds, and on three separate occasions has had the supreme delight of picking a strawberry off of it. That's right. Spoiled as it is, the plant has only yielded …

Art Camp

Last week, we went to Art Camp.  Every year for the past twelve years, my family has descended en masse on my aunt's cottage on Lake Huron.  Here we do normal family vacation things -- like enjoy big meals together and play outside and go swimming and have board game tournaments -- and not so …

Family Project: Puppet Show

We have just returned from our annual week on Lake Huron with my family. Most families enjoy just hanging out on vacation, but we are not most families. For us, family time is project time. We paint and draw and quilt and crochet and dance and make pinatas and Chinese dragons and have masquerades and …