Hellobee Boards

I'm jealous! My little guy wouldn't do anything remotely "educational" until he went to preschool and he's still really resistant. I think it's a "boy" thing. He just never wants to sit and "learn." But he absolutely loves to read, so we've done that since he was born.

With my other two boys, I don't think I will try to do anything formal unless they seem interested. We do a lot of play during the day though, and I make sure we get outside and go to other places like parks, museums, etc., so they have a change of environment.

As for learning ideas that come from play time - my 4-year-old loves Legos. I also let him and the 2-year-old play with dry noodles and "cook". That's all I've got right now!

Yes - my DS craves science and art projects!

We find most ideas online or he will just ask to mix a bunch of stuff together and see what happens!

Volcanoes are super fun and easy
Marbled paper
exploding bags
collect nature and make a collage
leaf rubbings
for the older kids we just dissected owl pellets - he loved it (thank you amazon!)
modeling with clay

some fav websites:
http://theimaginationtree.com/
http://handsonaswegrow.com/
http://www.learnwithplayathome.com/
http://preschoolpowolpackets.blogspot.com/
(her elephant tooth paste one is super fun)

I guess it depends on what you mean by education. Do we sit and do workbooks and do I have her sit and listen to me “teaching” – no, of course not. But just about everything you do is educational.

Do your LO’s help cook at all – there’s math, science and more. Do you ever ask them how many of something they see? Or what color something is, or how something feels in their hands? That’s educational. All those questions get them thinking and making connections in their minds. Building blocks are educational, art/craft activities can easily double as science type “lessons” (using the term very loosely!), math and more.

Something as easy as when you’re having a snack talking about the taste of something, the shape, the color, the texture, how many snack items you have, etc. All that is educational, but it’s also just natural parenting.

So yeah, we do a lot of educational activities with LO!