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 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.