What We Did Today: Pretzel Sticks

Any learning that is child directed is meaningful. When children are interested in their learning they will retain it. Child directed learning gives the child ownership in their learning and in their success. A great example of child directed learning happened in our house today.

We had pretzel sticks today for a snack and my son dumped his entire bag onto the table. He started playing with the sticks and I (being a mom) said, "We don't play with our food." However, I noticed he was making letters. He had placed one stick vertical with one on top placed horizontally. I asked him what he had made and he named the letter "T." Boy, was I wrong about playing with your food!

After explaining that in most cases playing with our food is unacceptable, especially in public places, I let him continue what he was doing. Our snack time turned into a letter formation lesson! Pretzel sticks are not the greatest tools to make letters with curves (s,b,d,o,etc.), but for these we used several sticks to make the letter big and as curvy as possible. It was not perfect, but it was fun and meaningful!