How I Survived the U.S. Embassy Waiting Room with a Preschooler—Screen-free

What's in Mommy's bag of tricks?

No electronic devices allowed. These four words may cause a parent to panic at the anticipation of a long wait, especially inside a government office such as the U.S. Embassy, which is not a place you'd associate with preschool-age-appropriate fun. But a trip to the embassy is sometimes a necessary inconvenience for families with travel plans or, like us, families with a young and adorable American  citizen who needed to be recognized as such. The night before our CRBA (or Consular Reporting of Birth Abroad) appointment at the embassy, my worried husband asked me, "Are iPads allowed?" Sorry, Honey, we're just going to have to be resourceful.

Even if we weren't required to line up with the majority of the people who were there to apply for a U.S. non-immigrant visa, it still took us three hours, from waiting for the doors to open (we got there early in order to be one of the first in line) to waiting for our documents to be processed (which took relatively quickly, but it seemed like other families were not so lucky. Need to get some official business done with a preschooler (and an infant) in tow? Here's how to play the waiting game, screen- and gadget-free.

"If You Can Make a Circle": A Simple Way to Use Art to Teach Shapes

Exploring the beauty of shapes

I've been struggling finding engaging activities for our homeschool preschool, but this morning, as usual, it was she who showed me an activity we could both enjoy and learn from. Letting the child lead is truly the wisest principle for early childhood education in our household. She's a much better teacher and initiator than I am.

I'd tried other activities to help her practice her shapes, but she runs from anything pre-planned and presented to her as a "lesson". Quizzing her with flash cards? Not our thing. She knows her shapes already, and the goal is not memorization of shape names, but training the brain to see how shapes fit into our world and to see that there are shapes all around us. It was about exploring possibilities and using objects creatively. I'd bought her a wonderful Learning Resources wooden pattern blocks set to play with because a lot of moms seemed to have success with those, but she is completely uninterested in them. So it was back to the drawing board.

It just so happened, drawing was actually the answer I was looking for:

We're Reading: 3 Children's Books About the Power of Imagination

The recent winners of the "Again, again, Mommy!" book awards have been three books on highly imaginative kids: Red Wagon by Renata Liwska, Tiger on the Wall by Annette Flores Garcia (illustrations by Joanne de Leon), and The Zoo by Suzy Lee.

Red Wagon and Zoo are both books where the beautiful illustrations are meant to speak louder than the minimal text, making them perfect leave-behind books for pre-readers to flip through. I'm always looking for books like these to encourage E to make up her own stories and explore these worlds on her own.