As the rain pitter-pattered down, I settled into a chair on the back porch with my hands wrapped around a mug of warm soup. My precious two-month old is napping inside. Warm fills me while the wind nips at my arms, chilling them. I slowly breath in the lovely smells that accompany a desert rain. […]
Power of Play
an impromptu lesson in physics
What started out as a skip counting by two’s lesson for the 5 year old with the marbles quickly turned into exploration-playtime by all three boys… I ran upstairs to put some things away and came down to find them full of giggles, wonder and excitement. They had discovered the glories of centripetal force as they rapidly […]
Making It Work: Promoting Open-Ended Play
Patriots going into battle. Note the broken golf-club, hockey stick and broomstick that are all standing in as rifles… Who needs play guns, anyways? They’ll improvise! So what now? It is hard to not end up with scripted toys. But I’ve found that this really doesn’t hinder a child when you are encouraging their creativity […]
From Trash to Treasure
(Xander at 3yo enjoying a homemade shield that he asked us to fashion from an egg carton and his lance from an old packing tube.) As we’ve been talking about, encouraging our kids in open-ended play is a great way for them to learn at their own pace as well as develop important creative and […]
Kitchen Play
Well, as we start to wrap up this little series on open-ended play, I had to include some ways we’ve incorporated everyday things we have around the house into our play and learning. There are so many toys to be found in the kitchen! Outside of the many practical and original uses for items found […]
Open-Ended Costumes
[Open-Ended Play Series, Part 7] PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 (Rich getting baptized by fire into our ‘style’ of homeschooling at my baby sister’s Egyptian Feast.) Our family LOVES to play dress-up. still… Growing up, we had a toybox chock full of wonderful dress-up clothes. Most of the items were […]