A New Participant of WONDER

Happy Monday, everyone! We have another Summer Stunner guest blogger for you today! Joining us is a new-to-SLOCA family starting in the fall. Please welcome the Ainsworth family! Chris (dad), Amanda (mom), Scarlett (5 yrs), and Iris (2 yrs). Let’s find out how they’re diving in the world of wonder this summer…

With two young kids (two and five years old) out of school for the summer, we spend a lot of our time at parks, in the pool and visiting friends. We also incorporate regular arts and crafts sessions, routine chores around the house, and lots of reading. My oldest daughter, Scarlett, will be starting Kindergarten at SLOCA in the fall and we are looking forward to getting involved in the community. 

As we prepare for our maiden voyage into SLOCA, we have started discussing the concept of WONDER. In preparation for this blog post, I started asking Scarlett what she wonders about. The typical response is either slight confusion or something off-the-wall silly but occasionally we get a nugget of honest curiosity. We feel like we are just starting to train a new muscle group by approaching the world around us with wonder. 

We would like to share some ways we have incorporated wonder into our weekly routine. A reminder that these endeavors are aimed at a five-year-old starting Kindergarten so you may need to adapt some of the principles to be age-appropriate if the ideas resonate with you.

• Discovering New Words: Throughout various conversations, reading books or listening to songs, we can usually find a new word that our student may not fully understand. We ask her what she thinks the word may mean, accompanied by example of the word in a sentence. This is often when we hear the aforementioned silly responses. After she shares her thoughts with us, we provide synonyms and a simple definition or example of a time she may have witnessed the application of the word. 

Example: “wonder”. 

Definition: When you are curious or you learn about something you don’t know. 

Scarlett: “I wonder about eyes.”

Me: “What about eyes?”

Scarlett: “What’s inside your eyes?”

Me: “Uhhhhh….”

• Identifying Letters: We drive around town a lot. To the park, grocery store, swimming pool, etc. Our roads are filled with letters on street signs and billboards. When our kids see a letter, we ask them to call it out and then choose a word that starts with that same letter. It’s a simple way to keep them curious about words and reading. You could easily make this more complex for older children by having them rattle off as many words with the same letter they can think of in a set amount of time or ask them to create a sentence only using words with that letter.
• Child-led Learning: If you have toddlers or preschoolers, you know the phrase, “I want to do it by myself!” very well. Well, give the (young) people what they want! Let them pick what the family does for an outing. You can provide the parameters or keep it wide open but let your child take the reigns. This allows them to develop comfort making decisions, thinking of the impact on others and, for the sake of this topic, take WONDER to new heights.
• Playing Board Games: We are huge fans of board games. They are fun, thought-provoking and most importantly, they bring us together for a face-to-face interaction that is becoming a rare phenomenon. They help us learn how to be good teammates, process winning and losing, develop our patience and even reduce our anxiety. Yes, these all true for adults too!  For more information regarding the potential benefits of children playing board games, check out this article from Scholastic.

Enjoy the rest of the summer and keep that WONDER flowing!

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