Photos: Create Memories & Build LANGUAGE!

We all know that blogging is a way to share our stories, our lives, our joys and sorrows and our beliefs with others. It keeps family and friends near and far entwined in our daily lives.

While visiting both Sarah and Suzy, I was amazed at the joy their boys had when reviewing the blog photos.  Pictures of a petting zoo experience came alive again as animal sounds and descriptive words came flowing out.  Pictures of an afternoon of swimming and pool basketball brought about lots of exciting conversation.  When we look at photos we have the opportunity to relive the experience.  Our senses come alive!  We can feel the wool on the sheep and the fur on the bunnies.  We can remember the cheering and excitement of jumping in the water and making a basket in the pool basketball game.  Every experience is a learning experience even when it is repeated and relived by looking at photos.

When you "relive" the experience with your children through photos, give them words.  STRETCH their vocabulary with positional words, such as "The cow is in front of the duck" etc.  Describe the way the animals felt, the way the flowers in the garden smelled, the taste of the blueberries you took on the picnic, etc.  They are building their vocabulary, their comprehension and are learning to "read" pictures. Most of all they are becoming story tellers and will soon be able to put their stories on paper.  Who knows?  They may be a published author one day!

Now, if you are more like me and not as tech savvy or use your computer strictly for "grown ups" here are a few easy and very inexpensive ideas to chronicle your family's life...create memories and build that language!

Tip #1 Never leave the house without your camera. Remember, everyday is an adventure and memories are being made.  Luckily, with Smart Phones, this is easy!

Tip #2 Snap the pictures!  Don't wait for those perfectly posed moments or you wll never have a finished product.  Just snap!!!!!  The more the better.

Tip #3 Every occassion is a special one.  Whether it is a morning at the park or a trip to the grocery store, turn it into a future learning experience and chronicle it with photos.

Tip#4 Print your photos.  Having them stored in your camera or having rolls of undeveloped film is no good to your child or to you.  PRINT THEM!

Tip #5 Don't store them in a box or toss them in a cabinet (sound familiar kids?) for that time when you will sit down and make those special, beautiful scrapbooks. That time never happened in this house. There are no beautiful scrapbooks, just shoe boxes of photos. I had good intentions though. :)

Tip #6 Go to the Dollar Store and purchase several small individual photo albums. The ones I am thinking of are about the size of a wallet. Fill them up!

Tip #7 You can make your own photo book by taking sandwich size zip lock baggies, put 2 photos back to back in each bag, zip it up and staple or binder ring several together for a photo book. Like So.

Tip #8 Sort the photos and place them in the books by events or outings or days.

Tip #9 Sit and relive the experience with your child. Add more descriptive language each time you "read" the photos.

Tip #10 Simple little photo book are perfect for something familiar or comfortable, when going to nursery or to a friends house.  They are perfect for a car trip or airplane travel, as well.  What a perfect little something to take to bed for nap or night time to recap the day.

Remember, make memories.

~Rita

Tying it all together!

Sometimes, when I was teaching, the best lessons I ever taught were never written down in my plan book. Gasp! I know, right? These lessons would just happen because of the direction my students were going, and I've realize playing with your own children is very very similar!
You don't have to plan, or have all these supplies on hand to make meaningful connections to what you are doing with you kids. You just have to think outside the box a little bit and tie it all together!

For Example:
We played in the 'snow', at my MIL's preschool.

She gave us a bag of sugar cookie mix and a snowman ornament to keep the snow theme going at home.  Well the universe works in amazing ways and that afternoon one of my oldest friends sent me a fun recipe to make snow ball cookies! Ta-Da! (Check out her baking blog, she is pretty good about posting stuff that actually tastes good!)

Picture from:  Kitchen Sweetness 

 I just extended our learning and it literally took no effort on my part, other than grabbing everything out of the pantry! (Not to mention all the fun cooking with mommy brings too!)

Another Extension Example:
We have been reading non-fiction books about zoo animals. I also bought the boys a subscription to Zoobies.  (It is a small, hard paged, short and to the point magazine subscription about one animal each time.)

And, remember our picture cubes from Thanksgiving?  Now they have Eric Carle Animal Cards in them.  The boys find the animals and we say the name and sound that animal makes. I also have certain letters showing on some cubes. Like the letter L for Luke and H for Hudson....

So, no time like the present to take the boys to the Houston Zoo!
So once again, they had all this stuff that we do everyday leading up to the actual real experience of seeing these animals ALIVE!

And my random connection to the zoo:
Some nights after dinner we dance.  Either the radio or whatever CD I have in the player in their room. Tonights CD was the Wiggles.  Hudson kept wanting me to fast forward to the next song and low and behold, we hit the learning jackpot!  The song was called Do the Monkey. (Keep in mind, my kids have no idea who The Wiggles are, or that they make movies, etc. So I made up my own dance moves!!) But it sings about Monkeys, Elephants, and Tigers!
And there you have it, connections being made, talked about, danced around!!!

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Use everyday outings and turn them into something a little more special! ((Like the grocery store; let them pick our some veggies or fruits and go home and let your children help turn it into something yummy! See, this could go on forever!))

I have a few more Valentine ideas too, I will post soon!

Who are you Thankful for?

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, we have been working on recognizing family faces (and names)! This is something you can do at home, and doesn't take much time or effort. We have these fancy store bought cubes:

Fancy picture cubes from Discount School Supply

They are marketed towards infants.... but I can tell you that my boys are 14 months old, and still love them! Each cube comes with a mirror and has 5 slots for pictures. You can put anything in there! We have pictures in ours at the moment. We roll them, find the person I am asking for, and then someone will find the mirror and stare at themselves in it for quite a while..... I'm sure our family can guess who that is!

But I also plan on putting animal flash cards in them, and practice animal sounds/identifying. I saw the Eric Carle Animal Cards at Anthropologie a few weeks ago, but I know you can get similar ones anywhere or print your own!  Then when they get bigger, alphabet picture cards and work on sounds/letter recognition... I mean the uses are endless. One day I'll be tossing the cube and there will be addition facts in there! 

Oh but wait, you say you don't have fancy picture cubes??? Not to worry. Here is a quick way to make your own! Remember learning is about the process, not the product!

Supplies:

Shoe boxes ( I have an abundance of little people shoe boxes, but use whatever size you have.)

Tape or glue

Wrapping Paper (Optional)

Pictures

Sharpie

I have twins, I mentioned that right??  Ha, I think I am really funny, sorry. Here is the simple, fast, your kids are screaming at your feet and you need something quick way to make your own:

Step 1: Tape the lid on your shoe box.

Step 2 and 3: Tape the pictures on and label them.

Teacher tip for the day: Write how you see it in real books!

Capital letter followed by lowercase letters.

I can not tell you how hard it is to break the all caps writing from 5 year olds!

 Fancy, crafty, kids are napping shoe box:

Throw some wrapping paper over it.

 And if you are really fancy... type up the words!

My sister used call me and tell me her kids said they were thankful for me at bed time, it would melt my heart. So each night, before bed and with our prayers, we say who we are thankful for and who we love. We have a really long list. Some nights my husband and I are standing in a dark room over the cribs for a very long time!

Happy Almost Thanksgiving!