Talk Like a Pirate Day - Pirate Picture Book Favorites!
YARRRR ME LAND LUBBERS!!!!
TODAY BE “TALK LIKE A PIRATE” DAY, AND WE ARRRRRR CELEBRATING BY SHOWING OFF OUR FAVORITE PIRATE BOOKS! AHOY!!!!
We love to play make-believe with our kids. We love putting on costumes and turning our old playground bus into a massive pirate ship.
Most importantly, we love teaching them things they need to know hidden under things they WANT to know.
THE BEST LESSONS ARE THE STICKY ONES, THE BELLY LAUGH ONES, THE PLAYFUL MEMORY ONES
Here are nine of our absolute favorite picture books for preschoolers (and school agers!) that you can read with your best pirate voice.
Pete the Cat and the Treasure Map (Who doesn’t love Pete the Cat?)
How I Became a Pirate (In Ms. Janette’s Classroom!)
Pirate & Penguin (Recommended for Pirates with younger siblings!)
Pirates Next Door (In Ms. Janette’s Classroom!)
Pirates Don’t Go To Kindergarten (Busy Bees Wish List!)
There was an Old Pirate who swallowed a Map! (Perfect for sequencing, cause and effect, and laughing!)
Even Pirates Need to Listen (Perfect for walking friends through following the rules)
The Gingerbread Pirates (Ms. LJ’s absolute favorite!)
A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade (Ms. LJ’s OTHER Favorite!)
Team Spotlight: Kindergarten + School Age
Our Kindergarteners, better known as “The Jellyfish” are doing swimmingly with Miss Janette!
The small class experience has really allowed Miss Janette to take our kids on a hands-on, personalized adventure for their first year of elementary school. They do yoga, they utilize play in all their lessons, they get up-close and personal with science projects and class activities. It has been such a delight seeing them grow so much in so little time!
Our School-Age Kids don’t “check out” when they check in, thanks to Ms. Victoria!
Once the Before/After care kids get to their outdoor classroom, the fun really starts! Ms. Victoria has taught them kickball, read Encyclopedia Brown, even made elephant toothpaste! They are even making a HAUNTED HOUSE for our Trunk or Treat Spooktacular!
They may only be here for a few hours, but our School Age crew really makes that time count for something.
We have found that, for both groups, the more focused physical activity the better. These two teachers really get to know the students in their care, take account of what they need, and make sure they provide for them in a patient, structured way. In doing so, these kids feel confident in trying new things and exploring their curiosity.
Thanks, Elementary School Team! You exemplify what Common Ground stands for.
WOYC21: Our Playful Pandas are Living it Up
All week we have been celebrating “Week of the Young Child” with the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and it has been a TOTAL BLAST.
Ms. Pinky and Ms. Simi in the Playful Pandas have really taken this opportunity to flex their incredible teaching muscles and show the world how much education really happens in play-based learning.
On Music Monday, Mr. Josh stopped by to play a little concert for each class. The Pandas got to play instruments and sing along to practice rhythm, patterns, and cause and effect! They also got to sing their heart out and dance the morning away.
On Tasty Tuesday our Pandas Teachers went above and beyond! Ms. Pinky and Ms. Simi presented their students with all different fruits. the kiddos got to touch and taste each one, then they took turns placing them into the blender. They even got to press the little blender button, much to their surprise and delight! Afterwards they placed the smoothie mix into little popsicle makers. While these froze a little more, the pandas got to try their concoction. At the end, they got to eat popsicles they made themselves. It was a step by step, multi-sensory science experiment that ended in a tasty treat!
Work Together Wednesday was quiet, cold, and rainy. But our Playful Pandas teachers had their kiddos build large, technicolor castles together. At the end, they all picked up the mess one piece at a time. Teamwork, patience, social practice. All these essential building blocks to emotional resilience and independence can come from something so simple.
Artsy Thursday is maybe my absolute favorite, and a perfect example of why kids’ art needs less guidance and more trust from teachers. Ms. Simi and Ms. Pinky put out paint, string, and paper. Then they stepped back and waited. The result was absolutely incredible. These one year olds stepped up, picked up the yarn, and began goofing around together. They splashed colors around, they shared, they made art. If we had walked them through step by step, it would have been a project. It would have been uniform. This was creative expression. This was pre-writing, fine-motor work, and independent experimentation. This. Was. Brilliant.
PLAY TO LEARN. LEARN TO PLAY. LEARNING IS JOY. Thanks for celebrating with us, Pandas!
Stay tuned for more wonderful ways our classes celebrated this week!
Miss Janette's "The Magic of Colors" Lesson Series PREMIERING IN MARCH!
To all the parents and guardians out there of curious, precocious little tykes…
We hear you. Winter is hard enough without the pandemic restricting activities. Sometimes you just need twenty minutes to do the dishes, to start a load of laundry, to make a zoom call. Sometimes you just need twenty minutes to take a deep breath and a sip of coffee.
That’s where we come in.
Miss Janette, the coordinator of our online classes for 2.5-3.5 year olds as well as our private kindergarten teacher, has designed four color spectrum lessons that come with a “ready-to-go” lesson box with everything you need!
Each twenty minute lesson has a story, a related craft or activity, and an extra bonus activity that can be done at any time. For each lesson you sign up for you receive a box with EVERYTHING your child needs to participate. Each activity is set up and measured out so that Miss Janette should be able to interact and teach your child with little to no supervision from a guardian!
Starting on March 8th, the classes will occur the next four Mondays!
Here is the registration page
We recommend signing up for all four classes because while they stand on their own independently, they also build on each other. Besides, they are all so fun, which one could you bear to skip?? The lessons are $20.00 per box, or $60.00 for the whole set! You may receive a “sibling box” for an extra $10.00 per lesson.
March 8th: Magical Color Mixing: Miss Janette will read Press Here and help your kiddo make their own magical color mixing wand!
March 15th: Rainbow Blooms: Miss Janette will read Penguins love Colors and do a Rainbow STEAM activity with your child!
March 22nd: Create Your Own Color Finders: Miss Janette will read Pete the Cat and his Magic Sunglasses. Afterward, she will help your kid create their own magical binoculars to help them search for colors!
March 29th:The Whimsical White Crayon: Miss Janette will read The Day the Crayons Quit and do an amazing coloring activity where they use colors to make their letters appear!
Give yourself a break, give the kiddos something to look forward to on their wintry Mondays.
-Common Ground
"I met a Pediatrician in the woods..."
Hello all! Ms. LJ here. We have been talking so much about kindergarten readiness here, both as discussions in our blog and in our kindergarten planning meetings. For many of us it is a passion project, a calling to find a way to reintegrate the joy of childhood with the delight of curiosity, of hunting for answers in this beautiful world of ours.
Learning IS a joy that fuels the fires of our existence. Our children are subjected to the fears of failure early, of “falling behind” or being measured against their peers with a single yard stick and being found wanting. These anxieties become inextricably linked to education as they get older, convincing them that it is something they have to endure, rather than tools given and honed to become our best selves.
Why? It is our very ambitious belief that it is because we have cut off curriculum from play. Particularly in the American education system for young children we have turned away from the most natural, efficient source of teaching.
BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POINT: I MET A PEDIATRICIAN IN THE WOODS…
On Friday morning last week I found myself home with my two children. I had just received my second covid inoculation and was feeling a bit run down myself, but I did not want to squander this rare opportunity to spend alone time with my kids! The Covid-19 pandemic as a whole has been a tragic, frightening event, but I will always cherish the summer I got to spend every day outside with my babies. I took them to the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, one of our favorite “safe space” hangouts from last year, to walk the grounds and kick the slush around under a blue sky.
It was here on one of these particularly wet paths that I ran into two women, one of which commented that it was nice I brought them out on such a nice day. I laughed and said flippantly “I figured they didn’t need to sit in a classroom today.”
In response, this woman gestured around her and said with utter sincerity, “This IS a learning space.”
I grinned, even though I knew she couldn’t see it behind my mask. “I think so too.”
The lady laughed and turned back to her friend, ”And I’m a pediatrician, so you can quote me on that if anyone asks.”
It’s not just our career teachers that are seeing this. It’s not just the parents who know their “energetic kids” focus better when in motion. Doctors who specialize in children are urging for parents and educators alike to integrate consistent, long-form play into all aspects of children’s lives. Physically, they are stronger. Mentally, they are more able to pay attention and less likely to have sensory issues.
Social competencies and emotional resilience suffer greatly without consistent peer-interaction in a playful and imaginative setting as well! Children often work out a lot of their big questions and anxieties of the day by integrating it into safe-space imaginative play reenactments. Without being able to work these issues out themselves, children are unsure of their own abilities to problem solve, and those anxieties and dependencies grow.
Here is a fantastic article from The American Academy of Pediatrics all about The Power of Play if you would like to read more:
The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children
It’s not that wrote learning, memorization, and standardized long-form curriculums don’t work, it’s that they miss the point of education entirely. They leave behind many and narrow the focus of the rest, curbing creativity, independent thought, and resilience to the necessary process of failure.
Think about any lesson you still remember 10, 20, 30 years later. Which ones stuck with you?
For me it’s almost always the games. My sixth grade teacher had us turn our entire classroom into a bunch of cardboard houses to mimic Hoovervilles. She dunked our feet in cold water and drew cards with battlefield injuries to give us a taste of war on the front. In third grade, multiplication songs and games stuck with me way longer than any flashcard work. Watching pumpkins rot, playing with baby chicks hatching from eggs and experiencing them grow was a poignant way to learn about the life cycles of living things. One of my favorites was pretending to be sound waves bouncing around a back alley. Even “Which President was it?” trivia tag helped facts that HAD to be memorized something fun and worth doing.
To reinvigorate education as a whole we have to reunite the JOY that should come with it, the fascination, the wonder. Let the kids run off in their excitement and experience a lesson with their whole bodies. Let them learn more than you thought, more widely than you thought. You’ll be surprised what you learn when you’re muddy and out of breath too.
Go Play! Keep Learning! Most of all, Have Fun!
Miss LJ
Common Ground: Winter Activities and Winter Attire
We are looking at A LOT OF snowy days coming up this winter!!
And we cannot wait for all of our outdoor winter adventures. There will be some days that are too wet or too cold! We will have little movie and popcorn parties and days where we do art while the weather outside is frightful.
But more and more studies are coming out showing how essential outdoor play is to our kids, and how the loss of consistent outdoor playtime is absolutely detrimental to their holistic well being. Kids are meant to play. They are meant to get dirty and windswept. They are meant to eat snow, trip in their swishy snow-pants, to fall down and find they can get back up again.
Play to Learn, Learn to Play Examples:
1. Building an Igloo with Friends: Promotes core strength, cooperation, simple machines and tools usage, basic engineering, imaginative play, patience, sensory endurance
2. Snow Walking and Rolling down Hills: Inner Ear training, strength training, leg and inner core training, aerobic workout
3. Snow Writing: Using natural tools to promote fine-motor practice. You can also use markers to do color work.
4. Winter Walk: Aerobic Exercise, Seasonal Cycles and Lessons, basic biology flora/fauna studies
Our preschool teachers are especially focused on “Kindergarten-Readiness.” This involves working on letters and numbers and pre-writing skills, but it also involves physical health and social-emotional independence. Outdoor lessons and games help cement fine-motor and gross-motor work. Operating in varying weather helps develop their sensory resilience which is essential for increasing attention span inside and outside of the classroom.
What do we always say? NO BAD WEATHER. ONLY BAD CLOTHES!
Is you child really set up for this winter? Here are items that we have on our student supply list that we highly recommend purchasing as soon as possible:
Kids Snow Boots — Snow comes in all different shapes and sizes, but it is always cold and always wet. An insulated, water resistant boot that goes high up a child’s leg will keep them warm and dry while they play. PLEASE NOTE: While rainbows will keep a child’s foot dry, they are not properly insulated and do not offer any protection against the cold. Snow boots are most appropriate in cold, wintry weather.
Snow Gloves — Snow gloves protect against the cold, but they are also water resistant. Cotton gloves, while warm, will become wet very quickly and will do more harm than good when trying to keep your child’s hands warm. Please make sure they have snow gloves available.
Snow Pants — Snow pants are key to making sure a child is warm and happy for a longer period of time. The water resistant fabric makes sure that the pants they wear to school stay as dry as possible so fewer clothing changes are required.
Thermal Underwear — We recommend these over sweat suits because they keep a child warm without overheating them or keeping their sweat in. These are perfect for layering winter clothes and helping a child regulate their body temperature while they play rough outside.
We will keep you all posted on our winter lessons and activities! Stay safe!!
— LJ and the Common Ground Crew
#GiveTime: Five Minutes to Give to your Kids
Our children are the future. They’re our hearts living outside. They can also be a point of stress and guilt when we are feeling stressed and empty from isolation. You want to be the parent who never eye-twitches at glitter spills, who always has a good bake coming out of the oven, who is never too tired to play “doggies” for the fiftieth time. We are not our best every day.
But we can spare five minutes every day. Need a little guidance? Here are some great ideas for an activity you can do in five minutes! If there is an Asterisk* by the activity, you can scroll down to the bottom of the blog to receive further guidance and elaboration.
FIVE MINUTE KID ACTIVITIES WITH LITTLE TO NO MESS:
Dance Party
Red light/green light
Trivia*
Simple Conversation — Ask them questions
Track Moon Phases Nightly on a sheet as a Family
Build Obstacle Courses*
Read a Book
Write a story!*
Hide and Seek
Floor is Lava*
Singing Songs
Build a Fort
Run around the block
A game of tickles
Tag
Words of Affirmation*
“What I’m thankful for” discussion
“What we did today” round table
Jump contest, Wall sit contest, Jumping jack contest*
Have you seen the common denominator among these suggestions? They all involve undivided attention. While parents are spending a record amount of time with and around their kids these days, the quality of these interactions is down. We are constantly distracted, constantly on call.
EVERYTHING can wait five minutes. No, really. Barring very, VERY extenuating circumstances, everything can wait five minutes. We tell our kids to wait five minutes all the time, we can definitely tell our phones to sit on the charger and wait five minutes. TV too. Those five minutes a day are going to mean the world to your kiddo, and I guarantee they’ll be your favorite part of the day too.
There are dozens more ideas! Maybe hundreds. Please share other five minute activities you have tried out with your kids!
Trivia: Don’t feel tied down to educational stuff with this one (although gamification is definitely a way to make learning fun.) You can make the trivia about family members, animals, even talking about their favorite tv show or book can help exercise their brains and show you know and interact with what they care about. You’d be surprised at what they know (and what you don’t!). Extra benefit of trivia? You can play ANYWHERE. We always play in the car to make the ride go faster.
Obstacle Courses and Floor is Lava — You’re probably thinking of what I initially imagined… walls of legos to jump over, suspended hula hoops, tree swings, something on fire…
Okay maybe not that last one, but I always thought that obstacle courses had to be an incredible feat of construction and purchase… certainly something that would take ages to set up. REALLY all you need is a clean floor and tape. Yell to your kids that it’s time for an obstacle course, and if they want one, the toys have to be off the floor. Once they’ve cleaned for you, lay out some lines and shapes on the floor, maybe a few on the walls, and let their imaginations do the rest! They can army crawl, jump, skip, or spin from one point to another. Somersaulting, spinning, and hand stands work that inner ear strength, so add a few of those. If you don’t mind incorporating furniture, you can make them crawl under chairs or hop over ottomans. One of the best things to do in obstacle courses is declare certain parts of the course “lava.” We love to use pillows as “lava boats” and the kids have to scoot across the floor on them. Easy peasy. If you don’t mind leaving the tape, this fun can last for a week and you don’t even have to set it up over and over. Set the five minute timer and give them a prize for completing on time.Write a story — This is fun, because they can start the project without you. They can draw the pictures and you can work on the words with them, or you can draw them together, any level of independence works! My only note in here is to let them write whatever whacky story they like, encourage that imagination muscle which often has to work in so many strict parameters.
Words of Affirmation — This one is amazing in its simplicity, and it can take any form you like. The way we do it at home is: “Do I love you when you’re mad? Do I love you when you’re sad? Do I love you when your listening ears are off? Do I love you when you’re happy? And sick? And when your messy or clean or quiet or loud?” It’s always yes. Eventually they start doing it too. Repeating these things, especially when you’re frustrated and overwhelmed, can be so rewarding and uplifting.
Physical Feat Contests — Kids are living a more sedentary lifestyle than ever. Doing fun physical feats with their family makes fitness a bright spot in their every day lives.
Stay Tuned for more Ideas!! and PLEASE post more of your own!
Love Love Love!
Miss LJ
GIVE TIME: Making a Mess! I mean... Experiments.
SCIENCE IS FUN!!
BUT…
It can be exhausting and overwhelming to turn our kitchen into a science lab.
We found ourselves one Sunday afternoon with crunched leaves in the couch, slime clinging like cement to the outdoor furniture, jugs of different juices with candies and half-melted cheetos floating in them. We had spent all Saturday cleaning, and it felt like we were living in a giant sand garden where the slightest breeze would blow something sticky all over everything… I saw my kids about to turn on the hose for their water table, opened my mouth to yell “NO MORE SCIENCE,” and then listened to what I was about to say to them.
I am not saying you should let your house just be totally dedicated to the whims of a toddler. What I am saying is that curiosity is the KEY to learning.
THIS SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF PRESSURE.
If you watch Emily’s Wonder Lab or watched The Magic School Bus, you think that every experiment has to be organized, clever, and steeped in some fantastic, curriculum-based scientific concept.
Science is not neat. Science is messy. It also does not have to be complicated.
We have a Scientific Method Worksheet free to download IF YOU WANT. It’s not necessary, but it can be nice to keep track of all the journeys of discover you go on. Free Download Here.
What if your three year old wants to know what’s inside an acorn?
1. Ask them what they think. This is a HUGE part of it, because you want them to start trying to figure things out.
2. Gather the materials! (AND YES THEY CAN BE DANGEROUS!) for this one, you just need a hammer and something to protect your floor if you’re inside.
3. SMASH IT! Let them help. It is important that kiddos learn how to use tools safely, or else they will use them NOT safely.
4. Poke at it! Look at the pieces! What is it? This can be the end of the experiment. If they want to know more about the stuff inside, you can look it up, but keep it simple, keep it steeped in wonder.
WHAT ABOUT THE MESS.
Friends, I hear you. My son is a big water-pourer. All the time. He gets in the sink and runs the tap. He sprays the hose into jugs of all sizes. He is constantly stealing people’s drinks and pouring them into other people’s drinks. We keep towels poised in the pantry for when he inevitably spills a cup of water onto the floor, the table, the dog.
This. Is. Science. He is developing spatial awareness. He is figuring out which containers hold the most and the least. He is studying how water works. He is using all of his senses to experience water. “This water’s hotter! This water has air bubbles! This water is wet! (okay, all water is wet, kid…)” He is excited, curious, and into it.
I ended up making a path of towels with different buckets of all sizes up and down the towel line. Before he poured, I’d ask him what he thought would happen, and supply during “observations” time what happened.
"Uh oh! There was too much water for the red cup. Is there too much water for the blue bucket?” “Uh oh! When you put sand in the cup, it becomes too full for the water! Why do you think the sand sank to the bottom?”
As they get older (my five year old is really into science experiments now) you can get into the more complicated messes. “Why is this slime so sticky? What happens if I add baking soda to it? Why shouldn’t I wash it down the sink?”
This was a winding road. Let’s do a quick wrap up, a conclusion, if you will.
These messy science experiments have a lot to offer your kids. They help them study the world around them in a safe environment where they have relative autonomy. They show your children the rewards of being bored and making their own fun. They show your children (and you!) that it’s okay to take chances, make mistakes, and get a little messy… as long as they are willing to clean up after themselves.
Once they realize there is time allowed for “SCIENCE TIME,” it is much easier to enforce the concept of “NOT-SCIENCE TIME.” That helps guide the fun and limit the mess. The worksheet above lets them write down any questions they have that can be answered during “SCIENCE TIME” so you don’t have to be constantly on the look out for eggs hiding in the bathtub… (that was a weird one.)
So get out there, science teams! Make the wonderful messes and maybe answer your own questions!! If you need a list of fantastic easy science experiments, check it out HERE!
Love you all, you whacky scientists,
Ms. LJ
Unplugged Life: No Bad Weather, Only Bad Clothes
Our Rising Stars this week took a nature walk and, under the cloudless blue November sky, they read “Corduroy” in an open field. Our teachers Ms. Petty and Ms. Vanessa heavily utilize the outdoors in their carefully constructed curriculum (this week’s theme is Friendship!) to ensure that the children are free to learn and play while adhering to our COVID-19 safety measures.
While we have been adhering to health code, however, we find that children who get plenty of sunshine and activity are also better listeners with longer attention-spans. We are encouraging our teachers and our parents to utilize the outdoors as much as possible in all of their activities year-round, whether or not there is a pandemic.
“But Ms. LJ, the weather has been fabulous!” you say, “How can we take our children out all the time when it gets cold and dark and wet?”
Repeat after me, because I forget too: THERE’S NO BAD WEATHER, ONLY BAD CLOTHES!
There’s no bad weather! Okay, watch out for tornadoes and hurricanes… and if there is lightning RIGHT next to you definitely find a safe space ( Go HERE For instructions on how to calculate the distance between you and a lightning strike) but barring exceptional highs and lows, most weather is perfectly fine for kids and adults of all ages!
In fact, occupational therapists encourage parents to take children outside in all seasons to help brain development and mitigate sensory issues that are on the rise in children.
For more on outside play and holistic healthy development, check out this CoordiKids Article
Need some tips for Good “Bad Weather” Gear?
Our Supply Lists include clothing pieces suitable for battling the elements.
TIPS
When it comes to jackets, make sure you have a LIGHT JACKET , a HEAVY JACKET, and a RAIN JACKET. We recommend with any raincoats you buy that they are knee-length! The bigger, the better, to protect them when they splash.
Crocs make excellent shoes, especially if you are planning to get wet or muddy. They are “feet-shaped” which provides extra comfort to growing kids. Here are some RAIN BOOTS they make, along with their classic style.
Extremities get cold first! Make sure you have appropriate gloves for the weather. If they are too heavy or unwieldy, your child may not want to use them and it makes outside a frustrating experience. If it is snowing or wet outside than cloth gloves may not be enough, and the adventure will be short and painful on little fingers! Check the weather, and tuck the right pair in your kids’ coat pockets!
When it is really hot and bright outside, make sure your kids clothes are lightweight and UV-protected! SUNHATS are perfect for littles to protect their sensitive eyes while outside so that they stay focused and happy! SUNSHIRTS and SUNSUITS are key for needed extra (and adorable) protection.
OUR BIGGEST, MOST IMPORTANT TIP!!!
All of our teachers dress for the weather. It helps them stay comfortable and fun and safe. Kids can tell what their adults are feeling, and if you are excited and ready for adventure, no matter what the weather report says? They will be too. SO PUT ON YOUR RAINBOOTS AND GO STOMP IN SOME PUDDLES!! The mud washes away. Memories build a bright future.
— MS LJ
Non-Screen Life: Training your Inner Ear
Hey everybody! We are here to talk to you about:
PLAYING OUTSIDE!
GETTING DIRTY!
Finding that SAFE DANGER!
We know with the pandemic, 2020 has been a year of hand sanitizer and indoor quarantine. But it has also been a year of finding your own fun! Going into the woods and rolling down hills. Climbing trees and hanging upside down. Going out in fields and spinning like tops.
According to Pediatric Occupational Therapist Angela Hanscom, not only are these things incredible for attention and sensory issues, they are a KEY ROLE in developing The Vestibular System. This is the system our bodies use to know where we are in space! It is even more important than it sounds. Without serious play, children are more frail, more clumsy, less able to pay attention, and much more likely to struggle with emotional regulation.
Our children spend a long time sitting upright with little movement. Help them train their inner ears by:
Going Upside Down
Rolling Down Hills
Spinning In Circles (10x in each direction ought to do it… with hilarious results)
Climbing Trees
Jumping off Swings
Tossing them in the air
Sliding down slides on their bellies
Teachers and Parents should be life guards in play rather than consistent active participants. We want to ensure the children are safe and healthy, but too much structure and restriction has been shown to be detrimental! Let the kids fall. The dirt can offer so many essential lessons to growing up healthy!
We will be posting more on the benefits of outdoor play here so keep your eyes out! In the meantime, go have fun and WORK THOSE EARS!
For more on Angela Hanscom’s research and Timbernook Program, click here!
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