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.

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.

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. 

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.

What we're doing this week

This week we've been doing a lot of fine motor skill activities.

This bead maze was a great buy in Australia on my last trip. It has wooden beads that slide along the wires. It also has wooden toys that can be pushed along channels in the base.

I made these sorting toys from recycled baby milk cans, wooden blocks, plastic lids and chew toys. Go here for instructions on how to make your own milk can sorting toys. Little Bean quickly got the hang of it.

This week's "Opening & Closing" discovery basket has practical life items that will help develop fine motor skills. Go here to more details.

 

After Little Bean became very stubborn about pulling tissues and baby wipes from any box he could find, I gave him a box of his own. I filled the box with small muslin clothes that he can pull out and put back in at his leisure.

 We taped some toilet roll tubes to the side of his drawers and taped a bowl to the bottom. He drops the ball in the top and it falls into the bowl. The angled tubes make the ball spin around the bowl as they land.

 We bought this toy from Gymboree. Peek-a-boo is Little Bean's favourite game. It's a sure-fire way to cheer him up and keep him amused.