Happy Birthday Alexander Graham Bell

Today we discussed the telephone and different ways of communicating. We pulled out our toy rotary phone and found all the numbers. It was good recognition for Princess V and a nice brush up on counting for Princess C.

After some free play with the telephone we had music time. I really enjoyed this today. I always enjoy music time, but I felt I really got to teach the little Princess' today. We pulled out our bongos, boomwhackers and ukulele. I started by telling the girls how sound on a phone is sent by vibration. So we had a quick definition of vibration, and then we felt it. As we put our hand on a bongo head, we would then talk. You can feel the vibration in your hand. It's slight and not much, but it's there. Next we enjoyed whacking the boomwhackers to create our own vibrations. For this we also put our hand over one end and talked through the boom stick. You can also do this with a pvc pipe, toilet paper roll, or any other cylinder object with openings on both ends. We finished up with the ukulele. I showed the girls how as you pluck the strings they vibrate. It's the strings vibrating that create the "music". Just like our voices vibrating through the phone.

Here's Princess V thoroughly enjoying her ukulele and the vibrating.

For arts and crafts today the Princess' made their own telephone. Princess V got to practice her scissor cutting skills. She is getting much better at it, but sometimes holds them upside down. I pulled out an old phone book, and let her cut up the pages. We then glued the pieces of the phone book onto plastic cups. Add some string through the bottom and you have your own home telephone. At first they didn't see how it was a telephone, but once I showed them how to use it, they had a blast. Although Princess C thought it was more fun as a fishing rope off the side of her bed. Creative.

The last part of our lesson today was on sign language. It's something I tried getting into with Princess V when she was younger, but once she learned to talk, we stopped using. Sadly I never really gave it a try with Princess C. So today, Princess V and I went over some of the signs we knew - Please, thank you, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, sit, and table. I talked with her how some people can't hear, and other can't talk. The only way they can communicate is through sin language. She seemed curious about that. For anyone interested in more signing with your toddlers, I've really enjoyed the dvd's "Signing Time". Very fun and interactive for the wee ones.