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

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!

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.

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.

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.

Clothespin fun

Jr S loves to do this activity with clothespins , I got the idea from Chasing Cheerios. I love this blog, and have used many many ideas from her blog. I had colored the pinching ends of the clothespins with markers when Jr S was about 15-16 months so that she would be able to identify the place to hold her fingers . But now she can do the task without cues.

Update on Kumon Books

After using just the sticker part of Kumon books we finally ventured to cut and paste and it was great. She finished about 8 pages in one sitting. I liked this activity , it focuses not only on fine motor but uses texture (glue) and analytical skills (while orienting the piece to be pasted) and gives a fun end product which can be proudly displayed on the Art Wall.

transfering rice grains

Another Montessori inspired activity, finally Jr S graduated from using bigger beans to using rice grains. She loves this task and is quite meticulous about clean up too. I adapted this using small  Anchor measuring cups.

Paper collage

We practiced tearing paper, what a great re-use of all my magazines and then pasted the pieces . Just a fun open ended activity.

one to one correspondence

For fall, we tried a one to one correspondence activity with silk leaves and plastic spiders. Jr S initially just wanted to put all the spider rings on her fingers but when she saw me doing the activity, she joined in and went on to do this twice in one sitting. A good lesson for left to right and one to one . Next time, I will try to do this with leaves we collect during our walks.

Push pin activity

I really wanted to do the golf tee activity with hammer with Jr S but never got a chance to go and buy the tees. So I improvised and used pushpins instead. This gave me a chance to talk with Jr S about safety while handling sharp objects, we worked on left to right progression while pushing the pins through a piece of packing foam. It was so nice to see her self correcting when she thought that the pin was not in order. Next time I will buy some colored pushpins so that we can also work on sorting. The first picture shows her doing the activity, second picture is her finished product .

Update: Just wanted to update that Jr S did not hurt herself while doing this and I didn't have to remind her to hold the pins correctly. Hopefully this safety lesson carries through!