Old memories.

I remember making these simple flashcards with black markers on white cardstock and taping them to the side of Jr S's crib and changing table. She really enjoyed those. She also used to enjoy seeing the light coming in from the side of the crib and the contrast which the slats offered her. This was recommended by my amazing sister from the book "The Baby Whisperer". One of the first handmade toy we made was rattle out of a cereal can. It was vibrant yellow with a small plastic ball inside it. Jr S loved to look at it . Another toy which Jr S loved was a remote control which helped us immensely as Jr S was not very tolerant of tummy time till she found out about the remote. Later we also used it to develop further milestones like creeping and crawling. One thing which has not changed since when she was a baby is her love for books. I remember the funny times when she was about 7 months ,she would instinctively start searching for her book stashed in the pocket of out rocker when it was sleep time. She still loves to have books read to her. her favorite phrase: ata vachuya ekda ani mag last time, translated means lets read , once and then the last time.

back from our hiatus... not really a hiatus though

I will be starting writing in my blog again. Since a couple of months, I had been entering our activites in another journal but missed my blog as that is how I would like my DD to eventually see what fun times we had. I am thinking of blogging about all our old activities which we did when she was an infant /toddler. Just as another record keeping device. Lets see how far I am able to do this.

fishing for insects

Recently we had a toy swap with  our very good friend and Jr S got a chance to read, The Wide mouthed frog . This came with a great puppet set of each of the animals. Needless to say, she loved it. Continuing with the same theme, I made some insects out of cardstock and taped magnets to them and Jr S "fished" for insects to feed the wide-mouthed frog.

spray painting

We made simple shapes with sidewalk chalk and Jr S sprayed inside the shapes with her little spray bottle. A great activity to work on fine motor coordination. If you want to isolate the control in the index finger , try using a water gun .

More pouring/transferring activity

Jr S loves transferring bird food in our little feeder, what a great repetitive activity for practicing transferring skills. This time I gave her a small plastic teacup to fill it. Now when we do this activity I fill in a small plastic container with bird food which makes the transferring it , neater. Birdies...Bon Appetit

water pouring

This was one of our staple activity last summer as well, but this year her skills have improved a lot for pouring and transferring. I just put out a kitchen tub with water, sometimes, with food color in it. We made a pouring station with a milk garton with a cutout hole and put the funnel in the pouring spout. Add a few measuring cups /spoons and watch them get all wet!!

Easter fun

We had lots of fun activities for Easter. Unfortunately, we were not able to arrange for an egg hunt this year but Jr S had fun at school . We did this patterning activity with different colored easter eggs. The first time, I made 2 patterns and had Jr S copy them . The second time she participated in making the actual pattern but got carried away a little. All in all , colorful fun.

matching skills

I love this game of matching cards, we first tried it before a trip to my sisters and then we played with it a couple of times in the plane ride too. It has 10 pairs of cards and they are tricky to match with subtle differences like purse/ no purse, shirt pattern differences etc. Till a few months back I would only present 4 to 5 pairs at a time for her to match. Now she is able to match all the 10 pairs at a time. I got this game from  here. Sorry for the bad picture!

Pudding

Jr S helped me make her pudding , she loves to use the whisk. Unfortunately, Jr S wasn't as interested in eating it . But it was so much fun, she helped me measure with her measuring glass and kept on saying "just 1 cup" as we measured.

Nature on the wall

We havent been able to take nature walks in many days due to a bout of illnesses . But we had a bunch of tulips which we dried and gathered a few leaves and twigs, pulled out some acorns we had gathered a few weeks ago and voila ! a nature collage . It looks so pretty , that I pasted it on the entryway wall. JrS  was so proud and pointed that collage to us several times. We sorted the leaves and petals and counted them before sticking them on.

coin rubbings

Jr S tried her hand at coin rubbings , we used quarters and stuck them on the table and positioned the papaer over them. Blue is our happening color this month, so of course we chose a blue crayon for this. Good for her fine motor and observational skills. I showed her how to do the task and then she took over!

This is a very messy activity witha lid and paint but the focus is on co-ordinating wrist movements. For this I put paint on the paper and then she made  the design by turning the lid using her wrist . Toddlers' logic: more mess = more fun, so it was great!

Lapbooks

I was very excited about making lapbooks for Jr S but at this time, I cannot seem to find the time  to make them . But this was the first one I made. It is about the letter A. The front panel has a sandpaper letter 'A' and 'a; there is a sorting activity, counting apples activity, matching sizes activity , marathi A activity, a letter search activity and a join the pictures activity. She loves it and pulls it from our shelf when in mood. The bigger activity pages are reusable . I made another with B and then on a weird whim ,made on with Q.

To reinforce the Marathi numbers and to work on jumping skills, I stuck these squares on the carpet with number 3, 4, and 5 in Marathi and then she had fun jumping in them. I was actually surprised to see her pointing out the numbers even when we walked by the squares afterwards.

Sand box fun

This sunday, we had a fun time in the sand box, Jr S loved scooping sand, she would scoop it from all over the playground and carry it upto her sand toys. I dug in a little deep and we found some damp sand so we tried to build little things with her toys. Needless to say she didn't want to leave it to come home.

Hula hoops

Hula Hoop is  a  great gross motor manipulative. We played so many games with it including ring-around the rosie in 2 variations , one simple round turns and the other with compound arm movts. The second one was a little hard for jr S but she liked it. Then we sang the Looby-Loo song and jumped in and out of the hoop. We used different activitites to initiate and conclude the session. I t was fun!

Cheerios Fun

We had fun stringing cheerios into a pipe cleaner, but Jr S kept on eating the Cheerios. So we had to pattern the activity: one Cheerio on the pipe cleaner and 2 Cheerios for her to eat. We ended up making a small necklace for one of Jr S ‘s Valentine teddy . Continuing with the cheerios theme, I pulled out an old cheerios book and Jr S really loved completing the pictures with Cheerios.

language skills and categorization

All this with our favorite song: old mcDonald. We started by giving old Mc Donald a library, house, store and then proceeded to fill in words using relevant objects  e.g Old Mc Donald had a library  EIEIO, in thta library he had lots of books EIEIO... It was fun and  helped us with categorization.

lady bug , this time for real

Jr S loved to play with this little lady bug for a few minutes, then the lady bug flew away.This is actually an old picture , and that's my nephews hand . Both of them played with her. Just found the pic so decided to share it .

farm animals again!!!!

I have no idea why Jr S loves farm animals so much . But I am glad she does. So I opened one of her bday gifts the other day and it was  a beautiful wooden puzzle with huge pieces. And we had a fun time trying to solve it. I think my nephew's obsession with puzzles is rubbing off on her and I am thrilled about it. We talked about corner pieces, continuity of pictures. I know she is retaining this information because when I got her some smaller puzzles , she would talk about it even though I still had to guide her through the puzzle.

Rodeo

Jr S has a Go- Texan day at her Montessori this Friday and so we decided to decorate a cowboy hat with pink and purple flowers and stars. She enjoyed it a lot but after finishing the decoration, she took them all off and started all over again. She did this about 3 times, ripped many flowers so we ended the activity by saying goodbye to the hat .We plan to complete the ensemble with pink bandanas and button down white shirt and jeans. It will interesting to see if she actually will let me put all that on. Till Friday then… eee-haw

Matching game

I saw a pack of games at walmart the other day , for about 2 $ , It had a bingo game , 24 piece puzzle and these cards for Crazy eight. Now I confess , I have no clue what Crazy eight is but Jr S opened the pack of cards and before I knew it she started arranging them in a line and match them up. So It was great , good for visual discrimination and fine motor for handling those cards .
 Sorry about the photo, but thats exactly how she lined them up.

Fun shaped parathas

We had a blast making these fun shaped parathas (obvious cookie cutters from Christmas...star, snowflake, gingerbread man) . She loved to eat them too. Plus they were healthy too .  Jr S loves to play with dough, she mooshed it so much that I had a "fun" clean up too.

Patterning activity with hearts

We made patterns with different colored construction paper hearts and Jr S copied the last pattern. I have used some patterns from Montessori for everyone in the past but I found better success with presenting atleast 2 full pattern sets for her to seee before trying to imitate. She loved to do it the first time. the second time I let her choose the pattern and she was ofcourse much too happy about it.

farm animals again!!!

This time we sorted farm and wild animals using the plastic figurines from Target with tongs. She loves to keep the farm animals safe from the wild animals. Spring and Summer visits to the farm are in order.

Valentines Day art

Jr S has a Valentine's Day celebration coming soon at her Montessori , So we decide to make a shirt with little hearts. I applied masking tape all over the shirt except for the part to be colored and let her run a riot with fabric paint and brush. She absolutely enjoyed it . But the best part for her was peeling off the masking tape . She really wasn't into the finished product so much as much as she was into those masking tape hearts. So we nade  a pink cardstock heart and she proudly pasted her masking tape hearts on it.

Cute little S had a farm, EIEIO.....

That was the song we were singing while playing with tiny and big farm animals. I got them from the dollar section at Target, then we pulled out an old Fisher-price farm toy , which became our center around which we built houses for the animals with Megablocks and jenga blocks . Finally we built a round fence using cardboard blocks and megablocks. Jr S had a blast playing with the animals. She called the tiny ones from the multipack --Babies and then the big single ones were their mothers. She matched them, fed them, rode her tiny tractor around them, and gave them blankets while they slept. We briefly touched upon how birds give eggs and other animals had babies but I am not sure she really cared for this information right now. Anyways , we had a blast !

Counting in Marathi

I would love it if Jr S is able to speak and read Marathi, my mother tongue. So we started trying to count in Marathi, geting her familiarised with the numbers. For this activity, I cut the numbers from a Marathi calender( Kalnirnay) and we counted the number of beans for each number and finished the activity with a numbers song which my mother had taught us. I hope this goes along way. It is beautiful language.

Ladybug and Snowman

Jr S loves ladybugs and snowman, so we decided to make one out of the pack of no bake clay . It was very messy and not the best for her litle hands but it was fun for me and fun for her while she was smoothening out the product and inserting pipe cleaners. But she had the BEST time painting them, she chose red color for both and then added the deatiles with a Sharpie pen and she named the ladybug Elli, the snowman has  a different name every single time... We are soo proud of these sculptures.

Musical Journey !

I am musically challenged, but I really want Jr S to be able to enjoy music and hopeful that she  learns to play  an instrument . We started playing this game while I was dressing her and she enjoyed it a lot. I would sing out the tunes of her favorite songs and she would have to guess them and she did so well. We tried a few songs in English and Marathi. I think in a few months she will be ready to play "Naughty Note" a great activity I read in  book long time ago.

Modified Lacing beads

I attached 2 flexible straws and molded a foil piece at the end to make this semi-rigid "lace" for early beading practice. She like it initially and laced a couple of beads and then got fascinated with the straw piece itself . Ahhh... you never know what they think!

Measure all the way

I made these super simple bars out of construction paper strengthened with contact paper and Jr S loved to arrange them according to height and then proceeded to take out her measuring tape to see how tall they were. She absoutely enjoyed it . Then she tried to measure my hand too!

Alphabet Bingo

I LOVE raiding the dollar section at Target and I found this fantastic game of bingo. We have adapted it for Jr S but it is still fun!! We have been using this for a few months now and we progressed from letter recognition to phonemic awareness to beginning Sounds. She still has a little trouble with the beginning sounds part for certain sounds but she loves it.  This is an old picture, now she can place her chips carefully in place.

Lazy in the new year..

We had a fantastic looooong vacation at my sisters place and now things are gradually falling in place with newer routines and some positive changes. So I did not have a new years resolution but I would love to be a little more active on the blog than before . With Jr S 's growth spurts we have been having a blast with new activities and older activities revisited.