We often rush about and miss the amazing, colorful backdrop nature provides us in the sky—particularly in the winter season. This week at Tinkergarten Anywhere, we’ll invite kids to slow down and behold the winter sky. Then, we welcome kids to use colorful, frozen “pops” and a plain bedsheet or cloth to create their very own beautiful winter sky and sunset.
The Guide
Step 1: Make frozen paints.
Follow these steps to make frozen “pops” kids can use to paint their very own winter sky. Note: These will need at least 24 hours to freeze before ready to use in play.
Gather your food coloring, short sticks (4-5 inches) and either a muffin tin or ice cube tray. Note: You can also use watercolor or tempera paint to color your frozen “pops”.
Put several drops of color, then water, into each compartment. Mix well.
Put tin foil over the top of the ice tray or muffin tin.
Poke a small stick through the foil and into each compartment. This will freeze to form a stick.
Place in the freezer (or outside if temps are below freezing) for about 24 hours.
Take them out of the freezer or bring them indoors from the freezing cold, give them a minute to warm up, then pop them out into a bag or bowl that you can bring outside.
Step 2: Watch the Sky Colors video lesson.
Hop into your My Tinkergarten dashboard to watch the Sky Colors video lesson. Kids can watch how Meghan and other explorers explore their winter sky, then get inspired to create their own!
Step 3: Look at your winter sky.
Lay down wherever you are and behold the winter sky together. Invite kids to share what they see. Share your own observations, too. If you could, how would you paint the winter sky? What colors would you use?
Step 4: Paint the winter sky.
Wonder, “How could we paint our very own winter sky?” Pull out your sheet and explore it for a while. Feel it. Hold it and wave it up and down.
Then, pull out your frozen color pops and wonder, “Could these help us turn this sheet into our own winter sky?”
Welcome kids to try out different approaches to transfer color from the frozen “pops” to the sheet. Some ideas:
Dip the “pops” in warm water
Sprinkle salt on the frozen “pops” and/or on the bed sheet.
Use your feet to crush frozen paint into the sheet sky.
Use sticks, rocks or any other objects around you to help add color to your sheet “sky.”
Any other, creative ways kids invent to get colors onto the sheet.
Step 5: Behold and celebrate your very own winter sky.
When you’re ready, shake off any extra frozen pop bits and hold up your sky. If there are enough adults, hold the sky over the kiddos.
Make it a point to behold the colors in the winter sky for days and years to come!
Why is this activity great for kids?
Taking time to slow down and notice the sky not only connects us to the natural world, it exposes the world's immense beauty and sparks joy. As kids take on the challenge of painting with colored ice, they’ll try out a range of approaches to solve a problem and practice thinking and acting flexibly—both super problem solving skills! Exploring melting and freezing also gives kids a tangible way to observe water in its solid and liquid states and to experience how temperature interacts with the states of matter. This kind of open-ended chance to transform ice and cloth into a sky also supports kids in using multiple senses, thinking creatively, collaborating, and persisting through challenges—all skills kids need to thrive!
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By creativity, we mean the ability to both imagine original ideas or solutions to problems and actually do what needs to be done to make them happen. So, to help kids develop creativity, we parents need to nurture kids' imaginations and give them lots of chances to design, test, redesign and implement their ideas.
"Creativity is as important now in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
Why, you ask? For one, it is through being creative that a person is able to get senses, sensibility and spirit working together. Simply put, without creativity, we don't think our kids will live a full life.
On a more practical level, it's also the means by which humans of all ages make an impact on the world and other people around them. A lot of heavy stuff is going to go down in our kids' lifetime, and their generation will need to imagine and implement solutions to big and very complicated problems. Although our kids are still far from public office or the boardroom, today's political and business leaders worldwide are already pointing to creativity as the most important leadership quality for the future.
Although years from the art studio or design lab, little kids can learn to think and act creatively if you give them time and the right practice.
Naturalist
Category:
Thinking Skills
What is a Naturalist?
The oldest and simplest definition, “student of plants and animals,” dates back to 1600. The term has evolved over time, it's importance changing as the values of dominant culture have changed. 400 years after that old definition, Howard Gardner, the paradigm-shifting education theorist, added “naturalist” to his list of “multiple intelligences.” Gardner challenged the notion that intelligence is a single entity that results from a single capability. Instead, he recognizes eight types of intelligence, all of which enable individuals to think, solve problems or to create things of value. To Gardner, the Naturalist intelligence enables human beings to recognize, categorize and draw upon certain features of the environment.
A true naturalist has not simply Googled and learned the names of plants, animals, rocks, etc. Rather, he or she has had direct experience with them, coming to know about them and using all senses to develop this intelligence. A naturalist also has a reverence for nature, valuing and caring for living things from the smallest mite to the tallest tree. A naturalist comes to not only knowing the creatures and features of his or her environment, but treasuring them in thought and action.
Why does it matter?
In the process of becoming a naturalist, children become stewards of nature, a connection that is associated with a range of benefits, including greater emotional well-being, physical health and sensory development (not to mention the benefits to nature itself!). In a world in which primary experience of nature is being replaced by the limited, directed stimulation of electronic media, kids senses are being dulled and many believe their depth of both their interest in and capacity to understand complicated phenomena are being eroded. To contrast, the naturalist learns about the key features of their natural environment by using all of his senses and be interpreting open-ended and ever-changing stimuli.
Problem Solving
Category:
Thinking Skills
What are Problem Solving Skills?
When we talk about problem solving, we mean the ability to solve a problem in which the solution is not obvious and in which the possible paths to solution are many. To solve such problems, kids will need two things. First, they’ll need the self confidence and comfort to both attempt to find and persist in finding a solution. The only way to develop this is to be given the chance to struggle with ambiguous situations or open-ended problems. We parents are all guilty, from time to time, of helping kids avoid struggle or swooping in to alleviate frustration when our kid encounters challenge. The goal is actually to do the opposite whenever possible. As long as the problem is not too difficult to understand or challenging to solve, even young kids can get comfortable with the feeling of not knowing the solution and fall in love with the joy of finding a solution to a problem.
Kids also need strategies to attack problems with which they are faced. If adults are able to work with kids to solve problems “as a team” but in such a way that the children feel and act “in charge” of the decisions, adults can actually teach foundation problem solving skills and strategies through modeling. For example, when you solve a problem together, kids get practice with key parts of the process like brainstorming, testing ideas, revision and solution. It’s also pretty easy to model how to use simple strategies like trial and error or breaking a problem down into smaller parts. Although children age 1 to 7 should not be expected to name, catalog or identify when to use a particular problem solving strategy, they are able to form habits and repeat approaches once those habits or approaches have become familiar. The more problems they solve, the better they know and can use these methods.
Why does it matter?
“The highest ranked skills for students entering the workforce were not facts and basic skills; they were applied skills that enable workers to use the knowledge and basic skills they have acquired” (Source: Are They Really Ready for Work? Conference Board 2006).
Although it seems a long way to go before our young children are hitting the job market, the ability to solve challenging, ambiguous problems has already been identified as a critical skill for success in the 21st Century. With advances in technology, finding information has never been easier. However, knowing how to interpret a problem and use available information to devise a solution still needs to be learned. And, we fear that the classrooms of today are neither designed nor incentivized to teach these skills effectively. In most schools, so much time is spent learning discrete skills, that applied skills like problem solving are wildly underemphasized. In a world that demands it, it is increasingly necessary that children learn and practice these skills outside of school.
Age: 0 to 8+
Time: 1 hour+
Materials: bed sheet, food coloring, sticks, ice cube tray or muffin tin
