Arty Crafty Birthday Party

This past weekend our twins had their 7th birthday party. Crazily, since we are moving house soon, I decided to have the party at home. School hadn't started for the year yet, so we were able to get away with just inviting close friends and family. As usual, a range of ages would be there, so we needed a theme that everyone would enjoy. Plus, with a boy and a girl it's hard to find a theme they'll both be happy with. So we decided to have an Arty Crafty party with some basic art activities and some crafts that were boy-friendly.

For a party like this our Polka-dot invites are just perfect, and youcan order them in several different colours to really brighten things up. We held the party on our covered verandah (a good thing, since it rained on the day) and made it look very festive with strings of papel picado and a bright plastic tablecloth on the food table. I set up four workstations (a camping table, a children's outdoor table and two makeshift tables created by putting whiteboards over smaller play tables - those were perfect for messy activities). There was a painting table, a playdough table (I made the playdough in the morning using a recipe from 'Your Child' magazine), a beading table and a table for making Ben10 Omnitrixes. The boys had great fun painting and glittering their Ben10 crafts.

For snacks we made mini-hot dogs with baby pork sausages and cocktail rolls. These were very popular (with the adults as well as the children). There were cupcakes, of course, and we had let our children decorate these so they were very proud to show them off to their friends. A few sweets and some chips (no tartrazine, no msg) rounded off the snacks and this was plenty - we actually had a lot of leftover sweets and chips, though the cupcakes and hot dogs were polished off.

The most fun part, for me, was making smocks for all our guests. With all the paint and playdough, I didn't want anyone's clothes ruined. I used a wonderfully easy pattern from Amy Karol's 'Bend-the-rules Sewing', and the smocks were a real hit. Of course, I forgot I would want to blog about the party, and failed to take photos of the smocks before they were all taken home by their new owners. But you can see the basic design in the lovely version shown here, which is taken from the bend-the-rules flickr group.

January 2009 already?

Wow, 2008 just flew by and here we are nearly at the end of January 2009. I've been very slack with this blog and I must apologise. There was just so much going on over the festive season I didn't have a moment. And now we are in the process of moving house so I'm sitting here in a little cave of boxes, which is not very conducive to work. So, a little break from the Multiple Intelligences while I share with you the plan that is helping me to move house with two 7-year-olds, several pets, and far too many books while still maintaining my sanity.

First I listed each room in the house:
Main bedroom
Kids Bedroom 1 and 2
Kitchen
Office
Garage
Bathrooms
Main - I grouped the lounge and dining room together here because mostly it's books and ornaments.

Then I broke each room down into phases. For example, in the office there are 3 phases:
1: Stationery, craft equipment and unused files
2: Books and files
3: Computer peripherals and equipment
I leave the computer itself, along with other big pieces of furniture, til last.

Basically, the phases cover (1) Things we generally don't use very often, (2) Things that are used but that we can do without for a week or two, and (3) Things that we're probably going to need right up until the move. So, another example: winter clothes can go in phase 1 since it's summer here now, but summer clothes need to go in phase 3. I hope this is making sense.

Next, I diarised the packing phases for each room leading up to moving day, and begining, obviously, by working through Phase 1 in each room then moving on to Phase 2.

So far I'm pretty much on schedule (apart from the office, which is just full of stuff and very difficult to phase).

Any great tips for packing up houses or the moving day? Please let me know in the comments thread...

Assessing your child's intelligence 'type'

Firstly, apologies for the long delay. The last month has just flown by. And now, as promised, a quick guide to assessing your child's intelligence 'type'. Remember, please, that nobody fits neatly into a box and your child may be strong in different areas...

Visual / Spatial Intelligence: Does your child respond better to pictures than to text? Does she seem able to 'read' pictures? Is she good with maps? Does she enjoy playing with 3-dimensional building materials like Lego and blocks? Does she seem happiest when drawing, painting or building? Then she probably has strong 'picture-smarts'.

Linguistic Intelligence: Is your child a chatter? Does he love to tell jokes and riddles? Does he play with rhyming sounds? Does he enjoy learning new words and use this vocabulary whenever he can? Does he enjoy listening to story tapes, radio and people talking? Then he is verbally smart.

Musical Intelligence: Does your child sing, hum and tap on every available surface? Does she enjoy experimenting with musical instruments? You might have the next Yo-Yo Ma in your house.

Kinesthetic Intelligence: Is your child sporty and constantly active? Does he enjoy running, climbing, catching, batting and other activities that engage his body? He may also like building models, sewing, drawing and other activities that require fine motor skills. This is body smart.

Logical / Mathematical Intelligence: Does your child love puzzles, especially ones that involve working with numbers? Does she enjoy working things out, measuring and calculating? Does she play chess or other strategy games? Is she constantly raiding your kitchen for materials to do science experiments? Then it's likely she is math smart.

Interpersonal Intelligence: Does your child have lots of friends? Does he seem to meet new people all the time? Is he the one who smooths over sibling fights, makes sure everyone is having a good time and helps you with the new baby? This child is people smart.

Intrapersonal Intelligence: Does your child keep a journal or a dreambook? Does she enjoy talking about her feelings and show a surprising level of self-understanding? Kids with intrapersonal intelligence are able to spend a great deal of time alone because they're happy in their own company, but they also make great friends because they tend to be sensitive and open to others.

Some teachers and theorists add other forms of intelligence to this list and they are perfectly sensible, but this is the core list originally developed by Howard Gardner. This is a brief introduction. You can learn more about each intelligence in Laurel Schmidt's great book 'Seven Times Smarter' or at this website.

Multiple Intelligences

I have a book that I have read from cover to cover several times, and yet continually pull off the shelf to browse and re-inspire myself. It's called Seven Times Smarter, by Laurel Schmidt, and it's about how to stimulate your children's learning through appealing to their different learning styles, as well as by helping them to bolster areas that are not typical to their own learning style.

The idea of multiple intelligences was proposed some while back by Howard Gardner. Initially, he proposed 7 intelligences - he has since added two more. The basic idea is this: we do not all learn, or express ourselves, in the same ways. Some of us are more physical, others more logical, others very visual, and so on. I personally learn better by reading rather than hearing, and I can take in new information very quickly if I read it. My daughter, however, learns very quickly just by listening (and is really good at repeating back word for word that juicy piece of gossip I shared within her earshot - a good lesson for me!). And this brings me to the main point of this post. Our children do not necessarily share the same intelligences as us. We need to understand their type of smartness, and how to communicate with them, if we are to really encourage their own intelligence rather than just pushing our type of intelligence on them.

So, over the next ten weeks we are going to explore the nine intelligences, with some ideas for activities for each. We're going to have lots of fun! In my next post we'll be looking at how to figure out which intelligence(s) your child seems most strong in.

In the meantime, if you'd like to read up more on the different intelligences, here are some really good websites to take a look at:
The Seven Intelligences at Literacy.net.
Concept to Classroom explains the theory of multiple intelligences and why they work well in classrooms.
Multiple Intelligences - a nice introduction with some ideas for encouraging the various intelligences.

Reading Reading Reading

As a one-time school librarian and avid reader, I am naturally very keen to see my children reading. My twins will be entering Grade 1 next year and both are begining to read and write. I consider reading and writing to be the two most important skills my children will ever learn, and I want them to get it right from the start, so I won't rush them but I will try to support them as much as possible. Today (it being Day 2 of the school holidays), I set them to creating little booklets about the long weekend we spent in the Drakensberg with their grandparents. They drew pictures and I wrote out descriptive sentences which they copied below their pictures. Then they wrote thank you letters to their grandparents, which we will post this afternoon.

I have read to my children since they were born. We have always read a mix of basic 'baby' books, picture books and longer stories. My daughter is a great fan of the Milly-Molly-Mandy stories, while my son prefers tales of knights and dragons. Both enjoy The Famous Five, anything by Roald Dahl, and the wonderful picture books by Jeanette Donaldson and Axl Schaeffer. We read Harry Potter, The Wind in the Willows, the William books, and many other classics aloud. We encourage the children to sit quietly with a picture book or two for half an hour in the evenings. Even though they can't properly read these books yet, they know the stories and can make out some of the words. We occasionally go to bookshops and allow the children to choose their own book to buy, and they both use the school and public libraries regularly. Both have bookshelves in their rooms filled with their favourite picture books and a number of other books that they will only read for themselves later on. And finally, but perhaps most importantly, both their father and I read books ourselves - the more your children see you reading books, magazines and newspapers, and enjoying it, the more they will want to read for themselves.

There are many wonderful websites to help your children learn to read, answer your questions about learning to read, and recommend excellent books for children. Exclusive Books have published a lovely Children's Best Books Guide for just R6, which features a number of my favourites and has introduced me to some wonderful new titles.

Starfall is a great website with alphabet and reading games for children of all ages. My children have gone through two levels of this site so far, and I am really very impressed with it.

The Family Education website has a very informative and useful section on reading.

Reading by 9 is a wonderful initiative by the LA Times that publishes a fantastic yearly parent's guide. You can access the guide online or download the pdf version.

Your Child magazine published a great article about reading in their September 2008 issue, and they feature a really good list of Best Books for Kids on their website.