guest post - Mama Pea Pod

Super excited to have Mama Pea Pod visiting my little corner of blog world today! She has been co-hosting the Outdoor Play Link Up with me and it has been really fun to see all the great outdoor play ideas she has.  So please show her some comment love and then head over to her blog and check her out!

Allow me to introduce myself...I'm Jane, AKA Mama Pea Pod, and I'm so excited to be guest posting here today. I have two daughters, close in age to Abbie's: Princess Pea is just newly 4 and Sweet Pea is 16 months. I love being with them and have taken time off from teaching to stay home a little longer. I want to enjoy every day I have with them while they are still young enough to want to hang out with me! It's all going by too fast. I blog about all the fun things we do together to make the most of it. Sometimes we do arts and crafts, like these DIY tie-dyed T-shirts, often we play and explore outdoors, and sometimes I like to just set up some open-ended play tools and see what kinds of imaginative ideas they come up with on their own, like chalk and puddle play. I am also a co-host of the Outdoor Play linky party, along with Abbie and Kate of An Amazing Child. I am a firm believer in learning primarily through play in the early years, fostering imagination and creativity in children, and in the importance of getting kids outdoors! I welcome you to come over to Mama Pea Pod and join in the fun with us!

Through the Magnifying Glass

I recently bought a kids' magnifying glass on sale at Michaels. It's made of plastic instead of glass, so no need to worry about my little peas dropping it and breaking the glass. I was excited to see what the world really looked like through a preschooler's eyes, so after a brief demonstration of how to hold it (not too close to the eyes, just a little above the object), I set Princess Pea out in Grandma's garden with it and waited to see what she would find of interest to her.

Here are some of the things she examined:





(It's a pile of seaweed from a recent beach exploration, in case you're wondering!)

Despite the demo, her natural inclination was to hold the magnifying glass right up to her face, like glasses, so I had to remind her a couple of times about how to hold it farther away.

We talked a little about how you can see details with it that we wouldn't normally notice, such as the water drops on the grass (she was sure they were ice until she touched them), lines on our palms, and holes in the leaves (why are there holes?).

We talked about how caterpillars eat leaves and leave little holes in them, like in The Very Hungry Caterpillar (still a favourite in our household), and we looked under and around the leaves to see if we could find any caterpillars or chrysalises like in Clara Caterpillar (which we recently borrowed from the library) (no luck finding any, though).

We found a bee inside one of the flowers, which reminded her that bees go inside flowers to get the 'yellow stuff' (she can never remember the word pollen) to make it into honey, which reminded her of The Big Honey Hunt that we just read at Granny's, and of the working bee hive we saw during our recent visit to the Wildlife Park.

Then she discovered her footprints with it ... which led to a completely different tangent that I'll save for another day...

I can't wait to try magnifying glass explorations again soon. Even Sweet Pea took an interest when she woke up from her nap - she snatched it right up and had a go too! It was a great way for the girls to explore nature, and it led to some wonderful dialogue about how the natural world works. And I loved the connections she made to recent stories and experiences!



Comments

[Mama Pea Pod]

Thanks so much for having me over, Abbie! I've enjoyed my stay :-)

[Debt Advice]

I like these all picture and every thing looking very nice and great. All natural pictures are my favorite.

[penny stock to buy]

I am so impressed by that all picture. Every picture looking great and wonderful. Also that little baby looking very cute.

[raspberry ketones]

Those all pictures excellent. This little baby very enjoyed in this photos. It such an excellent photos. These all are looking really very cool and great to know about it.