Physical Development
After making the Pumpkin Patch craft, we had lots of extra pumpkins so we continued the pumpkin theme in our crafts. In this post we’ll be showing you
- Five Little Pumpkins
- Make Your Own Pumpkins Faces
- Pumpkin Ring Toss Game
- Pick the Pumpkins Quiet Book
Five Little Pumpkins
This is my favorite Halloween finger play. I love the board book illustrated by Dan Yaccarino, who’s got to be one of my favorite children’s book illustrators. I finally bought the book this year since our library here doesn’t have it. We used the pumpkins while we read the book. The first time through we took away a pumpkin for each pumpkin in the book and then the next time we put one pumpkin back as we read about each one. Sammi loved this and we read the book several times with the pumpkins. The pumpkins are fun all on their own with out the book.
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate
The first one says, “Oh my, it’s getting late.”
The second one says, “There are witches in the air.”
The third one says, “But we don’t care.”
The fourth one says, “Let’s run and run and run.”
The fifth one says, “I’m ready for some fun.”
Oooo went the wind and out went the light.
And five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.
Make Your Own Pumpkin Faces
Sammi's faces are on the left. My example faces are on the right.
With another set of pumpkins we added cut out shapes to make faces. I cut out triangles, squares, ovals and different mouth shapes. Then I arranged them on the pumpkins to show Sammi what a pumpkin face looked like. Then I took the shapes off and helped her build her own pumpkin faces. We’ve been working a lot on emotions: happy, sad, angry and afraid; so we made a face for each emotion (2 for happy, of course!) Then Sammi glued the pieces on all by herself. I really had to let go of the finished product and let her do it how she wanted. She did a good job, I thought.
Pumpkin Ring Toss Game
We did a Fall Festival Trick or Treat at Brent’s school this last weekend. We decided instead of just having candy, we wanted to have games for the little ones to play so that it was more fun for them. Admittedly, there aren’t an awful lot of medical students with children so we wanted the few who came to have a lot to do! And we wanted it to be interesting for the students themselves who came. So we made this ring toss game. I saw this idea on an old school Reading Rainbow episode. (I sure miss that show.)
We covered a box with orange construction paper. Then I printed off the face from here and colored it in with yellow and black. On the other side, my crafting buddy, Holly, painted vines and leaves. She also painted the craft sticks green, with a shade of green we mixed ourselves for the occasion. When the sticks were dry we taped them with purple duct tape inside the box. Then we cut out rings from sour cream lids. The kids, and even adults, had fun tossing the rings onto the sticks. They were then able to reach into the box and grab their candy.
Pick the Pumpkins Quiet Book
This last activity I’m really happy with. It turned out better than I imagined it would. It sort of developed as I started to put it together. The pumpkins are sitting in the pumpkin patch. You pull the pumpkin out of its pocket and place it on a hay bale on the opposite side to decorate them for fall.
- I used an old cereal box for the pages. I duct taped the two pieces together to form the book. I covered up the duct tape in the inside with brown construction paper.
- I used the smallest size pumpkins that we had.
- I first created the pumpkin patch on a piece of brown construction paper. I used a brown marker to draw the patch and the lines where the pumpkins would slide into their pockets.
- To create the pockets I painted glue on the back side leaving boxes with no glue under the lines that allow half the pumpkin to slide into the pocket.
- Then I put a piece of tape over the line and used an exacto-knife to cut just the construction paper along the line. This created the opening of the pocket.
- On the opposite page I wrote out the instructions then glued six rectangles of brown felt for the hay bales.
- I finished decorating the pages with stickers of leaves and other fall things.
- Then I glued smaller squares of felt onto the backs of the pumpkins so they would stick to the hay.
I was thrilled that Sammi enjoyed it. She loved pulling out the pumpkins and putting them on the hay. She even got that each hay bale got one pumpkin. She could even put the pumpkins back into their pumpkin patch pockets all by herself. Yippee! I was hesitant to let Elli touch it since I didn’t get any of it laminated and I was worried she’d do a number on those little pumpkins. But I decided to be brave and let her give it a go. She loved it too. And she was fairly gentle with the pumpkins. A double success! And it made for a nice activity at church yesterday.
We had lots of fun with pumpkins this week. Now it’s on to bats and ghosts. I have some fun ideas we’ll show you all about once we’ve tried them out. Happy Halloween (uh, in about two weeks!)
Update: Click for more pumpkin crafts, activities and our favorite book!
Sammi’s Pumpkin Patch
Pumpkin Patch Craft
We had so much fun with our last pumpkin activity that we were anxious to make another pumpkin patch craft. I downloaded the pumpkin from Family Crafts and then printed it in different sizes. We then painted the pumpkins with our own version of orange and hung them to dry.
After they dried, we cut them out. - I took a brown piece of construction paper and used a brown marker to draw a pumpkin patch (a box with rows).
- Then Sammi used a glue stick to glue her pumpkins into the patch.
- We used a green marker to draw vines connecting the pumpkins. I added the little curlies.
- Then I found some cute Halloween stickers to complete the picture.
We kicked it up a notch
We couldn’t use just any orange to paint the pumpkins! No, we had to mix out own. Sammi loves mixing colors. I added red and yellow to a plastic plate and let her mix them together. She said it looked like ketchup and mustard. I printed the pumpkins on cardstock so they’d hold up a little better to Sammi’s vigorous painting.
She loved painting and mixing so much that when the pumpkins were done, she mixed a few more colors and made a lovely brown. Then, while I was rinsing brushes, she proceeded to paint her hand and make handprints on the butcher paper protecting the table. Thank goodness for butcher paper!
I’m working on another idea for the rest of the pumpkins. It involves the poem Five Little Pumpkins which is a favorite around here along with a few other ideas. Once we wrap up the pumpkins, I think it’s on to bats.
What Halloween crafts do you love?
I listened in awe as my friend described watching her son experience a night terror. It gave me chills to think of seeing one of my own girls in a night terror and being helpless in stopping it or comforting her. She described it such (this is a paraphrase):
We had gone to the high school football game and so the boys went to bed late. Then after just an hour or so, he (the younger about 20 months) started screaming. We went to his room and tried to calm him down. His eyes were glossed over. He was not responding to anything we said or did. His body was completely limp.
After a little bit we finally got him to wake up. But he seemed out of it. It took about a half hour before he could move his arms. We tried to hand him his pacifier and he raised his arm, but aimed low. He kept reaching for it and missing.
We packed up the boys and took him to the emergency room. After waiting a very long time, they were finally seen by the doctor. By then he had pretty much returned to normal. We explained the episode to the doctor. He quickly diagnosed it as a night terror and sent us on our way. He spent less than a minute looking at our son and then left.
They felt so unsatisfied by the doctor’s evaluation that they were sharing their story in the hopes of understanding better what happened to their young son. After speaking with a professor at the medical school, they were reassured that it was a night terror and that it didn’t harmful to their son.
I felt for my friend and the fear she encountered during this experience. I did a little research of my own and found some interesting information on night terrors and how to reduce the risk of night terrors recurring.
- Evaluate whether there’s stress in your child’s life. The emotion of stress can build up and then manifest itself as a night terror.
- Ensure your child is getting enough sleep. Lack of sleep seems to trigger night terrors. In fact, it is the most common trigger.
- Develop a consistent sleep routine. Stick with a consistent time to go to bed then prepare for bedtime with the same activities each night. These help soothe the child, releasing any stress from the day and get them in a comfortable mood for bed.
- Offer a balanced, nutritious diet. Getting a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains and proteins will help the body stay balanced which in turn helps your child navigate other stresses successfully.
One last note on night terrors. The easiest way to distinguish between a night terror and a nightmare is that a night terror usually occurs at the beginning of the night when the child has only been asleep for an hour or so. Nightmares typically occur closer to morning after a full night’s sleep.
The standard education parents get about how much their children should eat goes something like this: “They will eat until they’re full.” So, based on that I kept giving my oldest food as long as she kept eating. After her third or fourth helping I started to wonder if she’d ever get full! She has also consistently been in the 99th percentile for weight (and, fortunately the 95-98th percentile for height) so I’ve had to re-evaluate the standard education because my daughter is not standard. She’s a bottomless pit!
All day long she asks, “Can I have a snack?” I seriously regret ever using the word snack in the first place. Although I’m sure something else would have taken its place. So I am constantly trying to create ways to lengthen snack time and choose snacks that are filling but lower in calories. Here are some solutions that have worked for us and are quite fun, too!
To lengthen snack time I look for ways to prolong the eating. This gives her tummy a chance to tell her brain she’s full. I keep anything that has small sections, like an egg carton. I cut it down so it only has 4 or 6 sections. Then I put a couple of each snack into a compartment. For example, I put 2-3 grapes in one, 2 pretzels in another, her chewable vitamins in a third, 3-4 dried blueberries in the fourth. She gets really excited watching me put the snack tray together. Then we sit down at the table and visit as she eats. I ask her questions and help her remember to swallow before talking. We talk about what she’ll choose next, what she likes most, what color the snacks are, how many are in each, how many different snacks, etc.
Sammi’s all-time favorite, though, is Easter egg hunting. The Easter eggs from last year have been a regular toy around our house. I fill each egg with just 2 of a snack. Then I hide the eggs around the room, give Sammi a basket and let her find them. If I really want to drag it out, I only let her eat one egg then we hide them all again. We continue hiding/finding until either she’s bored or the eggs are all empty. While this is a ton more work and I don’t always feel like it, it has been a great way to slow down her eating and get her moving in the meantime.
Here’s to fun, healthy snack times everywhere!
The photo-elusive (took 23 pics to get this one!) Elli has picked up a new trick this week. She has started standing up from a squatted position. Last week she stood up holding on to me and then let go for a few milliseconds, but this week it’s entirely about balance!
The first time she stood for a long time she happened to have a pair of child-safety scissors in her hand. I know, I know, I’ll have to review my own guidelines for teaching children how to use scissors. I was so excited to see how long she could stand without losing her balance, but I was also worried about hose scissors. In the end I didn’t disturb her and just waited for her to sit again before I promptly removed the scissors from her hand. I wasn’t about to run for the camera at that point!
This morning we made a stop at the Harrogate City Hall (I’ll explain that in a future post) and the two gals that were there thought Elli was just so cute. So to get their attention, Sammi started telling them how Elli is learning to stand. She did a perfect re-enactment that made us all smile. Then Elli caught wind of what was going on so she promptly joined the attention seeking and started to stand up. She did it great the first time. The gals oohed and ahed which encouraged Elli to do it again. She had such a grand time that she kept losing her balance as she giggled and hid her head in the floor. It was performance at its best!
While this is probably the norm (to stand before walking) it’s a new development path in this house. When Sammi was about 14 months she started walking. I remember starting to wonder if Sammi would really ever walk. She seemed so old and so heavy! But she did it. The first time we left her with a sitter, no less. But she propelled herself by momentum. If she lost her balance or ran out of steam, she fell right over. She didn’t learn how to just stand until she’d been walking for well over a week. However children do it and whenever they decide it’s time, they’ll get it eventually!
The GNO Party this week on Twitter was fantastic. I love living in Eastern time because the girls are sound asleep by the time the party starts. Mom It Forward knows how to throw a party! The topic was Affordable Fun 101: Kids Crafts and Ideas. This was right up my alley so I was honored to be a part of the panel.
A few ideas that received a lot of attention are things we do around here so I thought I’d share. Today’s idea involves butcher paper, your child’s body and crayons/markers/colored pencils. Easy peasy, right?
Now to get down to business. Have your child lie down on the butcher paper. Then trace around your child with a crayon/marker/colored pencil. After you’ve traced the whole body, have the child color in clothes, hair, facial features, or Sammi’s favorite, finger and toe nails.
Variations/Extensions
Several party-goers offered great ideas on how they adapted this concept with their little ones.
- The original idea was brought up by Workingmomma247: “I have had my 5yr old lay down on butcher paper to outline his body and he colored the rest.”
- From Momof3boys3702 comes this extension: “We are doing Biology this year and I was thinking of doing that and having him draw his organs in correctly.”
- And Brunette01 came up with this variation with her daughter: “I helped my DD do cut-outs of everyone in the family to add to her bedroom wall. All her idea. It’s awesome
” - We had Sammi trace around Elli and around Daddy. Daddy was a lot more cooperative
As you can see, Sammi is turning into a lefty! This fun idea also gives little ones time to practice fine motor skills. Sammi is learning to control her hand better and the pencil as she traces around body parts. Going in between fingers is still hard for her, but when she’s done, you can tell which body part she traced! She now loves to trace her own hand. And then “paint” the fingernails.
And to continue, from yesterday, with things to remember about three year olds (and probably all children): Never attempt to do a project, even if it’s fun, between bath time and bedtime. Especially if you want pictures that are halfway cute. It’s not a pretty picture. I don’t recommend doing it!
I think I mentioned that Brent joined the Air Force and was at Officer Training for a month before we moved to TN. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did: here, here and here. With that at the front of my thoughts and experiences, I jumped at the news that Sweethearts (my absolute FAVORITE conversation hearts) was releasing a new line called Red, White and You to honor the military and celebrate America’s patriotism.
The hearts are red, white and blue with patriotic sayings such as “Miss You,” “Proud of You,” and “Home Safe.” The blue ones are blueberry flavored, which I really enjoyed. We had lots of fun trying to decide what to do with our candy hearts. We shared some of them with friends at the 4th of July cookout. A few of the other medical school students here at LMU-DCOM are also in the Air Force and enjoyed the hearts.
In the end, Sammi and I decided to make and decorate a cake. We made two cakes, an “X” and an “O” to show hugs and kisses for Daddy. Placing the small candy hearts on the cake was good practice for her growing fine motor skills. She was able to place all of the hearts “correctly” the first time, meaning she was pleased with where they went and how it looked. It’s fun to see her developing into such a capable child. I hardly had to oversee her in this project. When I get too involved, she’s quick to remind me, “I can do it myself, Mommy!” Or if I’m really intruding, “I can do it myself, Amber!”
She was also very careful to place the hearts so the words were showing every single time. I didn’t even ask her to make that distinction. She’s definitely showing literacy awareness.
The United Service Organizations (USO) offers a great little packet of craft ideas using the Red, White and You candies. You can download the packet here. Also, through the rest of this month you can donate to the USO to sponsor a care package sent to a deployed service man or woman which will include the Red, White and You candies.
First an explanation and apology: So Brent’s been gone about 2 weeks now at training for the Air Force. Before he left I thought it would be great to use the time in the evening after the girls were in bed to blog, catch up on reading and get the house work done. Maybe even some of my sewing projects, too! That was so naive! The truth, I’ve been completely exhausted and when I sit down, I have the hardest time getting back up again. I’ve completely lost my stamina and I feel like my brain shuts off at 8:10 when the girls are finally asleep. Ugh. It’s been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I apologize for not posting more regularly the last couple of weeks. My goal is to be better! But, we’re also moving in three weeks so I’m working on packing up the house.
Just as not all children crawl at the same age, not all children crawl the same way! The standard image of crawling is the baby on hands and knees with belly lifted off the ground. Other forms of crawling include the army crawl where the baby sprawls on the floor and uses arm strength to pull his body along; the scoot where the baby is in a sitting position and scoots her body to her feet then extends the feet out and scoots the body again; the hand-foot crawl where the baby moves along on hands and feet instead of knees. Most babies perfect one or more of these forms of movement before learning to walk.
It’s vitally important to note, though, that crawling is NOT a standard developmental milestone. It’s perfectly acceptable for babies to bypass the standard image of crawling all together and get right to walking. I have heard tell that babies who don’t crawl but go straight to walking are poor readers. From the academic research I found, that information is not supported. I did find some rather interesting stuff, though!
Crawling is a complex system of movement. Babies must learn and master a long list of skills before finally figuring out how to put them all together to crawl. Obviously babies must learn how to hold their head up and how to get up on their hands and knees. But they also must learn how to rock back and forth while on their hands and knees. Finally, they need to learn how to move opposite arms and legs simultaneously, i.e., right arm out with left leg back. This skill is learned and improved as babies learn to reach for objects and begin to realize they can move their whole body in order to reach a desired object.
Once babies learn to sit, they pick up on clues about depth perception in their surrounding environment. When children have been sitting alone for a while, they are able to make good decisions about how far to reach for objects and whether they should reach for objects across an open space. When babies become crawlers, they have to relearn the appropriate clues to depth at this new level. That’s why new or inexperienced crawlers will crawl right off the edge of the bed or stairs after an object (or an older sister like Elli did earlier this week!) With practice, though, babies learn what’s safe and what’s not. The next time Elli approached the stairs she backed up, sat up and looked at me for help! They learn so fast.
The opening topic of a junior-level university lecture I attended was “How to Calm a Crying Baby.” I chuckled as I recalled all the times my babies have fussed and I’d tried everything I could think of to calm them down. My babies love to be swaddled and to be rocked. Of course both of those were on the list along with diaper changes, feedings, singing, pacifiers, and changing positions of the baby.
I was beginning to wonder if this lecture would be worth my time when the instructor went off on a tangent about rocking. He shared some pretty interesting information that I thought I’d pass along. First, mothers rock their infants at the same rate of speed at which they walk. Since rocking is a familiar motion to babies from their in utero experience, it only makes sense that they would be most calmed by being rocked at the same speed at which their mothers walk. What I find more fascinating is that mothers unknowingly rock their babies as fast (or as slowly) as they walk. And yet, that is precisely the most calming speed for their babies. Which also explains why mothers seem to have “a knack” for calming their babies faster than anyone else. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve refrained from offering to take a crying baby. I’m pretty good with my own kids, usually, but that doesn’t mean I’m a super-comforter!
The second tangent about rocking showed how rocking is important and necessary for baby’s development. The rocking motion helps a baby organize the vestibular system which controls equilibrium, or balance. As a baby is rocked, the fluids in the inner ear move around which triggers the vestibular system to action. While the baby is calmed and rocked to sleep, this system is hard at work practicing communicating to the brain all the information gathered about the baby’s balance. I love this because all the times I’ve just sat and rocked my babies, ignoring chores, ringing phones, and errands, are completely justified because I was promoting my babies’ development. The next time the current baby insists I drop everything and rock her, I will remind myself it’s as important as tummy time to help her development.
I recently learned that children between 3 1/2 and 4 years of age go through a major physical development stage which leaves them awkward and clumsy until they get a handle on their new skills by about age 4. I was thinking about that in relation to rocking. It leads me to believe that rocking continues to be a necessary part of how we interact with our little ones. And it’s not always the calm, rocking-to-sleep motion; it doesn’t always happen in a rocking chair. Often Sammi and I “rock” when we dance together or she bounces on my leg or a variety of other times when we are physically close and moving together.
I love the warm weather and the chance to get outside and play! One of Sammi’s favorite outside games from last summer is blowing bubbles. When we first got bubbles, she was content to let us blow them and she’d chase them down and pop them. But very quickly she wanted to be in charge of the bubbles! She worked so hard one day until she was able to blow bubbles out of the bubble wand. Once the cold weather came back, we found a way to bring the bubbles indoors with us. We have a medium-sized rug in the living room that Sammi can blow bubbles on. As soon as she steps off the rug, though, we put the bubbles away. It only took her a few times of not watching where she was going that she figured out how to stay on the rug so she could blow her bubbles.
It takes an awful lot of coordination to actually blow a bubble, successfully! First, little ones need to grasp the wand, put it in the bubble bottle and take it out. That’s fairly easy for a child who’s 18 months or older. Next they have to figure out how to hold the wand close to their mouth without touching their mouth. This was THE hardest part for Sammi. I kept a damp washcloth with us to wipe her mouth off periodically so she wouldn’t have the icky soap flavor on her lips. Finally little ones need to control the shape of their mouth at the same time they are blowing air out. This took lots of modeling for Sammi to get the hang of. It’s taken her months to be able to blow air with any force.
With how difficult it is to successfully blow a bubble, I’m surprised that anyone would stick with it! But, the activity itself is so rewarding for little ones that they keep going despite the setbacks. This is learning at it’s best!
If that wasn’t enough to get you outside blowing bubbles with your little ones, here’s an interesting connection between blowing bubbles and language development: In 2006 researchers reported that children who could blow bubbles, lick their lips and pretend tend to have an easier time learning language! Read more about the study here and here. Also, check out these 10 ways to use bubbles for language development.
Have you entered the giveaway for tickets to the Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum? Click here to learn more and enter! Giveaway ends May 26.
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