Naptime routines

How to get four children down for nap at the same time? When it happens easily it's wonderful. : ) A tummy full of fun, nutritious food really helps; so does routine. The older children look forward to their rest period after a morning full of activity! They often set the pace and example for the younger ones. With tiny babies (all of ours are toddlers right now), the schedule follows more of their natural patterns of eat, sleep, wake, eat, sleep, wake, every hour or two. Our regular naptime for the older children is right after lunch. We clean them up, read a story, set up their naptime area, pull down all the blinds, change their diapers and put them to rest. Sometimes they rest, sometimes they play for a while. Hopefully they don't wake the other children! : ) I check the wakeful ones on occasion to see how they're doing but generally don't interact much - this is naptime, not playtime with Kathy, after all!

When all is quiet I take the opportunity to have a cup of tea, wash the lunch and breakfast dishes, tidy up, and catch up on anecdotal records and paperwork. In a few minutes it's time to get them up, change diapers, and start the learn/play cycle all over again!

Horses, horses, horses!

Today we visited Danada Equestrian Center in Naperville. We enjoyed seeing the kids in their junior high summer camp program, meeting several of their horses in the paddocks and barn (and a bonus - seeing a barn swallow pair feeding their chicks!), and watching two of their draft horses being groomed and harnessed up to pull the hayride wagon. We learned how to tell if a horse will welcome a person near them by observing their body language, and we learned about horse anatomy and breeds. We compared the kids' heights to the outlines of different breeds of horses - a fun math game! We even got to see the skeleton of Doc, one of their former draft horses, and learn about how bones are important. This outing is the concrete experience that will help them appreciate our visit to the Field Museum next week - the exhibit 'Horses' closes on the 13th and we don't want to miss it!

Fun and games

Some of the children's favorite games revolve around cooperation and a bit of friendly competition: Children Around the World, where when you land on a space that someone else is occupying, you share a token from your culture; the Birds of the National Parks game, which can be played as a memory game, or by collecting pairs as in a card game, or just matching the bird cards up to the poster and learning about them in that way. Even the two year olds enjoy it! They like to play 'Hiss', or as we call it, 'the snake game' where they match up (kind of like dominoes) two-toned pieces of snakes to make a complete one. It's a simple game, easy enough for two year olds to play. It teaches them turn-taking, colors, and counting. We also have story baskets, with a board book and little figures of animals and/or people or stuffed animals that help tell the story. It makes the story much more concrete for the little ones. They can hold and play with one of the figures while we finish telling the story, and that makes them want to revisit it over and over; it also expands the age range of interest. Right now we're working with some of the Eric Carle books in our story baskets, along with Mouse Paint!

New arrival!

This week we welcomed I, our new 15-month-old. She looks like a cherub! The other children have immediately taken to her. Grandma C is delightful! She is a professional speech pathologist and I feel grateful to benefit from her wisdom about the process of language development.

It has been a hot week so far with heat indices well over a hundred degrees, so we've played outside for an hour or so right after breakfast, then moved the party indoors. Last night's thunderstorm should give us a break in the weather - we hope to have a field trip today, and will update later on that, depending on where the children decide to go. Because of the heat, we allowed the children to watch a bit of Planet Earth and a film about horses, in preparation for our planned visit next week to the Field Museum to see 'Horses' before it closes on the 13th. Horses were a primary nexus of technology and culture for at least two thousand years before the development of the motor car; I think we've forgotten our debt to these beautiful animals and I'm looking forward to seeing the children's reactions to the exhibit. Perhaps today we will go out to Danada Farm to visit their stables!