Supporting Christian Science families and their young children
Bin or large container
Dried beans (pinto, navy, or lima)
Striped objects
Cups, spoons, bowls
Hide a variety of striped objects in the beans. Encourage your child to find all the striped objects. For additional fun, you can take a picture of each object using an iPad or camera phone. Invite your child to find the object that matches the picture. Once all the objects have been found, count the ojbects.
Canvas Art Boar
Acrylic paints
Painter’s Tape
Old credit cards or gift cards
Prepare art board by placing painter’s tape vertically, diagonally, or horizontally across the art board. Spoon or pour a small glob of acrylic paint on the board and invite your child to use a credit card or gift card to spread the paint across the canvas. Continue spreading different colors of paint across the board until the surface is covered with paint. Allow paint to dry. Then invite your child to carefully pull the paint off the canvas to see the lovely striped design.
Pattern of a snake drawn with permanent marker onto a 12×18 piece of construction paper
Googly eyes
Tempera paint
Small, clean household sponges cut in half
Glue
Newspaper to cover work space
Paper plate
Cover work space with newspaper. Pour a small amount of tempera paint onto a paper plate. Invite your child to paint stripes on the snake by dipping the edge of the sponge into paint and gently pressing it onto the paper. You may choose to demonstrate how to make stripes or point out some stripes on fabric. Allow paint to dry, then cut out snake. Preschoolers can be encouraged to cut out their own snakes. Glue the snake onto a piece of construction paper. Add googly eyes and display.
Orange and black construction paper
Glue
Picture or book about tigers
Spend some time looking at pictures of tigers with your child. Notice the beautiful black stripes that they have. Invite your child tear long strips of black construction paper and glue the strips onto orange construction paper to look like tiger stripes. Display the tiger stripes.
Tearing paper is a great fine motor activity for toddlers and preschoolers.
A variety of puzzles
Observe your child as she works a puzzle. 
Your child is practicing problem solving, improving her visual spacial awareness and eye and hand coordination, refining her fine motor skills, and when puzzles are worked on together they promote cooperative play.
Working puzzles is a very important part of a child’s early learning.
Materials
Variety of plastic colored straws cut into various lengths
Large empty Parmesan cheese container
Directions
Cut plastic straws into various sizes ranging from 2-4 inches in length. They can be all one color if you’re wanting to reinforce a specific color, or they can be a variety of colors, which can help with color recognition. Invite your child to drop the various straws into the holes of a clean Parmesan cheese container. You can encourage your child to find all the orange straws, then all of the purple straws, etc. Your child may want to count the straws as he drops them into the container.
In addition to practicing fine motor control, this activity also helps develop eye/hand coordination.
Five-year-old Jenny spontaneously picks up her room, taking delight in arranging her things in an orderly way. Kenny gives a rock from his treasured collection to a friend, delighting in his friend’s joy. Our toddler, Penny, starts to reach for the forbidden TV knob, then pulls back her hand and walks away.
These are moments that warm a parent’s heart – when the child wants to do the right thing. Is there anything we can do to encourage more of these commendable acts?
One way to approach this question might be to ask another one: why does a person do what we consider to be ‘the right’ thing? Dr. Lawrence Kohlberg, of Harvard University, has come up with answers that have won him wide acclaim and given impetus to some moral education programs in the schools. Kohlberg suggests six progressive stages of moral development, if we view these stages as periods through which each individual must go to reach maturity, and then try to label children accordingly, we are indeed limiting them, as well as our means of teaching them. But if we view the six steps as progressively higher reasons for doing the right thing, they can be a useful tool for working with children.
Briefly, they are:
1. Fear of punishment;
2. Hope of personal rewards;
3. Wish to be considered good;
4. Respect for man-made rules;
5. Respect for the rights of others;
6. Belief in universal principles applicable to all mankind; a matter of conscience
With these in mind we might look at a child’s possible reasons for wanting to pick up his toys (the first two illustrations show that there can be a range of degree within a step or stage of reasoning) :
1. Because he’ll get a spanking if he doesn’t, or because his parents won’t let him watch TV or play with his friends until he does.
2. Because his parents promise him a new toy if he picks them up, or because he can find his toys more readily.
3. Because he knows his parents and friends will consider him to be good if he does.
4. Because he has learned to respect the firmly established rule in his home that toys must be put away at the end of the day or before he takes out more.
5. Because he truly believes that the other members of the family have a right to a neat home and he wants to do his part.
6. Because he loves order, takes great pleasure in expressing it, and is not comfortable unless he is expressing it.
Looking at a child’s response this way, we can see that his reasons may shift from time to time (Even as an adult, I may be operating at step 3 when I quickly pick up the house before company comes.) But we can also see that communication to the child might have some effect on the level of his thinking.
If our sole means of getting a child to do the right thing is to punish him or to threaten him with punishment, we may be limiting his opportunity to respond to higher levels of thought. On the other hand, it may take a good deal of praise (step 3), rewards (step 2), and some punishment (step l), before a family rule is firmly established.
In the process we may communicate in ways that lead to stages 5 and 6. For instance, stage 5: “Daddy will be so happy when he comes home to a neat house”; “Thank you ! I have such a wonderful feeling when the whole house is neat and orderly” – or stage 6: “Doesn’t your room look beautiful with everything put away?” In addition, we might make a special effort to show a good example of order ourselves. (If we do this we’re using stage 5 – thinking . ) We can also look with the child at the order is nature and talk with him about how each one of us inherits and can express the quality of order from God.
Let’s look at some possible reasons, from a child’s viewpoint, for coming when he’s called.
1. “I might get punished if I don’t come.”
2. “Mother sometimes has a surprise for ne when I come quickly.”
3. “Mother thinks I’m good when I come right away.”
4. “Children are always supposed to come when parents call.”
5. “The family won’t have to wait.”
6. “It’s right to be punctual, so I’m impelled to come when I’m called.”
We can analyze other right actions we wish to encourage in the same way: cooperating, sharing taking responsibility, being honest. This kind of analysis can open new ways of thinking and provide helpful guidelines for parental action. (M. E. C, )
Wide strip of paper
Scissors – Dollar Store Safety Scissors work well for young children
Sharpie Marker
DirectionsUsing a Sharpie marker, make simple lines on a wide strip of paper. Invite your child to cut carefully on the lines using a pair of child safety scissors. Help your child place his thumb and the correct finger in the scissor handles and open and close the blades. This is an important skill for strengthening fingers in preparation for learning to write.
1 wooden block
Heavy twine
Gold tempera paint
1 paper plate
Tape
Blue construction paper
Begin by wrapping heavy twine around the circumference of the wooden block. Secure with tape. Pour gold paint onto the paper plate. Tape a piece of blue construction to the table. Invite your child to place the block in the paint and then press it onto the paper. Look at the fun designs that the block makes as it is pressed onto the paper.
Add glitter, floral mosaics, pompoms, googly eyes, plastic spiders, foam shapes, beads, or other lightweight objects to the slime after it is made
For Patriotic Slime, add red, white, and blue sequins or blue and red glitter.