It started on a walk…

by:Renelle

I am so excited!!! Two and a half years ago, I was walking around our neighborhood with my then 20 month old and 1 month old daughters. I was enjoying the fresh air and the quiet that can come with a mid-morning walk, but as many mothers know, in moments of quiet your mind is free to begin evaluating life’s big “checklist”. Doubts began to fill my head. Was my oldest was where she was supposed to be? Should she know her colors? What about the ABC’s? Should she count to 3,750,952? Was I failing already? Could she ever catch up if I didn’t prepare her now? That is when I had my “ah-ha” moment.

When I was a teacher, I sat down at the beginning of each year with a set of goals for each of my students. At the beginning of each month and each week, I determined what would be taught each day to accomplish these goals. All I needed to do as a mother was be intentional about what I wanted my girls to know. I decided on that walk that we would talk about “green”. We would look for all of the green we could see…shutters, grass, cars… if it was green we pointed to it. We practiced saying “g..g..g..geen.” Hey, I was working with a 20 month old. Do you really expect the “r” sound?

Well, that was the beginning. I called my sister and told her my brilliant revelation. She, being a preschool teacher, had access to all sorts of charts and checklist to tell me what my daughters should know before they turned 3, 4, 5. I told her that we should write a book, to help people like me… people who wanted their children to be prepared for school. People who had the best of intentions, but needed some direction.

That was two and half years ago. Since then, I have added another child and my sister has added a couple of her own. We have both left our teaching jobs to stay home and focus on teaching our little ones. We love to get together for theme days and have started to get together for a little pre-school class two or three times a month. I still want to make sure that my kids are prepared, but I have learned that as long as I am intentional when spending time with them, they will know what they need to know when they start school.

And here is where the real excitement comes! Kid-Up N’ Go is exactly what I was looking for on that walk. My sister and I have been compiling our ideas and activities. We have been taking what we know to be “best practice” as classroom teachers and using it with our children. Now you can use it with your children too! Being a teacher makes themes your friend. They tie everything together for kids (It also makes everything really cute!). Kid-Up N’ Go is a collection of themed activities to do with your child. Through these activities you will be working on all of the different skills that your child will need to be successful in school. I hope that as you get to know Kid-Up N’ Go, you become as excited as I am. Excited enough to Kid-Up N’ Go play to learn with your child.

Welcome!

Welcome to the brand new blog, Kid-Up ‘N Go! We are excited to bring you a brand new way of relating education and daily learning with your preschoolers. Enjoy! Now get your kid, get up, and go!

Sing a little song

By: Renelle

My husband and I were serving in our church nursery the past couple of nights. Our church was having a mini conference so we had the kids 2 nights in a row. Night one brought us mostly infants, and only about 8 as a total. Night 2 I assumed would be about the same. Then the 16 mostly 2 and 3 year olds arrived. A few reinforcements offered to help and I gladly accepted. The night went well all in all. There were no screamers, no biters, and in general all got along. One thing the room was not, was quiet. The kids who wanted to read, mostly sat on your lap. I don’t think they could actually hear the words. The noise wasn’t bad noise, just noise. After about an hour though, I thought we better bring it down a notch. It was nearing or past most of these children’s bedtimes and the no screamer room was getting restless.

Ah, the embrassment that I was about to embark on, but what else could I do. “Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere…” I sang. I do not come from a family of singers. I can hear myself change keys 10 times in a song, but I can’t keep myself from doing it. At least no one will ask me to join the choir I thought to myself as I sang. Another adult joined in, then another, then the kids. We cleaned up in 2 rounds of the song.

No one else had ask me to stop, so I gathered most of the kids and ask what we should sing. We sang several favorites. Some with movement (Head, shoulders, knees, and toes), some where we sat, some where we interacted (What animal next? for Old MacDonald), some that we just sang. Only about half of the kids were singers, but the rest of the kids were quietly playing and listening. Some of the kids would have gone on singing, but the room had calmed and you have to end on a good note. We played for another 20 minutes or so before moms and dads started to come in. The room never got as loud again though.

As I was thinking about, I realized that, even though I am not a good singer, I use music a lot to quiet situations. We have a favorite CD in the car. When I am cleaning the kitchen and the kids have the 6 millionth question or complaint, I sing a little verse of a random song. Sometimes they join in, sometimes they know to wait until I’m done, and sometimes it makes little difference. Still, as a behavior control technique, it can’t hurt to try to sing first. It sure beats yelling (even if in my case it sounds worse!)

Corn-tastic!

by: Angie

One week, our preschool club’s theme was “C is for Corn.” The kids’ favorite activity was our corn tasting and Corn-tastic graph.

The kids and I sat in a circle. I had a large sheet of construction paper labeled “Corn-tastic” at the top with two columns. I would show the kids a food that came from corn. We would name the food and all of the kids would taste a small sample of that food. We would then write the food’s name and glue a small piece of food in the first column. The foods we looked at were kernels of corn, cornflakes, corn chips, corn bread, and popcorn.

After all of the kids had tasted each food, we picked our favorite foods. Each child got to put a sticker in the second column next to the food that he or she had liked the best. We counted the stickers in each column and declared a winner – cornbread!

The kids were able to practice speaking and listening, taking turns, and making comparisons through our little activity. Several of them tried foods that they normally would not have eaten. The kids loved this part of our lesson.

When my husband came home from work, our two year old proudly showed him the graph the kids had made. The point of our activity may have passed over my young one. When dad asked what he had picked, Elijah replied, “I picked the pink sticker!”

Preschool Club

This summer, my cousins and I were talking about different preschool options available for our children. There are a lot of factors to consider when picking a preschool plan. There is the cost, the drive, the family’s weekly schedule, the length of the school day, the size of the class, the class structure, the personality and age of the child… The list goes on and on. We agreed that children can reap benefits from being part of a class. There are the social things; sharing, taking turns, having friends, building confidence, etc. There is also the almost magical, yet invisible, motivating force. Children seem to expand their interests and pick up new skills as they see what other children can do and enjoy doing. As we talked about the factors and the benefits, we came to the conclusion that this year, a twice a month class would be the best fit.

Not very many places offer a twice a month preschool. This led to the birth of our own family preschool. So, this fall, when schools started up, my basement transformed into a preschool room complete with a carpet area, little tables, and an alphabet chart on the wall. Our class consists of 7 children, 4 girls and 3 boys. This month, the oldest student turned 4 and the youngest student turned 2. Our sessions begin at 10:00 with highly themed activities and end with lunch around 12:30. Usually there are two moms downstairs with the class and three moms upstairs with the five babies.

Our preschool club has been going extremely well. Just as every child is different, the growth that we have been noticing has come in different areas. We will be posting about some of the activities that our kids have enjoyed the most. We hope that you can use some of the ideas with your own little learners. Perhaps one will seem like a perfect little activity to try during your child’s next play-date!

Your child can read in ONE day!

Right off the bat I would like to tell you that I am about to share an amazing strategy… a strategy that will have your child reading in minutes… and it comes not from me, but from an incredible teacher who has used it in the trenches. My Aunt Karen shared this with me. She is a seasoned professional in her own right, having 7 children, all of which she home schooled.

On with the magic. You will need a few pictures of animals and some index cards with one letter per card. Start with the animal pictures. Your conversation will go something like this…

“What is this animal?”

“a cow”

“What sound does a cow make?”

“moooooo”

“When I show you this picture, I want you to say the sound the animal makes. Let’s practice.”

Continue this conversation with the next animal. Each time asking what sound the animal makes. Now, show a letter card. I recommend “b” and have this conversation.

“What is this letter?”- or if your child doesn’t know letters yet- “This is a b”

“B”

“Letters are just like animals. Each one makes a sound. B says b. Can you make that sound with me? b When I show you this card I want you to say its sound.”

Practice a few times, then introduce “A” only using the a as in apple sound (we don’t want to move too quickly). Then introduce “T”. You are now ready to read. Put B…A….T… on the table. Your child will say b a t. Bat- there is a roar of applause. You read bat. Make a huge deal. Confidence is one of the key factors in reading success. Now put the cards T…A…B. Another roar of applause. Can you believe it? Two words already. Dare to go for three with the word at.

By learning just one more sound, g, you can read bag, gab, tag. That is 6 words knowing only 4 sounds.

I hope you see the beauty in this. Your child doesn’t have to know every letter or even every sound that each letter makes before they can feel the success of reading. They can do something immediately with a limited amount of knowledge. You will not believe how excited a child is to be able to “read”. Stay positive. Show everyone. Stick to 3 letter words with short vowel sounds and don’t introduce every letter on the same day. You want to end on a note that leaves your child wanting to learn more tomorrow.

Also, remember that when things are broken down into pieces they are digestable. You wouldn’t memorize a speech by reading the whole thing over and over. You work sentence by sentence and take breaks so that your brain has time to digest all the information it is processing. The same is true for your new reader. Practice in managable amounts of time and add just one letter at a time. The important part of this lesson is the immediate success that your child will feel. He is a reader!

Tea Party

by: Renelle

I have heard so much about making traditions, but I have always wondered how they actually start. I am sure some “just happen”, while others are carefully planned out with a specific objective. Here is the story of how my “tradition” is taking shape. In 6th grade, I went to a slumber party and decided to puffy paint a cow on a shirt. Why a cow? I don’t know either. Well, my friends mom bought a cow cookie cutter for me for Christmas and viola… I was now a cow collector. Fifteen years later my kitchen is full of cows. I’ve been doing cows for 15 years now for no real reason so now I am done with cows. I had a yard sale and most of the cows are gone. I decided that what I would like to collect is tea pots. Tea pots I have a reason behind. My mom is a tea drinker. She does not own a tea pot, but she has hot tea most days. My Aunt Alice is also a tea drinker. When we visit, we sit and drink tea. So for nostalgic reasons (not to mention so that I can enter the grown up world) I told my in-laws “I now collect tea pots.”

For my birthday, I received 2 tea pots. One that matches my china and a cute set that is covered in a honeycomb pattern. The set came in a hat box. My sister-in-law picked it out. The quote on top says, “Live every moment, laugh every day, and love beyond words…” This struck me as exactly what I should be doing with my children. My girls were 2 and 3. Not particularly ages that you give them a china cup, but who am I to use reason. I decided that I would leave the tea pot and cups in the hat box on the microwave. Easily accessible. About once a week ( I didn’t want to burden myself with a specific day or time) we get them out to have a “tea party”. I use the term loosely, since usually it means a cup of tea and perhaps some buttered toast. They are not well thought out. No special muffins. No tea sandwiches. No scones. Just a tea pot and some matching tea cups on saucers. You would think I had been planning for weeks the way their little faces light up though. I think that what makes it special is just sitting down and making time. We talk about goofy things, serious things, and I always mention that Grandma loves tea too. We also learn a little about etiquette. Don’t drink with the spoon. Keep your feet off the chair. Use your “please”. We have been tea partying for about 6 months now. I think it is a tradition that I will be able to keep. I have made it totally flexible. No guilt over missing Tuesday tea. No reason not to do it twice in one day. I also know from experience that tea never gets old and you never get too old for tea. I hope that as my kids start school, enter their teen age years, move out, have their own children, they will still enjoy tea with mom.