Topic Time!

This was the first year we looked at different topics and it became clear very early on that both girls, despite their young age, were very curious about science and vehicles. 

We had such a fun year on these topics and they learnt so much, setting foundations for revisiting these topics in the future years.

Sophia saw a rainbow out of the window one day and was fascinated that from her perspective magic had happened in the sky and there was a sudden display of bright colours she had never seen before and that were not usually there. 

They had learnt their colours last year, so it naturally followed for them to learn the specific rainbow spectrum, and there were some lovely educational videos on the Mother Goose Club channel. 

Sophia’s pieces of art were to become very colourful as a result and she spent hours on her new bright art style. 

I got the craft drawer out one day and asked them if they would like to create a rainbow to stick up on the wall. Tissue paper and pom poms were eagerly volunteered, and they busied themselves selecting the colours whilst I made the main frame, and then they stuck the pom poms on the relevant colour.

I thought it would be fun if we created some food art to reinforce the colours of the rainbow, make dinner time fun. I prepped the ingredients and the girls came into the kitchen to help plate their dinner for the first time. The sun was the egg yolks, the whites were the clouds, the potatoes and chicken with broccoli was the land, stones and trees. 

I had to be very creative making this dish as I wanted to them to eat the majority of it as it was their dinner. The rainbow layers consisted of red tomato ketchup, orange carrots, yellow was cheese, peas were the green. 

I made mashed potato and they mixed in the blue food colouring which they absolutely loved doing but then refused to eat when it came to dinner time. Indigo was red cabbage and violet was ham. Artistic licence certainly had to be allowed here due to their dietary restraints. Overall it was a massive success and was to lead to future work related food art.

Kira was of an age where she was learning her nursery rhymes, Sophia had already learnt them and was very resistant with Kira learning them. I needed to find a way to make them fun for her too so I followed Sophia’s interest in science and incorporated it into the sessions. 

While Kira was watching Mother Goose Club and Bounce Patrol, spinning and rocking to the music, learning the songs, I was working alongside Sophia with little projects and experiments introducing some scientific ideas. She absolutely loved it and threw herself into the activities, Kira joined in too but I did not expect her to retain the knowledge beyond the rhymes at their basic level.

With the rhyme Incey Wincy, we studied spiders and webs, and evaporation. I set up an experiment with a saucer of water on the hot radiator and Sophia checked on it regularly noting how the water was evaporating. We had a good chat about it and she drew a picture of the cycle within the rhyme. She was to later remember the conversation when we revisited the topic in later years.

Next came Baa Baa Black sheep, and we discussed how the farmer has to shear the sheep once a year for their health and to provide us with wool for clothes. We made sheep with cotton circles as an art project, watched sheep being sheared on YouTube, and I stuffed a container with holes with cotton wool so the girls could shear their own sheep. 

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was a perfect segway into discussing the lights in the sky and both girls loved this topic so much learning about stars, the sun and moon I expanded it to watching videos on the constellations, Sophia loved the Big Dipper particularly, which she was to later draw perfectly in a random picture one day. 

We found a fun planet song which the girls wanted to sing all the time and they quickly learnt the order of the planets a little detail about each of them.

I brought a space colouring and activity book and a large book of spaced themed stickers for projects and they happily set to work. We used art food again to make dinner and dessert fruit rockets which they helped plate up and demolished just as quickly. They enjoyed looking at news feed of rockets launching into space and we looked at it from a transportation perspective. 

I constructed a toddler sized rocket out of a cardboard box, and covered in black paper. They were so excited seeing it in the next morning and busily went to town decorating the outside with their space themed stickers. 

Their level of interest was inspiring and kept me reaching higher for them, they’d ask about every sticker, wanting to know all about them. They spent hours sat inside the rocket decorating it and their doodles showed awesome personal artistic development. They would sit in there for their space lessons and it was a part of the living room for quite a few months. 

Kira would sit in there to process and she would rock away in her rocket in her own little world. Sophia would save her periodically when the rocket would tip over from some over enthusiastic rocking. 

This year showed me that despite Sophia being four and Kira two, turning three, they were ready for little school projects and they were old enough to retain knowledge. 

Hearing Kira sing about the planets in her baby lisp was amazing and spell binding. I totally fell in love with teaching this year and a passionate fire was lit which has carried through the following couple of years. 

I hope this blog will inspire readers to explore topics in the early years. By following their interests and making it fun with a variety of resources, they are capable of amazing feats, and it is a beautiful bonding experience, which trains them for more formal lessons in the future. 

It also provides some ideas on how to teach the same subject to children of different ages,  balancing between their different stages, keeping them all amused and learning to a level they're happy with. 

If I had ignored Sophia's jealous feelings towards Kira growing up and being ready for rhyme time, it would have led to anger and resentment from Sophia. The last thing I wanted to do was to push Sophia away and focus my attention on Kira. Sophia had to learn to share the TV with her sister, so I amused her with activities when Kira was having ryhme time, but I connected the topics so they were still bonding. They are so close in age, I never wanted to cause a learning barrier between them, my goal was for them to grow up in the same class essentially, just teaching them to different levels when necessary, still accounting for the age difference. 

It was a very successful strategy, and has served us well over the years, when we had Xander in the teaching mix as well.