Many children are heading back to school this week (if not already back already).  It is a time of transition and change, of new faces and old.  It is a time of adjustment and a time of schedules.  And that’s just the teachers!

Whether your child is starting preschool or nursery school for the first time or is a seasoned pro at the education system, take a small moment to recognize your child’s teacher.  Creating a simple gift is a great way to introduce yourself and bring a smile to your child’s teacher’s face!  Here are a couple of quick and easy ideas to get the creative juices flowing:

1.  The traditional teacher-gift - an apple!  Apples are nutritious, easy to transport and even boys don’t mind sharing one with their teacher (my son absolutely cringes when I suggest a small bouquet of flowers from our garden, but an apple is “cool”).  Tie a note to the stem to finish it off.  I found a lovely poem online for a teacher-apple:

You plant the seeds of wisdom with patience and concern,
And your efforts all bear fruit as your students grow and learn.
You offer them good food for thought, you care right to the core.
There’s just no better teacher than the one this apple’s for!

2.  Another cute idea is to give your child’s teacher a small bag of Hershey Hugs chocolate candies.  Again, I found a cute poem online to accompany these yummy snacks:

You are a wonderful teacher - I think you’re very neat!
That’s why I put together this special little treat!
A little bag with Teacher Hugs to get you through your day,
And let you know that I am glad that you are here to stay!

3.  Other simple ideas:  give a cute pencil with a small note:  “You’ve got the ‘write’ stuff!”; tie a note to a ruler: “You really measure up!”; or a can of his/her favorite soda with “We’re bubbling over with excitement to have you for a teacher this year!”

Concentration, or Memory, is a simple game for children that is wonderful for increasing memory skills and learning to pay attention to details.  While commercially-created games are available in a wide variety of themes and ability levels, you can also create your own to fit your child’s interests and learning level.

Use an even number of index cards, such as twenty, to create pairs of objects.  These can be simple shapes, pictures, letters, or words.  Shuffle the cards, the place them face-down on a table.  Each person takes a turn to flip over two cards of his or her choice.  If the cards match, the player gets to keep the pair and go again.  If the cards do not match, then the player turns the cards face down again and the next person gets a turn.

For older children, try making a set of cards with upper/lower case pairs, synonyms, antonyms, or rhyming words!

Even our little kids will get a kick out of this great idea for using fun food to create some excitement about geometry!  It is a great way to explore shapes, and even older kids can benefit tremendously from this hands-on activity with shapes.

You will need toothpicks and a soft (and yummy) food, such as gumdrops, fruit snacks, grapes or marshmallows.  Use the toothpicks to place the piece of food on each end, then stick another toothpick in to form shapes, such as triangles, squares, and three-dimensional objects.  The food pieces are your “endcaps”.  This is similar to Tinker Toys and K’Nex.  See what interesting and new structures your little architect can create!

Here’s a fun activity to try with your child that promotes critical thinking and school readiness.  This idea can be adapted for any age from preschool through grade school and beyond.  Best of all, no supplies are needed!

Have your child turn his or her back to you.  Using your finger draw a letter on your child’s back and see if he or she can identify the letter.  After he or she guesses the letter, see if they can come up with a word that begins with that letter!

If this is too difficult for your child, try it out first on the palm of his or her hand.  That way, your child can see the letter being written.  With younger children who might not know their letters yet, try simple shapes, like circles, triangles and squares.  Older children will enjoy the challenge of entire words or a more complex picture, such as a tree, a plane or a house.

Have your child do the same to your back as well.  It is great practice for writing, spelling and simple fine motor skills and dexterity!

I recently came across an activity that is quite simple, but for my boys and me, provided oodles of fun and playing time.  While this is really geared toward older children, it can be just as fun with younger ones as well.

Each person needs paper and a pencil (or crayon, but my boys found pencils easier to manage).  The key is to draw a picture without looking at it.  This process forces your brain to think perspectively and to be intentional with each mark.  Start with something simple, such as a tree or a house.  Either blindfold the person doing the drawing, ask him or her to look away, or sit in a darkened room.  Use your non-drawing hand to orient your pencil with the paper, feeling for the edges.  Then, draw!

With practice, my boys got better and better.  Once they were able to “see” the picture in their mind while they drew, they found that it was easier to produce the desired drawing.  We moved on to more complicated ideas, such as landscapes, people, animals and even a space scene.

Another idea is to place the paper on your head (with a book underneath to give a solid writing surface) and draw a picture on top of your head.  When I was younger, this was a great activity that my friends and I would try at Girl Scouts, in the lunchroom, and in any free time we had.  Our favorite was to attempt to draw a pig, but we did venture into other simple objects such as cars and flowers.  This activity is more difficult than the other; not only are you having to draw without seeing what you are doing, you are having to do it in a different angle and perspective.

Challenge your kids (and yourself) to attempt some different art together today.

We’ve survived (and thrived) through 10 weeks of summer.  One of the few things that got me through this season was finding a small activity or purpose for each day.  I hope you found a few gems yourself and will continue to search for new ideas to share with the kids in your life, even when summer is over.  Here are a few ideas this week as we say goodbye to lazy days and look forward to school in a couple of weeks…

MONDAY:  Adopt a pet!  No, I’m not clinically insane, although a trip to the animal shelter would be a great activity (they can always use donations of pet supplies and appreciate a helping hand to visit with the animals!).  We’re adopting the ultimate pet today - a Pet Rock.  I’m going to let the boys paint their rock, then we are making “beds” out of shoe boxes and fabric remnants.  I’m sure we’ll have to create a birth certificate online for our newfound friend (thanks to Webkinz and Build-a-Bear).  Regardless, it will be a great time for all of us, and the best part is that it is FREE.

TUESDAY:  Fly a plane!  No, not a REAL plane…good gracious, who can afford the gas for that?  Make some paper airplanes and fly away.  Have contests for the plane that goes the farthest, the best decorated plane and the craziest flying plane.  Need ideas or tips on folding?  Check out this paper airplane website for some great ideas and patterns!

WEDNESDAY:  Make sure you finish any reading programs you started for the summer.  Now is the time to look for those missing books and movies, too.  While we’re looking, let’s clean out the summer-mobile.  Break out the suds and sponges for a good, old-fashioned car wash, then be sure to clean out the inside as well.   You’ll be glad you did when all those backpacks hit the floorboards in the next several weeks!

THURSDAY:  This can be as involved or low-key as you want it to be; today we’re creating a TIME CAPSULE!  I’m letting my boys decorate old shoe boxes for this; empty cereal boxes or even empty paper towel rolls will work as well, depending on the items your child wants to include.  This is an easy way for me to clean up all that summer “art” we have hanging on the fridge (and taped to the back of the closet door and hanging off of the bed frames…) as well as saving a few things the boys have loved this summer without having to actually make room for them.  I’m covering their boxes with old Christmas wrapping paper that I’ve turned to the wrong side.  Then, they are decorating them with markers and foam pieces.  Once the boxes are decorated, their summer “treasures” will go inside.  We are “burying” our time capsule on the top shelf of their closet (a sure place to store something in our house that you won’t need for a long time!).  Then, come next summer, we’ll open it up and remember all the fun we had!

FRIDAY:  END OF SUMMER PARTY!  This is really an anything-goes kind of celebration.  Want to have a pajama party?  Go for it!  Want to make your own pizzas to send summer on its way?  That’s a great idea!  My older son is having a sleepover tonight, so we will be making pizza, brownies and watching movies until late with the hopes of sleeping in tomorrow morning.  For my younger son, we’re spending the afternoon in the sprinkler, taking advantage of the heat and the lack of routine before school starts again.  What will you do to usher summer on its merry way?

Fisher-Price Recalls Learning Pots and Pans(tm) Toys Due to Choking Hazard

Here’s a quick and fun activity to do with your child to encourage creativity and writing.  If your child is not old enough to write yet, he or she can dictate the words or tell a story about what they see.

Browse through magazines and newspapers and cut out interesting pictures.  Glue them to construction paper and have your child create captions, stories or simply funny sayings for the characters pictured.  This is also a great activity to get a child involved with participating in a family scrapbook or album.  Let your child create captions for photos, or have him or her make “speech” bubbles or “thought” bubbles to go with the pictures.

This is an excellent way to get children thinking beyond what they know and to be creative with what they see.  With younger children, make a collection of simpler pictures, perhaps one or two objects in a frame, and record their reactions to the pictures.

This is a wonderful way to get ready for the more formal work of school while still having fun together.