What we're reading this week

This week I took Little Bean, my niece and my nephew to our local library. They have so many great holiday activities on at the moment. And they're free. Even better. Some of the activities include a chicken hatchery, Lego club, book making workshops, story telling, baby rhyme time, Summer fun at the museum and musical comedy shows. There will also be appearances by popular authors and book characters.  We're going to see an exhibition and talk on birds of prey, which features live animals.

Here's what we're reading this week. At first, I didn't intend on a theme but ended up coming across a couple of cute toilet training books for kids at the supermarket that I couldn't resist buying. One of them even has a button that makes the sound of a toilet flushing. So I thought the Nappy Duck & Potty Pig  book and Toot book would also make a good addition to the start of our toilet training journey.

These are some sensory books with textured panels to touch and feel. Some also have flaps to lift. Little Bean loves these kinds of books at the moment.

I couldn't resist this pack with The Very Hungry Caterpillar book and puppet. Little Bean has spent a large chunk of the week running around wearing it. This is one of my all-time favourite books.

I am a huge Mem Fox fan and this book is fabulous. I love the silly rhymes and pictures. It's such a fun book to read aloud.

This is book all about farts. It's really funny and a sure fire hit with small boys.

These are a couple of books that Little Bean picked. He likes the freaky realistic eyes in Nat the Cat. They kind of creep me out.

A Montessori Christmas

The Christmas chaos has subsided, the visitors have gone home, we've delivered all the gifts and the last of the leftovers have finally been eaten. Now it’s time to sit back, relax and have fun playing with all our new toys. I had so much fun shopping for Little Bean’s presents this year. I found lots of great Montessori inspired toys online.

My favourite items were these Rainbow Sound Blocks on eBay. They have beads between two layers of coloured plastic in a wooden surround. They come packaged in a beautiful wooden box. They were an instant hit with Little Bean. He loves putting them in and out of the box almost as much as he loves shaking them.

I also bought a plain set of Rainbow Blocks on eBay. The plain blocks have one piece of coloured plastic in a wooden surround. I can't wait to play with these on a light table.

With his current desire to be Mummy’s Little Helper, I thought that some toddler-size cleaning equipment was in order. I got him a rake, broom and a dustpan set. He had a blast raking up in the garden with his uncle.

I found this awesome little ride-on toy at Target in Australia. It's great for developing balance. When we finished our shopping, the carpark was almost empty so we let him have a go while we loaded the shopping into the car. He jumped straight on and instantly knew what to do. Clever little cookie.

I've heard lots of kids raving about how good Kinetic Sand is, so I bought 2kg of it. This will be a great addition to our sensory play toolkit.

Santa gave Little Bean this swing, but so far, he's been most reluctant to try it out. I'm not sure why. Maybe he's scared of it, or maybe it reminds him of his highchair and he thinks I'm trying to trap him in a boring toy.  

Little Bean was spoilt by the rest of the family too. He got these great books from Nanna and Pop.

He also got these magnetic numbers in a cool Minion pencil case. I'd previously tried wooden magnetic pieces but he kept chewing them to bits, much like he does with wooden jigsaw puzzles. I asked for these plastic ones for Christmas. Lets hope these ones weather the punishment a little better.

These are Little Beans first set of realistic animal toys. These are a small size. I also bought him some large sized African and farm animals, plus some small sized marine and Australian animal sets.

One of LB's aunties knows we Montessori and she got him this lovely wooden clock and a wooden numbers jigsaw puzzle. Very cool.

I think that this lot will keep us busy for several weeks to come.

This week's discovery basket

This week's basket is all about interesting textures. I chose items that were smooth and shiny, smooth and dull, and varying degrees of roughness.

The basket contains two smooth shells, an engraved shell, a slightly rough wooden pestle, a wire sieve, a plastic juicer, a rainbow shower pouf, a plastic scrubbing brush, a bamboo placemat and a drink coaster made from carpet.

What we're doing this week

This week Little Bean got some Christmas presents early. I ordered them in Australia and didn't think they'd be delivered in time for Daddy to be able to bring them back to Vietnam. They arrived just in the nick of time and I couldn't wait for Christmas to check them out. I guess I'm going to have to do more shopping for something to put under the tree.

About a week ago, Little Bean started chewing on everything. It's actually worse now than when he was teething. I'm stumped as to a cause or a cure. Little Bean can only use anything made of cardboard or soft wood under strict adult supervision. So I can no longer leave his jigsaw puzzles or these new alphabet blocks on his Montessori shelf. I really, really hope he grows out of it soon.

I bought these Melissa & Doug alphabet blocks from the Parent Direct online store. They can be stacked or nested. I  only use every second block as it makes it easier for Little Bean to distinguish between the sizes.

This tent and tunnel combo was also bought from Parent Direct. Little Bean loves it. He actually started using this last week. I put his pretend bed in the tent and we had lots of snuggles in there. Unfortunately, he jumped on the tent and bent the plastic frame within the first few days. It's been packed away until Daddy has time to see if it can be repaired. He been using the tunnel flat-out. His room has a wooden floor, and from downstairs, it sounded like elephants stomping about when he was racing up and down the tunnel. I ended up buying some foam matting to go under it to help reduce the noise. I tied the tunnel down to the matting to stop it sliding around. I must admit that I've been having a ball racing alongside the tunnel while LB crawls through it. This racing game has given us the opportunity to practice the commands stop and go. Crawling through the tunnel myself is a bit of a tight squeeze but loads of fun that usually ends with us both laughing hysterically. We've also been rolling balls through the tunnel and playing peek-a-boo.

Another purchase from Parent Direct was this cute Melissa & Doug peek-a-boo barn. The doors make a cute clacking noise when opened and closed.

I made this chopstick threading activity. For instructions, go here.

We've kept the fine motor skills activities using the icy pole trays and ice cube trays from last week.

What we're doing this week

At the moment, I try to do at least an hour of structured activity time with Little Bean each day. Usually, we do more. Over the course of the day, we do several short sessions, and the length depends on his mood and interest level. Some days, 10 minutes is difficult and other days, an hour is easy. His structured activity time includes Montessori activities, reading books together, singing songs with actions and drawing. I also try to include him in daily practical life tasks such as passing me clothes pegs, sweeping the floor, wiping his table after eating and packing up after activities. More on that in a later blog.

This week, we have lots of new activities and toys. I am also introducing a more structured learning environment with activity baskets and a floor mat. I will encourage Little Bean to keep his Montessori activities confined to the floor mat and to pack them back into the basket and return them to his activity shelf when he's finished with them. I foresee that patience will be a virtue sorely needed while we adjust. Patience is not something that either of us has in abundance, so this will be a trial for us. I just need to remain consistent and we'll get through it. This floor mat has a non-slip rubber backing, which is perfect for his wooden floor. It's actually a thin cot mattress I bought from Con Cung baby store. Little Bean often likes to help himself to the activities and play independently, so for now, I will leave the mat out permanently so he can use it anytime. When he's older and is able to roll and unroll it himself, we'll put it away when we're not using it.

 Our sensory item this week is a cute floor mat. It's made of t-shirt fabric scraps. It is super soft and has an interesting texture. Little Bean was immediately a big fan. An awesome buy for a couple of dollars at the local markets.

 

This week we're revisiting jigsaw puzzles. When we tried previously, Little Bean was teething and just wanted to chew on the pieces. Hopefully we'll have better luck this time. We're using puzzles that have little pegs to hold on to. I didn't even manage to get them to his room or put them in baskets, before he woke up and decided he wanted to check out his new stuff immediately. He ended up sitting on my bedroom floor checking everything out.

 I have some soft drink bottle lids that Little Bean will place in the compartments of an ice cube tray. He quickly got the hang of this and repeated it several times before wandering off to check out the other new activities. Thanks to his "opening & closing" discovery basket, he can get the lid off and on the container easily.

Another fine motor skills activity this week involves an icy pole mould. Little Bean quickly learnt which way up to put the icy pole sticks in the holes, but is still working on getting the alignment right.

He decided that it might be fun to merge some activities and started putting bottle lids into the icy pole mould.

Little Bean is into pull-along toys at the moment. His crocodile pull-along toy doesn't get enough traction on his wooden floor, so I got him a pull-along train. It has three blocks that sit on the carriage. I think I might tie a longer string to it though so Little Bean can walk with it. The string it currently has is tiny and he can only pull it along if he crawls or scoots across the floor.

We are keeping his xylophone keyboard this week and adding some more musical instruments. His wooden xylophone is making a return and I added some metal cans and tins to use as drums.

This week's discovery basket

We've all been sick with a cold these past couple of weeks, so I've been a bit slack about new activities and discovery baskets. Little Bean was too sick to really care anyway. This is the basket we've been using for the past few days.  Little Beans is currently obsessed with taking the the lid of his baby milk bottle and putting it back on again, so I was inspired to create the theme "opening and closing". I gathered up some practical life items with a range of methods for opening and closing.

 

This basket contains a white plastic container with a press on lid, two small blue containers with snap on lids, a baby bottle with a tight fitting snap on lid (Little Bean's current favourite), a textured vinyl purse with a zipper, a pencil case with a zipper and a blue container with a screw on lid. I also added a fabric bag that has a velcro fastening but didn't get a picture of it.

How to make a discovery basket

A discovery basket is a basket, box or tub filled with carefully selected items that your child can play with and explore. I've also heard them called treasure baskets. Items can be tactile, interesting or thematic. I usually choose a theme based on Little Bean's current interests and go from there. They are a great way to stimulate the senses, introduce new concepts and to practice skills.

I have a big box filled with loads of interesting items for discovery baskets. It's actually getting a little crazy. I have so many ideas that I'm going to have to get a bigger box soon. Maybe even a room.

Recently we've had discovery baskets for the following themes:
Round
Soft
Things that roll or can be pushed along
Sound sensory bottles - go here for instructions on how to make them

Round - metal sieve, metal baby food jar lid, sauce dipping bowls,
plastic lid with embossed stars, flexible clear plastic lid,
plastic jar lid with grooved edges.

Sound sensory bottles containing plastic straws, rice, chickpeas,
mung beans & lentils, kidney beans and bells.

Roll or push - sensory ball, plastic balls with bells inside,
velvet ball, small wooden balls, plastic rattle, plastic cylinders
with bells inside, plastic truck and lots of wooden cars.

Some other themes I'd like to try in the near future are:
Shiny and smooth
Metal
Spin or turn
Kitchen tools
Opening and closing
Rough or smooth
Wood

Here are some of the items I have put aside for future use:

Beautiful sea shells

Wooden chopsticks and
bamboo placemat

Metal sieve, silicon cupcake pans, plastic juicer, metal beaters,
metal ladle, textured plastic rice spoon, plastic curry puff press.

Sometime you can make the basket itself an interesting
feature. I like using plastic sieves and baskets
with different textures.

Texture - vinyl coin purse, shower loofah, woven handbag,
scrubbing brush.

A variety of scarves and shawls