Fun with the Kiddos

Now that Jaxton has started Kindergarten and is gone every single morning, I have lots of time to spend with Cooper and Kaylee.  We have really enjoyed spending time together at home, where Cooper can be the “leader” of play and we have spent lots of time in the toy room building spaceships, superhero jails, and superhero castles with stairs and ziplines.  Yes, we get creative. Cooper has been a great helper with Kaylee and has enjoyed spending time with her too.  We have tried to do fun things to give Cooper a chance to have mom-time that is all his own without being in a shadow of his big brother.  Painting was a lot of fun!  Poor Kaylee really has hardly painted anything in her life.  It was a lot of fun for her to experiment with this new colorful stuff that make her all dirty.  She was very concerned about the stuff on her fingers at first and wanted to “clean up” every time she got a smudge of paint on her fingertips.  Eventually she realized it was ok, and she went into full blown fingerpainting.  That was fun.  Messy, but fun, and worth the mess.  Cooper was very creative in what he chose to paint and how, using his fingertips to make dots, and making multi-colored hand prints.  Fun times!!

In the afternoons while Kaylee is sleeping, we have tried to have some kind of “school” hour.  Jaxton will do his kindergarten homework first thing while Cooper does a page or two from his preschool workbook.  It makes him feel important to have “homework” too.  Then we try to do something fun and interactive.  The boys have asked me questions lately about random things and how they work or what they do.  So instead of going into great detail, I have suggested we go to the library and find books on that topic.  So that’s what we have done for the last couple months.  This particular week they wanted to learn all about electricity.  Well how do you explain that to a 5 year old and a 4 year old?  We picked up electricity books from the library and spent one afternoon reading them all together.  We learned about atoms and electrons and how electrons flow through the wires like a river.  We learned about having a closed circuit or loop in order for the electrons to move.  We also learned about lightening and how if it strikes a lightning stick, then the electrons have somewhere to go, rather than to go everywhere and break up a building.  Its been fascinating for them as well as for me!  One of the books had an experiment in it that we tried.  We took a D size battery and taped on a long piece of foil to one side.  We wrapped the other side of the foil strip around a flashlight bulb and secured it with a clothespin.  In order for the electrons to start moving through the foil we had to make a closed loop, so we placed the flashlight bulb on the end of the foil strip to the other side of the battery….and….waaalaaaaa!  The lightbulb turned on!  It was pretty exciting!!  I love to do fun things with the kiddos and this was a highlight for us!!