Short Stretch: "Stone Soup" & Our Rockin' Round-Up

It's a Thursday afternoon as I write this post. We've had a fun and busy week here playing at home through the theme of our first summer Story Stretcher, Everybody Needs a Rock by Byrd Baylor. With nicer weather than expected, we've enjoyed some extra time outdoors and even at some local parks. Now it's time to start thinking about getting things done for Shabbos tomorrow evening and still make time to entertain the busy boys in this house. This is the perfect time to insert a short stretch story stretcher--and maybe even one that will recruit an extra set of hands in the kitchen as we get ready for Shabbos. Stone Soup by Marcia Brown is the perfect candidate for the job!
This is a classic, award-winning tale of three hungry soldiers returning from the wars, seeking a meal and place to rest. When the townspeople, who are afraid of strangers are a bit less than hospitable, the clever soldiers give them a recipe fit for royalty and a feast they will not soon forget! This book is a great compliment to our rock theme this week and can inspire some great play activities, too.

I introduced our book during breakfast in the morning, bringing it to the table to read with S and Y. While S is almost always up for reading together, this book is a bit lengthy and I felt the table would be an ideal setting to read it together before beginning our busy morning. He has loved learning some new vocabulary this week related to rocks--like pebble and stone. Language development happens so naturally through reading together! S automatically took to his kitchen set after breakfast for some Stone Soup themed dramatic play. He got out his pots and a spoon, grabbed a rock from our shelf and got busy!

The proof is in the pudding here--story stretchers don't always need to involve preparation or direction from adults. Children naturally expand upon literature through play! I was certain he would enjoy our afternoon plans just as much when I invited him to the kitchen with me to help make our Shabbos soup, Stone Soup style!

But with such beautiful weather outside, we took to the play garden first to make some Stone Soup in the water table. Adding some rocks, toy dishes, a ladle and bowls, maybe even some play food if you wish, can turn your outdoor water table into the perfect setting for making Stone Soup. If your weather is less than cooperative, water play is fun in the kitchen as well or even in the bathtub.

One of our favorite Shabbos songs to sing is this one, to the tune of "London Bridges" about making soup!

Shabbat Soup Song
Put the chicken in the pot (hold arms out in a circle, like a pot)
Stir it up, nice and hot (stir your "pot")
Get it ready for Shabbat,
For Shabbat!

Children can insert their own ideas for ingredients and it's particularly fun to include props like a pot and pretend food/pictures of foods to add or to include hand motions.

You can build letter recognition by making alphabet soup
in the tub, water table or a plastic bin!

In the real kitchen,S loves to help wash vegetables for soup.I set out the veggies I needed washed in a large bowl for S along with a few carefully selected stones for our stone soup. Even once the veggies were recruited to the pot, S continued to have fun washing his stones! He can also help with my assistance/supervision to peel and cut veggies for soup and add things to the pot. He is always eager to get his step stool even if to just be alongside me as I cook! Including little ones in the kitchen when you have to be there anyway is a great way to feel a bit less lonely in there and spend time together. It definitely takes a bit longer with more hands in this case, but I'd rather entertain those little hands in the kitchen than have to run out to keep them out of mischief every few minutes! Helping to cook the foods we eat also builds skills in math/measuring, science, reading, following recipes, fine motor skills like pouring, peeling, cutting, scooping and mixing--and sometimes means that the pickier eaters in the family will try what we're serving for dinner. The added bonus on this occasion was that I was able to get done what I had to get done while connecting it to our theme and spending a bit of time with my little campers!

We've had a great week stretching out the story Everybody Needs a Rock. As we move on to our next story stretcher theme, I think S will like to continue playing with some of the materials from this one. Rocks are a great summer theme to explore! Here are some of the other activities we especially enjoyed this week:

Rocks to pebbles, pebbles to sand, I hold a million tiny rocks inside my little hands! We had a lot of fun observing sand through magnifying glasses, burying and discovering little rocks and pebbles and playing! And then we had a lot of fun cleaning up...

Chalk is a rock!

Graphite works just like our pencils!

Building our names with letter rocks

Rock n'Roll Painting with red paint on the letter R

We rocked out to some great music while rolling the rock through the paint inside the shoe box!

S loved using rocks in his water table--with and without water!

For some more great reading on rocks, we really loved these books:

• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
• A Rock is Lively by Diana Hutts Aston
• If Rocks Could Sing: A Discovered Alphabet by Leslie McGuirk
• Stone Soup by: Marcia Brown
• If You Find a Rock by Barbara Hirsch Lember and Peggy Christian

This little guy is a big lover of rocks!

We'll be back next week with our next Story Stretcher theme. Until then...

Happy Playing!

Community Helpers Theme: The Baker, The Chef, and The Mashgiach

Our final exploration of Community Helpers took us to the kitchen, the playroom, and beyond as we learned about occupations involving food! My son is currently very into playdough activities, so this invitation to make cupcakes (left) was a definite favorite. I included playdough, some baking tools, some small parts (foam beads and pompoms) for decorating and "birthday candles" (straws). Baking is a favorite activity of my son's (although he's not always a fan of eating what we bake together). One of his favorite toys to play with is this wooden Melissa & Doug cookie set (below). We got ours off Amazon when there was a flash sale.



We used that along with some plastic coins props to go along with this cute action rhyme:

Five Little Cookies
There were five little cookies in the bakery shop
Freshly baked with frosting on top
Along came [insert child's name] with a nickel to pay
He/she took one cookie and went on his way!
Now there are four....
(...and continue on down to one)

This baking-themed science experiment that we did earlier in our unit helped show how yeast works. You can read all about it (and other community helpers themed science activities) here.

Part of learning about occupations related to food and its preparation also included talking about a very important Jewish community helper: the mashgiach. A mashgiach oversees the food preparation in factories, restaurants and other public venues to ensure that it is prepared according to the laws of kashrut. We help our son learn about keeping kosher naturally as we are eating and cooking together. He learns about how we eat only kosher foods and that we eat meat and dairy on separate dishes and at separate times. He learns to check eggs when we are baking together to make sure there are no blood spots that may render them unkosher and to wash produce carefully in order to eliminate any bugs. Grocery shopping is also an adventure in learning about kashrut as we look together for kosher symbols on packages of processed food items.

He plays frequently about cooking and shopping in his kitchen dramatic play area, so we brought out a fun Shopping for Shabbos game since we happened to get to this theme on a Friday. I prepared a shopping list ahead of time and set out the play materials we would be shopping for in our pretend storefront. He got to carry the list and a pencil for checking off items as he got them. He was very busy filling up a recycled brown paper bag and his toy shopping cart! You can make an activity like this more advanced by including a number of each item you wish to buy to encourage some practice with counting. You can also delve deeper by including prices and pretend currency and even a calculator or toy register if you have one. Take it on the road for a practical field trip and provide your little helper with his/her own list of items to find and add to the cart at the real grocery store!

Sensory bins are always a favorite activity in our house. We brought back our bin of dried beans and pasta from our construction workers day and this time added some toy kitchen tools, pots and pans and empty recycled spice containers. He loved scooping, pouring, filling and shaking. Then he was ready to eat some actual lunch and take a good, long nap before joining me in the kitchen to help prepare our actual Shabbat dinner.



Well, that's a wrap to our Community Helper's unit and we've had a LOT of fun. This theme is one that will continue to follow us in dialogue and in action as we go about our normal family routines. The dramatic play aspect of it was a great segue into the sub-themes of Purim, a topic we are playing and learning about heavily as the holiday draws near. Join us next time for a peek at what we're doing to get ready and until then...

Happy Playing!

A Peek In Our Playroom: Shabbat Edition

I'm veering off topic a bit for today's post, but be sure to check in again next week for more of our tree-themed adventures for Tu B'Shevat, including some early literacy activities, sensory play and a fun field trip! But for today, I wanted to touch on a topic near and dear to my heart every Friday morning--getting ready for Shabbat!

One of my son's favorite weekly activities before Shabbat
is decorating his own plastic kiddush cup to use at the table.

I have written before on the theme of Shabbat, including learning activities that can be done during the week, projects to encourage your little ones' hands in creating a lovely atmosphere and even some tips on making the day itself extra special. I think that as a parent in a shomer Shabbos home, one of my greatest concerns is that my child grow up to see Shabbat as a special and pleasant time and not, G-d forbid, the opposite! With a 25 hour time-span of extensive prohibited acts that even adults can find challenging at times, this can feel tricky. While we do go on walks, visits and even occasionally now make the 1.5 mile trek all the way to shul, much of our Shabbat is spent in the house. There are definite benefits to time at home. We get quality family time together. My son has longer stretches of uninterrupted, self-led play with his toys. It is peaceful and restful and rejuvenating for us all. We do a lot to make the atmosphere extra special--from how we decorate to what we eat to how we dress. That said, as my son grows older and more independent (i.e. more autonomous in navigating his space and accessing things he wants or needs), the challenge of setting up that space to adhere to the laws of Shabbat gets a bit more tricky. Common weekday activities like drawing, writing, arts & crafts, battery-operated/electronic toys, playdough, cooking and more are prohibited on Shabbat. There are a few approaches one can take with a play area regarding this issue. One is to never have those activities accessible at child-level. With our recent playroom updates (including a STEAM cart and fully accessible art center), this is not the option I choose. Another is to have these activities always accessible and either spend the day saying "no" and redirecting or turn a blind eye--after all, they are still just little kids, right? Children are not commanded to begin keeping the mitzvot of Shabbat until they turn 3 and even then, they are not required to be fully observant of them until after bar/bas mitzvah age. As a parent, however, I struggle with the idea of saying (even by not saying anything) that something is OK until all of a sudden one day it is no longer OK. Today you could use your toy computer on Shabbat, but next week you can't! Last week you were allowed to turn the lights on and off but not this week! I feel that not only is this something that could confuse our son, but also something that could create a negative association with growing up as an Orthodox Jew. So much in the same way that I set up our play area the rest of the week to be accessible to what we are learning and exploring as a family, I make a few modifications before Shabbat each week to support the same construct within the framework of Shabbat.

Dramatic play about getting ready for Shabbat and actually being invited to help with the process each week also sets a stage where my son feels involved in creating our Shabbat environment and ownership in the experience.

There is a huge benefit here to keeping a play area minimally stocked and swapping/rotating toys and materials. The idea of things being swapped out and rotated in is already a familiar one, so a weekly change for Shabbat does not feel threatening to my son (like things are being taken away). Additionally, since not everything is out or available all of the time, everything has a novel appeal! Our art center is now big enough that it requires a full tablecloth to drape over the top and not just a large scarf to drape over one shelf. Honestly, there are times my son peeks behind the curtain! We redirect him in those times and engage him in another activity. In addition, we've started something new with our STEAM cart to include Shabbat specific materials, toys or activities in a couple of the drawers each week. Sometimes I use toys/activities from our previous Shabbat theme. Sometimes I stock a drawer with favorite Shabbat books we can read together. There are some great toys and puzzles on the market for Shabbat play and beautiful toy Shabbat sets. If investing in a set like this is something meaningful to your family, you can definitely do so. You can also make your own play sets and involve the kids in that as well. My son particularly likes when I stock a drawer with our homemade Shabbat felt board set. Right now, I choose the toys or activities that go into the drawers and my son has the novelty of being surprised. You could also include children in choosing a toy, puzzle or game from their collections to put out each week for Shabbat.

Labels with a picture of a Shabbat table indicate to my pre-reader that what is inside is special for Shabbat!

Some favorite Shabbat books that he *would* read every day, but we save just for Shabbat itself. He especially likes to use the Shabbat story river rocks alongside our books or in creating his own Shabbat story.

He loves helping to set our Shabbat table and using his dramatic play toys to set his own little table. He also has a lot of fun with this DIY activity I created from a free printable available here.

For right now, my son loves Shabbat. He is excited for it each week and relishes most of the day. There are moments where he wants to make a smoothie or have toast or go to Chuck E. Cheese during the day and has to hear "no." We try to supplement statements of "we can't do that on Shabbat" with "but on Shabbat we can..." It is our hope that through our own modeling and through some creative efforts, we will be able to preserve his joy and enthusiasm for years to come. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Playing!

Shabbat Theme & My Five Senses: Part 4

As the next installment to our Five Senses of Shabbos theme, we explored our sense of touch and introduced the concept of different textures. So much of a toddler's experience is sensory-laden. Each and every day, my son is exposed to a variety of textures and tactile experiences. Having the formal opportunity to develop language and vocabulary around it was wonderful, and we had a lot of fun doing it!

Happy Hands-on Playing!

I never thought I'd have an educational opportunity to use Pat the Bunny or any of the other companion books that forever seem to make it into homes in gift bags after a baby arrives, but what do you know? They are a great tool for teaching about different textures (and other senses for that matter). "The bunny is soft!" my son shouted proudly after learning the word for the texture. 

Caught red-handed responding to his journal prompt at Table Time.

Shaping challah dough was initially the activity I had planned for the sense of touch, but since I am not baking this week, I decided to incorporate some different textures into our associated Shabbat craft activity--decorating a challah board. He had fun sanding the wood with the scratchy sandpaper block. I felt the block would be easier for his hands than a sheet of sandpaper at this point.

The sponge was initially intended for the upcoming painting part of the project, but he enjoyed using it to dust off the wood shavings and noticing its crinkly, squishy, somewhat scratchy texture.

And here it is again being used for painting.

He loved exploring the different designs it made by dabbing versus stroking it across the board. Once dry, we will add some stickers and a layer of Mod Podge before letting his very own challah board grace our Shabbos table.

And since we didn't make real challah, we still got the smooshy and squishy dough experience with some playdough!

Make it at Home Monday: Shabbat Story River Rocks

I've seen some beautifully handcrafted river rocks used in preschool and homeschool settings lately. Many times they are used with handwritten letters as an alphabet manipulative or for emerging readers to practice sight-words and even spelling their own names. I've seen gorgeously painted pictures of weather-themed graphics for use at Calendar Time/Circle Time. I've seen amazing graphics done as well in this fashion for use with story telling activities. I have horrible penmanship and am not particularly artistically inclined either, so after seeing a photo of a beautiful set of story river rocks done entirely with stickers, I felt a sense of relief and inspiration. I found small river rocks for sale at our local Dollar Tree in the floral department. There are larger options available at craft stores that would better accommodate larger graphics and/or smaller hands. Our Dollar Tree also had a collection of brightly colored alphabet stickers that I used for a set of alphabet river rocks (not pictured). When I recently purchased a pack of small Shabbat themed stickers, I had an idea--they would be perfect for creating Shabbat Story River Rocks, a great addition to our Shabbat theme this week or to any Shabbos afternoon! You could, of course, make story rocks related to any number of themes using or creating your own small stickers/graphics. Here's how:

Make it at Home: Shabbat Story River Rocks
You will need:

• river rocks in the size/shade of your choice--I purchased mine at the Dollar Tree and they are on the smaller end and in a variety of shades, light and dar
• accordingly sized stickers/graphics--if you are printing your own graphics, consider printing onto sticker paper to save the effort of gluing
• Mod Podge or similar product to seal (I used the goopy stuff you paint on and a small foam paint brush--you can also get spray versions if you have a well ventilated work space available)

Place your sticker on its rock, making sure to smooth it as carefully as possible over bumpy surfaces so that no edges are coming up. Paint a thin layer of Mod Podge over top. For best results, you may wish to coat the entire rock with a seal. Allow to dry before using for story-telling and play. 

I've used story rocks in a group setting to have children make up their own story about Shabbat. They can be used individually or as a family in this manner as well. They can also be used to sequence events of Shabbos--what do we do first, next, last? Additionally you can play games like "I spy" or "What's Missing?" using the a few or all of the rocks (for more advanced players) to guess which picture you might be thinking of or which one is missing from the collection. 

Happy playing and story-telling!

Funday Friday: Favorite Stories in Action, A Playful Story Stretcher

It's Funday Friday here. Generally speaking, that's the one day a week (other than weekends) that we come downstairs still in our pajamas in the morning. I still do homeschool activities, but our pace is a bit more playful and child-led as we get ready for Shabbos in the evening. Acting out favorite children's books is one of my favorite story stretching activities. I've mentioned the book, Is It Shabbos Yet? by Ellen Emerman before and it truly is a favorite among many children, particularly the one living in this house! The story is told from Friday morning when a little girl, Malkie, wakes up already asking if it's Shabbos yet. Her mother responds to this question throughout the day with "not yet," and invites her little one to help her with all of the many Shabbos preparations.
I've done activities with preschool classes to re-write children's names into the story and have them act out the steps to getting ready for Shabbos. As much as we adults can find the chores of cleaning, shopping, cooking and preparing for Shabbos to be daunting and sometimes even overwhelming, children inherently LOVE to help adults with these tasks and there are many ways in which even the youngest of hands can help. My son is no exception to this rule. He loves to clean and help in the kitchen. He doesn't always love actual shopping trips, but he does love to pretend about them in his toy kitchen area. We have a variety of plush, plastic and real Shabbos artifacts that he can play with and pretend with to act out the rituals of lighting candles, making kiddush, setting the table and having a Shabbos meal. He asks for Shabbos with the same eagerness as Malkie does (only usually beginning on Sunday morning and not Friday!), and so today when he brought me Is It Shabbos Yet? to be read aloud for the umpteenth time this week alone, I decided we would make a playacting activity of it.
Although we've done this activity before (we even did a Pesach version last spring), he was so excited to do it again today. Here's a few shots of the fun--wishing you all happy playing, acting, story telling and a wonderful weekend ahead!

Helping to clean for Shabbos! 

Shopping for Shabbos--adding a large recycled paper bag added a whole new element of excitement to playing in his kitchen set today!

Playdough Challah Station: when I am baking fresh challah, he's always the first in line to help, but for weeks I am not baking, playdough is a wonderful way to play about it. (Please forgive the purple color!)

Shabbat Theme & My Five Senses: Part 3

Besomim (spice) box for Havdalah

Today we explored the sense of smell and, although it technically marks the separation between Shabbos and the rest of the week, Havdalah. The Havdalah rituals help us to say goodbye to the sweetness of Shabbos while welcoming a wonderful week ahead. Special blessings are made over wine/grape juice, a lit candle with at least two wicks (also to symbolize the separation between the holy [Shabbos] and the mundane [weekdays]), and besomim (sweet spices to awaken the senses and bring us joyfully into the coming week). Besomim is commonly comprised of cloves, cinnamon or other pleasant smelling spices. It can be simply used right from its spice box or decoratively displayed in handcrafted containers that are often works of art in and of themselves. As part of our Shabbos theme and exploration of our five senses, I felt making his own besomim box would be the perfect way to use our noses today and to create something very special my son can use at Havdalah, which now with the sun setting a bit earlier, he may even get to stay awake for soon!
Havdalah can be made only when there are three stars visible in the sky, at nightfall. This is the time that Shabbos officially ends and the rest of the week begins. We used star-shaped stickers to decorate the box and help us remember this as well as some smiley face stickers to help us remember that we should enter the week ahead with the same joyfulness that the Shabbos brings each week.

We began today's lesson with another great non-fiction find from the children's section of our local library all about the sense of smelling. I find books like these--with clear photographs and very simple/minimal language--are naturally interactive for even the smallest readers/listeners. They also encourage vocabulary development. We took the lesson over to the table to test out our own sniffers and some favorites from our spice shelf and natural medicine collection. My son loved smelling some of our favorite kitchen spices and extracts as well as some familiar essential oils. 

Next, I introduced our activity tray with a dish filled with cloves and some cinnamon sticks ready to go into his soon-to-be-decorated besomim box. I arranged it as a practice in transferring skills, providing a small measuring spoon for scooping, a small bowl to transfer from and the box to transfer into. I did not give specific instructions, but rather let him lead and show me what worked best for him. He did naturally pick up the larger cinnamon sticks and put them into the box and he also immediately took an interest in using the spoon to scoop and transfer. 

"Smells yummy!"

When it became a bit challenging to scoop the little cloves up and pour, he began using a helper hand to place them into the spoon, testing out picking them up and placing them right in the box and even tested out pouring.

He had so much fun with the transferring aspect of this activity alone that I set up a Montessori-style transfer tray with two dishes, another portion of whole cloves, and a small spoon for scooping. This kept him happy and busy for quite some time! I love when an activity unexpectedly holds his interest and inspires further exploration. One benefit to being in a homeschool environment is the ability to linger in these moments and not have to "finish" a project in a timely manner. 

Happy playing, learning and lingering when interest is sparked!

Shabbat Theme & My Five Senses Part 2

Our homeschool bookshelf and basket are stocked with favorites from home and some borrowed from the library that relate to our current themes. We incorporate reading formally and informally--both at set times and throughout the day as my son chooses books to be read aloud.

The night before a homeschool day, I pack a few of our special books and activity materials in my son's school bag. He was so excited to take it from the hook (at his level) and open it up to see what was inside waiting for us today!

Our folders also hold important materials for the day ahead.

Our big kick-off to Homeschool Preschool ended up happening with a bit less fanfare than I'd planned due to an unplanned and brief stint as substitute preschool teacher for myself and substitute preschool student for my son. Lack of planning and all, I think it was the perfect opportunity and transition for us. My son did beautifully in a "traditional" classroom setting, and I got to see (as a neurotic teacher-mommy) that he does indeed have the ability to adapt to classroom structure and routines even having been at home with me. When the time comes that he does enter a classroom environment I think we will both be more than OK! And as much as I love the structure and flow of a traditional classroom setting, I also love the ability to move at our own pace at home. School at home can happen in one large chunk of time or in smaller chunks throughout the day as we see fit. Working outside of the house for shorter hours allowed us time in the afternoon to engage in learning activities And today, on our first full day at home together, we were able to go through our morning routines and activities, break for the ever so important library visit and Story Time, return for some more learning and play and break again for some lunch and a nap. I love that my son had the idea today to bring a book outside. He was so excited to use his new homeschool bag that we made together a few weeks ago, he grabbed his board book copy of "Pete the Cat Wheels on the Bus," packed it inside and asked for help to carry his toy school bus and a few Fisher Price passengers! There are so many benefits from both the traditional early childhood classroom experience as well as the play at home experience. I'm so blessed to have had a glimpse into both worlds and I think both my son and I are eager to continue on our journey this year. Here's a peek at our next installment of our first Homeschool theme: Shabbat & My Five Senses. Wherever your day happens to take you, I wish you joyful learning and happy playing!

Our Sense of Hearing:

Here are a couple of books we used today to explore our sense of hearing. The Sounds of my Jewish Year is an old favorite of my son's and yet he was so excited to unpack it from his homeschool bag this morning--as though it were brand new! I brought along Hearing, one of a great set on The Five Senses we found at our local library. The photos and simple text were a great way to start conversation about the sense of hearing and explore/expand vocabulary. 

These homemade egg shakers (dollar store "easter eggs" filled with rice/beans/bells and duct taped shut) are a regular installment here when we daven together in the morning or do other music & movement activities. It's a fun and fabulous DIY project that will be sure to get a lot of use. Today they were a great tool to explore different sounds together.

I used a couple of bells threaded through a pipe cleaner and some duct tape to create our jingle brushes. It made painting (an already beloved activity here) even more fun!

We are working on a book together throughout this theme I've titled "My Shabbos Five Senses Book." In addition, we are using many of our senses to create some special crafts and materials to decorate our family Shabbos table. My son was so excited to get to paint his own set of Shabbos candlesticks--and even more excited to hear his painting in action with our homemade jingle brushes.

The finished product, plus a layer of Mod Podge and some added LED lights shaped like candles for play. These could also be used as a display item or used with real candles (obviously out of child reach).

"Where are your ears?"