Category: Summer

Outdoor Math Games

By Mariah Bruehl, 21st July 2015

Summer is often when we all want to be outside to enjoy the sun, play with friends and explore nature. Fun in the sun can also coincide, playfully, with keeping up our math skills. The games and activities below can be played both outside and inside. The key is that they are portable and can be enjoyed in both environments.

Bracelet Fact Game:

Materials: pipe cleaners, colored tape or thin post-it notes

This activity helps children to remember basic facts in an area of your choice. Help your child or group of students decide on facts to practice (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division). Start with five to learn and practice. These should be facts that the child knows how to figure out but needs to gain in recall speed.

Activity: To play this as a game with two players, have each player play with the same facts on their bracelet. One player keeps the facts on the questions and the other player turns hers’ over to the answers. The first player asks a question or gives an answer and the other player locates it on her bracelet. For example, if player one calls out 5 + 5, the second player finds the answer 10 on her bracelet and calls it out. Starting with the answer is fun too, where the answer of 10 is called out and the other player locates the question 5 + 5. Children can also play on their own by quizzing themselves and checking answers.

Beach Ball Facts:

Materials: large beach ball, sharpie pen

This game can be played with as little as one player to a whole large group of players. Before playing write math facts on the spaces of a beach ball. Choose facts based on your child’s needs. To play alone, the player simply tosses the ball up in the air, catches it, and answers the question closest to him on the beach ball. If playing with other children, the ball is tossed back and forth and each player answers the question closest to him when he catches the ball. This game is easy to take with you and can be used in all different subject areas by simply changing the questions.

I Have, Who Has Card Game

Materials: I Have, Who Has card set (click on photo above to download)

This is another game that can be taken anywhere but does require a group of children. To play, pass out each child one or two cards, depending on size of group, and have them figure out the answer to their questions. Have students form a circle and the player with the start card begins. Students play until the player with the end card plays. Encourage children to answer quickly so that it becomes a fast paced, quick recall, game.

Hopscotch Counting or Facts

Materials: sidewalk chalk, and flat small sticks

I just taught my own children the game of hopscotch and we played for hours. In this version, it is played the same way as the original with a little twist in the labeling of the boxes. Instead of labeling each square with numbers one through ten, have your child practice skip counting. We labeled boxes by 2’s and 3’s to practice but you could decide on something different. Another fun idea is to start the first number higher, maybe 22, and then count by 2’s. Your boxes would be labeled: 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, and 40. Facts can also be written in the boxes with or without the answer. You could make boxes labeled 1+1 = 2, 2+2 = 4, etc. and have your child say the facts as he/she moves through the box.

Link: http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Hopscotch

Have fun!

3 Wildcrafted Herbs for Summer Days

By Mariah Bruehl, 20th July 2015

In our part of the world summer is in full swing. Despite my best intentions for a stress free summer I find we have a packed schedule of farm work, a garden that demands attention, fun trips out with friends, summer activities and the regular list of chores to do. Summer days are wonderfully long but can be tiring too.

When I feel a bit below par, or when I notice my kids are looking a little ragged round the edges, I turn to our herbal allies to help boost us up and set us on the right path again. As well as my own herb garden, I regularly turn to nature’s herbs too; they are a wonderful source of nutrients and don’t put a strain on the family purse.

If you are wondering what I mean by natures herbs, in short it’s weeds. There are many wonderful wild plants that can be harvested and used safely in our own homes, boosting our health and costing nothing but time. A nature walk can turn into an opportunity to stock your tea cupboard or medicine cabinet with wonderful tastes and uplifting nutrients.

At this time of year there is an abundance of wild plants available, many are at the peak of their power so it’s a great time to collect and store a little extra for later months. There is nothing more wonderful than opening a jar of dried herbs in the middle of winter, and drinking in the sweet scent of the summer breeze when summer itself is long gone.

Here are 3 of my favorite herbal allies, easily found in hedgerows and even gardens right now.

Nettle

Also known as Stinging Nettle, this amazing plant is packed full of nutrients. It’s green leaves are full of iron and even vitamin C, the perfect pick me up on a hot summer day. Even the seeds can be dried and used, sprinkle them on cereal in the same way you would with flax seed.

To collect you’ll need to be wily. They’re not called Stinging Nettle for nothing and the stings can be quite sore. Wear thick gloves (rubber gloves are great) when you snip these plants and then put them in an airy place to dry, out of direct sunlight. Use as a refreshing tea with a dab of local honey to help fight allergies and restore the nervous system.

Plantain

It makes sense to follow Stinging Nettle with Plantain, as this is the perfect remedy should you find yourself stung! Plantain leaves can be crushed and the juice rubbed right on the sting to pain relief. You can also make a simple tincture by filling a jar with the chopped leaves and then add brandy or vodka until the jar is full. Leave for 6 weeks or longer and then strain. The resulting tincture will work wonders on any bites or stings you many collect on your summer adventures.

Red Clover

This familiar and attractive ‘weed’ can be found in many a lawn or border. Instead of getting rid of it we should be collecting it! This is a really fun one to collect with the children, get them to gently snip off the purple flower heads and then dry them in a single layer in a dry place, out of direct sunlight. Both fresh and dry flowers make a wonderful, uplifting tea that is particularly soothing for women. If you have swollen feet, pop clover tea in a footbath and relish it’s calming power. It nourishes and much as it calms and couldn’t look prettier in a jar in the pantry.
Once you introduce wild plants to your children, you’ll be amazed at how each outing turns into a learning experience. You are also teaching your children that nature is their ally and helping them become their own healers too. So before you mow your lawn this summer just double check, you may want to collect your medicine first!

Summer Reading Bucket List

By Mariah Bruehl, 14th July 2015

What is on your summer to-do list? It may be packed with adventures, getaways, and activities, but did the simple act of reading throughout the summer make your list?

No matter your age, summer is the loveliest time to pick up a book and relax, soaking up the story as you soak up the sunshine. It’s easy enough to know that you must “read!” during the summer, but in the spirit of novelty (or novel-ty), why not make your reading to-do list playful? Not only will it get you to model strong reading habits, it will make summer reading even more approachable for your child, no matter his or her age.

Here are some ideas to create your own “Summer Reading Bucket List.” You can post the list anywhere in your home, and have your child check off each item as he or she reads different pieces in different ways. The bucket list can be hung on your refrigerator, written on a chalkboard to keep all summer long, placed in your child’s room, or posted above a dedicated workspace your child might have. Be creative, and amend the list as needed. We’ve created a few printables for you if you prefer to use to use them (click on the pictures at the bottom of the post to download). Of course, to make it even more enjoyable for everyone involved, you can participate right along with your child!

Summer Reading Bucket List

Places to read:

On the beach
In a pillow fort
On the grass
In a tent
Under a tree
On a boat
In the car
At the library
In bed
At the park

Things to read:

A new book
An old favorite book
A silly book
A book about a place you have never been
A magazine article
A recipe
A poem
A pop-up book
A rhyming book
A chapter book

How to read:

Read aloud to your pet or stuffed animals
Read aloud in a goofy voice
Read aloud to a group
Listen to a book being read
Read upside down
Read and act out a book
Write your own story and then share it
Read by flashlight or firelight
Read while eating ice cream
Listen to a family member tell an original story

Can you help your child cross off all of these items on the list? Can you cross off all of these items for yourself? The most important item yet unwritten on the list is simply to make sure you read all summer long – happy summer reading!

* Photo and printables by Randi Edwards

Summer Reads Bingo

By Mariah Bruehl, 1st July 2015

Summer is here and we all want our children to read for pleasure over the next few months… Although, over the years, I have found that the requirement schools often have for children to read for any given number of minutes backfires. They become preoccupied about watching the clock, are not truly engaged with their book, and far worse, see reading as something that needs to be completed as quickly as possible. The clock becomes the focal point rather than the book at hand and eventually for some children their innate desire to read disappears.

To nurture a love of reading, it’s far more beneficial to give children reading experiences—a variety of special, shared moments that highlight the joy of reading.

Many years ago, our 1st grade daughter came home with a great summer reading assignment–Summer Reads Bingo. When I saw this “playful” approach to encouraging summer reading I thought is was so good that we adapted a version of our own to share with you and your budding young reader.

*Photo and printable by Randi Edwards

Summer Acrostic Poetry

By Mariah Bruehl, 8th July 2014

This is a seasonal activity that I started when my kids were very young. The beauty of this particular style of poetry is that even young children can successfully compose a poem as they don’t need to know about proper grammar and sentence structure.

What is an acrostic poem?

An acrostic poem is a poem that uses the letters in the word to begin each line of the poem. The letters are written in capital letters down, rather than across, like this:

S –

U –

M –

E –

R –

Each line of the poem must start with the capitalized letter, for instance:

S – sunny days

U – under the trees

M – making music,

M – milkshakes and memories

E – everyone together

R – refreshed and relaxed

Here are some easy tips for creating acrostic poems:

Have your child brainstorm some ideas (one or two words is fine) about what summer means to them or objects that remind them of summer.

Encourage your child to use their own handwriting and try not to jump in and correct their spelling as it adds to the charm of the finished poem!

Sign and date the poem on the back so that you can remember which child wrote it and when.

Have the entire family participate and read aloud each others poems.

We like to do this activity at the beginning of every season but it could be done any time of year with any word that has meaning to your child. (Star Wars, Cupcakes, Grandma, Seashore, etc…)

It has been fun to look back on my children’s poems and remember what was most important to them at the time and how their thoughts, interpretations and spelling have matured over the years.

You are welcome to use my printable template here to get your child started or allow them to decide how they want to publish their poem – hand written, computer typed, with or without drawings, etc.

Some links to websites that talk about acrostic poetry:

Some books about writing poems with children:

Writing Poetry with children
Writing poetry (includes other poetry styles)

Storybooks about poets:

My favorite books of poetry when I was a little girl!

When we were very young / Now we are Six – A.A. Milne and Ernest H. Shepard

Collaborating with Nature

By Mariah Bruehl, 25th June 2014

Kate from An Everyday Story is with us today to share a fun way to bring together an appreciation of nature and our creative spirits…

It started with a stick, “Mummy wouldn’t this stick make a great tree house?…It’s a great shape, but it’s a bit small.” My five year old son wondered to himself how he could make this stick into a tree house… “What if we drew a tree house on top of the stick?” I suggested. He looked a little puzzled at first but then became very excited once I explained.

When you start looking around at all the differently shaped leaves, sticks and flowers in our yards, you can’t help but be inspired. A small round leaf could be a balloon, a long leaf could be a boat sailing on gentle seas or a snippet from a pine tree could be beautiful Christmas tree.

The tree house was just the beginning. Soon we had pages of pictures, as each different leaf or petal inspired different creations. We wanted to keep them but sadly the transient nature of petals and leaves means they will eventually wilt. For now we have pictures to remember them by.

Dandelions: A Playful Activity For Bringing Them To Life

By Mariah Bruehl, 21st May 2014

Monique of Green Acorns is with us today with to share some dandelion inspiration on this lovely spring day!

Dandelions – they seem to spring up overnight to decorate our yards with bright sunshiny-yellow polka dots. They’re cheerful, hardy, and tenacious. They provide magical experiences for many children who are amazed at how quickly they turn into puff balls and who find great amusement at blowing their seeds away and watching them head off on an adventure clinging to their tiny parachutes.

Recently while my children were happily playing with the dandelions strewn throughout our own yard, they were thrilled to find some who had put their “hats” on. They excitedly called me over to see. Hats? My oldest daughter went on to tell a brief story about the dandelions not being too sure about how they feel about losing their golden color and turning white so they put hats on to hide the change taking place. They then decide that they look just as beautiful and let their hats fall off to reveal their new look.

I loved this little story!

We went on to do a spontaneous dandelion study and recorded everything in our nature journals. They are really fascinating plants and we all learned something new about them. Did you know that the flower head is made of lots of individual florets, not just petals? The “hats” are the florets that have gone by and closed up. They eventually fall off to reveal the fuzzies. Did you know that those white fuzzies are called pappi (plural form) from the Latin pappus meaning “old man”? Makes sense. And there are so many fun things that you can do with dandelions. It occurred to me later that evening, however, that my daughter had opened the door to another engaging way to explore this flower. By bringing it to life in a different way. By personifying it. What a fun twist to their playful learning experiences.

Here’s what we did:
After making and recording our observations of a dandelion, my children filled out a printable that I created (you can download it here). They could choose to either place a sample of any part the plant in the detail box or draw a picture of it. They then added as many adjectives and descriptive phrases about the detail as they could. I encouraged them to use figurative as well as literal descriptions. Next we read several story books about dandelions. Here are some to check out:

Dandelion Adventures by Patricia Kite
The Dandelion’s Tale by Kevin Sheehan
The Dandelion Seed by Joseph Anthony
A Dandelion’s Life by John Himmelman
Stars in the Grass by Mia Posada

After reading each one we pointed out and discussed the various examples of personification and simile. The kids then brainstormed some of their own. You could choose to stop here and have the children write a simple sentence or two using personification (“With all her petals reaching out like the rays of the sun, Miss Dandelion greeted me warmly”) or even a short poem like a haiku. If your child would like to go on to write a short story, help him or her develop some personality traits and identify a dilemma to build on (seeds being nervous about where they’ll land, pointy leaves scaring off other plants, etc). Then let their imaginations bring new life to the dandelion!

Note: This activity is most appropriate for 3rd graders and older. My almost six-year-old was able to make comparisons with prompting and record a simple sentence. She also enjoyed using these flower cut outs for some imaginative play – an engaging way for younger children to personify an object.

Summer Reading In a Box

By Mariah Bruehl, 8th May 2014

Randi from Swoon is with us today to share a lovely summer reading kit for the blossoming young readers in our lives.

Summer is right around the corner and it’s time to think of creative ways to maintain and build on everything our children have learned in this last year throughout the long break. If you’re like me and your children attend school outside of the home, now is a good time to ask teachers for guidance and hints about ways to work with your child as they spend more time at home.

We have a new reader in our house who needs lots of practice and opportunities to grow the skills she’s already mastered. I want her to feel confident as she steps into the next school year, and I know that practice is the key. As a starting point, I’ve put together a little box filled with activities we can do together several times a week.

So, what’s in the box?

A stack of new readers and a fun bookmark. We will also be joining the summer reading program at the local library, and possibly purchasing more of these simple books as we go.

A homemade phonics game. I came across this lovely idea over on the Playdough to Plato blog. Using paper and stickers, we transformed two blocks we had on hand into a fun game about word families. Roll the dice and sound out the word. The first one to make 10 real words wins! Go here for complete instructions.

A homemade phonetic flip chart. This flip chart is all about sounding out words. Simply take a notebook and cut the pages into three equal sections. Write the consonants in the first section, as well as some common blends found at the beginning of words. Vowels go in the middle section, and consonants and common blends found at the end of words in the last section. Find complete instructions over at Kids Activities Blog.

As the summer progresses, I hope to add more things to the box and change activities as needed. I LOVE the idea of giving something like this as a gift to a new reader in your life. The contents of the box could easily be modified for a child who is in the pre-reading stages, or to fit the needs of a more advanced reader as well. The idea is to create a pretty and functional spot that has everything needed to inspire little ones to read.

Meaningful Literacy: Vegetable Stones for the Kitchen Garden

By Mariah Bruehl, 25th March 2014

I think the dream to carve out a little spot in our yards to grow our own produce is a common one. Growing and nurturing something with our own hands has given our little family such a deep sense of joy and connectedness; to each other, to our food and to this space in our yard.

We started creating our first kitchen garden about three months ago. We still have a lot to learn about soil preparation, crop rotation and natural pest control but this space has provided such wonderful opportunities for learning for our children; we planted the seeds together, watched as they grew from seedlings into plants and eventually produced delicious vegetables…which almost always get picked by tiny helping hands and straight into little bellies. However my children are learning more than how to raise and nurture seeds, this kitchen garden is also providing opportunities for meaningful literacy.

These little vegetable stones were an opportunity for my son Jack (5yrs) to write in a purposeful and meaningful way. These vegetable stones were for our garden; their garden.

I collected small clippings from different plants for my son to identify and match to the word card which I had written in both lower-case and capital letters. He then used these word cards to create his vegetable markers using some beautifully smooth beach stones and a permanent marker.

My children really enjoyed creating these stones for their vegetable garden. Over the next few days they added more stones under more plants.

I think it is so important for children to have opportunities to read and write in meaningful ways; writing for a reason, reading to discover something, in this way we can help to nurture and preserve that innate drive to learn and help to keep learning connected to real life. Whether it’s by helping to write shopping lists, reading steps in a recipe, or creating vegetable markers from stones, we can gently encourage literacy by engaging our children in meaningful tasks which are relevant to our children’s lives.

More about our kitchen garden here, and our homeschool routine as well.

Healthy Frozen Treats: Probiotic Popsicles

By Mariah Bruehl, 25th July 2013

Emma from 95 Acres of Sky is with us today with a delicious recipe for probiotic popsicles—a wonderful way to give your children a special treat that we as parents can feel good about.

During the busy, sometimes hectic and overheated, days of summer getting motivated to cook can be hard. I often find my food mojo goes on vacation as the temperatures rise (and rise). As my creativity and enthusiasm take a dip so does the family appetite, the children don’t want to sit for large meals when they could be running, swimming or playing with friends.

Rather than fight this phenomenon I prefer to go with a few ‘light days’, providing healthy snack type meals that are packed full of goodness but light on the stomach. These often revolve around tapas type meals with little bits of meat, cheese, salad, hummus, crackers and fruits that are easy to assemble and are handily portable if we find ourselves heading out for yet another round of summer fun.

But when the temperatures really soar I turn to a summer staple, fruit popsicles and homemade energy bars. These frozen treats are a hit with my boys, cooling them down and giving them a good dose of energy without the table time struggles of a full meal. They can function as a snack or a summer ‘mini meal’, just before we head out to the pool or a play date.

This year I’ve been more conscious than ever of trying to pack as much nutrition into every bite as possible. My growing lads are so full of energy, but liable to crash hard when their tummies feel suddenly empty. With increasingly busy schedules it is even more important for them to be eating nutritionally dense foods that support their growth and development.

Of course that doesn’t mean boring! The more delicious a food is the more likely they are to want to eat it, so good flavor is key. I’m also conscious of taking any opportunity I can to introduce probiotics and key nutrients into their systems; despite the massive range of foods available to us in these modern times, we are often consuming empty calories filled with sugar and additives, those foods marketed to children are particularly guilty.

So instead of reaching for the freezer section at my local store I reach for my blender and whip up a batch of probiotic popsicles, chased down with an energy bar packed with natural sweetness and a good dose of omegas. If making popsicles is a bit of a fuss these recipes make delicious smoothies too.

Probiotic Strawberry Popsicles

2 cups of chopped strawberries (a great way to use some softer or imperfect fruits)
½ cup of milk kefir (a probiotic drink thinner than yogurt)
1 tablespoon of raw honey

Blend all of the ingredients together and pour into molds or straight into a glass. The kefir helps build gut flora which builds immunity and health in the body. It has a tart taste so a little raw honey (which helps protect against seasonal allergies) is a great addition.

Fruits of the Forest Popsicles with Vanilla Yogurt

2 cups of mixed berries (blackberries, blueberries, raspberries etc)
½ cup of spinach
1 tablespoon of raw honey or 2 medjool dates

For yogurt topping:

½ cup of plain yogurt
½ – 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

Blend the popsicle ingredients together and set aside. Mix the yoghurt and vanilla in a bowl and then add in layers with the fruit smoothie to your popsicle molds. This gives a visual interest as well as a delicious layer of probiotics to soothe and cool hot tummies. Alternatively serve as a smoothie with a delicious yogurt dollop on top.

I hope that you give these recipes a try, enjoy and stay cool!