Ms. Amy's Blog @Child Central Station

Young children are concrete learners.  This means that they need hands on experiences. They need to experiment and explore. They learn through being engaged in play! One of the investments we decided to make to keep some of our options for young children fresh was to enroll in the Toy of the Month Club from Explorations Early Learning . If you are a regular follower of the blog, you know how much I think Jeff and Tasha Johnson rock.... This Toy of the Month Club really elevates their coolness even more! Every month they send you a box of "toys," handmade- that encourage HOURS upon HOURS of exploration and play! You won't need any batteries or screens.... Just open the box and viola! This is our second installment, and the children are so excited when the boxes come in! Every month, we receive a new box of cool stuff! Last month was a set of domino blocks, this month was a set of small wooden catapults. If you remember, we are a little bit cata...

When we were out of town last weekend, I found this great "Water Balloon Catapult." I remember my younger brother having one when we were younger. We used to launch water balloons off of the deck and send them flying out into the field. This one notes that it launches up to 300 feet. What I love about it, is that it requires teamwork. (There are ways to use it yourself, by hooking each end on your feet, laying back with your feet in the air and then using your arms to pull it back. However, for the children..... using it as a team works best!) While they are "just" playing, they are working on their social skills. Using this is no easy task, they also need to work together and are building large muscles! They are experimenting with physics, and geometry... I'm quite confident that they will soon figure out the exact angle and position in order to make a basket. I love to watch and support children as they take the time to really inve...

So, our exploration continues. Today, we opted to try some indoor catapult painting.  Most of our small catapult s went home with our little friends, so we quickly crafted a new line of them!  Instead of making individual catapults, we put four of them in a line on a board. We decided that we would try some watered down paint on cotton balls with paper as our targeted canvas. Our investigation required A LOT of tweaking. How far away does the paper need to be? What happens if you try to shoot off more than one at a time? Some of our little friends had trouble holding down the base and shooting off the catapult. Mr. Allan helped to hold down the base. (We will have to tweak our set-up to allow more of the children to explore this more independently.) Do you think that marshmallows would work?  (I wish we had some to try.... adding to the shopping list...) When all else fails, and your aim with the catapult just isn't quite right..... grab them...

While I was gone to the conference this past weekend , Allan and Dane built an "OGRE" catapult. (Well, their own version of one.) We have been trying all kinds of different experiences where Dane can either "blow things up" or send thing flying in the air. ( Here is a link to one of our catapult projects ) This evening, we opted to try some predicting with the latest model of a catapult. First, we tried to decide how far we thought the sponge bombs would fly. We wrote our predictions down. Then, it was time to.... Ready, Aim... Fire! After we shot all of the bombs, we used a measuring tape to determine how accurate our predictions were. We wrote down the actual distances and then compared them to the original guesses. Who was the closest? How much more/less did you guess? If you have to guess again, what would you say? Did the bombs all go the same distance? Why do you think that is? Do you think you can make the bombs land in the dump truck? Where ...

Earlier this week, we started to make a few catapults after reading this wonderful post over at All Things Beautiful. They found the idea from Almost Unschoolers (click here). I love all of the online tweaking and inspiration going on!!! Our first group of builders this week decided that they wanted to decorate their catapults with paint. So, of course, we had to wait for the paint to dry before we put them together. We used scraps of wood, clothespins, plastic lids (from milk, juice... etc), and tongue depressors. We also used hot glue to put them together. Our ammunition has consisted primarily of cotton balls. Although, today when a group of girls was simultaneously shooting theirs off, they became "POPPING POPCORN BALLS." "Fire in the hole!" Today's group of children did not want to wait for the paint to dry. They were having so much fun with the painted catapults, that they wanted their own "right now!" So, they opted to deco...