Gather. Stir. Knead. Play!

Joey makes a tadpole to show part of a frog's life cycle.

Children loves to manipulate dough. They squish it through tubes or cut it into shapes. Perhaps they're chefs creating an exquisite feast or ceramicists crafting perfect coils for a new hand built pot or a naturalist recreating a leaf of animal to study. Whatever they pretend, it is always fun to have some sort of dough with which to play.

Any Internet search will reveal a plethora of play dough options. Here's one that I use; it's so good that I only need to make it once a year, if that often.

Save containers to store the dough.
Family gave Ezra Play-doh, whose
containers I saved for my own dough.

Ingredients:
1 envelop of flavored drink mix
1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
1/4 cup of salt
1 cup of boiling water
1 tablespoon of oil

Directions:
1. Gather the ingredients
2. Stir together the ingredients. Let cool until you can handle the dough.
2. Knead the dough until it's smooth.
3. Play! Make sure to store in a tightly sealed container so that you can enjoy it for a while!

Take a moment to share some of your child's favorite shapes to make with this dough. Or, perhaps your little one made a geological landform, a model of an ancient Roman house, or some other accompaniment to your lessons - if so, share the idea!

The allure of shadow

Shadows are fascinating! I still recall the first time Joey and then Ezra discovered the play of shadow and light on the floor - they were mesmerized. Children's books, such as "Bear Shadow" by Frank Asch and a segment from Ezra Jack Keats' "Whistle for Willie," display imaginative play with one's shadow at its best (although, I don't think I will give my little boys nails and a hammer for unguided play any time soon).

Recently, we explored the shadow in another way. Since we do not own a television, but are fortunate enough to own a projector, we used the latter technology to simulate the sun's rays in a dark room. Joey and Ezra grabbed object after object, put them in the blue light's way, and watched the resulting shadows as they danced across the wall. Some objects were transparent or translucent, like a water glass, and seemed to sparkle even on the screen. Other objects were opaque, blocking the light and casting black forms, like Joey and the trumpet. With each ebony-etched pattern, we oohed and aahed.

Although my boys are too young to understand certain concepts, like Shadow Blister Effect or Rayleigh scattering, as well as analyzing the proportionality of the cotangent of the sun's elevation angle and the length of a shadow, these are concepts they can learn one day. And, it will all begin with the childlike delight at flashing shadows across a screen.