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'Treatment'
When my son has an 'owie'--the kind that requires love, but no medical attention--he gets the 'treatment'. Here it is (you'll have to imagine the motions):
A circle on the forehead,
A circle on the chest,
A kiss on the cheek,
A kiss on the beak,
Give him a smile--
And he'll be better in a while
This poem works like a charm, every time. Sometimes I prescribe two for good measure.
Anecdote: "Zert zert zert"
We recently, against my better judgement, employed the dessert tactic as a means to encourage broccoli consumption by our son, now 24 months.
Tonight after dinner, he bounced out of his chair, grinning, face still covered with sauce, calling "Zert! Zert! Zert!" ad infinitum. He had been a good eater, so I caved.
"What kind of dessert do you want?" I asked.
His face began to assume that excitedly twitchy toddler look as he considered his options. As he made up his mind, his smile broadened deeper.
"GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN" he burst, bubbling over with anticipation so palpable he was shaking.
I paused, puzzled, decoding his request.
"You want green dessert?" He nodded. "Green??" I probed again, trying to imagine what I was going to dose with food coloring. Marshmallow? Graham cracker?
And then I remembered the Odwalla Superfood ice cream we made together. It was almost green.
"GEEEEN CEEEEEEEEM!!!" he bellowed as I brought out his tiny helping.
Amazing. Sugar is much more powerful than I had ever imagined.
Oh God, I hope my adorable, innocent toddler was trying to say 'fix', and not what he just said twenty times in a row.
Cleaning Up
Learning to keep things clean and tidy is an important lesson best taught early, so why sully a toddler's yearning desire to be helpful by forcing them to settle for fake toy vaccuum cleaners and brooms?
A lobby broom ($6) and an adjusted Carpet Sweeper ($20-30) are great companions in the playroom, and effective too. He'll love watching bits get 'sucked' up into his 'vacuum cleaner'--and as a bonus: it isn't pink.
The lobby broom height is just right for toddlers, but the carpet sweeper will need adjusting. The one pictured is from Casabella and was packaged with a handle in three parts for ease of shipping. With the center section removed, it's just right for little ones.
Book Tie-In: Although it is out of print, a copy of 'Good Teddy', by Juliet Bawden and Helen Pask, might go a long way. Teddy cleans the house one board page at a time: "Good Teddy!" Afterwards, he earns a well-deserved rest. "Well done, Teddy!"
Vancouver, WA Public Library
The end of July saw the opening of one of the coolest play places in the Portland Metro Area--In Vancouver, WA! The new downtown library plays host to a beautiful new interactive early learning installation that rivals some children's museums! It is worth driving across town for kids under 4 or 5.
The children's early learning section was built by a specialty company called Burgeon Group, LLC, and is their largest installation to date. Among kinetic sculptures, hiding places, and room dividers you will find scores of built-in activities, hidden widgets, and wisdom for both parent and child.
Get three or more kids together to operate a cooperative musical instrument, hide out in a giant translucent teepee decorated with constellations, construct any letter of the alphabet in the Letter Factory, or plant a felt garden--the list goes on.
Top it off with gorgeous modern architecture in a dazzling new facility, and you have a whole day of activities planned. Don't forget to take a moment to enjoy the stunning view off the fifth floor terrace before you leave.
And if you're hitting Vancouver anyway--especially if you have older kids or teens--you might want to chug up Main St. to hit one of Vancouver's gems: Pop Culture, and sample some of their amazing collection of soda pop!
Vancouver Community Library - 901 C St, Vancouver, WA 98660
Find Pop Culture at 1929 Main Street, Vancouver, WA
Images reblogged from the The Oregonian and The Columbian
Odwalla Ice Cream
Beware: This is in no way healthful snacking, but if you or your kids are going to eat ice cream, at least it packs a couple of vitamins and some probiotics! I used Odwalla Superfood. The finished product comes out with an unusual sweet, tangy, fruity flavor and a smooth consistency.
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 can full Odwalla Juice Smoothie (~14 oz)
1 can full nonfat Greek style yogurt (or plain yogurt) (~14 oz)
Mix ingredients together until smooth and add to ice cream maker. Harden up the finished product in the freezer. Easy and YUMMY!
Book Recommendation: Home-Grown
Here is a picture book that will help your child understand where food comes from, whether you're starting your own garden or not!
Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert. Join a family as they plant seeds, water, wait, harvest, and cut up veggies--and finish up with a pot of vegetable soup! This book is perfect for kids with picky palates!
Music Exercises for Toddlers
Finding C
If you have a piano or keyboard instrument in your home, and you are not too concerned about your toddler damaging it to let them touch it, you might be happy to find out that teaching a toddler to find middle C is nowhere near impossible. In fact, it is quite simple: it only requires some repetitive encouragement.
Try to wait for a moment when your toddler is itching to touch an instrument, never drag them to the piano. Play the note and sing along with it, monotone, with a fun rhythm: "Here is a C can you sing the note C" or "Can you find the note C next to two black keys". As your child plays notes, sing the note name along with them in pitch, and applaud when they find C. It's that easy!
Once they've found C, ask if they can find another note C!
Of course, once you sense the tide turning against you, don't push back. Your little one will get it eventually.
No piano? No problem. The folks at childandme.com recommended this glockenspiel. It is tuned well, solid, and we love it! My son has been banging on it since 5 months.
Fingerpainting
I remember fingerpainting in preschool, but never in my home as a child. To my mother the inherent mess of this activity was an aberration, and did not fit into her definition of childhood play.
It is no surprise then that finger paints were among the first of the art supplies I purchased for my son, when he was not yet a year old. I may have bought them the same day that I bought crayons.
Want to keep down the mess? Here's the layout.
One standard 72" Vinyl Shower Curtain
Finger paints
Large white paper (try plastic lined freezer paper)
Tape
Divided plastic plate
1 clean rag for cleanup.
Find a nice open space and lay out the shower curtain on the floor, then tape the paper down in the center of the shower curtain. This keeps the paper in one place and away from carpet and the furniture. Most importantly, this keeps your little one's excited movements from merely pushing the paper around.
Squeeze a few teaspoons of each primary finger paint color into the available divisions in the plate. Choosing a white plate will help make color mixing a more visually interesting experience.
Strip your child down to just a diaper, or if you think s/he will be too cold, put on a smock. Old button down shirts on backwards work well. However, my son did get paint all over his feet, knees, and chest, so make sure whatever clothes your child is wearing will go directly into the washing machine.
Make sure you have one clean rag on hand close by for cleanup. Moisten it with very warm-hot water in advance (since it will get time to cool).
Stay with your child the whole time. The very instant that the fingerpaints start to lose the child's interest, scoop them up into the bath. If you miss this window, you may have paint covered projectile of a toddler on your hands. Once in the bath, point to the water and show them how the paint dissolves on contact. Talk about how the water washes the paint away with a tone of wonder and excitement, and your child will be so fascinated that they will have forgotten they didn't want a bath.
Why the Age Recommendations?
I don't believe in age recommendations on toys. Here's why: the primary concern of a large toy manufacturer is not your child's physical or mental development--their primary concern is selling goods for profit. That is not to say that they are not concerned with making quality products or making challenging, developmentally stimulating toys, either.
Think about how products come to be. Marketing teams analyze a target demographic and set product design specifications for products long before a product reaches 'high volume' manufacturing. That means the demographic often leads design specifications! Look carefully--most age suggestions land at '3+'. This is not an accident, age 3 is the trailing edge of a developmental demographic. Product slated for younger ages must be nearly edible, and the investment in manufacturing must be countered by the potential for loss--which usually comes in the form consumer recalls or legal entanglements. Toys targeted for children over the age of three then offer two benefits for the manufacturer: less restriction on design and dramatically lowered risk of expensive recalls.
If a toy is not targeted for a child under three it is simply not worth it to the manufacturer to assume the risk that an under 3 label represents. This is how you end up with shape sorters labelled '3+'. What's the problem with my 6 month old playing with a box of blocks? Nothing.
I never let the label think for me--it is simply a guide. I try to consider the reasoning behind the marketing division's decision: was the decision motivated by small parts or materials, or was it simply geared for a target demographic?
I look for suffocation or choking hazards and consider the suitability of the mode of play for my son's ability. Most toys have suitable alternative modes of play for younger children (a shape sorter becomes just a colorful box of blocks to a 6 month old, for instance). If I give my son a toy outside the printed age range, I always supervise his play. If I have identified some choking hazard, I simply ensure that the toy is always put away on a high shelf after carefully supervised use.
I have found my son enjoys and plays appropriately with toys that are meant for 4 year olds. He shape sorted, operated latches, and used thin crayons and play dough at a mere 12-18 months. We have had much longer use of our toys as a result of these decisions as well, since some toys continue to be interesting as he identifies their intended purpose.
This, of course, my personal opinion, not 'expert' advice. That said, I would not trust the legal or marketing departments of a toy manufacturer to know what's best for my son or what he is developmentally ready for.
Book Recommendations: For the wheel-lover
Who doesn't love wheels?
Machines At Work by Byron Barton: This exceptional book tells a detailed story despite its minimalist style. From demolition to construction, help your child learn about the functions of some big machinery, the roles of the workers, and the sequence of the work. The illustrations are crisp and bold, but not over-symbolized in a way that loses their essence.
Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go Richard Scarry is a children's literature legend, and this book is a beautiful collection of whimsical images of animals driving in cars and operating machines. Full of labelled pictures of different automobiles, this book teaches language, tells two stories at once, and even provides a game. Be careful, your toddler may never let you shelve this again! With new surprises on every page, it is stimulating enough that it may not be the best choice for a bedtime story.
Secret Squirrel Parks: Finding Corporate Greenspaces
If you ever find you want something more like a nature hike for your toddler than a swingset, consider this:
Many corporate business parks manage green spaces on their property. Without really trying very hard, you can find a private, underutilized trail that is short, well managed, and visually appealing. Try using Google Earth to 'fly over' business parks near your home, keeping in mind that complexes near creeks may be a safer bet. These also happen to be fertile locales for geocaching, so you can use those coordinates to help you find business park nature trails as well. The walks you'll come across are usually very short, and the paths are well maintained to attract lessors.
When you visit, remember that you are probably on private property. Just you and your toddler quietly walking through the woods will probably not cause any alarm, but act graciously to anyone you encounter.
Keep a lookout for goats! Recently some of the corporate business parks around Portland have been employing herds of goats to knock back their blackberry problems. If you're lucky, you might find some munching away!
Fingerpaint Paper
Reynolds Wrap Freezer Paper is plastic lined, so fingerpaints and watercolor stay put and don't soak through and tear. At around $5 per 18 in. x 75 ft. roll, it undersells your average purpose-built fingerpainting paper. As an added plus, it should fit those paper dispensers you have seen marketed for little artists.
Our Kid's Vitamins
We're fans of dietary supplementation, and this is how we finally settled on going about it now that we're halfway through his second year:
For a daily multi, we chose Trader Joe's Children's Chewable Vitamins after some deliberate label reading. This brand is not sweetened with artificial sweeteners, unlike our pals--the Flintstones.
Our health care providers recommended Nordic Naturals Children's DHA. If cod liver oil is a better DHA supplement, this cod liver oil might be the best. From Nordic Naturals own site: "Every batch of Nordic Naturals products is third-party tested for environmental toxins including heavy metals, dioxins, and PCBs, ensuring that every product exceeds international pharmaceutical standards and is at least 750 times purer than fish. Nordic Naturals was ranked #1 out of the top 10 fish oil brands in Norway for freshness, purity, and highest concentration."
Molasses is the product of boiling the remnants of sugar refining, and is a pleasant tasting source of several nutrients: namely iron, calcium, potassium and magnesium. Blackstrap packs the biggest nutritional punch, but any molasses will bring some dietary supplementation. It's great for dosing a peanut butter sandwich or some yogurt. 1 adult serving Brer Rabbit Full flavor (1 tbsp.) contains Calcium - 10%; Iron 15%; Magnesium 20%;
Wheat Germ contains more nutrients per ounce than any other vegetable or grain. Sprinkled on cereal or in yogurt, it provides a food source of Vitamin E, folate (folic acid), phosphorus, thiamin, zinc, magnesium, and essential fatty acids. It can go rancid, so we store in the freezer. Kretchmer brand, from Quaker, is toasted for added flavor.
Flaxseed Meal contains fatty acids, fiber, and micronutrients. We choose Bob's Red Mill Flaxseed Meal, which is ground, for better absorption. We keep it in the freezer and don't overdo it: it can have a laxative effect.
Weekend Out: Astoria's Bicentennial
Looking for something fun to do with your kids this weekend? The tall ships Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftan will be helping Astoria celebrate its Bicentennial, May 19-22, 2011. Free tours will be given by costumed crewmen between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., May 21, and 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. May 22. Ticketed excursions are available.
There will also be lots of sights and sounds suitable for little ones. Check out the Bicentennial schedule to plan your day.
Painting Paper
Try using Reynolds Plastic Coated Freezer Paper instead of plain paper for your child's messier watercolor and fingerpainting endeavors. The plastic coating prevents the liquid content of the paint from dissolving the paper. An 18", 75ft roll costs around $5 and will fit nicely on a paper dispenser over a table.
Celery Smiles
Here is a bite-sized snack reminiscent of ants on a log. Clean two stalks of celery, peeled from the same side of the heart so that they nestle well against each other (like smiling lips). Halve them and match the thinner side of one stalk with the wider side of the other and vice versa. Sandwich with peanut butter and slice into 'smiles'.