My Little Robins

Loving and Learning in the Nest

Preschool Pond Play

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One thing I love about giving my kids lots of time to play is that they come up with the most fun imaginative play scenes! May's Idea Nest nature study topic is ponds, but I only had to read one of the featured books before they started creating a pond in our backyard. It didn't involve a flood or an excess of water, thankfully. 

Although I had planned to offer different materials for pond play, they did their own thing, which is perfectly fine with me. Amazingly, their play turned into an explanation of the frog life cycle, complete with story stones that they asked me to whip up quickly with front yard rocks and a few Sharpies.

In case you need a little inspiration, here are some ideas for pond play. 


Related: Introducing the Idea Nest

Make An Outdoor Pond

This is not as elaborate as it sounds. A pond could have water in it, or not. It could be small or large. It could involve mud (a huge hit in our family!) or be tidier. Basically, you need a container or designated spot for a pond. Here are some suggestions: 

  • A blue plastic baby pool 
  • Sticks arranged in a circle (it won't be able to hold water but maybe mud?) 
  • Plastic storage container (this is what my kids chose to use!) 
  • A large soup pot (they used this, too! It's about their favorite outdoor "toy") 
  • Tarp wrapped around two drainage pipes, a trick I learned as a Tinkergarten Leader! 
  • An unused birdbath or flower pot 

Once you have a container, fill it with pond goodies! At first, the pond that my children made was clear with rocks and shells floating in it. It didn't take long to be filled with mud, grass, and bark. It looked like a legitimate pond! Here are some more pond-like additions:

  • Rocks
  • Leaves
  • Mud 
  • Sticks
  • Toy reptiles and insects
  • Rocks painted with reptiles and insects

Related: The Complete Charlotte Mason Preschool Guide

Pond Play

Setting up a pond is obviously the best part of this pond idea, but my three still found ways to play with their pond for hours! 

  • Retrieve items from the bottom of the pond
  • See what floats
  • ​Make frog story stones
  • Let the frog rocks explore the pond, hop away, and basically try to survive

Indoor Pond Play

This post would be incomplete if I didn't tell you about one of my very favorite pond play ideas that we did this month! I usually don't get into fancy sensory bins because clutter, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Since we've been homebound for six weeks now, I bought a loose parts frog pond kit from Mulberry toes on Etsy for something a little special. To go along with it, I bought a playsilk dyed like a pond from Kitchen Dye Works. The result was a gorgeous, imaginative play scene that kept my kids engaged and happy for days! 

Related: Charlotte Mason Preschool Foundations

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Handicrafts for the Spring and Summer with Rooted Childhood

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This question has been asked at least a dozen times in my local community Facebook group: What am I supposed to do with my kids all summer long? With school coming to a close for the summer, traditional schooling families suddenly have lots of time to fill. This is not often a problem for homeschoolers, who can fill all that time and still feel like it wasn't enough. But, as we've phased out lessons for our unofficial Kindergarten year, I'm looking forward to filling our time with handicrafts, cooking, and being outside. 

This post contains affiliate links. You can read more about them in my policies.

This year for handicrafts, we used Rooted Childhood. Each month's collection contains eight handicrafts, three recipes, book suggestions, songs and finger rhymes. While we aren't going to do year-round schooling (for now at least!) Rooted Childhood will be a wonderful way to keep some structure in our days and give us some big projects to work on so we're passing the time intentionally. 

Spring and Summer Handicrafts

Although I've written about Rooted Childhood before, I wanted to share with you the projects we've done this spring and will work on this summer. I love that these handicraft ideas are seasonal, so they are always changing and help us celebrate each season. 

In April, we made beautiful string-wrapped Easter eggs. We had friends over for a tea party, and made the eggs together.  It took us a bit to realize that if we coated the string in clear glue, it would wrap around the egg and stay much more easily. But once we got that down, everyone, even my middle guy (3.5) enjoyed making them! 

My husband even got involved with May's collection of Rooted Childhood. He tracked down wood, screws, and bolts to help us make flower presses. My children are so excited about these! Ours are a little bigger than the presses modeled in Rooted Childhood,  but in a way, that adds to their impressiveness. And of course, they can hold many, many flowers because of their size! 

Each collection comes out the month before on the 15th (if you have the subscription) or you can seasons or even months separately. I've organized each collection in a binder, so we can revisit the projects for many years to come. 

Continuing Story Time Throughout The Summer

We need to get into a new summertime rhythm for reading books, singing folk songs, and listening to poetry and rhymes. These things are a fantastic way to calm anxious little ones, interrupt quarrels, and as an added bonus,  they allow rich learning opportunities without our children even knowing it.

Every month when we get our new Rooted Childhood collection, Miss H flips through and looks for books and short stories that she'd like to read. Last month, she was really excited to learn the folk song, "I Love the Mountains." It's such a blessing when our children are eager to learn and participate in literacy-building activities!

Little Chefs

Miss H loves to cook. I often hold back from trying new recipes with her, because I'm not sure how they would work with a six-year-old, plus two little guys who love to "help." (By the way, I've learned that giving the little ones a bowl of flour and some water to pour in there is the BEST way for them to help. They stir and have so much fun, and the real recipe still turns out to be edible!) 

Rooted Childhood has three recipes in each collection. They are real-food recipes, which I love! These almond-flour cookies (see below) that we made were really delicious. We ate them pretty quickly, which was okay with me, because they are healthier than a lot of things that my boys eat! 


 

Make sure to download the beautiful Sunrise Collection for free. If you decide you want to add beauty to your days through Rooted Childhood, you can use the code mylittlerobins for 10% off. 


Making Family Habits Meetings A Habit

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If you want to make habit training a habit, then family meetings are really helpful. But, these family meetings should focus on habits, and not just the typical “state of the family” meetings that many people hold. According to  The Center for Parenting Education, a non-profit organization, holding regular family meetings supports family bonding, helps children develop higher self-esteem, and helps children understand how to solve problems, among many other benefits. A family habits meeting carries these benefits as well as allows parents and children to develop plans for forming positive habits, or breaking those pesky bad habits.

The idea to hold meetings like this came from James Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (affiliate link.)  He recommended these weekly meetings to get the whole family involved in establishing new habits for each family member. I’ve spent some time brainstorming what this should look like in a Charlotte Mason home. Often, when people talk about habits, they mean the concrete things that we do each day. How can we apply these same principles to habits that are often more abstract, like paying attention and obeying?

Related: Keeping a Habit Training Journal

 

Family Habits Meetings

While establishing your family habits meetings, think about a night when you already do something fun. Maybe you have a weekend game or movie night. Add your meeting right before that event. When we put an event that might come with a little bit of resistance with something that everyone looks forward to, it makes it easier to do. And, if you are already in the habit of doing a special family night, adding a meeting close to the same time will help make it a more natural habit.

Weekly family habits meetings can help you make habit training a habit. #charlottemason

 

Planning

Come to your meeting prepared. Think about the habits that you’ve worked on the week before, and if the approach needs some altering, or if you’re ready to tackle a new habit. Per the nature of a family meeting, children should have some say in this, but in my experience, when they try to think of habits that they want to work on, the habits aren’t all that beneficial to the family. As sweet as it would be for Miss H to get in the habit of song-writing, this is something we can tackle in our free time and not when we’re looking for ways to improve our family’s daily grind! I suggest having in mind the habit you would like your children to work on, and then involving them in the process of making a plan for each habit. Ask them what you can do to make the habit come easily to them. (Because if it’s difficult, it will probably fall to the wayside in a matter of days!)

Often when we approach habits, we say, “I’m going to do this every day!” but we don’t give much thought to how we will do that. Or, we pick huge habits, like going to the gym everyday, and then get frustrated when we miss Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Break the habits up into small, manageable bits. If your goal is to have your children obey you, start small. Maybe they could get into the habit of saying, ‘Yes, mom,” after you ask them to do something. Or maybe your habit could be that they obey you promptly when you ask them to make their bed each morning (although, eventually you will want them to get into that habit all on their own!”

Make a Habit Statement

Recently, I’ve been helping my kids work on clearing the table completely after meals, and as we get up from the table, I start cleaning the kitchen immediately rather than being pulled into someone’s game (which is so precious, it just makes for a messy kitchen!) Some days, we did well with this habit, and other days I completely forgot. After paying attention, I realized that my cue for cleaning the kitchen is to get up from the table. On days that I was in a hurry and didn’t sit down for a meal, but ate quickly over the island while my kids sat at the table, the kitchen remained a mess and the bowls, cups, and napkins stayed on the table. So, in order to work on the habit of cleaning the kitchen and table after each meal, I needed to work on the habit of sitting down at each meal.

To do this, I needed to make a habit statement, not just a wishy-washy proclamation of, “Oh, I really need to sit down for meals!” Here are my two habit statements:

When I put the kids meals on the table, I will sit down to eat with them.

When I stand up from finishing my meal, I will go clean the kitchen in entirety.

Planning out habits like this helps us address the cue, the action before the habit that reminds us of what we’re going to do next. During your family habits meetings, discuss the cues that will help with each habit, and any environmental changes that might need to happen to help with the habit.

Family Habit Meeting Planner

While it’s definitely easier to develop concrete habits, by planning and approaching little parts of each habit at a time, it’s possible. Bring your whole family into the process to build deeper bonds and to get everyone excited about the habit training journey. I’ve created a family habits meeting planner that I wanted to share with you. It gives you space to write your habit training statement and process. Post it somewhere visible so you remember what to work on that week!

 

Making Tracks in the Snow, or, Habit Training

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If you’ve been hanging around with My Little Robins for awhile, you may have heard me make this analogy before. And, if you were a fourth grader in my class several years ago, you heard this analogy, too, that I made up to help you understand synaptic pruning and other concepts of habit training. I think this analogy is helpful, and I wanted to flesh out the similarities between habit training and walking in the snow. 

Today is a snow day for local schools, and we are celebrating it in our own way, with blanket forts and tea parties. Yesterday the air became frigid, dropping well below zero overnight, and layers of light, dry snow covered the ground. Our Wednesday plans were cancelled, and instead of staying inside, we braved the cold weather to play in the snow.

I loaded all of the children into my car, complete with a sled, all of their snow gear, and a bundler for the baby. The park with a slightly sloping “sledding hill” is within walking distance, but little legs get extra tired walking in the snow. When we pulled into the parking lot, I searched for signs of others. There were no tire marks in the parking lot, no little footprints near the hill. A part of me was disappointed that we were the only ones enjoying this crystal blanket. What were all of the other children doing? Do other people think it’s too cold to be outside right now? I was sad that we were literally the only ones enjoying this beautiful, although cold, day.

But there’s one thing that I always love about being the first one out in fresh snow.

The untouched beauty of the white snow blanket.

Knowing that no one else has set foot here today. 

I love it when we are the first feet to press down the powder.

Making our mark. 

Join Leah in the Thinking Love habits training course February 2019!

I watched as my toddler got out, a little unsure of his mother’s sanity for bringing him outside on such a day. He stayed by the car for a moment, then picked up his yellow boot high, holding it timidly above the fresh snow. He placed it down, hard, repeating the dramatic process several times. With over six inches of snow, each new step was hard-fought. The snow covered the top of his boots and I could see him thinking and planning each subsequent step carefully. He walked forward a bit, and then, gaining more confidence, walked in a circle, making a whimsical little loop of tiny boot prints.

He saw me smiling at him, and then he turned around retracing his steps, this time more quickly, more confidently. He had already pressed the tracks into the ground, and this time it was much easier. Had he turned back to retrace his steps again, he would have sailed by at his fast toddler pace.

Charlotte Mason Habit Training

And in my son’s exploration of the snow lies a secret of habit training. At first, we start off awkward and flailing. It is difficult to form a new habit, and it feels unnatural. We are, after all, fighting our nature. But, as we repeat the new habit again and again, it gets a little bit easier each time. We are no longer flailing, we begin sailing.

“For a habit is a delight in itself; poor human nature is conscious of the ease that it is to repeat the doing of anything without effort; and, therefore, the formation of a habit, the gradually lessening sense of effort in a given act, is pleasurable.” Home Education page 121 (affiliate link).

The process that our brain undergoes during habit training is called synaptic pruning. We strengthen the synaptic connections between neurons when we practice a new habit, and we weaken the connections between our former way of doing things. Like the snowy path, repeating the steps only makes the pathways stronger and clearer. Those trudging, stumbling motions become fluent, our new nature.

When you start to build a new habit, either for yourself or for your children, remember that it only gets easier. Remember that the unnatural, fighting piece of it is only temporary, until your brain, and your body, can catch on.

 

 

Froebel’s Alphabet Sticks: ABC’s Outdoors

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Ever since writing my post about Charlotte Mason and kindergarten, I’ve been trying to get more familiar with Froebel’s ideas. Friedrich Froebel lived in the late 18th century and early 19th century, and his principles on early education deemed him the affectionate title “the father of the Kindergarten.” Unfortunately, Froebel did not have an outstanding way with words, as pointed out in an introduction to his collection of letters explaining his Kindergarten principles, Froebel’s Letters. His works are a little cumbersome to read. There are a lot of ideas that Charlotte Mason accepted as valuable for young children, and some of them that she dismissed with sharp allusions in her her volumes. In another pamphlet Froebel wrote, called “How Lina Learned to Write and Read,” my shoulders, which were slightly slumping after poring through his bulky letters, perked up a bit. He recommended building the alphabet with sticks outside, which to me, sounded like a fun, Charlotte Mason style way to learn the ABC’s outdoors.

Froebel’s Alphabet Sticks

In “How Lina Learned to Write and Write,” Froebel described a reading instruction method that is pretty different than what Charlotte Mason described. Lina, at the age of six, showed an interest in reading a letter that her father had received. So, her mother took her outside and taught her how to make letters with sticks. Mother taught her each sound in her name at first, and then she made the letter with thin, small sticks. The rest of the process is somewhat similar: she learned an interesting word, like “father” or “mother”, by learning each sound and its symbol, and then writing it with sticks.

While Charlotte Mason thought that reading and writing were a bit more separate than this, I think the process of writing letters with sticks is engaging, low-maintenance (which I always look for!) and can be done nearly anywhere.

Suggestions

Froebel recommended using thin sticks for this process. We have a pretty silver maple tree, and the smaller branches are perfect for this. We’ve also collected willow boughs before, and their flexible branches would work well for alphabet sticks, too.

Letters with straight lines (like H and T) are the obvious choices when building letters with sticks, but Froebel recommended using a thumbnail to pierce a thin stick to make it bend easily to build letters with curved lines, like R and P. You could even get creative and add in little pebbles or the flexible stems of ubiquitous dandelions. Instead of introducing an entire word and its letters all at once as Froebel recommended, choose a letter that represents the beginning of a familiar word, and introduce it. Teaching an entire word’s worth of letters is a little more ambitious than Charlotte Mason’s approach!

Miss H and I built some letters on the ground, as Froebel mentioned, but we also tied some of the letters together with twine. She had fun playing with the letters for a few days!

When to Start

You can introduce this activity when your child shows interest in letters, although it is probably best with children at least three years and older. Your littlest children can join in too, like mine did! He loved rearranging the sticks for me 🙂

 

Why I Love This

I’m always on the search for ideas that fit with Charlotte Mason’s methods. This stood out to me for a few reasons. 1) H and I have done something very similar to this before. She had a ton of fun with it, and it was a natural, by the way learning experience. 2) It’s outside! Anything that we can do outside always has the added benefit of appealing to all the senses.

Other Ideas for Learning the ABC’s Outdoors

  • Shadow letters: Why not get creative, and make letters with stick shadows? See if your little ones can experiment with holding up multiple sticks to make shadow letters.
  • Mud drawing: When it’s muddy outside, use sticks to write letters in the mud.
  • Stick hunt: Sometimes sticks just naturally look like letters. What kind of stick shapes can you find? (We’ve found Y, L, etc.)
  • Twine sticks: Wrap your alphabet sticks in twine so they keep their shape. Connect the two sticks by wrapping the twine around them several times, and then tying a knot.

Froebel's Alphabet Sticks: Outdoor ABC's ideas for preschoolers.

 

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