Month: September 2015

Story TIme

Fall Themed Story Time

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Fall is a great time to learn and play outside! We have been sitting in the hammock and doing what I call our story time. Sometimes we do activities while reading the books so we have to get out of the comfy hammock! Story time lasts about 10-20 minutes depending on the books we are focusing on. Babs and I read a TON of book together usually her favorites. During story time I choose the books we read and we usually read them for 1-2 weeks depending on her interest level the activities I have to go along with them. We have currently been working on the books pictured above. I will be posting the activities we do with each book in the coming days! Check for these books on Scholastic, Amazon, or at your local library!

One Windy Day by Tammi Salzano Illustrated by Hannah Wood

The Leaves Are Falling One by One by Steve Metzger Illustrated by Miriam Sagasti

Let It Fall by Maryann Cocca-Leffler

Uncategorized

Clothes Pin Pinch

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The clothes pin pinch is an activity that work on fine motor skills. I happened to have some clothes pins around the house. You could use the colored plastic ones to add some more learning opportunities to the activity. Babs has always beenWP_20150923_18_03_19_Pro a kid who loves to figure out how things work so she really enjoyed this activity. She still uses both hands to pinch the clothes pin but that’s okay! It all about practicing and having fun! I keep showing her how to do it with one hand and she tries for a while. 🙂 We used one of my kitchen mixing bowls that has a lid so we can keep it out for a few weeks and work on it. The key to this activity is let your child explore the clothes pin before you try to show them how to do the activity. If this is something they have never seen before they will be curious about the clothes pin… I know Babs was. It was useless trying to get her attention while she was figuring out what this thing I keep calling a clothes pin was…lol! You want to work on them pinching the clothes pin and clipping it to the edge of the bowl. When they have finished they can unclip them and put them inside of the bowl.WP_20150923_18_03_49_Pro

Materials Needed

Bowl

clothes pins

Kids Cook

Fruit Kabobs (printable kid friendly recipe page)

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Babs can be picky when it comes to food and just because she liked it yesterday doesn’t mean she will like it today! Kids cook is something we try to do once a week and it is intended to be done with an adult at all times. Doing a kids cook project is one way we work through some of those picky eating habits. It tends to be a very simple cooking project which many times doesn’t actually require cooking! The goal is to get her exposed to food she tends to shy away from. It’s a great way to get kids to touch the new food, because let’s get real sometimes even that is a struggle. 🙂 I try to only include one new ingredient so she will continue to enjoy the activity and not feel to overwhelmed by the new food. I create kid friendly recipe sheets that include pictures and simple directions. I print them and put them in a binder that we call her cookbook! Last week we make fruit kabobs and the new/she used to like them and now she doesn’t food was blueberries. I have included the recipe sheets for you to download and use if you would like! Good luck! I would love to hear how it goes!

Check out the kid friendly recipe sheet for Fruit Kabobs!

science, Sensory Play

Bring Summer Inside!

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I love fall and all the wonderful things that come along with it like apple cider, donuts, bonfires….but if you are anything like me I am still not ready for summer to be over. 😦 I could have handled hanging out at the beach for just one more weekend. Okay, that’s a lie, maybe two or three more weekends. 🙂  Babs isn’t ready for summer to be over either. We had such a great time this summer planting flowers and harvesting vegetables from the garden. She has a wonderful Aunt who bought her one of those potted plant grow kits they have for kids. You can get them in the clearance section or sometimes the Target dollar spot has them also. This turned out to be a great way to bring summer inside and continue some of those learning opportunities. Today we used a bowl and spoon to saturate the soil pellet included with the kit. Other times she has just stuck her hands right in the soil and water to break it up.

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We were able to focus on many different skills during this activity such as following directions, waiting, and independently scooping aWP_20150928_11_33_17_Prond pouring. This can also be a very language rich activity! We talked about how the soil feels and different sizes of seeds.

Planting a potted plant inside provided more opportunities for responsibility as well! Letting her do this independently did mWP_20150928_11_35_29_Proake a mess, however, then she was able to be involved in the clean up. Watering her new plant has also been added to the list of chores (or as well call them Toddler Tasks)… you know making her bed, cleaning up toys, and now watering her plant.

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developmental

Activities for Infants

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When Babs was an infant I was always looking for different ways to engage her. Sometimes I just ran out of ideas. I found these great activities for infants online and I used many of them with her. She enjoyed most of them! Some of the activities are out of the box ideas which I really like. The are developmentally appropriate based on how old they are. They have newborn all the way to 12 months. For each month there is a different weekly activity. Thought I would share!
http://www.babycenter.com/0_lets-play-weekly-activities-for-your-babys-first-year_1501475.bc

pretend play

Safari Anmial Playscape

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Babs recently received some safari animals for her 2nd birthday. We decided to make what I call an animal playscape. She is always creating “homes” for her animals using WP_20150907_18_13_27_Problocks, pillows, cups….pretty much anything she can get her hands on. I love her creativity! However, I noticed she tended to just have the animals hide in their “home” and then she would move on to a different activity. I wanted to use a container that had a lid so we could use it for multiple days without our cat destroying it. So I ended up buying one of those bins used for under the bed storage. It worked perfectly! We then spent some time outside collecting different items from the yard. Babs thought this was cool. It was like a backyard scavenger hunt! I gathered some sand from the sand box and we used that as the ground. To make the lake we used a Frisbee, however, any shallow dish that will hold water would work great. We made the cave using a Solo cup and some rocks from the yard.

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We played with it together for about 45 minutes!

She loved it….and I loved it because we could just put the lid on and clean up was done! This activity is a great way to encourage more detailed pretend play. She has continued to play with it independently for about two weeks now.  By independently I mean I am in the same room for supervision but usually doing one of the many household chores that need to get done on a daily basis. Probably folding laundry…..ughh. Hope your little one’s like this activity as much as we did!

Materials Needed

Under the bed storage bin

Toy animals…safari, farm, anything will work

Plastic cup

Frisbee or shallow dish

Natural materials from the backyard

  • Sand or dirt
  • leaves
  • rocks
  • sticks
  • acorns
  • grass
  • pretty much anything else you can think of!