The Laundry Extra Cycles: Are They Worth It?

As technology evolves, so does your washing machine. Do you remember the first washing machine you used? It probably didn’t have as many settings or extra cycles as the latest models. In fact, if your washing machine is less than a few years old, it likely has cycles you’ve never used before, or don’t know how to use. 

These add-on cycles replicate the customized treatments of residential laundry services, which are run by experienced launderers who can tame the stains out of all fabrics, including bedspreads and comforters, with professional tools. This might make your washing machine’s extra cycles sound much more enticing, but what exactly do they do and are they worth it?

Delicates

Worth it? Sometimes, but use sparingly. Some whites and colors can’t handle the high agitation of the regular cycle. They require the delicates cycle, which has a slow washing cycle and slow spin cycle, increasing the amount of water used by your machine. It’s not environmentally friendly because the extra water strips away microfibers that end up polluting the ocean. The delicates cycle is offered with most modern washers, but you can work around its environmental harm by putting your small load delicates in a mesh bag and using a regular cycle with cold water. The bag will act as a buffer from the high agitation and fast spin cycle. This workaround isn’t best for highly delicate laundry, such as clothes with sequins or other attachments. These are best for the delicates cycle or traditional hand washing.

Handwash

Worth it? No. Though this cycle mimics the gentle agitation of handwashing, it can’t replace true handwashing. Similar to the delicates cycle, this uses a lot of water, so unless you have a large load of handwash-only laundry, you’ll be wasting a lot of water and electricity on a few garments at a time.

Whites

Worth it? If you have a large load of soiled whites. This cycle uses high temperature to burn away bacteria and stains on white clothing, and typically has high agitation. This cycle can be helpful if your whites are heavily soiled, but otherwise, it can be substituted with a regular cycle. Like the delicates and handwash cycles, this cycle isn’t environmentally friendly, but for another reason: hot water requires more energy than cooler water.

Pre-Wash

Worth it? If your clothes are heavily soiled. An extra soak before the main wash can loosen dirt and other impurities for a deeper clean. It can also make stains easier to eliminate or fade. The pre-wash cycle will soak your laundry, agitate, then rinse, before beginning the main wash. This cycle is most efficient when used with a pre-wash detergent, or a detergent formulated to attack specific stains. It’s rare for clothes to be so soiled they require a pre-wash, but if you’re a parent doing laundry for an extremely active kid who plays in mud and loves to explore the outdoors, you might use the pre-wash more often than other people.

Rinse & Spin

Worth it? Can be useful for swim season. When you’re in between swim days, it’s useful to toss your swimsuit in the wash for a quick rinse and spin. This cycle doesn’t use detergent, but it washes out chlorine and salt so your swimsuit doesn’t smell bad between uses.

Use extra cycles when needed

There are many other extra cycles, including extra rinse, bulky, and sanitize. A helpful way to view them is as add-ons for particular washes. Most washes will be fine using the regular cycle on its own.

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Favorite Activities About Thanksgiving This Year

Because it is both a family event and a cultural holiday, Thanksgiving is a good time to make sure private kindergarten children feel included as they learn about the traditions that surround their family’s version of the holiday. More than just an American holiday, the harvest season is celebrated around the world. 

Helping with Cooking

The aromas of Thanksgiving can be tantalizing for a Montessori private kindergartner. To help your children feel more included in the festivities, offer them some small tasks to help with preparations. Every day tasks such as slicing, stirring, and measuring are all important jobs that your kids can help with and reinforces the Montessori method. And don’t forget the most important job of cleaning the pie filling and cake batter out of mixing bowls after using them!

Gratitude Activities

Around the world, harvest festivals and celebrations are about being grateful for the bounty of the harvest. This idea is easy to carry over into the modern tradition, when we are grateful for all that we have, for our friends and family, and for our ability to help make other people’s day a little brighter. You can even make a game out of things to transform into gratitude activities.

Turkey Baster Feather Blast

This fun little game teaches fine motor control and keeps kids busy. You’ll need a turkey baster and a feather for each player, and set up start and finish lines so there will be goals. To make things more interesting, create an obstacle course instead of simply moving down a straight path.

Pine Cone Turkeys

With a few common items, private kindergartners can make festive seasonal turkeys. They’ll need one large pine cone for each child, some construction paper, and paste. Instead of using googly eyes as shown in this example, let your kids draw eyes of their own to make each turkey even more personal.

Thanksgiving is an awesome time of year, filled with opportunities to get your private kindergarten student active and involved. No matter what country a person comes from, there is a harvest celebration in their culture. We all have a lot to be grateful for, and this is the season to show it.

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Transform the Magic of the Holidays Into Practical Experience

The holiday season is here, bringing with it the opportunity for preschoolers to learn practical life lessons through the traditions of the season. Practicing academic skills like math, and practical experiences like sharing and learning to feel good about themselves helps children develop habits and skills that will guide them through life.

Counting Down

One of the easiest ways to incorporate the holidays and support the Montessori philosophy is to take a hands-on approach and have your child count down the days to the next holiday. This teaches children to count forward and backward and instills the progression of special days in their minds. Instilling a sense of the passage of time in children will make it easier for them to learn to use a calendar, tell time, and even learn the months and days of the week.

The Power of Giving

Grace and Courtesy are a hallmark of the Montessori Method. During the holidays, children have plenty of opportunities to be both giving and grateful. They can display a giving attitude by doing nice things to help others, for example. Since the act of helping others make us feel good, the more children have the opportunity to do nice things, the more they will want to do. Remember, receiving gifts is awesome, but giving gifts makes us feel good as well.

Decorating for Self Esteem

It is important that children feel good about themselves and their abilities. Helping decorate for the holidays helps instill a sense of self-esteem in kids, with the added bonus of making them feel more included in the holidays as they unfold. Research has shown that decorating your room or home is good therapy for people of all ages, but it is especially useful for children who are searching for a way to be a part of the family they belong to. 

The holidays are magical, but so are the minds of preschool children. Giving children the encouragement to become immersed in the holidays helps them learn, develops important physical and social skills, and gives them a sense of being a part of something larger than themselves. With a little thought, you can easily incorporate all sorts of practical experience into the excitement of the holidays.

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How to Plan Festival Activities for Kindergarten

While private kindergartens offering large fall festivals may be on hold this year, you can still enjoy the semblance of normality with small festival-like groups. Planning festival activities will take a little work, but for small groups such as what is currently allowed it is easier than you might think. How many kids, what will they do, offer refreshments, and clean up when the day is done. Beyond that, you should be able to wing it.

Number of Children

Most localities currently prohibit private gatherings in large groups, sometimes as few as 10. Find out what the regulations are in your community, and plan to stay below that, even if it means only four or five children and their guardians. Keeping a small group engaged is an easier prospect anyway, requiring less supervision of children bored by inactivity or waiting.

Simple Games

For group entertainment, cooperative games keep everyone involved. Scavenger hunts are great for social distancing, along with silly obstacle courses and non-contact games like hot potato. The key is to get all of the kids involved and rely more on having fun than a strict tally of winners and non-winners.

Treats For All

Refreshments are a must-have for any group of kids. It is okay to have some sweets involved, but serve them early for burning energy and rely on healthier snacks like fruit or celery sticks to snack as the event progresses. Be sure to check with other parents to make sure you won’t be serving the wrong items to children with allergies or aversions.

The Clean-Up Game

Plan on the day coming to an end, and a grand finale of everyone chipping in to get the area cleaned up and organized. When the whole group is chipping in, tidying up is more like another game than a chore, making the work go faster and easier. You will still have some work to do later, but a cooperative effort beforehand will be a big time saver when you do. 

Whether in school or at an authentic Montessori private kindergarten, small groups of a few children can still enjoy seasonal fun. Focus on social distancing and hand washing, along with treats and activities that minimize direct contact with others.

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Exciting Nature Activities for the Absorbent Mind

Maria Montessori identified the first six years of preschool life as the period of the Absorbent Mind. She recognized that children are more focused on learning and discovering new things during this phase of life, beginning with discovering their body and immediate surroundings before branching out into the larger world around them.

Bountiful Book of Bugs

Even though preschool parents might be a little squeamish, small kids tend to love bugs. One ongoing activity is to create a journal about the bugs found in the yard. Identifying ants and beetles and spiders and butterflies and all the hundreds of types of insects found in the yard or local parks is interesting for parents and children alike and teaches kids tremendous amounts of information about bugs and how they benefit the environment.

Build A Weather Kit

Another ongoing project is to gather and use a weather kit. Windsocks, thermometers, and a rain gauge are the basic tools to track weather day-by-day, and you can add a clock to measure how the days get shorter as the end of the year approaches. Not only is this a simple and educational activity, but it is also a practical life-long experience.

Visit a Corn Maze

Corn and sunflower mazes are popular with small children, and well-suited to a socially-distanced environment. It is a great activity for building critical thinking skills, developing fine motor skills, and establishing a firm foundation for self-esteem. Corn mazes tend to be on farms, and familiarity with farm animals and country living are typically part of the excursions. Due to group size limits, it is best to schedule your maze visit in advance. 

The Montessori philosophy encourages preschool kids love to learn, and Fall is an excellent time to get outside and take part in the natural world. Giving your child’s absorbent mind a world full of engaging discoveries is beneficial in ways that won’t be obvious for years to come.

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