Here is the answer to yesterday’s Thursday Thinker.

If Janna serves one tennis ball at noon and serves one ball every minute after that until one o’clock, then she will have served 61 times.

Serve 1: noon
Serve 2:  12:01
Serve 3: 12:02
Serve 4: 12:03
.
.
.
Serve 60: 12:59
Serve 61: 1:00

Janna is practicing her tennis serve. If she serves on ball at exactly noon and serves on ball every minutes there after until one o’clock, how many balls will she have served?

Last week I let you know of a place where you can find American Made Baby Toys and how to choose a toy for your baby. Today, I am going to talk about American made toys for infants, the 12-24 month old. This is a lot more exciting because there are many, many more American made toys for this age range.

My favorite toys for this age range and those that can be manipulates. Blocks are an important toy. There are so many things that the infant learns from stacking and knocking over simple wooden blocks.
This set of blocks is made in the USA by Uncle Goose and are colored with a child-safe ink.

A little wood work bench is also another great developmental tool. It creates another lesson on cause and effect while developing those motor skills.

Lacing beads, pull toys and push toys are all great toys for engaging the infant and creating enjoyable learning experiences.

If you are looking for an outdoor you, Little Tykes makes much of their outdoor equipment in the USA. If you are only looking for American made products, I want to make you that you know that not all Little Tykes toys are made in the USA. This link will take you directly to their products that they state are made in the USA.
The best toys for this age are low tech and high touch.

I liked this idea as a way to introduce chart making to young children. After this activity I think that it would be great to take it another step and create a bar chart from the data. I would create another chart with the children with snacks on one axis and the quantity on the other axis. The children will learn that they can easily see what the most popular and leas popular snacks are.

Here is another great video of a Story Time Felts product in use. This is the well know story of The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly. Children love this nonsensical story plus, it promotes rhyming, an important pre-reading skill.

Here is the answer to yesterday’s Thursday Thinker.

If Farmer Joe said that all but two of his animals were horses, all but two of his animals were cows and all but two of his animals were sheep.  That means that he has a total of three animals on his farm.  One horse, one cow and one sheep!

Joe Farmer has purchased a new farm and was describing the animals that are on his farm. He stated that all but two of the animals were horses, all but two of the animals were cows and all but two of the animals were sheep.

How many animals are on Joe’s new farm?

As we get closer to the holidays I start getting asked about what toys one the market can people buy for their children that are American made. Luckily, many stores are starting to advertise the country of origin for the products they sell. Today, I’ll start with baby toys.

Craftsbury Kids is one store that labels the country of origin for their items and they have a nice selection of unique and appropriate baby toys. About 90% of the baby toys in this store are made in the USA.

The best toys for babies are simple toys that they can investigate with their senses. Texture is important because the baby will be learning about the toy with their hands, mouth and often rub things against their face. Also, those toys that crinkle or rattle are a perfect way for the baby to explore and learn cause and effect.  For babies, keep it safe and keep it simple.

This morning I was reading a blog post over at Parenting Zoo about ideas to keep young children busy, without TV, when you are trying to work from home. This got me thinking about something that I don’t think I have talked about, independent play for young children. The interaction and play between parent and child is very important, but I think that many times we forget to encourage independent play.

I am sure that there are times that you wish that your children would play on their own so that you can accomplish every day tasks, but that type of play does not happen automatically. The post at Parenting Zoo gives some good suggestions of ways to encourage your child to play on their own. Most children need encouragement. We need to help them along and teach them to be independent players.

Encouraging your young child to play alone has benefits that reach far beyond our own needs. It help the child become self-directing and fosters self reliance. The child gains confidence that they can begin and complete a task on their own. Children need to know that they can turn to their parents for help, but they also need to know that they have the ability to accomplish tasks and solve problems on their own. Encouraging this independent play is the first step.

Last Monday I told you about the tutoring position that I started at the local middle school. For the couple of sessions that I have met with the students I have taught the kids some of the strategies in the Fun With Figures e-book that I purchased.

I have to say that I am very excited about it. It gives the kids some different ways to look at things. Today I taught them a method of how to check their answers for addition problems. Often times kids make mistakes in their addition. It’s not because they don’t understand what they are doing, they simply make mistakes. So, I taught them a digit sum method to check their answers. None of the kids had ever seen this method before and I even got a few “Wow, that’s cool” type of reactions. That is not an easy thing to come by in math class.

My plan is to introduce these types of strategies and reinforce the math skills that they should know. I think that a big part of helping the kids will be to never completely abandon a topic. I will have to keep revisiting topics so that they are not forgotten. They first few minutes of every tutoring session will be dedicated to reviewing materials frim the past. That way it will always be fresh in their minds.