Playing with Trash

What could be better than a swimming pool full of newspaper and colorful baggies?  Well a lot of things, my son thinks ;)

It took a while for him to really get into this... I had thought he would love it because of how much he liked to throw fall leaves but I was mistaken.  Still, we had our good moments, like when he realized that he could see through the bags and wanted to sing the peekaboo song.

I found the idea for this activity here.  Oh, and also only use the plastic bags if you are going to be supervising your child!  I just added them in because we don't get the paper so we had very little of it in the garage, but had tons of plastic bags that my inlaws always seem to give us.

I also made up a sensory box (in this case, I almost think its just another term for "junk...") I tossed tons of stuff in there, mostly game pieces--from Rummikub, Dominoes, Sequence, Mancala, Scrabble, plus shape beads, cotton and pompoms, clothesmpins and a couple shiny plastic ornaments for good measure.

I set it out with tons of containers, spoons, cups, etc. and let my son get to work.  He did a lot of stirring and scooping and in general, had a great time!  I am sure we will get it out again tomorrow.

He is currently into stars since we put up the tree, so we set about to do a star collage.  He has helped make these in the past but this time his helping equated to him continuously getting his hand stuck on the paper.

So I pretty much made the whole thing, but it was worth it later because he keeps picking it up and starting to dance, his signal that he wants me to sing twinkle twinkle little star.  so cute!

One final thing I did, in a fit of randomness, I decided to cut stars out of scrap paper and I taped them up all over the living room.  It took a while, but he eventually noticed them and has been having fun taking them down, looking at them, and then "pat, pat, pats" them back onto the wall (which is what we say when we make the collages).

Circles and Triangles (yes, again!)

Today we have done some of the activities from Tuesday, along with a few new ones that I really enjoyed. My favorite activity was rolling this shapes dice.

I got the idea here at Toddler Toddler .  I wrapped a kleenex box in paper towels like I was wrapping a present (again, I am seeing a serious materials shortage at my house...  we need paper!  And real tape!).  Since I figured it wouldn't last long, I quickly drew shapes onto the box, although once I get real paper I will probably cut the shapes out.  This all took less than five minutes and voila! Shapes dice.  We rolled the dice and then called out the shape that was on it--I only put circles and triangles on it to keep it simple.  It was really fun.  Obviously it is already falling apart due to Owen feeling like he has to claw the box to throw it, but it was a very fun activity and I know we will do it again soon!

I also downloaded this simple shapes book a few days ago called Shape Monster from Hubbard's Cupboard

I think it is designed to be for kids to put together but we don't have many shape books so I figured it would be perfect for us.  I colored the shapes and put it together and we read it a few times.  Owen seemed to like it and was especially interested in the circle and triangle pages.

The other "new" activity today was playing with the shapes sorter game.

Oh, I hate the shapes sorter, it has been the bane of my existance.. Owen doesn't understand it and all he ever wants to do is dump the pieces out all over the place so I step on them and hurt my feet... But today I tried something new, and got out just the circles and triangles thinking that maybe the more complicated shapes overwhelmed him (Whats with the star and plus sign? Whats wrong with a rectangle or oval or something?).  He got the circle right away and needed a little help with the triangle but I was very surprised that he even did that well since he hasn't been able to do it before.   I'm going to try my best not to hate this toy and to play with it some more in the future.

Finally, I know that I posted this the other day but I thought I would post the sensory bean tub again,  It is one of Owen's favorite things to do, plus we added a little singing to the activity today.  We had lots of scooping implements as well as the triangle and circle shapes, and I let him play by himself with it for awhile (which, in general, means disaster).

When I came back I remembered that we have been singing a song from storytime lately to the tune of "where is thumbkin" so I made up a very easy song for the shapes.  "where's the circle? wheres the circle? Here is is, Here it is, this is a circle, this is a circle, here it is, here it is."  yeah, I know, am a genius songwriter.  But he loved the song and I think it helped reinforce the shapes (which he mostly understands now).  We also sang about other things like "where's the bowl, spoon, etc."  I'm pretty sure I am going to incorporate this song into other activities because it worked pretty well for us.

Also, this afternoon, if we have time or inclination, I will bring out the playdough and use the shapes sorter shapes to press into the dough.  But maybe we will save that or another day, who knows?

Anyway, thats what we are up to, hope you got some ideas that you can use and please share with me anything you have been doing that you think we would enjoy!

in which we make noise, eat finger paint, stack and explore color (or not)

at the library, Owen really seemed to enjoy playing with shakers while dancing around to music so I decided to implement this at home. We've danced, and we've shaked, but never at the same time. I rounded up some noisemakers-- a set of keys, bells, a homemade shaker bottle (beads, rice and found items in a waterbottle), round bead containers, a package of beads and a vitamin container with magnets inside.


I was searching for the Ting Tings, which I think is the essential toddler dance music (and should be marketed as such) but settled for Mates of State instead. It was a blast, well for about four songs, and then he suddenly found coloring more appealing, but that is exactly why I set up the color table so I was cool with that.


Fingerpainting with pudding was another activity of the day. I had mixed up and colored instant pudding last week so we used the leftovers. If I were making it fresh today I would have had Owen help stir in the food coloring. I laid out tinfoil (interesting to play with and easy cleanup) and set out some utensils and objects and let him do his thing with the pudding. He had lots of fun smearing and eventually eating, the pudding. And spoon practice!


I thought this stacking rings-type activity was going to be a hit, but it wasn't. As soon as Owen saw the paper towel holder, he started making car noises and was driving it around the room. lol. Well I had cut up some toilet paper rolls, and gathered up other round objects with holes in them like stacking rings, bracelets, duct tape, etc for him to place on and take off of the paper towel holder. I will definitely try this again because I still think its a great activity.


the final thing we did was introduce the color green, which I don't think he's really ready to embrace but we will keep looking at colors. Today I put a bunch of green things in a green bag and had him play with them and take them out while I named the items...Usually this sort of discovery is really fun but the bag must have been full of lame stuff because he was so over it in a few seconds... Maybe if I had said "these are my cherished treasures please do not touch them" he would have spent a lot of time on it, who knows. Anyway, I have some piles of red and blue objects put together in the closet, I am sure we will try this again soon.

beginnings

last week, I made playdough for Owen after googling a recipe. This activity led me to learning how to make finger paint, and finally searching all the websites and blogs of the universe to find things for toddlers to do, activities to help them learn and to have fun. So now I am trying them out! Some things work better than others, but I figured that reading the blogs of fellow mamas was so helpful to me that I would put out my own in hopes it can inspire someone else. I'm still new to this so its a lot of trial and error... But I've noticed that these activities seem to interest him much more than his toys. These are some of the things we have done the past few days:


Cooking! This is by far the best activity for Owen--he will spend a ton of time stirring and whisking away in a little pot. I am showing him how to add ingredients, last night it was flour, water and chex, this morning he has been stirring oats, flour, water, kix and frozen peas--we would add a new ingredient when his interest would start to wane. It is a very messy activity, but I am trying to remember that cleanup only takes a minute or two and the activity lasts for much longer. Last night I got him up on a chair and he "helped" me stir dinner (we made a casserole). This was so much fun that he got angry when I tried to take him down and make the rest of dinner myself.




Bean tub! To practice scooping and spooning, to touch and feel and play with. Also very messy, a large tub would be wonderful to prevent mess but we don't have one. In our tub is dried beans, popcorn and penne. He loves to play around with it, the activity was even more fun when we dumped it all out onto a tray and spread the beans around with our hands.






Transferring Sequence chips from a bowl into a muffin tin.


devolved into this....


Here he is doing "the wipers on the bus go swish swish swish"... When we get started on that song he doesn't let me stop! He will either say "again" in toddle-speak or do the actions and we keep going and going and going and going...


And I want to add that all of this stuff added up still doesn't take that much of the day, and is just interspaced here and there. Owen is still mostly doing free play with whatever he finds interesting, mostly just running back and forth in the house.

ok thats it for now , we are off to storytime at the library, I have more to share soon ;)