Playing With Goop

What is Goop? Well, here is a hint, it is a very easy and fun to make, it is inexpensive and it provides hours of entertainment. Goop is a little bit like a homemade version of play dough, only much more delightfully messy, goop is a squishy slippery substance that can provide a bunch of bored kids with hours of good clean (messy) indoor fun on a rainy day.

What Do Kids Learn From Playing With Goop?

They develop their fine motor and sensory skills by manipulating and handling the goop. They also learn about cause and effect when they touch the goop, move it around, and see how the material comes back together.

Making and playing with goop

What You'll Need
* 1 ½ cups cornstarch
* 1 cup water Measuring cups
* Spoons
* large bowl(s)
* Airtight container

Here's How To Do It
Set up the ingredients, the bowls and the pans. Have your child help you make the mixture. Measure the cornstarch and water in a container. Mix it with a spoon. Add more water if the mixture seems too dry. If the mixture seems too wet, add cornstarch.

Ask your kids questions

* How does it feel?
* What happens when you stir it together?
* How long can you keep the goop in your hand before it slips away?
* Can you squeeze it into a ball?

Just remember to cover the kids and the table with plastic or something else that’s easy to clean, put the girls’ long hair up in ponytails, goop can be messy but it’s worth the hours of entertainment on a rainy summer day. Keep in mind that goop is made from edible ingredients, it's not really made to eat. Very young children should be supervised carefully, and encouraged not to eat the goop.

Thanksgiving Turkeys

What’s more fun then involving you little ones in decorating the Thanksgiving table. Little ones love to help and parents love to keep the busy during holiday down time. I found this adorable activity on a website called DLTK and added a few ideas on how to use it. Fingerprint turkeys, I love this activity for 2 reasons, the first is that a child of virtually any age can participate in making the turkey and it makes a great keepsake for the family. You can use the fingerprint turkeys to make place cards or even place mats for your guests.

What you need:

brown finger paint

red, yellow and/or orange finger paint
scrap cardboard or an old margarine container lid (something to act as a pallet)
black marker
paper or card stock
contact paper if you decide to make place mats

Directions:

Squeeze a bit of brown finger paint onto a margarine container lid
Squeeze a bit of red and/or orange finger paint onto the lid, spaced away from the brown
paint (or use a second lid)
Stamp the pad of your index finger into the orange or red paint
Use your finger to make an arch of fingerprints as the turkey's tail
Optional: Make a second arch around the first one using your index finger or your pinkie again... you can use the same color or another autumn color for the second arch (it's actually
better to make the outside arch first if you're planning to do two)
Use your thumb finger to stamp a brown thumbprint in the center of the arch as the turkeys body
Use a marker to add feet, a beak and eyes.

This can be a fun and enjoyable activity that will get the whole family into the holiday season. At Goddard Ashburn we use activities such as the one above to keep the children engaged by showing them that learning can be fun.

Call us to arrange a time to visit our school and see what other fun we are up to.

The Teaching Opportunity in Thanksgiving

With the Thanksgiving holiday later this week, I thought we would focus on teaching children about the meaning of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to teach children about the concepts of compassion and generosity. You may think that your child is too young to fully understand these concepts, but here are a few ways you reinforce these concepts with children.

Volunteer: Volunteering is a great way for your children to see generosity in action. There are numerous chances in every community to volunteer. Homeless shelters, nursing homes, and mentoring programs are just a few. There may also be other opportunities closer to home. Perhaps an elderly relative or neighbor could use a hand. It feels good to help others. Your actions are the most powerful influence on your children and seeing your volunteerism could help them understand and later follow your example.

Being Green: There are several forms of compassion. Compassion can be directed toward people, toward animals and toward the earth. By practicing recycling you can actually teach compassion. Explain to your child why you recycle items. How it’s important to take care of the earth so that it can be in the best shape for future generations.

Top of Form
Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity for children to learn about compassion and generosity. Teaching children compassion “thanks” is more than having them learn polite phrases and manners. Compassion means that children recognize the impact their actions can have on others and on the world.