Celebrating the Fourth of July

Celebrating the Fourth of July

 

I think Fourth of July is becoming one of my favorite holidays.  There aren’t any huge preparations that need to be done – no gift shopping, gift wrapping, basket making, etc.  Every year, we host brunch with our immediate family and then head over to our town’s parade.  The boys love running around in the street and watching the marching bands, dancers, old fashioned cars, and fire trucks pass by.  We come home, put the boys in for a nap, then usually go to a BBQ.  Simple.  Fun.

 

Thinking about the upcoming holiday has me talking to the boys about WHERE we live, because it is of course a celebration of our country.  From teaching them that we live in the United States of America lead us to working on learning our ADDRESS and some other BASIC PERSONAL INFORMATION.  I always tell the boys the name of our street when we turn down our block and I will periodically ask or tell them what town we live in, but lately, I’ve been putting it all together into teaching them our complete address.  Almost every night when I lay with them in their room before bed, I ask them their address and we talk about where we live.  We also have added in when their BIRTHDAYS are.

When I was working in a school, one of my biggest pet peeves was when students didn’t know their address and/or birthday.  I had 4^th and 5^th graders that couldn’t tell me what street they lived and had no idea when their birthday was.  Now since I was working with these children, they of course all had some sort of speech and language issues, so in some cases this lack of knowledge was because of their disability, but in many cases it was just a lack of someone talking to them about it.  ADDRESSES and BIRTHDAYS are something that needs to be directly taught and it’s not something children learn in school – it’s taught at home.  I write in this blog mostly about how to teach your children through experiences as opposed to drilling information but in this case, just tell them their address and birthday – again and again and again.  Bringing it up at a time when you’re about to celebrate the U.S.A. or before someone else’s birthday of when driving down your street, certainly make the information more relevant, so take advantage of those opportunities. 

 

 

In addition to talking about where we live, I am also hoping to do some painting this week.  I love painting fireworks because it’s so simple and no matter what or how you paint, it can totally look like a firework.  You can use your hands, paintbrushes, sponges, star shaped cookie cutters, etc. Last year, we painted with q-tips. 

 

 

This year, I think we’ll try one of these great Fourth of July painting craft ideas:

Handprint American Flag

Spectacular Fireworks using a toilet paper roll

Exploding Fireworks using a sponge

Firework Painting using pipe cleaners

During our craft, we’ll be focusing on the colors, RED, WHITE and BLUE as well as the concepts BIG and LITTLE (as in, “here you painted a BIG firework, but this firework is LITTLE).  Expanding on the words BIG and LITTLE will add in HUGE, TINY, and my little Anthony’s favorite word right now, ENORMOUS.  DESCRIBE your artwork and make it come to life by PRETENDING to be fireworks when you’re done.   Encourage your little one to use their SENSES to talk about fireworks – what do they LOOK like, SOUND like, SMELL like, how would they FEEL (hot).   

Let me know if you find any Fourth of July crafts that your little one loves!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Love & Language,

Marisa