Exploring paint

This week when we finally had some time at home Jelly Bean and I had a wonderful time exploring paint. I put out a huge piece of paper, gave her primary coloured paints and a bunch of strange things to paint with and let her loose. She has a great time and I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed just mucking about with the paint. For little ones it's all about exploring a medium not the outcome.

I put out paint brushes, string, a doll shoe, a pipe cleaner, a shower pouf, some round sponges, a dish brush and left the rest to her. I painted along side her and just let her do whatever she wanted. I know she loves to get messy and I am trying very hard to keep my clean-freak side from influencing her. I bit my tongue many times during our session and tried not to cringe to much when she touched me with painty hands.

Of course painting herself became the most fun. She started off painting her feet and then I had to stripe her so she wouldn't paint her clothes. In the end she was covered in paint from head to toe. One of my favorite moments was when she decided the dolls shoe should fit her. It was so funny to see her putting it on her toes again and again.

 

 

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The box that keeps on giving - the many games to be played with a big box

At the beginning of this year I made Curious George a play house out of my mother in-laws chest freezer box. Then we started renovating and the house was flat packed because we had no space for it. Since then it has had many lives and revivals.

It was a station at CG's 2nd birthday party and the kids had a ball playing in it.

Then it got left at my aunts house and it got rained on. When we eventually got it home I thought it was beyond repair. It went into the garage and I forgot about it. This week I was looking for ways to encourage CG to play in the garden (he still doesn't choose to play their even though the builders are gone) and I found it again. So I hauled it out along with the brown box tape and set about trying to resurrect it. It wasn't easy and I used alot of box tape but CG was so excited by it that it was worth it.

The next day we fetched the post and we spent almost half and hour sending CG post (all the junk mail we had gotten) through his post slot. He absolutely loved this game and we stayed outside until it was quite cold and then Jelly Bean woke up for a feed so we went inside.

 Finally today I gave CG a set of paints and he painted his house. He loved this and spent over an hour decorating his house.

For now the box is holding together and is living outside (its winter and there's no rain) so who knows what game we'll come up with tomorrow. The only limit is our imagination and the boxes structural integrity.

Talking maths with your child

Found this article online and thought it had some interesting points and good advice.

Take a look.

Why It’s Important to Talk Math With Kids

Baby Sign question answered

I received the following question via my Facebook group, a day in the Peas Pod. Please feel free to join me there is you'd like to follow our daily lives.

My 2nd girl is 15months now, and knows what she wants! My sister says you used baby sign with Curious George. She knows a few basic signs that I got from a book. Too late to teach her more? What resources did you use? Our home language is Afrikaans but my older girl is bilingual. Do you think that will be more difficult for little one to adjust? Thought I'd pick your brain, though porridge brain might interfere:)

Thanks so much for your question, I love being able to help out where ever I can. I hope you don't mind if I answer your question on my blog. I think it's a great question and others may benefit from the answer.

I would highly recommend baby sign. We are truly seeing the benefits now. It was really fantastic that he was able to communicate his needs to us when he was in the hospital in traction with his broken leg. At the moment he tells anyone who will listen the story of his leg - he makes the sign for ball and says ba ba, then he says bick (his word for fall over) and then he makes the sign for broken (which we made up for him) and points to his leg. So you can see that at 21 mnths he is using a combination of signs, words and sounds.

I definitely don't think it's too late for your daughter to learn baby sign at 15mnths. She will probably learn the signs quite quickly once she realises that they help get her what she wants. CG learnt the sign for broken after my showing him just three times. Every child is different so I would just suggest trying some signs and seeing how you go.

We used Baby Signing Time DVDs, which you can read more about in my Baby Signing Time post. The DVDs are in English but there are many other Baby Signing time resources you could use that you could translate; there are apps with the flash cards and there is a blog which has some of the signs on it. I also Googled some signs, which Baby Sign didn't include, using an American Sign language website called Signing Savvy and then just showed CG the signs myself. This is how he learnt the signs for some of our African animals like hippo, lion, giraffe etc.

As long as you are consistent in using the sign every time you say the word and saying the word every time your child does the sign then you should be able to teach any words you like. At first I was against teaching CG general words like train or car. I didn't want to stunt his speech at all and only wanted to use the Baby Sign to help him communicate his needs. So I didn't re enforce these words beyond what he saw on the DVD. However he picked them up on his own without me repeating them during the day and started using them himself to communicate. He was so excited that he was able to 'talk' to us and tell us about the things he saw around him that in the end we just went with the extra vocab as well. His ability to communicate his needs, feelings and thoughts astounds me each day. Of course we are really the only ones who can understand him at this point but I suppose this would be the same if he was using grunts and sounds like other little ones do.

We have heard some people's concerns that we will stunt his speech development because he is not being forced to speak to make himself understood. My opinion on this is two fold.

1. At this age and stage of development what they are really developing is the ability to communicate. I am not worried about what form the communication takes as long as his ability to do so is being developed. Words will come in their own time. Just like crawling leads to walking. Every child moves through the movement milestones in a unique manner but all (except a rare few) will walk and then run. As long as I am not concerned about comparing my son to other children of the same age (which as you know is never a good idea anyway) then I see no issue with the actual spoken words coming a little later if that ends up being the case. However we have already watched him drop many signs in exchange for the words. After all every one understands the words but only mom and dad get the sign. When he starts to speak in earnest I am confident that his vocabulary and ability to express himself will be far more advanced than if he had not had baby sign. I'll keep you posted.

2. One of the key reasons for communication is to have ones' needs met. I would rather have an himself understood. CG has even made up some of his own signs for things and people to get his point across. Just as other children might say woof woof for dog before they actually say dog.

In the end I think you could quite easily teach her some signs in Afrikaans the sign wouldn't matter as long as she understood the meaning and more importantly that you are able to understand her. I'd try some signs and see how you do. It will take some repetition before you see any results so I'd give her at least two weeks. In the end if it doesn't help you won't have done any harm (her ever expanding brain will simply kill off the synapses for the signs as it learns other things) but if it works your life may suddenly become much much easier. 

The house that we built

We've all seen the VISA ad where playing with the box the toy came in is a priceless moment. So we all know that toddlers love boxes. This said I was very excited when my mother-in-law kindly saved us the huge box from her new chest freezer. I took it home and it sat in the way in our study for ages until one night I got all creatvie and drew all over the flattened box with a permanent marker.  I drew doors and windows and plants all the way around the box. Then I made him a mail slot and drew (very badly) the two decorative tiles from beside our front door on the box.

Once I'd cut the doors and windows I realised that they would be impossible to shut from the inisde. Curious George's favourtie pass time at the moment goes along with his favourite word - shut. Sometimes he comes up behind me when I'm choosing clothes from my cupboard and says "shut, shut" and then closes the door on me. So I had to make sure he could "shut, shut" the windows and doors of this house. I got the idea to cut the oval holes in in the door and window frames from a play house I saw at Papachinos over the weekend. All credit goes to daddy for working out how to make the top of the box into a pitched roof - well done.

Here are the photos of daddy and Curious George playing in the house when we finally set it up and stuck it back together.

Our house ..... in the middle of the street....er study.

"Say Hello to the camera" says daddy. "Shut, shut" says CG.

"Shut, Shut" the windows. Turns out this is best done from outside the house.

Let me in daddy.

"Shut, Shut"

Peek-a-boo mommy.

Peek-a-boo daddy.

Pudding paint

Today I decided to try making finger paint from instant pudding. I'd read about it a while ago online but hadn't tried it because at that stage Curious George wasn't having sugar but now that we eat most things I thought I'd give it a try.

What you'll need:
1 box of instant pudding
450ml of milk
Electric beater or whisk
Clean surface for painting.

At first he wasn't sure what to do with it. My child is the child a moms and tots who won't touch any of the massy play. So I had to get him started. I messed around bit and he watched. Then I licked my finger. Mmmmm. Once he discovered it tasted nice he was off. Just goes to show that a little encouragement goes a long way.

Then he got into it but he still enjoyed it more when he had a stick or a spoon to play with. Much too messy and gooey for fingers. Its a good thing I know that at the beginning art is really all about experience for little ones and much less about actually creating something. Otherwise I might think that simply eating the pudding and picking out the little confectionary stars was not very artistic. You've got to start somewhere.









































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Poolside science

Curious George loves playing around our pool. It's science and discovery at its most basic. He's discovering all about current from our pool skimmer. This game fascinates him and we end many hours throwing the plastic ball pit balls into the pool to see where they will float to.

I add some extra learning by asking him questions like, do you think the ball will go to the skimmer if we drop it all the way over here? I also narrate what he's doing and what' happening: look the ball is floating toward the skimmer because it's caught in the current. Oh now both of them have been sucked in.

CG has also tested out floating and sinking by throwing stones into the pool but daddy was not very impressed with that experiment as you can imagine.

My Little ones general curiosity and exploration has reminded me that science is everywhere there's so much to discover every day if you just keep your eyes and mind open.








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Bath time fun

Today we discovered one of the best and cheapest bath time toys ever. Curious George absolutely loved this game.

The game - pouring water from a jug into a bottle using a funnel.

I spent R4 on a wide mouthed funnel and R4 on a small plastic jug with a handle. We then used a 500ml buddy bottle to pour the water into.

He loved this and laughed and laughed every time the bottle was full.

Warning: This game is so much fun it could send your child into overwind.

Passage Ping Pong

Its rainy and cold outside so we are playing passage Ping Pong. Its great, Curious Goerge has been running around for 30min chasing the balls. Good way to expend energy and keep him entertained.

Close all the doors that lead into your passage. Take two balls and throw them around. We used ping pong or table tennis balls but small rubber or stress balls works well to.

Explore me Box

I did Baby Gym with my son when he was around 4mnths old. This by the way is a great age to do Baby Gym which I would definitely recommend and am hoping to write a post on sometime soon (just got to find a few extra hours on my 24hr clock).

During the sessions we learnt about ways to stimulate your little one's senses. One of which is touch of course. Our instructor, Elma, had a great idea of using things with different textures for feely time exploration. I embellished on this idea a bit and went wild at Westpack (a huge plastic and home warehouse wholesalers near us) buying all sorts of things for feeling. Then I put them all in a box. Over time I added other things from the recycling and around our house. When Curious George could sit he loved exploring this box, especially because it involved unpacking. I would add new things periodically to keep him interested.

What’s in the Explore me Box.

• Coloured pot scourers of different textures and colours
• Plastic Goldilocks scourers
• A car buffing glove
• Sponges
• Ribbons of different types and textures
• Plastic bracelets
• Cellophane from flowers
• Bubble wrap (watch they don’t put it in their mouths)
• A knobbly plastic starfish
• Fuzzy pipe cleaners
• Glass cleaning cloth (they are very nice and soft)
• Delight Custard Cups

Junk Xylophone

I made this xylophone for Curious George when we were experienmenting with sound.

You can use anything that makes a good sound when banged together. I also attached a spoon for him to bash at it with but that was not all that successful. Mostly he just enjoyed pulling on things so the whole string bounced and everything bashed together.

I tied it to the bottom of our table because the items need to hang freely not up against something.

What I used.
Sturdy cable from a fabric store
Ordinary old string
Some metal pipes I found in the garage from a shelving system
Metal spoons
A plastic ruler
A tin can with a hole made in the top and a small bell tied inside it. (I made the hole with a nail and put duct tape along the open end of the can in case there were any sharp edges.)
A plastic tub filled with plastic dolls shoes.

Sensory Tub - wool bits

There will be quite a few posts based around our sensory tub. Its a large plastic tub which we bought at a plastic warehouse.

Bits of wool - these come from pompoms I made for Curious Georges Birthday which he managed to pull apart.
Two clear Tubs from our plastics cupboard.

He really enjoyed filling the smaller tub and pouring the wool into the larger tub. Eventually he ended up jsut playing with the tubs. He spent a good half and hour playing here.

Put the Lid on - Fine motor

Good for hand eye co-ordination
Matching shape and size
Hand control

Series of containers (round is best) from your recycling.
In the photo is a Calcivita tub, Aqueous Cream Tub, 125ml Cream Tub.

Ribbon Pulling: Good for grasping and pulling.

Thingy for drying socks and undies
Random bits of Ribbon

(sorry the sun from the window means these are not the best photos ever)

Totsperience - Learning through doing

For ages I have been trying to get around to adding posts about all the games and explorations I play or put together for Curious George.

Today I was reminded again about how entertaining a tot can be a desert when it comes to ideas. Thinking up ideas can be really really tough. My design and preschool teaching background (possibly also just my general make something out of nothing demeanour) helps me come up with ideas but I also use the net and other mom's blogs along with books and pre-schooler ideas which I simplify. 

I have been documenting the things I do in photographic form for a while with the best intentions of getting them onto my blog to help all those mom's out there at their wits end. However I just never seem to get around to writing the posts. So I have decided, in the interest of helping mom's out (which after all is the point of this blog) before my child is 20, that I will simply post the photos with headings and captions. That way the ideas will be out there and helping other mom's develop their little ones.

I believe that children learn through exploration and play. They learn by doing, seeing, creating and experiencing life. All the ideas I come up with are about learning through play which is the best way for children to learn. I will be posting more on teaching tots in the future  but for now let’s just get those ideas out there.

So here comes the first one now.