Activity Box: Weights and Measures

Last spring, I put together a math activity box designed to encourage exploration of weights and measures. It was supposed to be for the middle young gent, and I intended to switch themes and materials by summer, but all three fine young gents still spend time with these activities so the Weights and Measures box is here to stay, for a while longer at least. It doesn't hurt that it's got materials that seem to appeal to a wide range of ages, particularly the rice and flax, the scale, the measuring tapes, and the counting bears.

This is a great box to pull out for preschool gent because unlike the Flying Paper box, the activities don't require any fine motor dexterity, so he's able to play with the materials independently. Like the Flying Paper box, we've got some ideas and materials for structured activity, and the materials can be explored independently as well.

Today we pulled it out and three-year-old gent happily occupied himself with rice, cups, spoons and the balance scale for nearly an hour, then his kindergarten brother took a turn. Two weeks ago we all played a measuring game which involved jumping on a long piece of paper, then measuring the jump using crayons, counting bears, cuisenaire rods, hands, feet, books and whatever else we could find. "Dad, I jumped twenty-five stickers!" shouted kindergarten gent later that afternoon.

The activity pictured above asks the question "How many _____ equals 1/2 cup of rice?" We put 1/2 cup rice in one side of the balance scale, then filled the other side of the scale with blocks or cars or markers until it balanced. Great fun!

Make a Science Activity Box: Weights and Measures

You need:

A plastic tote or very large shoebox to hold materials

Scissors
Crayons
Paper (We used paper from the recycle bin.)
Graph paper
String

Measuring tapes and rulers
A compass (the math kind, not the geography kind)
A protractor

Rice, beans or flax
Measuring cups, measuring spoons, and a variety of small container
A balance scale (or the materials to make one)

Thermometers
Old watch or clock

Other supplies will depend on the specific activities you choose. Check out Mudpies to Magnets(Robert A. Williams, Robert E. Rockwell, and Elizabeth Sherwood) and More Mudpies to Magnets(Elizabeth A. Sherwood, Robert A. Williams, and Robert E. Rockwell) or another preschool math/science book from the library, borrow one from a friend, buy one or two to keep on the shelf, or search the internet for activity ideas. I print or photocopy an activity page, place the items in a large Ziploc bag or a folder, and staple the page to the bag. Instant experiment!

Our Weights and Measures activity box included these activities:

Measuring Spoons, from Family Math for Young Children: Comparing (Equals Series), p. 68-69. A measuring, counting and estimating game played with rice, cups, spoons and dice.

Beans in a Jar, from Mudpies to Magnets, p. 85. Sort beans and layer them in a small jar, then draw a picture. Sorting, graphing and art.

Look How Far I Can Jump!, from More Mudpies to Magnets, p. 183. Measure length and distance by jumping onto a long piece of paper then measuring the distance with stickers, blocks, markers, hands and whatever else you can find to measure with. Don't forget to use the measuring tape! The fine young gents have really enjoyed this activity. Extend the activity by using different items to measure your child's height, the table, or the room.

How Many Equals Equal?, More Mudpies to Magnets, p. 191. The activity pictured above, another favorite, especially with kindergarten gent.

Play with thermometers and water of different temperatures.

Measure a piece of string as long as your arm or your leg or your whole self. How many things can you find around the house that are the same length? Is the table/chair/book longer, shorter, or the same?
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For more measurement fun:

Measurement Resources, Elementary School Lessons & Materials for Teachers

Mathematics and Children's Literature, from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics site, Illuminations

How to Plan a Preschool Math and Science Center (or activity box!)

The Path to Math: Measurement with Young Children

Tuesday Ten: Pocketses

Busy moms have to tidy quickly. Sometimes to get from one lesson to another, or to get from one place to another without stopping to fret about where things go, things end up in our pockets. (Now here's what is in my head..."What has it got in its pocketses?" Name that tale.) I just got home from a school-lunch-more school-choir-swim lessons-library-choir meeting kind of a day and had a chance to empty my pockets.

Ten Things I Found in My Pocket at the End of a Very Long Day, or What Has It Got in Its Pocketses?

One red Hot Wheels convertible.

Two crayons, one red and one white.

Three pattern blocks, the long pointy kind. That felt good when I sat down at the choir meeting. Yeah.

Four buttons, black, possible eyes for our forest animal masks.

Five Golden Rings.
(Just kidding.)

Six Legos, a red square, three tiny lights, a round one and a Lego wheel that's been chewed on by the dog.

Seven numbers, a scrap of paper with a phone number that I needed to call but didn't because I forgot that I'd put the number in my pocket.

Eight coins, a quarter, four pennies, two dimes and a nickel.

Nine...I got nothin'. I don't have nine of anything. In all honesty, some of these other numbers didn't work out quite that neatly either. I had one dime, not two, and only three pennies. I really did have three pointy pattern blocks, though.

And Ten leaf crumbles, more or less. Why do I put leaves in my pocket?

I also had an acorn and my library card.

(humming) In the fourth hour of schoo-ool, my darlings gave to me.....

Farmer in Chief

An open letter to the next president, from The New York Times

"Dear Mr. President-Elect..."

"Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change."

Read the entire article, "Farmer in Chief," written by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, here.

Roasted Beets, Leeks and Onions

Roasted Beets, Leeks and Onions

You need:

Olive oil
2 beets, peeled and cut into cubes
2 onions, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 leeks, cleaned and sliced (How to Clean Leeks)
Several cloves of garlic, peeled
Salt and fresh-ground pepper (optional)
Balsamic vinegar, about 4 Tablespoons

Toasted pine nuts or chopped toasted pecans, goat cheese, or save the salt and pepper for the table (optional)

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

Heat a large ovenproof pot over medium heat. Add olive oil, then add the beets, onions, leeks, and garlic, and if you've got a few shallots left over from last time loving husband made a recipe calling for shallots, throw those in too. Wonder to yourself why he can't add two tiny little leeks more than the recipe calls for. Cook, stirring, until vegetables have browned a little. Toss with the balsamic vinegar and a little salt and pepper.

Place the pot of vegetables in the oven. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees and continue cooking for 30-40 minutes until beets are tender. Serve topped with the pine nuts or goat cheese or alone with salt and pepper.

Based on this recipe from BBC Good Food.

Fruits of our labors

The mornings are cool, the frost is coming. Final fall harvest: A handful of green beans, several handfuls of dried bean pods for seed, four red tomatoes, three lemon cucumbers, four pumpkins, one small greenish pepper, a mystery squash and one surprise, a green cucumber in the corner of the garden. A handful of raspberries. Tender young beet greens, thinnings for a salad. Three warm brown eggs. I'll be gathering eggs all winter, I hope.

The green beans will go in tonight's chicken pie, with a spinach and beet green salad and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers on the side, and roasted beets and leeks from the youth farm. Eggs are in the fridge, minus the one I stuck in my pocket for lack of hands. The dried beans have been shelled, labeled and put away until spring. The pumpkins and squash are waiting to be roasted and turned into pie. We'll be putting in an order for onions, potatoes and garlic from the youth farm.

We've still got beets and carrots growing, and a few late raspberries ripening. I've already been pulling corn and sunflower stalks, weeding, yanking the bean vines off the trellis. Today I'll go out in the cool fall sunshine and finish the job, putting the garden to bed for the winter.

Life is good.

Note to self

Even if I promise to remember this time......
Never never never never ever put an egg in my pocket.

What We're Reading

The Princess and the Goblin, George Macdonald.

What a charming story! This is one of the few children's classics that I'd not read as a child. The fine young gents are enjoying the story, and it's refreshing for me to have a read-aloud that flows well as a read-aloud. We're right smack in the middle, and the gents are trying to guess what the goblins will do next, is the huge big grandmother good or wicked? and if Curdie will end up rescuing the princess from some evil predicament or other. I'm enjoying the little bits about how princesses (and by association, princes) behave: They keep their word, they try to be gracious, they keep on trying. The gents get a little lost during some of the goblin conversations, but they ask questions and I summarize some of the longer bits (er...and skip some...please tell me I can't be the only one who "abridges" a little when the guys aren't following or when I get bored), so they're getting the gist of the story and thoroughly enjoying it. I'm enjoying the story too, and for once I have no idea how it will end.

The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan.

I read the Lightning Thief, Book one in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, last spring while chaperoning a lovely lady's choir trip. I'd finished my book and the young lady sitting behind me loaned me the first book in the series she'd brought along on the trip. A rolicking good adventure, and a fun introduction to/review of Greek mythology. Percy (short for Perseus) is a modern-day son of the ancient Greek sea god, Poseidon. Modern-day Olympus has moved to the eight-hundredth floor of the Empire State Building, and Hades resides in the Land of the Dead beneath Los Angeles. The book is fun and action-packed. I made it through the first, second, and half of the third books before the trip was over.

When it came time to choose a new read-aloud, I thought the fine young gents would enjoy an adventure with swords and battles and monsters, so I started reading The Lightning Thief.

Problem one: Too scary. After two nights, five-year-old gent asked me to stop reading the book at bedtime. It was giving him bad dreams. But the gents begged me to keep reading the story during the day, so I decided to stick with it.

Problem two: Speaking of abridging while reading (above), I found myself skimming over the parts referring to the fact that Percy's parents were not married, some of the references to the escapades of the Greek gods and goddesses, and after having a chat with five-year-old gent about how we talk to others, I skipped the many uses of the words "stupid" and "idiot." I was feeling a little uncertain about skipping any of the lines, words, sentences, paragraphs. After all, I have strong feelings about reading stories as the author has written them, for better or for worse. But listening to my usually mild-mannered young man begin calling his brother "stupid" reminded me just how impressionable these young minds can be, so I started editing on the fly.

Problem three: The Lightning Thief was a rolicking good read, but as a read-aloud....clunk, clunk, clunk. After the first few chapters I was kind of hoping the fine young gents would be willing to give it up. I felt the same way about Peter and the Starcatchers a couple years ago. Children's stories have become so action-driven that the writing that makes a story rich, charming, beautiful, full has disappeared. It's almost like reading a movie instead of a book, just an endless description of the action. When I started The Princess and the Goblin in the evenings, the contrast was so marked that I was relieved, and I couldn't wait to finish The Lightning Thief so I didn't have to read it any more.

It sounds as though I hated the book, and I really didn't. Is it the greatest book out there? Nah. But it's a great story. Is it a great read-aloud? Certainly not. But Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a fun series, a clever way to introduce and reinvent the ancient stories of the Greek gods. I'm sure it will be delightful for the fine young gentlemen when they're, say, tweens. But we'll wait until then to bring out the rest of the series, and they can read them on their own.


Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses, Bruce Feiler.

I misplaced it (for real, not "misplaced" because I didn't want to read it any longer), and have just found it again. Feiler decided to visit all of the places mentioned in the first five books of the Bible. It's a fascinating and mostly well-written book. I've particularly enjoyed the landscape descriptions and the stories of the people Feiler meets along the way.

As a side note, while Feiler is visiting the Sinai Desert, he was certainly obsessed with food. There are several really bad food metaphors--comparing distant mountains to raw ground hamburger, for example. Clunk. It was a bit distracting (to me) from the purpose and direction of the book, but the clunkers were entertaining to read out loud, and rest assured, once he's out of the desert the bad metaphors stop and the normal flow of the book resumes.

Good book, definitely well worth reading.


This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel J. Levitin.

"Pitch is so important that the brain represents it directly...If I put electrodes in your visual cortex (the part of the brain at the back of the head, concerned with seeing), and then I showed you a red tomato, there is no group of neurons that will cause my electrodes to turn red. But if I put electrodes in your auditory cortex and play a pure tone in your ears at 440 Hz, there are neurons in your auditory cortex that will fire at precisely that frequency, causing the electrode to emit electrical activity at 440 Hz--for pitch, what goes into the ear comes out of the brain!" (p. 29)

My lovely Irie sis, knowing how much I enjoyed Oliver Sach's Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, mentioned that Da5id was reading a similar book. Not long after she showed up at my door with This is Your Brain on Music. Levitin breaks down music into separate elements, such as melody, harmony, pitch, rhythm, tempo and so on) and addresses the science behind each element. That's as far as I've gotten, and some of it is very technical, but it is fascinating.

Oh, and this is either the perfect book or the worst book ever for me as the Earworm Queen. (Depending on whether you're me or the person sitting next to me, I suppose.) Levitin uses well-known music of all genres as examples to illustrate the concepts he's discussing. At swim lessons the other night, I found myself inadvertently humming in succession Michelle (Beatles), Roxanne (Sting) and the "Chinese Dance" from The Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky).

King Arthur (Usborne Classics Retold) , Felicity Brooks.

Second-grade gent's reading book. "It's good," he says. He likes the swords and stuff. I like that he's experiencing classic tales that he'll be reading later on in his education.




A Seed is Sleepy, by Dianna Hutts Aston (Author) and Sylvia Long (Illustrator)

Part of our fall nature study, we pulled out A Seed is Sleepy for the pages that show tree seeds. We've since looked at this beautiful picture book daily. The illustrations are stunning, detailed and life-like, and the text is informative and simple. A nature library classic. I first read about this book at Nina's Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea (isn't that a lovely name for a blog?), along with its companion, An Egg is Quiet. Nina always has great book recommendations for young children, and these books are real treasures.

Happy Reading!

Wordless Wednesday

Nature Notebooks: Leaf Study

A rainy Friday nature outing with friends to Dorris Ranch Living History Farm. (More Dorris Ranch outings here and here. It's a beautiful park.) Dorris Ranch is a perfect place for a tree study, as there are many different kinds of trees to explore: Oaks, maples, walnuts, filberts. We found lots of oak and maple leaves, a few leaves we've not yet identified, acorns, and an odd fruit-looking thing that is probably an oak gall harboring a larval wasp.

The children were interested in exploring the park together and picking up leaves, but when it came to examining, classifying, discussing we seemed to lose them a little. All in good time, I found. When we got home, the fine young gents and I set up a tree study tray (see below). They both remembered quite well the ideas we'd introduced during our outing. At the park, I'd held an oak leaf up to the sky to show the beginning of the leaf's decay--we could see the lacy leaf skeleton beginning to emerge. At the park second-grade gent had given me a quick, "Cool," before he raced off to play. At home, he sought out that leaf and intently examined the structure under the microscope. He'd remembered what I'd shown him and was ready to explore. "That's what I want to draw in my book, Mom," he announced.

Kindergarten gent was delighted to tape a leaf to his notebook. He sifted through the leaves, looking for the right one. He remembered that I'd told him that maple leaves have five points, and he counted them. Eventually, he chose a different kind of leaf because he felt more confident drawing that shape. Did he want to try to identify it? I asked. No, he just wanted to draw and label the leaf --"leaf". That's what made him happy, taping the leaf into his book and writing about it. Fair enough.


Make a tree study tray. We've got a permanent nature exploration display on our cabinet in the dining area. Feathers, acorns and acorn caps, rocks, a praying mantis egg case, a butterfly cocoon. After this week's nature outing, we put our new treasures and some of the old onto a tray with the magnifying glass and microscope to make a tree study tray so that the fine young gents and I can explore at our leisure. Obviously it doesn't have to be a tray. It can be a table, a bin, a shelf, a drawer, a corner of a cabinet.


A nature tray allows independent exploration. Children need lots of time to explore on their own, to come to their own interpretations and conclusions, opportunities to be wrong, and to figure out the world on their own terms.

My lesson for this week: Try to balance guidance with hands-off exploration. Don't let my own ideas of how an exploration should flow or what it should look like get in the way of the interests of the children. We've got plenty of subjects in our day in which I am the leader and the teacher. In our nature study, sometimes my job is direct teaching; sometimes my job is to prime the pump, to pique their interest, to walk away without giving all of the information so that they've got the opportunity to learn on their own, to ask questions, to follow their own ideas.
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Next week's tree study: Mid-week, we'll head to the cherry tree at the church down the street to do a fall sketch. We've got spring and summer sketches of the tree--tight green buds on bare branches, full bloom, raining white petals, in beautiful green leaf.
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Adding later: A friend sent me the link to this lovely blog, Handbook of Nature Study They have a lovely tree study based on Anna Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study, one of our family's favorite nature study resources. Check it out!

Nature Day: Heceta Beach and Sweet Creek Falls

"We really should go hiking together/go to the beach together/do a project together sometime." I wish I had a dollar for every time I've said that to my sister.

We were talking about her trip to Sweet Creek Falls, and I said it again: "We should take the kids there. Or maybe we should just take them all to the beach sometime."

I said, "Let's pick a day right now. Then we'll write it on our calendars. Then we'll remember."

So we did.

(Ha. Guess who forgot until I called her that morning. I'd make even more fun of her if I hadn't done the exact same thing before.)

We decided to just go to the beach. You have to understand something about the Northwest Pacific coast. Most folks think of going to the beach as swimming, surfing, basking in the sun in bikinis. Like you'd do in, say, California or Florida. In Oregon, you bring your windbreaker, long pants and a sweater along with your sand toys and beach blanket. The water is freezing, not for the faint of heart, and instead of swimming, you wade and jump in the waves.

It was in the low 70's when we left home. Optimistic me, I put on a pair of shorts. Doh! By the time we crossed the Coast Range it had dropped to a respectable but bearable mid-60's. "Uh-oh," I thought as we neared the beach. It was sunny and bright almost into the town of Florence, but as we drove along the river toward town, we could see the wall of clouds hovering over the beach. Oh well. We headed there anyway.

It was 56 degrees and windy. The kids had a great time.

The moms were cold. We lasted almost an hour, then we packed up and headed to picnic and hike at Sweet Creek Falls instead.

It's a beautiful drive to get there. It's a beautiful hike. The path we took followed Sweet Creek up past lots of little falls and cascades. It was a little rocky and slippery, but nice and short, easily hikeable even for the littlest folks.


When we got to the falls, there were lots of boulders and logs for climbing clear across the creek, but only for those who already knew how to swim. Non-swimmers had to stay where moms could reach them.

We'll definitely head back, maybe without going to the beach so that we can explore a little longer, and maybe even head to Beaver Creek Falls just up the road.