With all the rain that we have been seeing here in the Bay Area there has been a small number of these uninvited guests looking for a dry place to hang out. Unfortunatelly for them I already sprayed our home to prevent a mass invasion of these little critters. I love Ortho Home Defense Max by the way! That stuff worked great! Every now and then though, Grace will find one random lonely Ant crawling on the floor, the wall, the carpet, or the tub...you get the idea. Usually her body (and a little bit of verbal) language go something like this.....
Hello little Ant.
I see you moving but where are you going?
And why don't you want me to pick you up?
There! Got you!
Oh maybe not.
Wait....ugh.
Kay now! Argh....
Gotcha!
Mommy Ant!
She shows me her finger which now has a squished Ant on it. "How should I respond to this" I ask myself. The only thing I can think of is something I learned from one of my former professors, which is to go with it and turn this into a fun and educational lesson. This is a classic example of what Early Childhood Educators call an Emergent Curriculum, which is taking a situation or experience such as this and turning it into a lesson plan on the spot.
So we briefly inspect the Ant (what's left of it), and find some legs and a body. I then get out some construction paper, cut the body as a whole (she's 2, doesn't need to be perfect), make about 10 legs, grab some googely eyes for fun, give her some glue and begin to work on putting this Ant creation together. She arranged and glued, and I asked where the legs, arms, and eyes might go.
I may have cheated by drawing in a smile to indicate where the head should be, but either way we got some pretty good vocabulary practice in and she did do all the work herself. Not bad ha?!
Hello little Ant.
I see you moving but where are you going?
And why don't you want me to pick you up?
There! Got you!
Oh maybe not.
Wait....ugh.
Kay now! Argh....
Gotcha!
Mommy Ant!
She shows me her finger which now has a squished Ant on it. "How should I respond to this" I ask myself. The only thing I can think of is something I learned from one of my former professors, which is to go with it and turn this into a fun and educational lesson. This is a classic example of what Early Childhood Educators call an Emergent Curriculum, which is taking a situation or experience such as this and turning it into a lesson plan on the spot.
So we briefly inspect the Ant (what's left of it), and find some legs and a body. I then get out some construction paper, cut the body as a whole (she's 2, doesn't need to be perfect), make about 10 legs, grab some googely eyes for fun, give her some glue and begin to work on putting this Ant creation together. She arranged and glued, and I asked where the legs, arms, and eyes might go.
I may have cheated by drawing in a smile to indicate where the head should be, but either way we got some pretty good vocabulary practice in and she did do all the work herself. Not bad ha?!
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