What we're doing this week

This is what we got up to last week. Little Bean is still fascinated with bugs, so we continued with most of our activities and books from the previous week. We also added some new activities.

Little Bean loves pulling stuff out of the kitchen cupboards, so we direct him towards the section storing our plastic stuff. The other day he found a drink bottle and became obsessed with screwing the lid on and off. I ended up getting a plastic egg carton and a flip top storage container for him too and let him practise opening and closing them.

I found these great toys on Australian eBay. They were part of an 8 pack of wooden puzzles and cost around AU$55. After Little Bean had played with them for a while, he got the plastic egg carton out and started to put the wooden discs in the compartments.

Little Bean was playing on the floor and bumped a plastic toy cow. It started to spin and he loved it. He started to investigate how to spin the cow on purpose. Once he had it sussed, I added some other animals and objects for him to try spinning. Any that didn't spin were quickly tossed aside and he decided that the cow and a fish were the best. We've since found lots of different spinning toys and household items to explore, some purpose-made to spin and some that just happen to spin well.

A surprise addition to our activities this week were some plastic water bottles. I was crushing them up and putting them in a tub, ready to go in the recycling bin. Little Bean liked the noise it made and wandered over to watch. When I was done, he took the tub and sat down on the mat with it. He proceeded to put the bottles in and out of the tub over and over again. Occasionally he would play with the bottles and crinkle them too.

Little Bean has become interested in books with flaps. We've been reading these two books this week.

Little Bean loves singing and we often sing and do actions for nursery rhymes. 

I read "Hettie and the Fox" by Mem Fox to LB and my nephew as a bedtime story last week. It was a big hit. I loved doing different voices for each animal. Reading aloud to kids is so much fun. I am a huge Mem Fox fan, so I just bought her book about reading aloud to kids on eBay. I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to read it.

What we're doing this week

This is what we did during our first week back in Australia for the Christmas - New Year holidays. Little Bean is loving it here. Our house in Vietnam is rather small and doesn't have a yard or garden to play in. We only have a tiny courtyard at the front where we park our motorbikes. Little Bean has played more outside in the past week than he has in the previous 3 months. It has made me long for an Aussie style house and garden. When we remodel our Vietnamese house next year, we'll be including a large rooftop entertainment area which will serve as a garden and play area for Little Bean. He really loves exploring my sister's garden and has quickly gone from walking to running since we've been here.

I unintentionally ended up with a bugs & insects theme to most of our activities this week. It just happened that LB found some bug books and discovered my nephew's bug specimen collection.

I bought Little Bean a play set because it included a little wagon, some sandpit toys and a watering can (which I have wanted to get LB for ages). It just happened to also include a "Creeper Keeper" bug viewing container. We haven't tried it out yet, but we'll go looking for some creepy crawlies to go in it this afternoon. I'm sure we can find some slater bugs or snails amongst the pot plants when we water them.

My sister found this awesome bug collection for my nephew at a garage sale. It was a lucky find as it was one of those sets where you had to buy a weekly magazine and bug specimen. These sets usually cost many hundreds of dollars by the time you purchase them all, and often take up to a year to collect. Little Bean is fascinated by them and is very good about only getting a couple out at a time, then returning them to the case before swapping them for more. He is grasping many concepts like this now and I am constantly amazed by how much he actually understands.

Little Bean got to play in a sandpit for the first time. I gave him a couple of spoons and a sand castle mould to play with. He happily scooped, poured and transferred sand for hours. We also used some damp sand to build small castles, which he gleefully smashed with little fists. Once I bought him a sandpit set, he had a shovel, rake, hoe, sieve, bucket and small moulds to play with too.

   Little Bean's cousin was watering pot plants and LB wanted to join in, so he was very happy to be given his own toddler-sized watering can. He quickly got the hang of it and likes to help water the plants every day. He is really enjoying being able to do lots of things that big kids and grown-ups do. Now that's he's undertaking so many new practical life and self care tasks, I'll be writing a post on practical life activities shortly.

The weather has been quite hot, so we've been playing with water a lot. I have been filling his little wagon with water and giving him different tools to play with each day. So far he played with his sandpit set, cups, bowls, slotted spoons for scooping and large serving spoons for transferring water. He also plays with all sorts of natural items he's collected himself such as leaves, rocks and honky nuts. The honky nuts and rocks seem to be firm favourites.

Little Bean has also been enjoying some quiet activities on his Montessori mat. He's been stacking plastic cup towers and knocking them down. He's also been nesting cups and bowls too. As a fine motor skills activity, he's been playing with an icy pole mould set.