Jumble House Challenges, Learning for young children, nature, Outdoors

Why? Why are there more yellow flowers?

WHY? My daughter once asked me why there were more yellow flowers than white. To be honest I’d never even noticed! But, yes, she was right. When I looked around there were more yellow flowers. Why? I hadn’t a clue so I threw back the question! “I don’t know. Why do you think it is?” Young children are SO much better than us at answering their own difficult questions! Back came the answer, ‘Maybe it’s because the bees prefer yellow flowers?’ A pretty good hypothesis to start with. So from there we got into a conversation about what the bees were doing on the flowers and was it just bees or did other insects visit flowers and why? Then of course came an even more difficult question! “But how can we find out?” Well, by then it was getting rather near to tea time and my mind wasn’t really on bees and flowers. But daughter being very persistent would not let it go! To cut a long story short she decided to test out her colour theory by placing clear plastic dishes with a sugar solution on a selection of different coloured card. Then I got on with making the tea while she sat there like a statue counting how many insects visited the different coloured ‘flowers’! The result? Was her prediction correct? Try it and see!

Jumble House Animals, Learning through Play, nature

Learning about Snails for Young Children 

Gardeners don’t like Snails for obvious reasons but kids are fascinated by them AND they are incredibly interesting creatures AND very gymnastic AND make very good pets!

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO ON SNAILS

Looking at them through the eyes of a child they are quite incredible creatures with their slippery silver trails and waving tentacles.  What other creature carries its house on its back!  It’s the stuff of fairy tales.

In the video Lizzie finds a snail eating  her plants and decides to find out how she can stop this happening without hurting the snail. There is also an investigation for parents or teachers to carry out with their children.

This is the first of two programmes. In the second programme Lizzie will be looking inside the snail shell and exploring spiral shapes in nature and buildings.   Click on the link below for a programme on spirals.

SPIRALS IN ART AND NATURE

Jumble House Books, Learning for young children, nature

FREE ebook

IN SEARCH OF SPRING

What IS Spring? I wrote this little book for two of my grandchildren who live in Singapore. (It’s available free for four days on Amazon: amazon.com/author/judibrereton )

LINK TO MY AUTHOR PAGE

Like little JUMBLE TUFT in the story they have never experienced ‘Spring.’

In the story everyone is helping to Spring clean ‘Jumble House’ and Jumble Tuft doesn’t understand why everywhere is in such a mess. Wise Owl sends him into the woods to find out more about Spring from the woodland creatures. He learns a lot but still has some questions which Wise Owl helps to answer. All ends happily when Jumble Tuft decides he likes this thing called ‘Spring’ and helps the others with the spring cleaning. Jumble Tuft and all the woodland creatures he meets are handmade and at the end of the book there is an opportunity to make one of these characters. Children can also follow the adventures of the JUMBLES on my learning channel. The book has 38 full colour pages. Here’s an excerpt. I hope you like it!

Jumble House Autumn, Crafts for kids, Fun Learning for Young Children, Learning through Play, nature

Autumn Garden

Kids love gardens and one like this is so fun to make and takes virtually no maintenance apart from watering. They will really enjoy making new items for the garden and changing the theme as the seasons change.

It is a very good way of teaching about plants and germination and seasons plus they will hopefully develop a sense of responsibility caring for their little garden.

We don’t have a garden so I created this on a patch of tarmac at the bottom of the steps.

I simply laid a sheet of plastic over the tarmac raised up around the borders on bricks. This made a hollow in the centre which I filled with compost.

I planted a mixture of real and artificial plants . Some planted directly into the compost. Others in small plant pots.

The garden was made in the spring and has survived high winds, rain, drought and temps. of 40+

Last week I changed the theme to Autumn by adding lots of fir cones, dry leaves and little Veggie characters.

Jumble House Early Learning, learning, Learning through Play, nature, PreSchool, Science

Onions! Rooting veg. FUN


Four days ago we made some little rooting containers from plastic water bottle tops stuck onto lids to keep them stable. They work really well!  We put a red onion in one positioned so the base was nearly touching the water. 

Four days later and it looks like this! 


Children of all ages will learn such a lot from just this simple activity but let them find out for themselves by observation and careful questioning. Get them to predict. To investigate. Suggest their own experiments. How far this goes depends on the developmental stage of the child but don’t underestimate. Children are capable of  understanding  and absorbing a lot more than we think! 

Take photos or draw the vegetables at different stages. Take measurements of the shoot and the root and the girth of the onion bulb at the beginnng and every three or four days. Make charts to show the difference.  

Compare the growth of the plant with our growth. What we need to grow. Where we get food from. Where does the food for the plant come from? 
Ask questions and use the question words. What? Where? Why? How? 

What’s happened to the water? The roots? The shoots? The onion bulb ? 

Will this work with other veg.?

With pieces of veg? 

What will happen if we root two of the same veg. but positioned differently.

Ask them to look carefully at the veg. first and to predict where the roots will grow. 

Why do plants grow roots? 

If you turn the onion/potato etc round what will happen to the roots? Try and see. 

Why are roots white and shoots green? 

Do shoots always grow up and roots down? How can we find out? 

Why has the bulb shrunk? 

Now try this! 


Have fun!