The totally fun zero mess art activity

Yesterday morning we tried out some great new kid's markers. They're a large size, perfect for little hands to grip, and are designed with a sturdy tip that can't be pushed inwards if they're pressed too hard on the paper.

 

Drawing with markers gave LB the chance to practice putting lids on and off. Something he dearly loves doing. With every lid he finds. All the time.

 I thought Little Bean would love this activity but it was met with limited success. He loved the drawing part but kept crying "Ewwww" every time he got ink on his hands. Out came the wet wipes and problem solved. Hmmm, maybe not. His cries became quite upset because there were still faint ink marks. 

 

After washing his hands for the third time, I'd had enough of trying to get him over his ink phobia for one day. I decided a cleaner art activity was in order. Enter one jug of water and a large paintbrush.  The neighbours had held a wedding reception - street party in our little laneway cul-de-sac the previous day and the gazebo was still up. Perfect for an outdoor activity. We set up under it and  "painted" the concrete laneway with water. As time went on, curious kids came out and had a look. Within 15 minutes, we had half a dozen kids "painting" with us. One of the kids even "painted" flower pots and her front gate. Loads of fun was had by all and there was zero mess to clean up. Just a few paintbrushes needing a quick rinse. This will be a regular activity I think.

One of my clearest and fondest memories from kindergarten is "painting" with water on the side wall of the school. I remember being so excited to go to play lunch because it meant that I could go and "paint". This activity would work well on many surfaces. Your kids could "paint" the house, the garden path, the driveway or you could even get them to "paint" (and wash) your car.

Animal theme activities - week 3

We've started Gymboree art classes and also have lots of art and craft activities planned for at home. One of our art activities this week was stamping. We used some kangaroo and koala stamps. See this post on art activity trays.

I have rearranged the kitchen and made it possible for Little Bean to safely access the kitchen bench. I'm not able to buy a Learning Tower (Santa?) or to make one at the moment so I had to improvise. We still have LB's old cot sitting in the dining room area. We used to use it as a bed - play pen when he was a baby. I was going to get rid of it but realised I had a new purpose for it. A make-shift helper platform. I pushed it up against the kitchen bench and LB can stand in it. Problem solved. The existing height settings are either too high or too low, so I'll have to drill some more holes to give us some better options. More on that project another day.

 This was his first time helping me cook and he loved it. He was in charge of the mixing bowl and stirring. He also helped sift flour, pour in the liquids and added the eggs after I cracked them into a cup for him. On the first day, we made banana cake for morning tea. We also made the almond milk to use in the cake. Another day, we made bacon and vegetable egg slice. He wanted to taste everything, which was fine for cake batter, but a bit weird for raw egg slice. He also cut capsicum and carrot sticks using this awesome crinkle cutter we bought from the How We Montessori shop. It was only AU$3.95

 

Animal recognition is happening. After our art activity was packed away the other day, Little Bean went and got a rubber ducky, pointed to the picture of ducks on his table and put them together. Happy dance.

We added some new animal figurines. He is now learning African animal names and sounds too.

I made Little Bean this activity board. For more details, read the full post here.

Instead of putting the dolly pegs in the pocket of the activity board as I had planned, LB often threaded them onto the front piece of fabric. This gave me the idea for this next activity. Putting dolly pegs on a tin can.

This week I added a spooning activity for the first time. He is using an Asian soup spoon with animal counters.

LB is using tongs for the first time too. These are a small pair that I found at the supermarket for a couple of dollars. He picked it up within a few minutes and really surprised me. I didn't think that he'd be able to do it and just wanted to see how far off he was. Instead, I am now planning more tong activities for next week. I gave him animal counters to see how he went with hard objects. I think I will try something soft like pom poms next.

I have been meaning to try this next activity for a couple of weeks but never found the time. Well, this week, our shell washing activity will happen. We will do it at LB's hand washing station. This red tray is actually for drying dishes on and includes a draining rack. I got the two wooden brushes from the fruit and vegetable section of IGA supermarket in Australia. They're for scrubbing potatoes. I bought both so that I could see which shape would suit little hands best.

We haven't had a discovery basket for a while so I thought I'd make one up with the new containers I've been collecting for another opening and closing activity. It has a small gift box, pill box, lunchbox, cardboard box, plastic container and a drawstring bag.

LB's new toilet learning area

Little Bean has shown little interest in using the potty. For the past few months I've had the potty in the bathroom and tried to coax him into using it. I've tried getting him to sit on it, fully clothed, to read a book. I've tried getting him to sit on it while I use the toilet. I've tried reading him cute kids books on potty training. So far, the best response was him sitting on there, with pants on, for a couple of minutes. However, the most common response was a near-tantrum. I decided to treat it the same way I treated brushing his teeth. If trying to get him to do it was going to end with an upset, crying child who comes to hate the task, it's better to forget it and let him come back to it when he's ready. I was reminded to follow the child.

Little Bean hated me trying to help him brush his teeth. He would get worked up to the point of hysterics. I gave up and just let him do it himself. His diet is very low in sugar so I figured that it wasn't too bad to just let it be for a while. Sure enough, a few months ago, he started that phase where kids love to copy everything that Mum and Dad does. Suddenly, he's following me to the bathroom, watching me brush and asking for his toothbrush. He even wanted me to help him finish job properly. I must admit, I did a happy dance. On the hard days, it's the small victories like this one that remind us to hang in there.

Back to the potty. Last week, out of the blue, Little Bean sits on the potty while I went to the toilet. And yes, I did another happy dance. Through out the day, he continued to follow me to the bathroom and sit on the potty. Albeit, this is all with pants on but it was progress. The next day, he let me take his nappy off when he went to the potty. So far, he's only staying on there for a few minutes at a time and hasn't actually done a wee or poo yet. I decided that the couple of books by the potty wasn't going to cut it anymore and decided to make a proper toilet area for him.

I put a shelf beside the potty to hold pull-up nappies, wipes, toys, books and plastic bags for stinky nappies. I also added a small washing basket for soiled clothes and a non-slip mat under the potty. We usually use a modern cloth diaper with press studs but it's not practical for toilet learning so I've switched to pull-up disposables for now. I have lots of training pants but he's not ready for them yet. Recently, he's been wearing a lot of summer bodysuits (onsies) as he had really bad eczema on our last trip to Australia and we had to buy bodysuits for him so he couldn't scratch his tummy and back. Between starting toilet learning and his eczema clearing up, I've switched him back to t-shirts and shorts with an elastic waistband. He still needs help pulling his nappy and shorts up and down, but he's improving every day.

DIY hand washing station

Little Bean is getting the hang of washing his hands at the bathroom basin with a little help from me and he just loves the child size basin at his Gymboree class. So, I thought it was time to give him his own hand washing station. Vietnamese bathrooms usually have a tap on the wall for filling buckets so it was really easy to do.

My first step was the DIY hand washing basin. Then I added a cute non-slip bath mat, soap dish, hand towel and vanity mirror. I couldn't find any small bars of soap (hotel soap is perfect) so I cut an ordinary bar of soap into thirds with a meat cleaver. I put a piece at my basin too so that Little Bean will see me washing my hands the same way that he does. The mirror has a place to store toothbrushes, toothpaste and other small items. I'm not storing his toothbrush here yet as he kept running off with it. I keep it with mine and give it to him when we brush our teeth every morning and night. These days, he really likes brushing his teeth and will happily let me finish the job for him. This is a far cry from several months ago when he all but kicked and screamed if I tried to help. Then, three months ago, he started that phase where they want to copy what Mummy and Daddy do. From then on out, he wanted to brush whenever I did and even let me help him to do it properly. Yay, victory. Some days, especially on the hard days, it really is about the small victories.

While I would love to have added a little porcelain basin to our bathroom, it hardly seemed worth the expense since we're building our new house soon. I plan to put a child size ensuite bathroom off Little Bean's bedroom in the new house though. For this project, I bought a tiny plastic stool and two plastic bowls the same size. I simply used silicone to glue one bowl to the top of the stool. The other bowl nests inside it. Little Bean can turn on the tap and put water in the bowl and when he's finished, I can lift the top bowl out and empty it into the basin. By using two nested bowls, it's sturdy and can't get knocked over. 

I'm still helping him wash his hands but he does most of it himself. He needs a little prompting sometimes to help him remember all the steps. I think that I'll make some laminated picture cards showing each of the steps and put them on the wall above the basin. Now I just have to get him to co-operate long enough to take photos next time he washes his hands. Wish me luck.

Animal theme activities - week 1

This is actually a post about what we started doing three weeks ago. Since our return from holidays in Australia, I just haven't found the time to post any new blogs. There has been crappy internet service, an intermittent access to Blogger and the hassle of trying to get Little Bean settled in at home again.  Then I sprained an ankle and got the sore throat from Hell; a totally miserable combination. Add to that, all the Vietnamese New Year holiday preparations, work functions, visitors and the required visits to family. Honestly, I am SO, SO over it. I can't wait for normality to be restored and for life to go back to our regular, slightly boring, but reassuringly familiar routine.

We're having a month-long theme of animals and the sounds they make. We're focusing mainly on the farm and household animals that he see sees regularly, as well as the most common African and jungle animals he sees on TV and in books.

Our journey began with lots of singing and dancing. Little Bean is a huge fan of The Wiggles and we have several of their DVDs. We've watched, sang to and danced along with lots of their songs about animals such as The Monkey Dance, Ponies, Uncle Noah's Ark and Captain Feathersword Fell Asleep on His Pirate Ship.  I have to tell you, I've been getting a pretty good workout dancing along with the DVDs. Who needs aerobics when you have a toddler who loves The Wiggles? We've also been watching New MacDonald's Farm and Play School DVDs.

We've been singing animal songs like Old MacDonald Had a Farm and Five Little Ducks using our plastic animals and bath tub duckies. Here is a copy of our free printable lyrics for Five Little Ducks. 

I bought some Kinetic Sand from Online Toys Australia at Christmas time and we finally got it out to make an animal sensory tub. It is really weird stuff. It's almost like it crawls along. I think it's kind of creepy. I put some small plastic African animals, spoons and small bowls in the tub along with 2kg of sand. Little Bean loves to go out to the balcony to play with it at least once or twice a day. I've been burying animals for him to find and helping him mould the sand with the bowls. But mostly, he loves scooping and pouring the sand.

I bought this Build-A-Garden set online from Modern Teaching Aids. This is one of my favourite online stores for Montessori and homeschool materials. The dowels are designed to fit into a base and the beads can be threaded on to make a garden with flowers and bugs. We're only using the dowels and bug beads at the moment for a smaller scale threading activity.

 We bought this push-along duck toy in Australia from our local pharmacy. Little Bean broke the duck's beak off five minutes after we got home. He loves the noise it makes.

Little Bean was given these cute ladybird and monster Pillow Pets by his aunties. He loves snuggling up on his new floor bed with them. I plan to put them in his old toddler bed and turn it into a reading nook. More on that project in my next post.

 I got these gorgeous Melissa & Doug jumbo knob puzzles from Modern Teaching Aids.
We've also been using the pieces for vocabulary practice, singing Old McDonald Had a Farm and imaginative play.

 Little Bean loves to throws things at the moment, so I'm trying to channel it by putting out this basket of soft balls. The four smaller balls are actually really dense pompoms I got from Kmart  in a pack for a few dollars.

 Little Bean's Daddy gave him this super snuggly teddy bear a few months ago and he's really taken to it. This month, Big Bear got his own bed, clothes, nappy and sippy cup. Little Bean has been resistant to sitting on the potty so I'm hoping that Big Bear can help us by swapping his nappy for training pants and going on the potty too.

What we're reading this week

We're not swapping out our books weekly at the moment. Instead we're having a month-long theme of animals and the sounds they make. I never realised just how many animal books we had until I chose this theme. There were too many choices so I pared it down to books that included the most common animals that Little Bean would come across daily in the world around us - farm animals, Australian animals and zoo animals.

These are the books from Little Bean's reading corner basket.

These great little chunky books came in boxes that can be used as a pull-along toy. 

I bought the First words and Animal fun sets. 

We're only reading the Baby Animals book out of the First Words set.

I got this The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Little Learning Library  by Eric Carle from The Book Depository. It has little board books on colours, words, numbers and animal sounds. We're just using the animal sounds books this month.

The Tall book introduces the concepts of tall and small using jungle animals.

 

I got these cute fabric sensory books in an online Christmas sale for a few dollars each. Bargain. They're usually quite expensive.

 Little Bean's Nanna got him these books for Christmas. Lucky boy.

These are some books that Little Bean and I will be reading together throughout the month.

 I love these two books. Danny's Duck has such beautiful illustrations. Where's My Teddy? is a great way to reinforce the concepts of big and small. I use this book in my ESL (English as a Second Language) kids classes. Eric Carle books are also a common feature in my classes too.

These are four of the mini books that we got in a Penguin books - Sunday Times newspaper promotion in Australia. Each Sunday, you could redeem a coupon to get the books. I think the first book was free and then the remaining books were only $2 each. All the books were much loved children's favourites.

The Cocky's Circle Little Books range used to be found by the checkout in Australian supermarkets. I haven't seen them for a while so I'm not sure if they're still available. I picked up a heap of them from a charity shop. 

I love the Ladybird Phonics series. I used these with my older son little. OMG. That was nearly ten years ago. Oh, how time flies.

 One Woolly Wombat is a fun way to introduce Australian animals. I bought this in a pack of Australian kids books at Australia Post. They have lots of great cheap books.

 I am a HUGE Mem Fox fan. I own heaps of her books. Hattie and the Fox is great book featuring all our farmyard friends.

A colourfully illustrated book will all the jungle animals. It has big flaps that lift up or out to show larger scenes.