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.

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.

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.

Bath Time Fun

Little Bean loves to have a bath. There's no problem getting him into the bath, but getting him out can be a hassle. Luckily, we have lots of cool things to do to pass the time.

To help keep him safe, I bought him a bath seat. I got this one at Big W in Australia. It has suction cups on the bottom to stick it to the bathtub.

I love this bath thermometer from Canpol. It makes it super easy to get the bath water just right. I got this from Con Cung baby store in Ho Chi Minh City. They have lots of stores across Vietnam and have a delivery service that is free for purchases over 199,000 VND (AUD$10). The delivery fee is only 20,000 VND (AUD$1) for purchases under 199,000 VND.

We use this Aveeno bath soap for Little Bean. It is gentle on his skin and his eczema. They have a great range of bath and skin products that are suitable for eczema sufferers.

 

Little Bean has a lovely Nanna who has given him some great bath toys. She gave me these stick-on stars when he was born. They have suction cups on the bottom and they are textured on top. This made them great for putting on the bottom of his baby bath to sit on so he wouldn't slip. Now that he's older, he likes to stick them on the sides of the bath and the tile wall.

Nanna also gave him these stacking bath cups from Bruin. Little Beans can stack them or use them to scoop up water and watch it dribble through the holes in the bottom. The top cup has a water wheel in it.

This fabulous waterfall toy is from Nanna too. It's from Fisher & Price. You can stick the toys on to the wall in various orders, and pour water through the top. It's a great way to show Little Bean cause and effect. He really likes it when the lobster dumps the water out of the bucket.

These squeaky animal toys are so cute. We usually have a plastic jug in the bath and Little Bean likes to put these toys in and out of it. He also uses a large slotted spoon to scoop them out of the water. I'll add another step soon and get him to scoop them and then put them into the jug.

Gymboree Play & Music update

Little Bean and I finally attended our free introductory Play & Learn class and it was great. We are definitely becoming members. I'm not sure who had more fun out of the two of us. I had such a blast jumping around, dancing and singing. It's all good because a dozen other Mums were doing it too. Little Bean loves music and dancing so mat time was his favourite part. All the staff seem to really love kids and to love their job, which is the most important thing to me. They just oozed joy and enthusiasm, which rubbed off on the kids and had them feeling great too.

I would have loved to get some photos but I was so busy having fun, I forgot all about it. The equipment was set up completely differently to the last time we were there. The big inflatable tubes were set up as swings and as tunnels. They added a net that the kids could walk or climb up. There was a little gang plank for the kids to walk along or bounce on.

To see my previous post and photos from our first visit to Gymboree, go here.

Each class has a theme. Our theme was "Side by side". It was all about promoting co-operation and socialisation. Most activities were done in pairs or groups, and the kids were encouraged to wave to each other and say hi at each step of the activity. Little Bean amazed me by doing so many things that I didn't think possible for him. The main thing I learnt from the class was to stop underestimating Little Bean's abilities. He is so much more able than I ever gave him credit for.


In my previous post, I forgot to mention that Gymboree Play and Music has locations in 33 countries.

The Vietnamese locations can be viewed here.

In Australia, they only have locations in Queensland so far. See here.

International locations can be found here.

What we're doing this week

This post is a little late going up. We got Little Bean some beautiful new wooden toys last week. They are made by Win Win Toys, a Vietnamese company. I want to buy 90% of their toy catalogue.

This pull-along crocodile wriggles along with a caterpillar-like movement and makes a clacking noise. However, it doesn't work on the wooden floor in Little Bean's bedroom. The wheels can't get enough traction. It works on his playmat and on the carpet in my room though. He likes to just carry it around and chew on the string and bead.



Little Bean loves music so it was a no-brainer to start his musical instrument collection with this rainbow coloured xylophone. It was a fast favourite and he quickly learnt that it sounds cool when you run the stick across the keys instead of just hitting them.

I loved this ball-run toy and couldn't wait for him to want to play with it. After only showing him twice how to put the balls on the top ramp, he has it sussed and played happily for ages. He has since found alternative uses for the balls.

He has lost some interest in stacking his bowls and cups this week. Instead, he has been using them with the balls from his ball-run toy. He puts the balls in them, tips them from one bowl to another and covers the balls with them.

He's still loving his sensory balls. He's really gotten the hang of kicking the big red ball around now. I was also going to pack his inflatable roller toy away as he hasn't shown much interest in it for a week or so, when he suddenly started playing with it again. It has bell filled balls inside and he loves the sound. He's lays on top of it and rolls over it to the floor on the other side. He's also been kicking it around. Kicking really seems to be a big thing for him at the moment.









He's been wanting to carry his basket of wooden blocks around one-handed. It didn't work with the shallow basket and they kept spilling out. I got him a new deep basket with handles and he's been carrying them everywhere.

His discovery basket contents haven't changed. I realised that in the photo of it, there's a small round wire sieve I didn't mention last week. This was part of an old discovery basket that he found laying around and put in there himself. He loves the feel of the wire mesh.


I didn't change as many things this week as I originally planned. Instead, his natural curiosity found new ways to use old things. Next week, his sound sensory bottles will be taken out as he's currently showing minimal interest in them. I think I'll replace them with visual sensory bottles.