Booklist: Reading Up on the Secret Lives of Boys

As a female Developmental Psychologist, I heard and read a lot about the specific socio-emotional and academic needs of girls, how we were being marginalized out of math and the hard sciences, and how our self-esteem was being diminished by a global patriarchy.  Only in the past seven or eight years does it feel like the needs of boys are being addressed significantly, and only more recently than that does it feel like the discussion is acknowledging that boys and girls are different but equally in need of accommodation.  It's not as though one gender is dysfunctional in relation to the other (some boys may be energetic, but does that make them troublemakers?  some girls may naturally be more interested in language, but does this make them bad at math?  and does this have to apply to all boys?), it's just that we must understand them for what they are and appreciate each child's individuality.

In any event, I feel like I have much better insight into where my daughters are coming from than my son after reading these books.  A little chat with my husband (sorry Dad, I haven't gotten to talk to you yet!) revealed that I truly don't get it, but I feel like if I want to be the conscoius parent that I regard myself as I really need to get a better idea of what's going on behind my son's alternately charming smile and grouchy scowl.  I'll get to girls soon, but here's a list of books that I've really found to be worthwhile.  Each of these books is provides a unique perspective on learning and socio-emotional development, and what we as parents can do to raise our boys to be happy, successful men.

Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys:  This book is a great place to start. The authors really illuminate what life as a boy is truly like with plenty of anecdotes about how boys are indoctrinated into male culture, what role the educational system and its methods play in shaping a boy, a great discussion of relationships between boys and their parents, and lots of concrete ideas about how to raise an emotionally whole boy from birth to early adulthood.  Absolutely eye-opening.

Real Boys' Voices: A stunning companion to Raising Cain, this book is a window into the minds of boys and young men.  In their own words they share intimate stories of how societal pressures lead boys into drug use, early sexual behavior, sublimating their emotions, and putting on a mask of toughness.  At times so raw it's tough to read, it gives tremendous insight into what's going on in their heads and how our reactions and opinions fuel this behaviors.  Also provides lots of suggestions to help parents become accessible, trusted allies to their adolescent boys.

Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different - And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men:  Raising Boys is less about anecdotes and stories than providing approaches to help you raise your boy to be the best he can be.  The author maps out parenting strategies by age, starting at birth and extending through early adulthood, and discusses the role that testosterone and brain development play in boys' behavior and in shaping their needs.  It's a relatively fun, easy read and provides great ideas that you can apply immediately.

The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life:  While the earlier books focus mainly on emotional development, The Minds of Boys is an awesome peek inside how our educational system is at odds with the personalities and needs of many boys leading to low performance and disciplinary issues.  Starting with infancy, the author offers great advice on how parents and teachers can play to boys' unique strengths through play and setting up activities in boy-friendly ways--without putting girls at a disadvantage.  This book significantly influenced the educational choices we've made, and if you have or will be sending a boy to school I highly recommend it!

It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons: I so enjoyed the essays in this book.  They're short (since my time always seems to be in demand!) and insightful, leaving me with something to think about and mull over for the rest of the day.  The stories touch on a range of ages, leaving you reminiscing about when your kids where younger, relating to moms who are sharing your experience, and thinking about what's down the road.

What have you found works for your boys?  Do you find that they're different from the girls in your life and need special accommodation or is this 'boy crisis' just an idea pushed by the media?  Are there other books, articles, or resources that you love?

Bubble Painting (aka don't drink the bubble water!)

So far I've learned a lot from experimenting with boycraft.  The following rules always seem to apply:

• Anything with puddles of glue, mixing seemingly innocuous ingredients into strange concoctions, or pounding on things with a hammer are definite winners.  
• The time spent really focusing on the boy without the distraction of his sisters, the laundry, cleaning out the car, emptying the dishwasher, etc, pays itself back many times over in hugs and seriously improved behavior when I can't focus on him quite so intently.  (it feels like he's gone from scowly-storm-cloud to ray-of-sunshine in the past few weeks).
• Messy projects are better than not-messy projects.  Always. 

I'm sure that these rules are a vast oversimplification, but they definitely applied to this project and we had a great time (as did Josie, when she came home from school and discovered the creative mess)!  There are a few ways to do bubble painting, but this is really my favorite, as you get a nice sheet of paper that you can use for stationery, cut up for another project, or collage onto. 

Materials:

• shallow dish
• drinking straw
• liquid food coloring or tempera paint
• dish soap (we used Palmolive)
  

Process:

• Mix about 1 Tablepoon dish soap with about 2/3 cup water and either 1 Tablespoon tempera paint or 10 drops liquid food coloring.    The tempera paint gives a more opaque look, while the food coloring is more translucent and watercolor-like.  We did a few sheets with layers of color (the green is food coloring, the purple tempera), and these were definite favorites! 
• Use the straw to blow a big pile of bubbles...make sure to tell your child not to suck through the straw.  Blow!  Don't drink the bubble water!  Ick!
  
• Lay your paper flat on top of the pile of bubbles, then peel it off (don't let it sit too long or it'll pop all of the bubbles and sink into the the liquid at the bottom) then lay it out to dry.  

Hardware Collage and Foil Prints

Jasper is always happy to help out in the garage, but he's not quite as handy as he'd like to think.  Enter the hardware collage!  This really fulfilled his love of anything garage-related, and he was happy to spend a lot of time carefully picking out what he wanted to include in his collage.  We sorted through all the little jars and bins  assorted hardware goodies that Daddio's collected over his years of puttering.

Materials:

• a medium-sized scrap of wood (heavy cardboard would also work).
• wood glue
• spare hardware stuff: nuts, bits of chain, washers, small-headed nails, hooks, eye-bolts, screws, etc (if you don't have anything like this, check out the individual bins at Lowe's)
• foil (heavy-duty works best, but a double-thickness of regular-weight is fine)
  
• a stiff scrub brush
• old toothbrush 

How-to:

• Have the kid drizzle glue liberally over the piece of wood.  You don't want it to be too, too thick or you won't get good definition in your print, but it has to be thick enough to hold onto whatever you're putting into it.
  

• Let the glue dry thoroughly.  This may take a couple of hours or as long as overnight if you're in a humid climate.  Jasper was totally happy with the finished product, but we decided to take it one step further.  
• Lay your foil over top of the collage.  You can either use it as it comes off of the roll, or crinkle it up and flatten it out for a different effect.  Secure by folding around the edges of the wood.  

• Bam, smash, or pounce (if you're not a three-year-old male) your stiff brush all over the foil to press down around the objects underneath.  Use your old toothbrush to press down further, and smooth the foil with fingers to really make the objects stand out.  Experiment to see what works best for you!

So what have you been working on?  Any new boycraft ideas to share?

Pop Rockets! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.......

So I've been trying various things with Jasper since school started for his sister and some have worked great (smashing playdough, for one) while others, well, not so much (anything drawing-related). With this one I've really hit it. I have one word.

Rockets.

Seriously, it seems like boys are generally very transportation-oriented, and rockets seem to be the pinnacle of interest for my guy. Combine that with the hands-on science aspect of this project and I really found a winner! (I should say that everyone loved this--both Josie and Daddio joined in at launch-time).

Materials:

• paper towel tube
• file folder (or light cardboard such as a cereal box)
• glue stick
• stapler
• scissors or craft knife
• empty film canister (the one with the lid that fits inside worked slightly better than the traditional type that's black with a grey lid--I asked for one in the Target photo department)
• alka-seltzer
• water

Process:

1 - Cut a 3" circle out of your file folder and cut a slit to the center.

2 - Cut four triangular fins out of the file folder, each about 2" high (see the one in the picture, above?). Snip about 1/2 inch off the top of your triangle, then fold in about 1/2 inch. Make two snips in to your fold line to create three tabs. Fold them in opposite directions.

3 - Snip one end of your paper towel tube into little tabs, about 1/2 inch square. Mash them in a bit with your hand to round the end.

4 - Roll your circle into a cone shape, then glue and staple to hold it. (this is apparently where I stopped taking pictures, go figure!)

5 - Apply plenty of glue stick to the mashed-in end of your paper towel tube and stick the cone onto it. Hold for about two minutes while the glue sets.


6 - Glue fins on around the bottom.

7 - Stick your film canister up inside the base of your rocket (inside the paper towel tube; it should fit exactly), with the open end facing out. Hold on to the lid!

8 - Add 1-2 Alka Seltzer tablets, pour in a bit of water, put the cap back on (quickly!), set it on the ground pointing skyward (hustle, hustle!) and stand way back and wait for blastoff. Don't forget your binoculars!

Our rocket popped up by a couple of feet on our best attempt (two tablets, fill about 2/3 full of water), perhaps not nearly as impressive as Jasper was imagining (orbit?), but it was such a fun project. We talked a bit about what was happening inside the film canister as the Alka-Seltzer reacted, and as the kids get older it will be fun to experiment more and collect data about what works better (1 tablet or two? More water or less?). Definitely a boycraft success!

So what are your boys into these days? Are they the transportation-rocket-blastoff type, or does something else get them fired up?

cornstarch clay and a color wheel/mixing lesson

For regular playdough use I'm hooked on the Jello recipe, but when it comes to making things to keep I like a dough that's really smooth and more clay-like. My recipe for cornstarch clay makes a very smooth, slightly sticky white dough that takes color really well. Most recently we used it for a hands on lesson in color mixing. (On the boycraft front, this really worked with Scout since it's (a) very visual and (b) required a lot of smashing and mushing around of clay to get the color mixed in!). Using liquid food coloring you can mix small chunks into a range of very vibrant hues. Here's how we did it:

Mix up a batch of cornstarch clay (recipe's at the bottom). Once the clay is cool, divide into seven equal parts. Form into balls, then use your finger to poke a hole in the top of six of them. Place four drops of food color in each as follows:

• four red drops
• three yellow drops, one red drop
• four yellow drops
• four green drops
• four blue drops
• three red drops, one blue drop

Seal the top of each ball back up and let it sit for 10 minutes (or longer, up to overnight, if you keep them in a tupperware) to let the color soak in a little bit--it just keeps your hands cleaner. Now the fun starts! Smash and roll each ball until the color is evenly mixed and smooth. (I found that the quickest way to do this was to roll the ball between my hands until it was mixed--about a minute--but Scout preferred the smashing method!).

We put them in a circle on a piece of paper and talked about "primary" colors (red/blue/yellow) and "secondary" colors (orange/green/purple). We then cut small, equally sized chunks of primary colors and blended them together to make secondary colors...look, they are the same as the big balls we made with food coloring!

Next, we mixed "tertiary" colors (red-orange, orange-red, orange-yellow, yellow-green, green-blue, blue-violet, and red-violet) by combining small, equally-sized chunks of each primary color with the secondary colors on either side. These made some gorgeous colors!

Now, I don't have a picture of this, but Scout had the best time smashing the colors together in a big, circular rainbow, then rolling all the colors together until we had the most stormy grey color you can imagine. Quite a remarkable experiment!


Cornstarch Clay:

Ingredients

• 2 c baking soda
• 1 c cornstarch
• 1 1/4 c water

Method:

• Combine ingredients in a medium saucepan.
• Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until it begins to look like mashed potatoes.
• Immediately remove from heat, let cool a bit, and knead to form a ball. (Be careful not to overcook or it gets lumpy and hard).
  

(Recipe is from "Look at Me: Creative Learning Activities for Babies and Toddlers" by Carolyn Haas-Buhai)

Best Homemade Playdough Ever...Check Out the Secret Ingredient!

This morning, in honor of the start of Boycraft month, Jasper and I mixed up a batch of our favorite playdough. I know, I know, homemade isn't ever quite as smooth and nice as the store-bought stuff and doesn't have the distinctive scent but I swear that this recipe is really great. It's smooth, the color is beautiful, and it smells delicious. The secret? Jello. Seriously! I think that it has to do with the gelatin--this recipe produces a very smooth, not at all crumbly dough.


Now, Josie and I played with a lot of playdough, rolling it out carefully, using cookie cutters, making tiny plates of food...but Jasper and I take a different tack. We play rough. We smash it down on the table and whack it with a rolling pin and our hands to make hills and various terrain. Then, we take our significant collection of little plastic animals and trees and stick them in (the added benefit is that they stand up...which they won't do on the floor).


The best part is when we pull the animals out and observe the prints that they leave behind. The elephants leave big round prints, the moose and horses leave hoofprints, and the dinosaurs leave, well, dinosaur prints. Finally, we drive our little cars, trucks and tractors around on it at check out the prints that they each leave.

Jello Playdough

1 c. flour
1/2 c. salt
2 Tbsp. cream of tartar
2 Tbsp. oil
1 c. water
1 small box Jello (any flavor/color)

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan and mix. Stir continuously over medium heat until forms and changes color slightly. Remove from heat, let cool a bit, then knead well. Store in an airtight container.

So what fun are you up to with the boys in your life? Head over to the Month of Boycraft post and share a link or comment!

September: A Month of Boycraft!

I just didn't get it.  Neither Josie (my oldest) nor I have ever been particularly girlie girls: we like bugs, get dirty, play trains...and I didn't see that there would be much of a difference between girls like us and boys.  Heck, we're not called tomboys for nothing, right?  I couldn't have been more wrong.  While our interests are pretty well aligned, I really didn't anticipate the intense physicality that Jasper would bring to our family.  When mothers of boys would talk about having to get out and run their boys around every day I scoffed a bit, thinking that they were overdoing it.  See, wrong again.  Jasper has to be run, tickled, thrown around, and use his boy-spirit to best advantage every day.  He likes to read books for an hour or more, but that has to be balanced with some gross motor activity.  He's happy to express himself creatively, but it has to have that gross motor component too--smashing playdoh, painting big strokes on big paper, driving dumptrucks around his big sand city; where Josie was happy with glue, scissors, and markers for an hour, Jasper's interest wanes after a few minutes. 

With Josie heading off to Kindergarten every day I'm left with a lot of time to (finally!) spend alone with Jasper doing what he wants to do (as opposed to what Josie has told him he'll be doing).  I'm excited to have this time to focus on him, but I feel like I'm entering uncharted territory populated by dinosaurs, rockets, space people, and construction equipment.  Thus, I've decided that September shall be Boycraft month on Kiddio and we're going to put our minds together to come up with some great ideas to share with the boys in our lives. 

To kick it off, please take a minute and share what you've been doing with your boys (or your girls, if it's something good!).  If you have a blog post to share, add it to Mr Linky.  Alternately, feel free to leave a comment.  'll be featuring some of the ideas you share as the month goes on!



Disclaimer:  As a girl myself, and as the mother of two girls, I don't mean to shortchange girlpower a bit.  I'm sure that many/most girls will be equally interested in this stuff, I just mean to say that as moms we may not really get how to engage our boys in creative activities that meet their unique needs.  I've struggled with it personally, and I'll bet some of you have too.  Talk to your husband about what it was like to grow up boy--you may be surprised at how different the experience is from what you remember from your childhood.

Coming Up in September: Boycraft Month!

With Josie off to school and Adelaide still thoroughly enjoying her morning nap, I'm excited to have the opportunity to spend some good boy-time with Jasper.  Sure, he's okay with the tea parties and paper dolls, and surprisingly cooperative about princess dress-up, but this kid is so naturally a boy.  Cute crafty things that Josie has been so naturally interested in just don't catch Jasper's interest the way bugs and trucks do (although I'm fortunate to have a girl who's also quite interested in bugs and trucks!), so I find myself treading new ground with him, and I'm excited.  Thus, I've decreed that September shall henceforth be known as Boycraft Month, and Kiddio shall be populated with ideas fit for boys (and girls, don't get me wrong, I'm not cuttin' y'all out!). 

So what are you doing with your boys lately?  What creative projects and ideas have you come up with? How is life with your boys?  

Like I said, it's uncharted territory for me, and I have no idea where we're headed!