i need activities for young kids...

[halfwaynowhere]

my sister babysits 2 young boys, Brandon, 6; and William, 5. she brings them over and hides in her room sometimes when she can't deal with them, she says they are more well behaved at my house...well, i love spending time with them, i think its a great opportunity to be a part of somebody's life, to help mold who they will become. i don't think my sister sees it quite like that... anyways, Brandon is starting 1st grade, although his old school was planning on having him repeat kindergarten, his mom decided it would be best to put him in 1st grade. William is going to start Kindergarten... the boys are obviously at different levels... today i read to them, the book was too long for William, but Brandon was really interested, and i thought that was great... we played candyland, but i wouldn't let them play until after i read the story of the game to them, and i think that helped, because now they know the characters and everything, and they had a discussion about what they would do if they went to Candyland... Brandon loves playing with blocks, he's such a wonderful architect... we just use blocks from the game Jenga, becasue my parents got rid of most of our toys years ago, but Brandon has managed to make a replica of the eiffel tower out of those little blocks, and he's having a great time figuring out different ways to build things... william is at that age where he just wants to knock everything over... they really like playing with legos, but they don't build with them, they just play with the people, and i don't like that because i find it hard to interact with them with that... at their home, they play a lot of video games and watch movies, they go swimming, play with action figures, etc. although my sister does sit them down for "learning time" where they use their leapfrog systems. i disagree with that strategy, i think every time should be an opportunity for learning... of course, my sister thinks she wants to be a preschool teacher, or some sort of childcare provider, my parents don't think she'll do that great of a job, and although the boys love her, iand i think she's great as a babysitter, she's not a great full-time nanny, they need more than to just play video games... so now my brother pulled out his toy cars, and is playing with those with them, but he just got home from school, and he's going through the teenage angst thing, so he's not being that careful about what he says, or enforcing the rules... anyways, i posted this because i'd like some ideas on what to do with them, i think sometimes they need seperate activities because they are at different stages, but i need them both to be pretty much quiet and contained at the same time... my mom keeps trying to teach them native american crafts and stuff, but they don't understand the concept of that right now, so they get disinterested... she used to teach native american folklore to kids, but they were middle school aged, so i guess she just doesn't know the right approaches... they do have fun playing with beads though... anyways, what do you do with your kids, what works, what doesn't? i need fun games to play, and crafts and stuff that teach lessons about life and everything... thanks in advance...

[Ceres]

I wish you could come over and hang with my kids! You sound like you are great with little ones. You are right, making a seperate learning time is a sure way to teach kids that learning isnt something do naturally with everything they do. I suspect your young architect learned more trying to make his tower look like the Eiffel Tower than he would have spending the time working on the Leap thingy.
They learn so much just from sharing your life every day, spending time doing stuff together - even stuff that isnt made to entertain kids.

[halfwaynowhere]

lol... i love spending time with kids and with adults... its the people my own age that i have always had trouble fitting in with... i just feel really bad for the boys because of their personal situation, and i want them to have the best childhood ever... i searched the web for free coloring book pages, and i printed out pages and made my own little coloring books for them... i left the covers blank, with just their names on them, and the books allow for extra pages to be added in... i figure next time they come over, we can have coloring time, and if they finish a page and tell me a little story about it, i will give them a sticker to put on the cover... i may ask them a few questions, like how many carrots the bunny is holding, or whatever, i think its a good learning activity... my parents taught us through the activities we did, and i think that helped me become who i am, and i saw so many people who's parents just bought them learning tools, and let them do it on their own, they got bored... the leapfrog system i think would be a good thing if you sit down and use it with the kids, but the other day i was trying to help brandon with his, and he didn't want to follow the instructions, do the activities on each page, he just wanted to push buttons and make noises and stuff... i know these aren't my kids, they aren't my responsibilities, my sister gets paid to take care of them, but i think we would do better working together.... the boys seem to love me, aparrantly they had so much fun with me the other day when we went swimming, and when we played candyland, that all day they were asking blair if i could come over and go swimming with them, and play candyland... of course, it was early this morning, and it was my day off from work,and i needed some time to myself, my sister didn't want to give me that time, so she just left me alone, and brought the boys over later... but it was fun, i really like them, its just hard when they misbehave, because i can't really discipline them, its not my place, so it just gets awkward... i'm getting better at it though...

[Mother Goose]

it does sound like you're doing a wonderful job with them. As for your sister wanting to teach preschool or do day care....I've been there...done that...it's not easy by any means. I did it for 5 years before having my own kids.

Activities...hmmmmm....let me see. If you have some place they can paint...that would be great...but use different stuff to paint with.
* You can do marble painting: place a piece of paper in a box...I normally use the tray like boxes that the walmart sodas come in, dip marble in paint, drop on paper & gently roll it back & forth across paper until pain is gone
* use old toy cars (roll them through the paint & then onto the paper,)
* Q-tips
* string (this one gets pretty messy..lol.)
*You can also do butterfly painting...they paint on the paper & fold it in half to create a butterfly effect.
*Oh, another messy but fun one is straw painting...you place a drop of paint on the paper & have them blow it around .....these usually turn out pretty cool.
*can make ants or spiders out of egg cartons...paint them black & add pipe cleaners for feelers and/or legs

You can set up a scavenger hunt for them...most kids like that quite a bit.

You can do raisin & toothpick contruction: draw a shape on a piece of paper & then use the raisins to stick the toothpicks together to make the outline of the shape with that...your little architect should like that one :)

You can do a guessing bag...gather some items & place them in a bag...instruct the boys to grab one item within the bag & tell them to describe it (smooth, rough, soft, hard) and have them guess what it is.

To make coloring with crayons a little different you can tape two or three together & let them draw with them like that.

Oh, and my kids LOVE drawing on boxes...if you have any big boxes that they could actually get IN to...you can have them turn it into a truck or a rocketship ...what ever they like.

You can also have them do 'bean' art...just have them make a picture with beans...or any kind of small food item like that...noodles, cereal

You probably already play I spy with them...that's a favorite of my 6 yr old :)

A real 'learning' activity: you write down some letters....make sure to include the letters of the boy's name and have them x out the ones not in their names & circle the ones that ARE. At 5 & 6 this should be pretty easy, but it never hurts to practice...you could do it with other words if they're ready for that.

You can make your own alphabet puzzle game for them. cut out 26 pieces of paper...write upper case letter on the left of the piece & lower case on the right...then cut the pieces down the middle & make them match them up.

lol....I guess I could go on all night. Hope this gives you some options. If you want to talk more, feel free to pm me. :)

[halfwaynowhere]

those are all great ideas! I'll have to try some of those out as soon as i get the chance... i'd love to play with paint, but my mom is menopausal and is going crazy about keeping the house clean, so no messy stuff just yet... i need to get a "shopping list" together... not just stuff to buy, but stuff to find around the house that we can use... we used to have all sorts of craft supplies, my mom used to do arts and crafts, and everything accumulated, but she gave most of the stuff away to one of her friends who is a preschool teacher... i don't even think we have crayons anymore! time to hit the 99 cent store!

[MoonDust]

at that age the best way for them to learn is through play.
Blocks, play dough, all that's great.
Dress-up and then having them tell a story about it helps them with language development.
Try a few cooking activities and let them get their hands in it. Cookie recipies, healthy snacks, all good things.
if your mom's not too crazy about the mess you can get a bucket of giant chalk (about $1) and let them go nuts on the cement, then just wash it away when they go home!
I've got a bunch of activities in a big 4 inch binder that I want to add to my site, but haven't gotten around to it.
go to: http://itswhoiam.net/ChildDevelopment/index.html (http://itswhoiam.net/ChildDevelopment/index.html)
I havea few articles that may help and the beginings of a book list of books that may interest them.

[Yvonne Belisle]

Run a search in this forum there are tons of ideas in the earlier threads.

[rowena]

Hi,

Maybe you could take the boys to the public library and show them how to pick out books, and while you're there, look for books on activities for kids. There's one book called Miserly Moms that has very inexpensive recipes for things like play-dough (though they can get messy!) Some libraries also have free activities like reading or game circles; some museums do, too.

If you're able to take them outdoors, parks and nature trails are wonderful - my kids and I used to go on "adventures," which mainly involved walking along streambeds, over rocks and tree roots, etc., and making up stories about how we were looking for a long lost treasure.

[Wytchie]

Hi,

Maybe you could take the boys to the public library and show them how to pick out books, and while you're there, look for books on activities for kids. There's one book called Miserly Moms that has very inexpensive recipes for things like play-dough (though they can get messy!) Some libraries also have free activities like reading or game circles; some museums do, too.

If you're able to take them outdoors, parks and nature trails are wonderful - my kids and I used to go on "adventures," which mainly involved walking along streambeds, over rocks and tree roots, etc., and making up stories about how we were looking for a long lost treasure.

My kids love nature trails. Some of the things we have done to make it a bit more interactive is the 'match box game', where you try to collect as many things on your walk as you can that will fit into one matchbox (its quite amazing how much you actually can get in there), also they love to do things like collect fallen leaves, feathers, that kind of thing to make a collage with. The best one ever though (according to my 6 yr old) was when we went blackberry picking, and then made our blackberries into jam...for weeks all they really wanted to eat was sandwiches made with "their jam" lol...

Salt dough has always been really popular in our house too, as has anything involving making something to eat (see jam tale lol); an easy one is to get a pack of plainish biscuits, like digestives, and then a bit of icing and some assorted sweets and let the kids decorate the biscuits. Another fun (and a bit more healthy) one is fruit kebabs; you get a straw and some soft fruit like bananas, berries etc, and just cut chunks and let the kids thread them onto the straws.

A great web resource I have found for activities and colouring pages and things is http://www.enchantedlearning.com , my kids also love http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies , which has colouring pages related to characters found on the tv channel as well as ideas for makes and things.

As a mess preventer for painting/modelling clay that sort of thing, we bought a cheap plastic tablecloth (the ones people use for childrens parties), you can get them in poundshops, they cover a big area, and are waterproof too, so its really easy to just scoop them up and shake them outside after the kids have finished playing, and then wipe it down ready for next time.

It sounds like you are doing a fantastic job with the kids already though...the main thing is just to be enthusiastic about whatever it is you are doing, and to be interested in them, which you obviously are...I think that you could make pretty much anything you do with them fun!