The Preschooler’s Busy Book (9 page)

All the balls you can find

Gather together all the balls you can find in your house: tennis balls, soccer balls, basketballs, beach balls, and so on.
Line them up one foot apart and have your child kick each one.
See which one is the easiest to kick, which one goes the farthest, which one goes the highest, and so on.

Sand

Dirt

Water

Bucket

Cake pan or pie plate

Grass or flower petals for decoration

Make some really good mud for your child’s play.
Hand-mix sand, clean dirt, and water in a large bucket.
Keep the mud really thick.
Give your child a cake pan or pie plate and let her make a pie.
Decorate the results of your child’s efforts with grass or flower petals and bake in the sun.

Water balloons, water pistols, garden hose, or tub or pool of water and plastic containers

Using water balloons, water pistols, a garden hose, or a big tub or pool of water and some plastic containers, have a water fight with your child.
Invite some of your child’s friends over for the fun, and serve Popsicles or ice-cream cones afterward.

Notebook

Pen or pencil

Bird book (optional)

Take a nature walk with your child.
Try to notice as many different types of trees, bugs, and birds as you can.
Keep a list of what you see.
If you like, bring colored pencils and let your child draw the things she observes.
If you can’t identify a bug, tree, or bird, or if your child asks questions you can’t answer, write down the item’s description and your child’s questions to look up on your next trip to the library.

Sunscreen

Sun hat

Bag lunch

Juice

Books

Every child should pick berries at least once in her life!
Kids find strawberries the easiest to pick, as they are low to the ground, easy to see, and have no thorns.
Find a farm that allows you to pick your own fruit.
Go early in the day before it gets too hot, and don’t forget the sunscreen and a sun hat.
Most preschoolers won’t last more than half an hour at this, so take lunch, juice, and some books for your child to enjoy in the shade when she tires.
At home, have your child help you wash and hull the berries.
Homemade jam is a marvelous project if you are feeling ambitious.

“I suppose there must be in every mother’s life the inevitable moment when she has to take two small children shopping in one big store.”

—Shirley Jackson

Children just naturally have the desire and the energy to play all the time, but there are times when your child will just have to sit.
It may be a long ride in the car, or at the doctor’s, dentist’s or hairdresser’s, or while you wait for your meal to arrive in a restaurant.
Consider providing your child with his very own take-along Busy Bag (see
page 5
).
No matter where you are or what you do, be prepared with quick, easy activities that require a minimum of props to keep a cranky child busy and calm, and a parent sane.

This is a good game at the dinner table or in the car.
One person starts a story and each person takes a turn continuing it.
You may want to have each person add a sentence, or choose a “pointer” to conduct the story.
The pointer decides who goes next and can stop a person at any time, even in midsentence.
You may want to choose a topic or theme for your story, or leave it completely open and see what kind of nonsense results.

Ask your child to tell you what certain words mean to him.
Pick out everyday words that he has likely heard before.
Some suggestions to get you started: concrete, marriage, retire, divorce, bachelor, anniversary, occasion, special, obedient, country.
You may be surprised to find that some of the words in your child’s vocabulary are something of a mystery to him.
Some of the answers you get will be priceless; write them down for posterity!

Make up riddles about animals, objects, or people for your child to solve.
For an elephant you could say, “I am very large; I have a long trunk; I live in Africa.
What am I?” For a fire truck, you may say, “I am big and red; I have a loud siren; I help put out fires.
What am I?” Describe people by what they do (doctors, nurses, police officers), or friends and family by how they look (tall, wears glasses, long hair).
Be specific to help your child solve the riddle without getting too frustrated.

Choose a familiar story, song, or rhyme that your child has heard often.
Read or recite the story, song, or rhyme, but substitute wrong words or names in obvious places.
For example: “Old MacDonald had a car” or “Mary had a little dog.” Have your child listen for the incorrect words and say “Beep!” when he hears one.

Ask your child silly questions to help him use his imagination and make choices.
For example: “Would you rather be a bird or a cow?
Why?” or “Would you rather be a table or a chair?
Why?” Take turns asking the questions and giving the answers.

Pillowcase or drawstring bag

Small, unbreakable household objects

Place a variety of small, unbreakable household objects inside a bag.
Close the bag so the objects are not visible.
Have your child feel the objects through the bag and guess what they are.

Felt

Pen or marker

Cardboard

Glue

Scissors

Scraps of yarn and fabric

Shoe box

Draw the shape of a person on a square of felt.
The person should have clearly defined arms and legs, with the arms held away from the body.
Glue the felt to a piece of cardboard and cut out the doll.
Glue on yarn for hair, and draw a face with a marker.
To make clothing for the doll, place the doll on scraps of fabric and use a marker to trace around the body.
Cut out the clothes and dress the doll; the cloth will stick to the doll’s felt body.
Store the doll and clothes in a shoebox and take the box with you on long car rides.

Refrigerator magnets, magnet-backed letters, and numbers

Cookie sheet or cake pan

This activity will help keep your little ones busy in the car when going on long trips.
Bring along all the magnetic-backed toys you can find, including refrigerator magnets, magnet-backed letters, numbers, and so on.
Your child can use the magnets to spell words or create pictures on the cookie sheet or cake pan.

Look around you as you wait in a doctor’s office or a restaurant, or as you drive in the car.
Have your child name five things that are blue, red, yellow, and so on.

Shoestring licorice

Cereal or crackers with holes in the middle

Tie a knot at one end of a piece of shoestring licorice (or a plain piece of string).
Show your child how to thread cereal or crackers with holes in them on the string, and then tie both ends together into a knot.
The end result will amuse your child for quite some time.
In the grocery store, he can eat one piece each time you put something in the cart; in the car, he can eat one piece each time he sees a dog or a red car.

Shoe box

Felt

Flannel scraps

Scissors

Cover the top of a shoe box with felt to make a small flannel board.
Cut colored flannel scraps into various sizes and shapes, such as animals, cars, people, circles, squares, or triangles, or try letters and numbers if you feel ambitious.
Store the pieces in the box and take it along on your next car trip.
Your child can form designs or words on the top of the shoe box using the cut-out pieces.

“… children must be ready to learn from the first day of school.
And of course, preparing children for school is a historic responsibility of parents.”

—George Bush

Parents have few responsibilities more important or more rewarding than helping their child to learn.
As a parent, you are your child’s first and most important teacher.
Children generally learn what adults around them value, and you can use your daily activities to informally teach your children about reading, math, geography, and science, among other things.
Children are naturally curious, and there is much you can do to advance their knowledge in these academic areas.
The activities in this chapter will help you provide opportunities for your child to understand the connection between academic knowledge and the skills you use every day at home and at work.

During the preschool years, children develop at an extraordinary rate.
Each day’s experiences, however familiar to adults, can be fresh and exciting to curious preschoolers.
Although your child’s incessant curiosity may be aggravating, especially at the end of a long day, it provides an opportunity for you to help her connect daily experiences with words.
Tying language to the world your child knows allows her to go beyond that world to explore new ideas.
Not only do parents have abundant opportunities to help children develop language, but these opportunities often occur naturally and easily.

While connecting experience to language is an important foundation for learning to read, no activity is more important for preparing your child to succeed as a reader than reading aloud together.
When you read to your children, they almost automatically learn about written language.
They learn that the words in a particular written story are always in the same order and on the same page.
They may also learn that print goes from left to right, that words are made up of letters, that each letter has at least two forms (capital and small) and that there are spaces between words.

Take your child to the library on a regular basis.
(Our children receive their very own library cards when they can print their name.) Help your child find her way around the library, and show her how to look for books by her (or your) favorite authors.
Appendix D
provides a list of some of the best
read-aloud books for young children.
I also recommend
The Read-Aloud Handbook
by Jim Trelease (4th edition, Penguin Books, 1995), or
Honey for a Child’s Heart
by Gladys Hunt (3rd edition, Zondervan, 1989).
These books offer lots of great reading suggestions for children of all ages.

While reading with your child, you will often have opportunities to answer her questions about the names, sounds, and shapes of letters.
Preschoolers are very observant and often focus on company trademarks and logos that include or resemble letters of the alphabet.
For example, the golden arches at McDonald’s look like an M; pointing that out may be an easy way to begin.
Television programs like
Sesame Stree
t also may help your child learn letters and the sounds they represent.
Try to watch these shows with your child so you can talk to her about the letters on the screen and point out all the other places those letters appear.

Research has shown that children who know the names and sounds of letters when they enter school learn to read sooner.
The following activities will help your preschooler learn to identify letters, sounds, and words.

Index cards

Pen or markers

Scissors

Print a capital letter on the left side of an index card and the corresponding lowercase letter on the right.
Cut each card into two parts with a wavy or zigzag line to make two puzzle pieces.
Mix all the puzzle pieces and have your child put them together again.

Playdough or modeling clay (see
Appendix A
)

Help your child form letters out of playdough or modeling clay.
Then, have her close her eyes, feel a letter, and try to identify it by shape.
As a tasty variation, make some Alphabet Cookies (see
Chapter 3
) and bake your alphabet!

Clothespins

Paper

Tape

Pen or marker

Old magazines

Scissors

Write the letters of the alphabet on small pieces of paper and tape them to clothespins, or print the letters right on the clothespins.
Cut out magazine pictures, one for each letter of the alphabet, and have your child match the clothespin letters to the beginning sounds of the objects in the pictures.
Clip the clothespins to the corresponding pictures.

There is a delightful book called
Alfred’s Alphabet Walk
by Victoria Chess (Greenwillow Books, 1979) that would nicely complement this activity.

Small notebook or loose sheets of paper

Crayons or markers

Old magazines

Scissors

Glue

This is a good rainy day project that can be completed during one or more sittings.
Help your child print a letter of the alphabet on each page of a small notebook, or use loose sheets of plain or colored paper.
Have your child draw a picture of an animal that begins with that letter, or cut animal pictures from old magazines and glue them onto each page.

Small notebook or loose sheets of paper

Crayons or markers

Old magazines

Scissors

Glue

Photos of friends and family (optional)

This is a long-term project that is great for rainy afternoons.
Help your child print a letter of the alphabet on each page of a small notebook, or use loose sheets of plain or colored paper.
Your child can draw a picture of something that begins with that letter, cut pictures from old magazines and glue them onto each page, or use photographs of friends and family members.

Paper

Scissors

Pen or marker

3 plastic cups or coffee/tea mugs

Cut out circles of paper small enough to hide beneath a cup or a mug.
Write different letters on each circle.
Place three tea or coffee cups on the table and hide a paper circle under only one of them.
Have your child guess where the letter is and identify the letter when she finds it.
Take turns hiding the circles.

Paper

Pen or marker

Crayon

Draw a large dot-to-dot outline of your child’s name on paper.
Have her use a crayon to connect the dots to spell her name.

Paper

Pen, marker, or crayon

Draw a dot-to-dot outline of a simple picture.
(Try tracing some pictures from your child’s coloring books.) Starting with the letter A, place each letter of the alphabet at a consecutive dot.
Have your child connect the dots by identifying each letter.

Index cards or paper

Pen or marker

Tape

Print the letters of the alphabet on index cards and tape several cards onto windows, walls, furniture, and other items around the house.
Tell your child what each letter is, then have her bring you the letter you request.
Or show your child an object, such as an apple, and have her bring you the letter “A.” You can also play by mixing up the cards on a table and having your child pick out the specified letters.
For younger children, use fewer cards at a time.

While on a walk, in the car, or at the grocery store, look for objects beginning with each letter of the alphabet.
If you like, make this a competition, and whoever gets to the end of the alphabet first, wins.
Of course, let your child win at least some of the time!

Index cards

Pen or marker

Old magazines

Photographs (optional)

Scissors

Glue

Once your child can recognize the letters of the alphabet, you may want to start practicing simple word recognition.
On one set of index cards, write some simple words, such as cat, dog, or bird.
On another set, draw or cut out magazine pictures that illustrate the words you have chosen.
Lay all the cards on the table, face up, and have your child match each word to the corresponding picture.
Try name recognition by using photographs of your child, siblings, friends, relatives, and so on.
Write the name of each person on an index card and have your child match the photo to the appropriate name.

Toothpicks

Raisins

Paper

Pen, crayon, or marker

Put a raisin at the tip of each toothpick; the raisins will connect the toothpicks and keep them from being easily jostled apart.
On a piece of paper, draw letters and shapes that correspond in size to the toothpicks.
Have your child connect the toothpicks to create each letter or shape.
You may not need to draw the letters or shapes for older children.
Keep in mind that your child will eat some of the raisins (which makes the activity more fun), so keep plenty on hand.

Paper

Pen or marker

Clear contact paper

Crayon or marker

Damp cloth

Help your child learn to print her name.
Draw two parallel solid lines with a broken line in the middle.
Print your child’s first and last name on the lines, and cover the sheet with clear contact paper.
Your child can use a crayon or marker to trace over her name and wipe it off with a damp cloth when finished.

Index cards

Pen or marker