Tutoring with Amy

Everyone loves bubbles!! My new bubble machine has been a HUGE hit with the little ones 😍 POP! POP! POP!

Today we had the perfect weather for some swimming! This little guy absolutely LOVES the water. 🐠 He was laughing from the beginning until the end! 💦

Are your little ones simply not interested in painting? Try something new! Break out the car collection and dip the tires in some paint and then… “vroom vroom vroom” all across the paper (and table!) and let your little one create their own art!

Happy New Year everyone! 🥳

Today is the day! I am officially OPEN! 🤩🥳

Please feel free to contact me to arrange a visit or to organize some tutoring for your under-12s. 🥰

2022 is going to be a good year! 🤩❤️

For toddlers, curiosity is the name of the game—and it keeps them moving all day, every day. Weary grownups, take note: This boundless energy and spirit of exploration is a good thing!

“With every new texture, sensation, and item they discover, toddlers are building an understanding of the world around them,” says Meg Davis from KinderCare’s Education team. “That’s great for their development because it actually helps them form neural connections in their brains, which enables them to learn even more.”

Playing with a variety of building and creative products helps children build self-confidence and encourages their independent learning too. By allowing children freedom in construction play it also makes them think independently and make decisions based on what they are learning.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have become a major focus in education due to expected job growth in STEM-related careers. One of the biggest advantages of using magnet play as part of STEM instruction is that children of all ages enjoy experimenting with magnets. This, combined with the numerous hands-on activities that magnet play provides, makes it a great comprehensive learning opportunity for both preschool and elementary classrooms.

Science: Magnet play is a great way to teach children about how magnets work. Life and environmental science can also be incorporated into magnet play activities thanks to a variety of magnetic materials that allow children to design insects and flowers.

Technology: You can help children learn about technology as they play with magnets by discussing which technological devices use magnets in order to work and how some technology items can be damaged by magnets.

Engineering: A number of magnetic building items, such as blocks or Magna-Tiles®, are available to help children learn about engineering as they design and build a variety of creative structures.

Mathematics: Children add and subtract magnets from a surface as they play, which helps them learn concepts such as more and less, on and off, and size and shape.

Bubble Foam is an amazing, messy, sensory experience that uses all five senses of touch, sight, smell, sound and even taste (though tasting is not encouraged!). It is a textural wonderland that changes and reforms in your hands. Adding colour enables swirls and patterns to form and burying and hiding toys in the foam adds to the sense of discovery and play. Shaving cream encourages children to manipulate and mould materials, building their fine motor skills and coordination.

This activity creates curiosity in children and enables them to reflect on what they are doing, developing a love of learning and encouraging them to take the initiative.

What an awesome idea 🤩

Children love playing with sand, and it’s easy to see why. You can do so many things with it – move it around, build with it, draw in it – and it’s also very soothing to the touch. There are several benefits to playing with sand:

1. It improves fine motor skills.
2. It provides opportunities for exploration and experimentation.
3. It’s a sensory, immersive, calming experience.
4. It provides an outlet for creativity and imaginative play.
5. It’s a good way of getting children to play outside.

In this activity we used a black sheet of paper, some glue to make the number 2 and then cups of sand to pour onto the paper. This was a huge hit! 🤩

I don’t tend to use books with my under fives, unless they ask to do some writing. We learn numbers through writing in the sand, and letters through painting or building. We use the natural resources around us to learn the things books can’t teach us.

On this day - however - all three boys were WAY excited about using the pen and writing in the books, so I followed their lead, we practiced sharing & taking turns and they were all elated at their fantastic writing skills. Moments like these make me ! 🥰

🤸🏻‍♀️• Balance in childhood is an important skill for several reasons.

Kids rely on balance when they take part in different sports and games. They also need balance to carry out a wide variety of independent daily activities like getting dressed, eating, and going to the toilet.

The skill of balance is used when we control and maintain our body positions when sitting or standing still (static) or while moving (dynamic).

Many developmental aspects are involved in balance, such as body awareness, attention, physical strength, gross motor, and sensory processing.

🧼 • Blowing bubbles is a calming activity for children.

In this experiment stolen from TheDadLab, we took empty water bottles and cut the ends off. Then we placed an old sock over the end, dipped it in soapy water and BAM! We had bubbles all morning.

1. Visual Sensory System Bubble Play

Make observations together. Ask your child questions such as “do you see the rainbow inside?”, “what colours do you see?”, “which one is the biggest?”, “how many bubbles can you count?”

2. Vestibular Sensory System Bubble Play

The vestibular system can be engaged through bubble play by running after the bubbles, making giant bubbles with large movements such as large circles and figure 8s.

3. Oral Sensory System Bubble Play

Make art and stimulate the oral sensory system at the same time by doing bubble painting.
Develop those oral muscles by blowing bubbles using different tools. Experiment with seeing how the impact of blowing softer or harder has on the size of the bubbles.

4. Tactile Sensory System Bubble Play

Put the bubble mixture in a large tub and have kids explore with their hands, sponges, kitchen utensils, and scoops.
Catching bubbles is a good tactile sensory play activity.

🔍 • SCIENCE TIME 💥

Milk is mostly water, but it also contains vitamins, minerals, proteins, and tiny droplets of fat suspended in solution. Fats and proteins are sensitive to changes in the surrounding solution (the milk). The secret of the bursting colors is the chemistry of that tiny drop of soap. Dish soap, because of its bipolar characteristics (nonpolar on one end and polar on the other), weakens the chemical bonds that hold the proteins and fats in solution. The soap's polar, or hydrophilic (water-loving), end dissolves in water, and its hydrophobic (water-fearing) end attaches to a fat globule in the milk. This is when the fun begins.

The molecules of fat bend, roll, twist, and contort in all directions as the soap molecules race around to join up with the fat molecules. During all of this fat molecule gymnastics, the food coloring molecules are bumped and shoved everywhere, providing an easy way to observe all the invisible activity. As the soap becomes evenly mixed with the milk, the action slows down and eventually stops.

Thanks to TheDadLab for sharing this fun activity!

Messy play is basically exactly what it sounds like – allowing your children to make a controlled mess so they can use their senses in a logical and educational way. And while the idea of making a huge mess often puts parents off, the benefits of messy play are huge and totally worth the minimal inconvenience.

It uses the hands and fingers, which promotes fine motor skill development. It encourages finger dexterity, hand and shoulder strength – skills all necessary for handwriting in the future. Messy play also helps with body balance and spatial awareness, enhancing gross motor skills.

Messy play fosters creativity and imagination, encourages language and communication skills, practices concentration, and promotes physical development.

There is no end goal with messy play. The point of it is to let children explore the materials in front of them in whichever way they wish. They can touch, smell, taste (if appropriate), listen and see each item in whichever way pleases them the most. Allowing them to interact with their surroundings fosters their creativity and brings them joy. It can stimulate their curiosity and allow them to ask questions and look for their own answers as they make discoveries about each new object.

Construction play helps children to cooperate with each other in order to complete tasks. This could be something as simple as passing each other bricks or passing buckets to each other. By doing this children will strengthen their social skills and become better team players.

Construction Play is proven to make a difference to the way children think and complete tasks. It's a form of play all schools and nurseries adopt to aid child growth and development.

It can be crazily vast. Simple things such as counting bricks, measuring weight and moving objects all contribute to making a child think outside the box. Children all have different ways of learning and thinking (at different stages too). Using construction play helps make education fun and engaging!

When you add edible construction pieces to the mix, it becomes even more exciting!

Painting with cars is a great way to integrate process art into the session and engage even the most reluctant students into enjoying a creativie experience.

Process art is an amazing resource for supporting the development of self-control and self-regulation. It is extremely beneficial for building confidence and fostering creativity. It allows students to make art that is truly theirs, from the initial idea through to the finished product.

Sometimes, the art doesn’t happen on the paper, and that is fine. Some students may enjoy just driving the cars around the paint tray, mixing the colors and seeing how they interact. If they want, a print can be made by pressing a piece of paper gently over the tray when they are finished “driving.”

In both situations, students are experiencing art on their own terms, and loving the process.

Young children’s brains are hardwired for exploration and observation—two things that just so happen to be early science skills.

“At this age, children’s critical-thinking skills and fine-motor skills have developed to the point where they can start using simple tools,” says Meg Davis from KinderCare’s Education team.

Magnifying glasses help kids see things they’ve never seen before, like small insects close-up. It opens up a whole new world to them, which they find pretty amazing!

“Using magnifying glasses to look at the veins on a leaf or an ant’s three body parts gives children new things to think about and wonder about,” explains Davis.

☀️ • “Yellow is the perceived color of sunshine. It is associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy.” – Marcia Moses

Play-dough appeals to various learning styles as children can experience this tactile material through the senses.

How does playdough help a child’s development?

1. FINE MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
Moulding playdough is excellent for developing a child’s fine motor skills. Children need to develop their finger muscles and have proper finger control before they can learn to write at school.

2. VOCABULARY
One of the ways play-dough helps children’s development is that while they work on their creations they form new ideas and concepts. They will learn new words such as roll, squeeze and flatten, as well as words describing what they are making.

3. CREATIVITY
When a child works with playdough, they basically have a blank canvas waiting to be moulded into something unique.
This activity works on creativity as a child has to mould from an image they hold mentally. Even if they try to reproduce something they have already seen, theirs will always look different.

4. CONCENTRATION
One of the best skills that playdough develops is attention span.
Playdough is a quiet activity that requires a child to sit still for periods of time. This is great for lengthening a child’s concentration span over time.

5. SCIENCE CONCEPTS
Playdough promotes cognitive development in many ways, such as learning early science concepts.
An example of a scientific concept is discovering materials and how they change.

Fiction helps children learn to deal with hard and unpleasant things emotionally. It softens the blow, since the hard things happen to someone else, but the story gives them a schema for those feelings that they might meet again later in real life. Because their emotions are involved, it gives them a chance to practice, as it were.

Practicing through fiction is something children do naturally. You see it all the time in their play. They pretend as they play in order to try to figure out certain aspects of life, to learn a bit more about it in a safe setting.

It’s important to use ALL of our senses when learning. We were learning about the color red & had some yummy red strawberries to help! 🍓 🍓 🍓

Setting up for & enjoying learning about the color BLUE! 💙 we turned our whole learning space blue and had loads of fun with our messy play, painting, water fun & balloons!

I remember this day so clearly. A young lady I was tutoring was tasked with building a volcano for school and she had no idea where to begin. We discussed different options and she decided she wanted to try and make it out of lego. Following her lead, we started building. Once it was complete, she wasn’t satisfied. It didn’t feel “real”. So, we brainstormed for a little bit more and came up with the idea of using natural resources - she wanted to bring it to life. I’m sure you all agree it was a fantastic decision & nature really did pull through. If there’s ever a natural way (which there always is!) I choose that!

“Nature knowledge is most important for young children. It would be well if we all persons in authority, parents and all who act for parents, could make up our minds that there is no sort of knowledge to be got in these early years so valuable to children as that which they get for themselves of the world they live in. Let them once get touch with nature, and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight through life. We were all meant to be naturalists, each in his degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.”

Charlotte Mason was a very wise teacher.  I’ve been pondering her thoughts about nature study lately and have to say…she was right!  My son is living proof – as are so many children of families who make nature study a priority.

“Children should be encouraged to watch, patiently and quietly, until they learn something of the habits and history of bee, ant, wasp, spider, hairy caterpillar, dragon-fly, and whatever of larger growth comes in their way.”

Your children will find it much easier to learn science in formal lessons with books if they have already made a personal connection with the plant or animal or weather or whatever they are studying. If they have the background of nature study, the book studies put them in a position of simply discovering more about something that is already an acquaintance.

Today is the day! Get your EXTRA 20% off all sessions that are booked and paid for today. Let’s start 2022 off with some interactive and engaging learning to help your little ones succeed! 🤩

Updated Rates!

I’m here to help make learning fun! Whatever your needs, I’m happy to help. I can’t wait to start learning with you! 🤩

Hi everyone! I have updated my rates. Please contact me if you have any questions or queries! 🤩

Bookings are starting to come in, don’t miss out on the available slots!

Tutoring with Amy Hi everyone! My name is Amy and I am a certified private tutor based in Lusaka, Zambia. If you are between the ages of 0 and 12 I would love to work with you to help improve your skills. Together, we can make learning fun!

One week to go until Black Friday! Any sessions that are pre-booked for 2022 on the 26th of November will be eligible for a 20% discount.