Taking Off the Training Wheels

Do you want to know the best secret about how to teach your kid to ride without training wheels? It is awesome and works so well. Well I will tell you but first you have to hear about how well it worked for us.

A few months ago my son told me he wanted to try riding his bike with out the training wheels. So we tried the way that my Dad taught me. You know with me walking/running along side him holding on, poised to let go as soon as he was going fast enough. Well that failed miserably. I was way to scared that he would fall because I could feel him leaning way over to the side and he was getting frustrated that I would not let go. Lets just say that experiment ended in lots of tears from both of us.

So my Mom tried the same technique to no avail. My husband might have tried too but I can't really remember. When all was said and done we put the training wheels back on and decided we were just not ready for this step yet.

About a month later during the pouring rain we were playing with one of Aiden's friends and I was chatting with the friend's Mom. She told me that her kids learned to ride without the training wheels by taking the training wheels off BUT ALSO TAKING THE PEDALS OFF!! Just make sure feet can touch the ground so they can use them to push the bike. Who knew (maybe you did but our family definitely did not).

So a few days ago it finially showed some signs of summer here and my husband took the pedals and training wheels off. This was in the evening right before bed and so my son practiced inside (I know what were we doing with that). Over the next two days he probably practiced a total of 15 minutes.

Yesterday he came to me and said I can balance now put the pedals back on. Lets just say I was sceptical that he was really going to be ready after this little time but we did it. Outside he went with my husband and pedals but no training wheels. Guess what...he could ride the bike! No falling and no false starts! OH MY GOSH!! SO EXCITED!

For my daughter (who is two) we are not even going to start her with training wheels, straight from trike to bike (no pedals or training wheels). Just make sure her feet can fully touch the floor.

One summer bucket list item down 69 to go!

Alphabet Search Lends a Helping Hand

A few weeks ago I was trying to get a few things done before heading out the door and my kids were going a little wild so I quickly put together this little word search for my son and alphabet search for my daughter. It was so easy to put together and it kept them at the table for a few minutes doing something new just long enough for me to gather our things and get ready to go (and still take some photos of them).

I think this would be great while out because you can make endless versions of it on the fly. Just make sure you carry around paper and markers/colored pencils/pens or whatever. You could do this with shapes, numbers, emotion faces, animals, whatever.

The nice thing about doing it yourself is that you can make the letters larger so that it is easier for the younger kids to see and distinguish differences/similarities. It is a great exercise in sight words, learning the alphabet, matching, and concentration.

Curious George Discovery Beach: A Preschooler Game

It has been a while since I have written, I have gotten horribly busy and there just was not room for this for a little while. Sorry for the lapse...

I have been thinking about games again...we have one in our house the both kids started playing at about two years old. Well truthfully my little girl started sitting with us at about a year and tried to play along but just was not able to do it. It is called Curious George Discovery Beach.

This is a great memory game that mixes things up (literally and figuratively) by having you search for objects on the card with in a "sea" of blue. There are tiny objects that hide in the "sea" and when you shake the box they get mixed up again. Little puzzle pieces open to reveal a window into the sea.

This is a great game for learning about taking turns, strengthening memory, matching, learning to look for an object based on the picture, and can help in learning colors. The game does not take very long to play which is good for young kids.

                                                                   

St. Patrick's Day Craft

We are not actually very big into St. Patrick's Day. In fact I usually completely forget about it because my brother-in-law's birthday is the same day and I think of it as his birthday instead! However, this year my son has some things going on in school that have to do with it including a leprechaun that is coming to give "luck".

Well this has me thinking more about St. Patrick's Day. I was doing a rainbow craft with the kids anyway so I decided to add a St. Patrick's Day theme to it. 

We started out talking about rainbows and how they occur. We talked a lot about rain splitting the light of the sun and how it is necessary to have both sun and rain to get a rainbow (yeah for science!).  

We also talked about the colors in the rainbow (leaving out indigo we will have to go into that more later). We did all of this talking while were actually doing the craft itself. 

When we were making the pot of "gold" for the end of the rainbow (making it St. Patrick's Day themed) and how some people think that if you can find the end of the rainbow you will find a pot of gold. We talked a little about St. Patrick's Day coming up and how it is a kind of Irish myth that this can happen. I decided to talk this time to talk with them about what is most important to us, and it is not gold. 

Friends, family, and love are more important to us than money/gold because it is something that makes us feel really good, so we talked about that. I feel like really important to talk about this due to how materialistic our surroundings are and this was a great way to fit this talk in with a craft. 

My daughter is a little young to actually get what I was telling her and my son was a bit skeptical but talking about it is so important. Due to love being what we find more important we put hearts at the end of the rainbow. 

Here is the finished craft: 

 What you need:

White paper
Yarn
Hole punch
Scissors
Cotton balls or tissue paper
Paints/markers/crayons 
Egg carton
Pipe cleaner
Glue
Foam Hearts (or some other "gold" for inside the egg carton)

What to do:

1. First you need to prep. I cut out the clouds from two pieces of copy paper holding them together and then punched holes around the outside of the cloud while holding the two pieces of paper together. This helps to keep them lined up and matching in size, shape, and location of the holes. I am sure that older kids (even my sons age) could do this but that is not what we did this time. 

2. We drew lines for each of the colors of the rainbow on a piece of white paper so that the colors would end up in the correct shape. 

3. Paint the colors on the page (or color with crayon/marker). 

 4. While the paint dries cut a long piece of yarn, tape one end up so that it can be more easily threaded through the holes. Tie the other end through a pair of holes on the clouds. Sew the cloud up leaving a few open when you get close to the end. 

5. Stuff cotton balls or tissue paper into the cloud. Finish sewing up the cloud and tie it off. 

6. Glue the cloud to the rainbow (you can cut the rainbow out so there is not any white on the edges of the paper if you like, or use blue paint to make sky behind the cloud). 

 7. Next using one egg carton section create the pot by using green or black to color it. 

8. Glue your "gold" inside the "pot", we used foam hearts. 

9. Punch two holes directly across from each other on the egg carton and one hold at the bottom of the rainbow. Put a pipe cleaner through one hole, then through the hole at the bottom of the rainbow, and then through the second hole on the pot to make a handle. 

10. Hang it up! 

This craft is great for fine motor skills, vocabulary building, learning colors, science awareness, cultural awareness, and talking about the importance of family/friends. 

You can find the dot paints we used at the link below:
                                          

A great rainbow book is this one:
                                                               





Or if you are looking for one that is more science oriented but very kid friendly I recommend this one: 
                                             


One of my absolute favorite children's books for spring and rainbows is this one:
                                             

What kinds of things are you doing with your kids for St. Patrick's Day? What are your family traditions surrounding it?