That is the question I asked for entries to the Playful Learning giveaway post, I thought I would share one of mine first...
When I was a kid, my parents owned a grocery store and the had this little old lady called 'DeeDee' that worked for them. I can clearly remember standing on a crate and sitting on the counter with DeeDee as she packaged up the fruit, vegetables and cut the meats and cheeses. I would help put the right amount of apples in a pack and the such like and I learnt about weight too, the best bit though was getting all the offcuts of the meats and cheese to eat at the end! When we had customers come into the shop DeeDee would have me help and then 'reckon up' (this was before the days of electronic cash registers!) and I would have to work out the change. It was like playing shop but for real.
I also remember learning about the laws of physics by putting my little brother in a trolley meant for blocks and pushing him as hard as possible down the ramp that went to the store room, if I managed to get the cart straight he would hit the wall at the bottom and bounce backwards, actually, thinking about it, maybe it wasn't such a great physics lesson lol.
Anyway, enough of my reminising of the 'good ole days' it is time to announce the winner of the Playful Learning Book and E-course is ..... Jen Law, Congratulations, I will be contacting you very soon...
Books often spark some great learning expeiences. One of the best was when reading "Little Nose - the Hero", there was a story in it where little nose was watching some men ceremonially painting a cave. This led to us creating a cave structure under the table from brown paper, making our own paint (cround charcoal and egg, pig blood from the butcher etc.) beth recreating existing cave paintings and making our own modern interpretations of cave paintings.
There were some great experiences shared in the comments section, here are a few of my favourites...
The kids and I just made the solar system out of wool balls, then hung them from the ceiling fan in the family room so they could rotate (my son's idea).
When I was a kid my mum bought us a toy printing press. There was a set of rubber letters that we could put together into a set of holders to make up words and phrases to print. We used that thing all the time, and had lots of fun learning to write while printing up our own newspapers and flyers. Wish they still made that toy these days. Such fun!
Stephanie said...
Jo.....I LOVE this book! It is amazing! I would love to win a spot in her e course!!!!! It would so amazing! The best learning moments with my kids have been when I followed their lead! Bunny fell in love with a book about a cupcake girl and we used her love of it to write a story, bake cupcakes, and learn about fractions! It was really a great time! We all had fun!
The best learning experience thus far with my children has been watching a very large (6" wingspan) Robin moth leave it's cocoon, spread its wings, then find a mate all on our kids picnic table. Unbelievable.
I totally agree on what she said about getting off of your "high horse" about selecting books and such. I would love Manon to read the "French classic" and she loves Babar for ex but she has her own mind about what she wants to read. The thing that we enjoy the most in our family is cooking. She can cut almost anything (even a rabbit;) and enjoys baking and cooking so much.
My favourite memory of childhood is of the stories my dad would tell me at bedtime about a little bushman in the Kalahari Desert - I got to know that character so well that I started to tell the stories too - perhaps a reason why I love literature so much today! I have carried on the tradition with my sons!
My best learning experience was at my grand mom's knitting machine. I learned numbers, colors, distance, weight, maths with great fun. Hope the book or the e-course help me to find fun ways to learn together with my two small babies.
A fun learning experience for us was building 'stairs' with the sofa cushions. The most fun part was the climbing up and down.
This is wonderful, thank you so much for the opportunity. I cant wait. I had to cringe a little when I spotted all the typos in my comment.
ReplyDeleteThankyou post: http://who-knows-what-i-will-write.blogspot.com/2011/09/thrice.html
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