Save a life this Christmas (oh, and every other day of the year)

We live on a paradise island where people come from around the world to spend their holidays on tropical beaches and enjoying all, this wonderful island has to offer. So what makes such a sought after destination have 34 suicides occur each year? 

Last week my husband informed me that around 34 people commit suicide in our town per year. Then he told me that means around 24 people will take their lives in the next six weeks! To say I was shocked is an understatement but what really pushed me (and him) to speak out was, that while we were discussing this in the car driving over the bridge that separates the island from the mainland, someone was (un-be-known to us) taking their life by jumping from the highest part of the bridge.

So, what can we do? Once I read a lovely story which has inspired me in the past to be kinder to strangers and I will tell it here for you. A woman was driving with her husband and he was just grinning at random people they were passing. She asked him what he was doing and he simply replied "saving lives"! Apparently suicide survives said they would have seriously reconsidered their attempt if a stranger had smiled at them that day. Well, I personally haven't met any attempted suicide victims but I like to believe those small gestures can change the world and save people in moments of despair. 

So, reach out. Smile, hug, converse or anything that you feel could help. I want to thin that if one of my sons was ever in such despair, someone would just ask them if they are ok.

Read my husbands article here (in Portuguese, but if you want it translated, just let me know in the comments below).

Earth, Moon and Space

Recently me and the boys went to a moon landing exhibition. It was really hands on and we had a fantastic time. We have spent the last week remembering different facts from the day and started to collect materials to reproduce a few of the activities we did.

Today while we were playing outside the boys spotted the moon in the sky. My eldest asked why half of it was 'missing' so I started explaining about the phases of the moon and he remembered things from the trip last week. He ran off to get a telescope so he could see better. Unfortunately we don't have a telescope so we decided to try and make one!. After finding the broken magnifying glass and a cardboard tube we fashioned something that resembled a telescope and the boys took turns trying to see the moon's craters. After a while I decided to get my camera and do a super zoom photo to see what we could see of the moon - unfortunately no craters.

Then I remembered the space torch we got my youngest for his birthday so we sat in the darkened corridor to view all the photos. It was even better as there are several shots of the moon landing including the foot print that they seem to have loved from the exhibit (you can find the torch here). 

This led me to try reproducing the footprint in our sandpit. This was so funny and we all had a good laugh while they tried to stride around in my big boot with crayons taped under (to make the right sort of groove).

After, we coloured in two polystyrene balls I had to represent the earth and the moon. We discussed the countries we had to add to the earth and the names of the oceans then remembered that the moon had craters and the big boy asked about the protective bubble that protects the earth from comets and meteors and why earth doesn't have craters like the moon. I was really surprised by how much information they both remembered from the day trip and how excited they were to try all these activities in their own home. When the earth and moon were ready they practiced rotating around each other being the earth or moon and this had them in fits of giggles as they got dizzy and fell down over and over!

Later on they asked to watch a moon movie and I remembered that there are several parts of a documentary called Cosmos that have nice images about earth and the moon. We enjoyed most of it although some of the cartoon parts were a bit overwhelming so we skipped past those!

For our bedtime reading I asked if they had any books about planets or space and they remembered a book about a boy who goes to Mars. It's called Marshmallows for Martians and was a great way to finish our day before turning off the lights for another look at the torch images.

I'm sure they will want to repeat many of these activities tomorrow and I will be coming up with a few more to compliment these (I will try and add them to this post later).

 

Learning about money!

Money is an important aspect of life and one that needs to be taught well so that children can learn the importance of saving and sensible money management. And it all starts when they are really young. Both my boys have been fascinated with money since a young age and we have encouraged this curiosity by giving them small amounts of pocket money and discussing where this money goes. They each have a piggy bank where they can put their money and save up for a toy they would like. We have a family donation jar where we put small change and encourage the boys to do the same. When they visit the turtle sanctuary near our home they take the money and donate it to the turtles to help them. Finally they have the option to put their money in the bank and this is what they do with any birthday and Christmas money. They are learning that this money is for their future and that by leaving it in the bank they receive bonus money called interest. 

So all that said, they also want to touch money! Play with it and post it into their piggy banks most days. This is great contact and we use these moments to teach counting, the names of the coins and simple math concepts such as ten 10 cent/pence coins make 1 real/pound (we are trying to teach them about the two currencies they will have the most contact with first).

Here are a few of the activities we have done recently which have been fun and received with interest.

Coin cleaning
This was such a simple activity and one they have wanted to repeat many times. We put one of each coin in a small pot and covered them with vinegar. Then we went off to school. When we came home the coins were super shiny. The boys got excited to see how shiny the coins had become.

Coin rubbings
We used our shiny clean coins to make a collection of coin rubbings. This is another simple activity which requires a piece of paper, some crayons and some coins. The only tricky part is trying to keep the coins still under the paper while they do the rubbing so we started with the bigger coins.

Drawing, counting and value representation
We took to the white board to draw around the coins then draw numbers and explore the values using our number rods. We discussed how two fifties make 1 real/pond and other summing of coin values. Although the boys are young they started to look closely at each coin to see what number was written on each one and they grasped the concept that certain coins go together to become 'the same' as other coins.

If you have some other ideas for us on how to learn more about coins, value and money, please share them with us and all Babysteps readers in the comments below :)