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I do love trains so I was thrilled to receive an email from another AMS parent about this Athens secret (at least secret to me).

Lake Town & Shire Railroad (http://www.laketownandshire.net) is in the garden of a friendly couple on the eastside. Once a month, they open up their garden to eager kids and grown ups who want a chance to run the LotR themed trains through the garden. 

We went for the first time this weekend. We were a bit dazzled.

Although they prefer to train operators at age 6, the owners did offer the chance for the girls to run the train. I really appreciated Jane pointing out to Daisy that her trainer had been running trains since she was Daisy’s age and that now she’d teach Daisy how to. I liked the invitation for longevity with this (despite the girls being a bit on the wild side that day). 

This is Daisy explaining to me how the trains work, making a mistake, and then deciding she was wasting valuable time talking when she could be running the trains. 

Even Clementine got in on the action:

“Look! I made the train go through the tunnel!”

Being in the garden for an hour required a bit more self-control than Clementine had, so we went out front for some jumping. 

And then took a rest while waiting on her (assumed-to-be) imaginary friend, Cutter.

Meanwhile, back in the back…

It was time to reign in the boundless five year old energy and bid farewell to the trains, until next month. 

Next date: April 13 from 1:30 - 4:00

I am excited to announce another Math + Play Workshop this month. This one is a bit different from the past workshop. This is more focused on 3 - 5 year olds and it has an interactive component. 

First, I’ll work with the parents talking about how to make the play your child is already doing “math-ier”. (Expect more technical terms like that one.) I’ll discuss research-based ideas about math and play, so you can be confident that your kids are getting the groundwork they need to be great math learners without lifting up a single flash card. This part will last about 45 minutes. Your children can play with Arrow’s caregivers during this time.

Then we’ll have the application part. You can observe your kids at play with the materials we discussed. See what they’re already doing and think about how to arrange situations to take them to the next step. 

The last 15 minutes will be a Q&A session. 

If you attended the last workshop at Treehouse, this one will be a perfect complement to it. The concepts will be repeated, but new ones will be added in that are more targeted to the 2 - 5 year old range. 

Call Arrow to register. Let me know if you have any questions.
706|354|8383 ourarrow.com

Offered on Saturday, January 19th @ 10:00 - 11:30 a.m. @ Arrow
Intended for parents & their children (3-5 years of age)
Space is limited (we have a few spots left), so preregistration is required.
Cost: $15

I am so excited to be leading a workshop on Math + Play this week at Treehouse. Before I forget, here are the details.

                             December 12, 7:00 - 8:30
                        Treehouse Kid + Craft on Broad St.
                We’ll provide some wine with your workshop. 
                            $15 register via their website

The gist of the workshop is this: I have studied a lot about math strategies for elementary school students. A whole lot. I dream about it every night. (Official credentials are at the end of this post, just in case you want something more tangible than ‘dreams about math’ in an instructor.)  And every time I walk into Treehouse I’m struck by a new toy that really has the potential to enhance kids’ math learning. So, after two years of telling Kristen “You have such amazing math toys!”, we decided the time was right to share that little secret with others. 



Here’s the thing about this math/play workshop. It’s not necessarily going to look like math. It’s not going to be games you use to teach subtraction with regrouping or multiplication facts (okay, there may be one or two little hints about that). It’s more about developing the spatial skills that make all of the other mathematical thinking function smoothly.  

 

My research deals with these spatial skills and their connections to math achievement. It’s kind of amazing the impact spatial sense has -not just on geometry but on number sense and problem solving. So the idea is that if you teach spatial skills, you’re potentially impacting a broad range of mathematical stuff. So the question, of course, is - how do you teach spatial skills? Well, there are a few ways, but one of the best ways is through play. 

I believe strongly that kids learn through play. There’s research to back that up.  (I won’t cite it because I’m off the grad school clock right now, but trust that it’s there.) Playing soccer, roaming the neighborhood, playing in a sandbox, building Thomas the Train tracks, even video games…all of that play is homework. It is actually developing kids’ spatial (and therefore mathematical) sense.

Some toys and activities lend themselves more directly to developing spatial sense. I’m going to lead you to these toys. Some toys, like blocks, are great on their own, but if you know the situations to set up to make the experience even math-ier…well, they can be downright magical. I’m going to help point you in that direction.

At this workshop, we’re not going to look at the math curriculum for any particular grade level. Math facts may not make any appearance whatsoever. No flash cards, no worksheets, no work that is really a drill disguised as a game. We’re not trying to trick kids into learning math. Instead…



We’re going to look at how and what kids enjoy playing.  As adults, we’ll look at the math that underlies these games. Because if you, the savvy parent, know what to look for, then you know the kinds of opportunities for play to set up for kids. You know what the next step might be to make the play even more mathematical.  


Like I said, Treehouse has amazing toys that promote these skills, but we’re not limiting the talk to their stock. I’ll talk about toys you may already have at home, or ones you could easily create. The idea here is to get the most bang for your educational-toy-buying buck. To that end, Treehouse is offering participants a discount on the toys we discuss in the workshop. (You have to use the discount that night, and it is limited to the toys we cover.) That’s a pretty fine deal, isn’t it? 

I hope to see you there. I’m excited to have a captive an enthusiastic group to work with! 

As promised, my math street cred is as follows:
Certified to teach PreK - 8th grade math, gifted endorsed, former classroom teacher.  Current Ph.D student specializing in elementary math learning strategies. Current math consultant working with school districts to improve math instruction. Have been asked to write tasks for math standards on the state and national level. Talk about math in my sleep. 

If you’ve read even the tiniest bit of this blog, you know I love Treehouse. Let me tell you about something that made me fall in love even more.

Bonus love: How amazing is this picture? I grabbed it from their online store site, a visual and shopping delight designed by Hope Hilton.

When I first started thinking about The Candyland Project, I thought it would be great if we could purchase the games through Treehouse - help out local kids, support a local store. Win win.

I knew it would be a bit complicated since it’s not the type of thing Treehouse usually stocks. (Bonus love: Have you seen how many locally made items they sell there? Dolls, birdhouses, clothes…it’s amazing.) Kristen wasn’t put out, though, and she made dozens of calls to see if they could carry the game. She intended to offer us a big discount for the project so that our money could go further. She called the other day and said that she finally had a distributer that could get the game to her without her having to order 5000 of them. The catch: her price would be $8.50. You may have seen me post yesterday that Target had the games for $8.00. A friend posted today that WalMart has them for less than $5.00. 

Treehouse is our busiest drop off point for games. What can you say about a business that is so intent on serving the local good that they are willing to let their toy store be a drop off point for a game that was bought from a big box store, their very competition as the holiday season approaches? 


I don’t really know what to say. I’m touched, awed, inspired. And I heart Treehouse in a really really big way.

We are told to shop local so that the money stays local. This shows that more than the money stays in our community. The behind-the-scenes good will stays here too. 

If you’re buying a Candyland and are dropping it to Treehouse, please take a few minutes to browse the amazing store. Try them out first for your holiday shopping.  If you’re not local, they have an online store for you to peruse. They deserve to stick around. Athens deserves to have them stick around.  

Two weeks ago on Facebook, I alluded to a brilliant idea I had. It seemed brilliant to me because it was easy. None of my ideas are ever easy. This one is. So easy, in fact, that with less than two weeks between the lightbulb going off and now, we’re off and running. Here are the details.

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Did you know that playing board games, like Candyland and Chutes & Ladders, can help prepare preschoolers for math? As kids play, they begin to develop a mental number line. 

Research has shown that kids a majority of kids in Head Start have not seen these games. Well, that’s an easy fix, isn’t it? We are trying to raise funds to buy about 100 games, starting with Candyland this fall. This would put a game in every classroom in the Head Start and Early Head Start building AND send a brand new game home with every family who attends curriculum night. 

More than that, we’ll offer training to teachers and caregivers on how to maximize the math language as they play. In the spring, we hope to give away the same number of Chutes & Ladders, which has been shown to have a remarkable effect on improving preschoolers’ number sense.

It’s rare that you find an easy fix that doesn’t really have a downside. The worst case scenario here is that we give kids a brand new game. The best case scenario is that we make a remarkable difference in how prepared they are for kindergarten. How can we not play those odds?

Can you help? 

Please donate brand new games or funds to purchase games by November 24. They will be distributed at Head Start’s Curriculum Night on November 27th.

Drop Off Locations:
Model Citizen Salon on Prince Ave. 
Aderhold Hall
Until we add more locations, I’m always happy to pick games up from people. Just email me. karengerow@gmail.com.

If you’d rather donate from the comfort of your own home, we have a paypal widget for that. Games run about $10 - $15. Feel free to donate any amount that you can. Every little dollar helps.  

I used to have my standard mantel decorations that sat unchanged throughout the year. Then I began switching out all of it at Christmastime, then a couple of years later I started doing Halloween mantels…and then I began changing them every few months. It appeals to my love of decorating without doing a major overhaul (like the room switch I’m still recovering from). 

Here’s a picture of the mantle earlier this year. It was inspired by John Seawright’s studio. Thanks to a kickstarter project I got to see beautiful photos of how his studio looked at the time of his death. It was a beautiful museum, trinkets, treasures, snapshots tacked up every-which-a-way and everywhere there was a surface. I used to have rooms that looked a wee bit like this (but without layers of evidence of the decades of cool living). So the postcard inspired me to put back up everything I loved. It is loaded down with my vintage and handmade favorites. 

At the far left is the postcard of John Seawright’s studio that inspired the mantel.
A blue ceramic horse Daisy painted. I always want to display it next to a copy of The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse.
A bubble gum machine filled with felt balls. A very happy swap.
A colorful bird from OCAF’s pottery sale.
Up top is a space age pinball game, underneath which sits a wee elf from Treehouse.
I’ve collected vintage cameras for about 25 years now. I love the deco looking Brownie.

To the right of the camera is a postcard Dave’s Uncle Clay gave us one Christmas. It shows a place in Washington, NC (where Dave’s mom’s family hails from) that his grandfather on his father’s side played at. A very cool connection between two families. 

In front of that is a small orange pottery piece I got from the swap group that turned out to have been made by my friend Kristen. It’s filled with acorn caps and tiny bunnies. To the right of that is Dave’s grandfather’s football trophy. Behind that is a sweet birdhouse from Treehouse. 

Then there’s creepy baby. I LOVE creepy baby. She’s a hundred years old, is missing a leg and has springs coming out of her arms. She enchants me. Dave hates her. I tried to make her peppier by putting one of my chalkboard signs there so that she’s imploring you to smile, but apparently that just made her creepier. 

Inside a small R. Wood plate is a little shrine to Chesterfield, the pup not the cigarettes. There’s a silver cup engraved with his name, a gift from Dave’s family, a little crown I used to keep next to all of his pictures, and a tiny personal Chesterfield ashtray. He was named after the cigarettes, so sometimes the pup and the smoke get blurred in tributes. 

Oh, the red frame I love. It is as beat up at the bottom as it looks in the pictures, but it’s not nearly as wonky. That’s a side effect of the patched-together-photo. I liked how wonky the process made everything look. Inside the frame: another vintage camera, a lovely mermaid shadow puppet from Treehouse, Edison phonograph tubes, a little boxer salt shaker (Chester was clearly on my mind for this one), the largest pine cone I’ve ever seen,  and two tiny flash cards: Ask and Whistle. Outside of the frame is yet another camera, two delightful little cans of vegetables, and an iron toy I got from the swap group. 

When I switched this mantel out, I thought I’d go for a much cleaner look. I wanted to have all blue and clear glass - bottles, insulators, jars, etc.  - and nothing else. This is how my attempt at minimalist decorating turned out: 

(This is also where I discovered the app AutoStitch, so photogging the mantel takes two minutes instead of hours.)

 I managed to get some of the clear glass in, but I kept adding and adding to it. Clearly I like a more cluttered look. I think of this as my accidentally patriotic mantel - it was around the 4th of July that I put it together. It was only later I realized how much red white and blue there is. 

Not as much story with these. Insulators and bottles from sales and swaps. I love how wooden thread spools look all stacked up. The two absolutely fantastic masks are from Michael’s dollar bin. Some favorites in the middle - one gigantic lightbulb I got from the KP Surplus garage sale, some vintage payment envelopes, and an awesome pair of goggles. At the middle right we have two of my favorite things I’ve bought at a craft fair - both from Rachel Sleppy - the red, white, and blue ribbon and the milkglass with lovely handsewn mushrooms.

All of this came down this weekend to make room for our spooooooooky Halloween mantel. We still have some crafting to do before I can consider it finished. Here’s a link to last year’s if you need a taste of spooky decorating. 

As soon as I found out our first baby was going to be a girl, I was in a hurry to name her. I had a few different ideas about room color schemes in mind, but each was tied to a name. Gigi (Giselle Gerow) would have had an orange and pink room if Dave hadn’t choked when I suggested the name. Poppy Gerow, naturally, would have had red if Dave hadn’t seen way to many Seinfeld episodes, and yelled out,  “Poppy! You peed on the couch!” when I suggested the name. And Daisy Gerow (which, interestingly, was the first name I suggested) would have a light yellow room with white and orange and green. Her room was gorgeous and it just seemed to suit her. If you want to see what the first incarnation of Daisy’s room looked like, you can view it here. 

When Clementine sort-of shared a room (there were good intentions about sharing, anyway), the color scheme still worked. It was already citrusy, just like Clementine. I added elements to carve out a space for Clementine, too. However, sharing a room didn’t seem to be in the cards. We could never get Clementine to sleep in there because the idea of being that close to Daisy was just too exciting. We decided it was time for them each to have their own rooms. 

Daisy’s is now complete. She moved into our old bedroom and kept the green color that I loved so much. Daisy is a very colorful dynamic girl, so I wanted to make sure her room showed that off. Lots of color, lots of girly dress up opportunities. I think it reflects the almost 5 year old Daisy as much as the first one reflected the newborn Daisy. 

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This door knocker was a gift from Daisy’s great-grandmother Tay. It’s perfect for the grown up five year old who often wants to be alone.

A big change for the new room is that the newest member of the family shares the room with Daisy. Meet Gliddy the Guinea Pig. Daisy loves him despite this sad little face she’s making in the picture.

The new vanity is my favorite part of the room. I got it at a consignment sale. I saw it when I dropped off my clothes to sell and spent the whole night thinking about it, hoping it would be there when I got to the sale. 

Look at the little beaded knobs!

My granny.

Some of the art I made for Daisy before she was born made it into the new room. These hang over Gliddy’s cage.

Close up on the first one because I love this Shel Silverstein poem so much.

The purple coat rack holds half of the dress up dresses. The rest take up a full dresser drawer. The photograph above is by the inimitable Holly Brown.

I’m happy that there’s a good bit of local art in Daisy’s room. In addition to the photo by Holly, there’s this flower by Hope Hilton on one window and the two pieces by Lou Kregel on the other.

My other favorite part of the room is the bed. I got the bed, which I spray painted turquoise, from the fabulous Chrissi Oscar. Daisy made the fabric wings above the bed at Treehouse’s fashion camp two years ago. Another piece of Lou Kregel’s art hangs above the wings. Fabric in an embroidery hoop is a carryover from Daisy’s old room.

Above all of that is Daisy’s name, something I ordered from etsy before she was born. The beautiful photo of three year old Daisy is by EarlyGirl Photography.

I found this great organic bedding at Goodwill. I love how it looks with the turquoise bed.

This long shelf used to be in my classroom. The baskets store the 8000 My Little Ponies, random horses, fairies, blocks, puzzles, etc. etc.

The dresser was from my room. Maybe one day I’ll add the handles back on. 

Another piece I made before Daisy was born. This one is a family tree in need of updating (but I still love it).

She’s a happy girl.

If you’ve read anything on this blog, you know of my love for Treehouse. Now there’s a giveaway…$50 gift certificate from Cakies. Enter here. 
http://mycakies.com/2012/08/sponsor-welcome-68/

PS

Doesn’t all of Hope’s web design look just lovely?