Learning to swim

Learning to swim is an important life skill and one most parents often begin to think of teaching their children from a very early age. There are usually baby swimming classes at local swimming pools and these can be a great way to get your baby off to a good start in swimming.

As a family we enjoy swimming a lot and it was something we wanted our children to love aswell. From an early age we started getting them used to having water poured over them and training them to hold their breath when they went underwater. This all began at just months of age when we bathed them. We would let the running water from the shower fall over their bodies and several times during their shower we would count "one, two, three" and rapidly hold them under the flowing water. They always seemed calm in water and they never cried when we did this. As they got older they would sit in their baby baths under the running water and they have both enjoyed this time to play with plastic animals, make bubbles with the baby shampoo or pour from various plastic bottles!

When we first started taking them swimming we would play games where each of us would go underwater, always counting "one, two, three" first. They were always quite confident in the water and we used this to help them de skip basic control of their bodies while they enjoyed playing.

When they were around 18 months we began to use swim jackets available here.

These allowed them to explore the water safely whilst being independent. As they became stronger we removed a float from the jacket. Each session at the pool we would try to spent a few minute doing a swimming skill or lesson without the jacket. The idea for this came from a wonderful website www.uswim.com which I came across when looking for ways to teach my sons how to swim. The site has full instructions on how to build up the necessary skills to become a swimmer so we began to do these every time we went to the pool. The amount of time they did these skill lessons increased as they grew until now, at 4 years old, our eldest son can swim across the pool and is reluctant to use his swim jacket at all. The youngest is diving under the water in his lessons and has started trying to swim like his brother! You can watch the big guy in action here.

We have all enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, the learning process and the boys' confidence just keeps growing. We still have a way to go with technique but we feel confident that should they fall in a pool they could get to safety or at least keep afloat for a short time. Of course we hope this will never happen and cannot stress enough how children should been supervised by an adult 100% of the time they are in a pool. Learning to swim early can only protect them further!

Interesting fact: did you know babies are born with the ability to automatically not inhale water? Due to the physiology at birth, when submerged in water their windpipe automatically closes. This ability tapers off around 2 years of age so it's perfect to teach them a counting technique before this age. The "one, two, three" technique or other consistent words can help them know what to expect and when the natural ability no longer persists their brains will already know what to do when they here the words!

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 :)

How to have a bug week

My boys love bugs and being outside so this week we have concentrated on having a bug week. This has involved collecting different insects to observe and draw, reading books about insects and doing worksheets centered around bugs. Their movie night film was bee movie to round it all off!

We spent lots of time looking at different bugs and drawing them. They both enjoyed trying to carefully catch ants and centipedes from the garden to look at through the magnifying box. We counted the legs and looked at antenna and wings. They drew simple pencil drawings of what they saw and the eldest wrote the names of the bugs while we practiced phonics.

They enjoyed reading 'The Hungry Caterpillar' and using the storyboard I made for them. This brought up questions about which bugs eat what and we discussed our favorite fruits and foods and the colours of these foods.

I compiled several worksheets I found online to make a small activity book for each of them. There were mazes, colour by number, word searches and  dot to dot and they really liked that it was a little book for them. All the activities were related to insects and they were keen to work hard in them.

Each week they have movie night as a reward for working hard all week and for us to enjoy snuggly time on the sofa watching something fun. This week I decided on 'Bee Movie'. I was going to go for 'Bugs Life' but the language and scenes are not so great for small children :(

They have had lots of fun with this project and have been interested in the life cycle of butterflies so I am sure it will lead to another collection of activities next week :)

Whatsapp para educação

Como dona de uma empresa pequena, trabalho em horário flexível e posso estar com meus filhos em tempo integral. Adoro fazer com que nossos dias juntos sejam cheios de animação, atividades e jogos educativos. Não assistimos muita televisão e, como sou especialista em educação infantil, busco novas maneiras divertidas de ensinar meus filhos sobre o seu mundo.

Então, imagina minha animação quando um grande amigo me convidou para um grupo de whatsapp com pais que pensam mais ou menos como eu!

Entre no grupo no mês passado, e desde então vi o grupo crescer até os atuais 14 membros. Somos famílias de vários países e falamos línguas diferentes. Todos as crianças falam inglês, mas não necessariamente como a primeira, nem mesmo como a segunda, língua.

Usamos o grupo para a troca de ideias e informações sobre o tema de educação infantil. Trocamos links e sites interessantes e as crianças mandam fotos dos projetos, trabalhos ou jogos que estão fazendo. As crianças também conversam entre si por mensagem de voz, o que foi bem especial para meu filho mais novo, que completou dois anos agora e recebeu várias mensagens de parabéns dos novos amigos internacionais.

Recentemente começamos compartilhando vídeos das crianças fazendo atividades e o resultado foi super inspirador. Pais e filhos se animaram muito em aprender sobre o mundo, novas línguas, geografia e culturas. Esse intercâmbio de ideias e informações se tornou bem presente e ocupa grande parte de nosso ambiente educacional em casa. Depois de uma chamada pelo Skype com uma família da Espanha, meu filho maior queria aprender palavras em espanhol e olhamos a mapa do país para ver onde os novos amigos moram. Fizemos também atividades sobre bandeiras e meus dois filhos curtiram fazer as de seus países (já que têm dupla nacionalidade) e as dos países dos novos amigos.

Para mim, o grupo deu confiança para fazer mais atividades com meus filhos e me sinto muito apoiada pelos outros pais. Há um ambiente muito positivo entre os pais do grupo e isso é verdadeiramente inspirador, não só para mim, mas para toda minha família.

Whatsapp for education

As the owner of a small part time business, which allows me to work flexi hours, I have the privilege of being a full time ‘at home’ mum right now. I love to fill our days with fun, educational games and activities. We watch very little TV and as my background is in early childhood education, I’m always thinking of ways to teach my sons more about the world they live in.

So, you can imagine my delight when a good friend of mine invited me to a whatsapp group with other like-minded parents.

I joined the group last month and I’ve seen it grow to presently include 14 members. We are from all ends of the world and speak an array of languages. All the children speak English but not necessarily as their first or even second language!

We use the group as a way to swap ideas and information around the theme of education for young children. We send links to resources that may help each other and the children send each other pictures of their work, projects or games (with their parents help of course). The children also speak to each other using voice messages and this was very special for my youngest son this week as he turned two and received many birthday greetings from his international friends.

Recently we began sharing videos of the children carrying out activities and the response has been so inspirational. Both parents and children have found a new interest in parts of the world motivating the learning of new languages, geography and cultures. It is a very present exchange of ideas and information, which has become a big part of our learning environment. After a skype call with a family in Spain, my eldest son wanted to learn some Spanish words and we looked at a map of Spain to find where his new friends live. We then went on to have a flag activity where both boys enjoyed making sticker flags of their own countries and of their new friends.

For me, the group has given me confidence to do more and more with my boys and I feel so supported by all the other parents. There is a huge positive vibe from the other parents and it is really inspiring, not just for me, but for my family as a whole.

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