{"id":2973,"date":"2018-11-06T02:17:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T02:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/?p=2973"},"modified":"2018-11-06T14:15:27","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T14:15:27","slug":"gem-drop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/2018\/11\/06\/gem-drop\/","title":{"rendered":"Gem Drop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Materials<\/strong>     
\nClear plastic bottle
\nPurple plastic “gems”\"\"
\nWater (optional)<\/p>\n

Directions<\/strong>       
\nThis is a simple activity  that toddlers love to do\u2014and which you can extend to cover numerous learning skills!<\/p>\n

Choose a plastic bottle that has an opening slightly bigger than the objects your child is going to drop inside.  I used plastic purple \u201cgems\u201d from a craft store.  You can use beads, small stones, etc.  I fill the bottle about \u00bc full with water because it helps muffle the noise made by dropping the gems into an empty bottle and an activity with water is always more attractive to a toddler! <\/p>\n

Pick up a gem and drop it into the bottle.  Encourage your toddler to do the same.  The act of picking up the gem is a great way to practice the pincer grip, which helps later on with picking up and holding a pencil correctly.  Dropping the gem through the bottle neck promotes hand-eye coordination and, as your child drops more gems into the bottle, you can even talk about the concept of water displacement, which is what happens to the water level as you drop more solid items (gems) into the bottle.  An easy way to illustrate this concept is to put a rubber band around the bottle before your child begins dropping the gems in at the water level.  As he drops more and more gems into the bottle, the gems displace the water and the water level seems to rise.  This is an abstract concept that you may want to ignore until your child is a little older! <\/p>\n

Finally, you can practice counting how many gems are dropped into the bottle.  When your child is done, dump the water out in the sink, and let your child shake the bottle until all the gems fall out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Materials      Clear plastic bottle Purple plastic “gems” Water (optional) Directions        This is a simple activity  that toddlers love to do\u2014and which you can extend to cover numerous learning skills! Choose a plastic bottle that has an opening slightly bigger than the objects your child is going to drop inside.  I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gem Drop”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":2974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games-and-activities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2973"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2996,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions\/2996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/sites\/acorn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}