The Amazing Imaginative Mind of a Creative Child #7

I bought several tins to use as gift boxes for holiday gifts.  Every one of them ended up with a car or train inside.

How to Argue With a Pre-School-Aged Child (And Lose) #21

(We transitioned from "toddler" to "pre-school-aged" at approximately 3.3 years, but kept the numbering sequence for the title)

P=Parent
C=Child

P: Hey, the humidifier is running! Wanna see?
C: Where's the fire?
P: There is no fire, it's a humidi-fier.
C: Is it hot?
P: No, it's not hot. It's just water vapor.
C: (blows the vapor) It should be hot if it's fire. So. Be careful!

The Amazing Imaginative Mind of a Creative Child #6

Hmmm.... I guess the bus was transporting the cars up to the (blanket-covered) piano, where they obediently departed in a very tight single-file line.

The Amazing Imaginative Mind of a Creative Child #5

Every couch cushion placed next to the front door to make a safe airplane landing.

The Amazing Imaginative Mind of a Creative Child #4

While unpacking groceries, my 3 year-old built a tower that he was quite proud of.

The Amazing Imaginative Mind of a Creative Child #3

2 1/2 year old "helping" load the dishwasher.

How to argue with a toddler ( and lose ) #20

P= Parent
T= Toddler

(Toddler eating a whole apple, looking at the bite marks)
T: Are these my teeth?
P: Yes, the marks in the apple came from your teeth. Those are teethmarks.
T: Like bookmarks?
P: No, not like bookmarks.
T: Ow, my apple is stuck in my brain!
P: Did you get a brain freeze from the cold apple?
T: No, it's stuck!

Learning how to teach Spanish, part 1

Prelude:
From age 4 months to 18 months my son's daycare provider was Spanish-speaking. We thought this early introduction to hearing two languages would be a huge benefit to his ability to become bilingual. In addition, it re-sparked our (his parent's) interest in enhancing our high school/college knowledge of Spanish.

My First Spanish Word Book

I originally bought this book because I wanted my son to learn Spanish along with English, at the youngest age possible. But it has turned out to also be a great book to learn English. At age 1-2, he pointed to the pictures and said what they are, or asked what they are. I tried to tell him both the English word and the Spanish word, but at the same time I didn't want to confuse him, so sometimes we'd just say the English word. If it's something he really knew well (milk, dog, cat) we'd say both.

It also helps me to learn the vocabulary. I take continuing education Spanish classes at the community college so that I can use it and teach him all the Spanish I know.

The Beginning of the Lessons
The Spanish classes, which meet once a week continuously, take the winter off each year. This year the break is from November to March, so I decided to take that night each week to work on Spanish lessons with my 3 year old. Not being a teacher, or sure what to do, I decided to mix it up each week and see what works and what doesn't.

Week 1: Videos.
We tried a CD/book combo: Speak Spanish with Dora & Diego. He listened to about half of the 1st CD before getting bored, it was a bit too slow paced. And I thought the vocabulary was a bit useless. I don't see him using the words "dairy stand", "stable", and "henhouse" very often in English, let alone Spanish. This is by Pimsleur, but maybe would work better on older kids who already know some Spanish.
Then we watched a video "Kids Love Spanish". This was super cheesy with a lot of repetition, but he was actually watching it and repeating the words! Success!

Week 2: Cooking.
It was Spanish lesson night but I had so many bananas in the freezer they were falling out every time we opened the door. So I decided we could cook banana bread (3 loaves) and learn the ingredients in Spanish while we cooked. The vocabulary included:
Platanos (bananas)
Yogur (yogurt)
Salsa de peras (pear sauce)
Huevos (eggs)
Azucar (sugar)
Harina (flour)
Sal (salt)
Mantequilla (butter)
Pan (bread)
jengibre (ginger)
chocolate (pronounced choc-oh-LAH-tay)
Manzana (because he ate an apple while making the Pan de Platanos)
I can't really say how well it worked, I just had him repeat each word as we added it, and then we went over all the ingredients in Spanish a couple of times. I realized as we were doing this that a lot of the words had more syllables in Spanish than they do in English, which can be hard for a toddler to remember. So while buttering the pans, we sang a Mantequilla song in which we just repeated "mantequilla" a bunch. He seemed to like that. Songs are great. And whether he retained any Spanish from this lesson or not, we ended up with tres panes de platanos!

Week 3: Muchas Cosas
It was such a busy night. Trip to the grocery store, visiting the neighbors (he did successfully count to 12 in Spanish for the neighbor!) Then getting dinner ready and a bath! He just wanted to play. I tried to compromise by getting in his little "tent" with him with My First Spanish Book but he wasn't into it. So while he ate dinner we worked on word repetition. Leche, queso, huevos, agua, pan, perro, cola. Which lead to an extensive conversation (with a lot of English) about how you can make the perro wag his cola just by saying his name! But the cola wags slow. But when someone comes to the door that cola wags muy rapido!

I think the lesson I've learned in this, so far, is to take it slow, one word at a time. And to try to make it fun!

How to argue with a toddler ( and lose ) #19

T: It's too spicy! I don't like spicy.
P: Someday you'll like spicy.
T: When? In ten days?
P: Sure. You'll like spicy food in ten days.
T: I don't like spicy. Has it been ten days?
P: Not yet.
T: I still don't like spicy.

How to argue with a toddler (and lose) #18

P= Parent
T= Toddler

T: It's windy!
P: It is!
T: I can drink the wind.
P: You can't drink the wind.
T: Yes, I can! Look. (slurps loudly) That's drinking the wind!
P: It is?
T: Yeah, but you have to do it slowly.
P: You need to sip it?
T: Yeah, you sip the wind. You can't gulp it. And it can't be too cold or it doesn't work.