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A Bucket of Beans for Your Preschoolers?

YES! Here is a fun and inexpensive activity for your preschoolers to do on a rainy day or inclement weather day.  Get a few bags of dried beans at your local market and pour them into a large but shallow container.  Beans are cheap enough and very easy to clean up if you buy the larger-sized ones. They are re-usable as well (for play of course – not to eat or cook!). Split peas will obviously be more difficult to clean up as they are very small. 

 Place some items in the container with the dry beans so that the children can pour and scoop the beans with – such as measuring cups and spoons and small plastic cups or bowls, etc.   Children will love this activity!  I purchased a small plastic swimming pool that was about 5 or 6 feet wide and poured about 10 bags of beans into it.  You can use any size container though.  The kids poured the beans into the various containers and even onto each other.  It was not odd to find a bean or two inside a toddler’s diaper!!!   

 You can add various toys, dump trucks, toy dinosaurs or plastic dishes, etc.  The kids like to play hide and seek with their toys in the beans.  You can create some simple math games such as counting up to 100 beans or 10 beans.  You can have the kids guess how many cups full of beans it will take to fill up a bowl or a pot, etc.  You can have an art activity where the children can glue beans onto a project.  For a science activity you can have each child plant some beans in a cup just to see what grows.  Lima beans work well for that activity.  There are lots of things you can do with beans and preschoolers – just use your imagination.

Cleanup tip: place a flat sheet or plastic table cover under your container or plastic pool to catch most of the spilled beans.  It definitely makes cleanup easier.  Also, after the bean play is over make sure you store the beans in an airtight container or plastic bag as they will grow into plants or begin to smell if they get exposed to too much moisture.  Have fun with BEANS !

(PS – You could also try this with rice but it is much harder to clean up!)

RAINY DAY PREK !

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Two Year old Toddler’s Development produced by Simply Parenting and pediatrician Dr. Mary Ann LoFrumento

Duration : 0:3:14

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I’ve been trying to remember all of the nursery rhymes/kiddie songs I knew growing up. My 18mth old loves listening to them, especially the ones with hand movements. Any new or old ones would be cool!

There was a little girl that had a curl right in the middle of her forehead! and when she was good she was very good and when she was bad she was horrid!

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey when along came a spider that sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away!

This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none! This little piggy was a bad little piggy and he went wee wee weee wee wee all the way home!

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Should there be homework in preschool? This question is an extension from another question I have asked in this forum. I babysat for my younger cousins, two girls. The older one is 4 and in preschool. Her teacher is supposed to the best. She assigns preschool  homework every night for the kids. She gives the math problems (addition & subtraction). I didn’t start doing that kind of stuff until kindergarten and 1st grade! They also have reading assignments and they have to practice writing their letters and numbers. Well naturally since I was watching her after school I made sure that her homework was done. This teacher is very strict. She wants the homework to be absolutly perfect. Perfect handwriting. No mistakes. No eraser marks. Ofcourse I won’t let my cousin turn in homework that isn’t correct. But naturally she is going to mess up and she will have to erase.

After about a month. My aunt tells me that she got a call from my cousins teacher saying that the preschool homework has been very sloppy. She doesn’t accept sloppiness. I got upset because, the teacher has been sending my cousins homework back with happy faces and stars. Nothing about the appearance. My aunt once sat with me while I was helping her with her homework and told my cousin what a good job she was doing. If her homework is so sloppy, why wait a month to say something? I am not an expert in early childhood education but what 4 year old, who is just starting to learn to write is going to have perfect handwriting? I am not saying that we shouldn’t have hig expectations, but should we also be realistic?

I am not an early childhood education expert, so I don’t know what the expectation is. Short of me doing the homework for her, I don’t know what more I could have done.  This is definately not developmentally appropiate and makes me wonder how she got to be “the best” teacher.

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