Cooking Fun

My little one is really into pouring and putting things into new containers right now.  So today we made chocolate chip cookies.  That is an activity that involves almost nothing but pouring, stirring, and exchanging containers.  She helped me pour everything - flour, sugar, egg, etc.  I would get things ready on the counter (where she can't reach), and then I'd put the bowl on the floor and let her help hold and pour the sugar or whatever into the bowl.  When we needed to soften the butter, we put the cup of butter into the microwave together, and I had her fingers touch the buttons to make it go.  When it was time to stir, I gave her a spoon and she stirred with me.  The best was gradually adding the flour/baking soda/salt mixture (in one bowl) into the sugar mixture in a different bowl.  I put both bowls on the floor next to each other, and she used her table spoon to put little spoon-fulls of flour into the sugar mixture.  She got clever at one point and started putting the sugar mixture back into the flour!  It didn't really make things more difficult, and so I let her play.  The only difficult part was when it came time to pour in the chocolate chips - "I want chocolate!  I want chocolate!"  We had to do a new Signing Time DVD diversion at that point.  Overall, though, she enjoyed herself so much, using those skills she is most excited about right now in such a grown up way!

Hand Fun

These are some of our favorite sing-song rhymes that occupy our hands and work on fine motor skills:

Open, Shut Them: (hands follow the instructions in the rhyme)

Open, shut them; open, shut them.

Give a little clap!

Open, shut them; open, shut them.

Put them in you lap!

Creep them, creep them, slowly creep them

Right up to your cheek!

Cover up your little eyes 

And through your fingers peak!

This is the Church:

This is the church, (fold the hands "church", with fingers linked together pointing down and thumbs facing you)

This is the steeple, (point the pinkies "steeple" straight up)

Open the door, (open the thumb "doors" in front)

And here are the people! (turn hand upside down and wiggle the finger "people")

We do others, too, but I'm drawing a blank.  I'd love to hear what others do!

Obstacle Course

Today I didn't really feel like going outside, but my daughter still had energy to burn.  So I made an obstacle course in our living room.  First she had to climb a mountain of pillows.  Once she reached the top, she could wiggle her way onto two kitchen chairs I had set up facing each other.  Once on the chairs, she sat down, and I sang, "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great...." (she prepared herself) "FALL!" and she scooted off of the chairs and onto a pillow on the floor.  Next came Daddy's trunk, which served as a step onto the next pair of kitchen chairs, where we did Humpty Dumpty again.  Then, having successfully navigated the path, I had her run, run, run back to the beginning to do it again.  The only problem with this activity was that, as she got creative with it, she wanted to add other obstacles that I didn't feel like adding.  I was pretty low energy today.  If I had felt better, that probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal.  As it was, she LOVED the activity.

Sand Bucket Pendulum

I took one of my daughter's sand buckets and attached about 2 ft of yarn to the bucket's handle.  We had so much fun swinging it back and forth.  I had gotten out a bunch of pasta pieces (Mezzi Rigatoni - they are in the bucket in the picture) and was going to put them on the string, one by one, as a counting game.  She had no interest in that, and it turned out to be too difficult for her, anyway (at least with that low of motivation).  Instead, she put all the pasta into the bucket, and we swung the bucket back and forth with the pasta in it.  We played a few little games with this:

1.  It turns out she is really into dumping, scooping, and pouring right now.  So we would dump the pasta out and then put it back in the bucket.  She saw another little cup, and she put the pasta first into the cup and then poured it into the bucket - it was great for working her motion precision and coordination, even if that wasn't what I initially set out to do. 

2.  I showed her that, when you smoothly swing the bucket all the way up and around - upside down and all - the pasta doesn't fall out!  

3.  We played "bang the bucket."  I attached another string of yarn to another bucket for myself, and I would swing that one while she was swinging hers, and we knocked them against each other.

4.  We also played "kick the bucket."  I'd hold it steady, and she'd kick it.  

So I didn't set out today to work on coordination and motor skills, but we had a ton of fun, and she really did end up learning the concept of the pendulum through extensively interacting with one.   We'll work on counting some other time.

Water Scooping

One of my daughter's favorite activities is playing with water.  Sometimes we do this in the tub, but during the day I get out my biggest cooking pot and fill it with water.  Then I take my measuring cups - the 1 cup, 1/2 cup, and 1/4 cup, and put it in the pot.  I place the pot on the floor on top of a folded bath towel or two, which we sit on, to catch the spills.  Then we scoop up the water with the cups!  I'll do things like fill up the 1 cup and dump the water into the 1/4 cup - too much water!!!  It won't fit!  Then I pour the water back into the 1 cup, and - not enough water!  We do this over and over.  She's positively fascinated by it.  She'll often add to our little game by getting other containers to put in the pot and scoop the water.  Her favorite are these little stacking toys she has.  They have holes in their bottoms, and so when we try to scoop the water - it falls through!  I look flabbergasted and sing, "There's a hole in the bucket..."  She thinks it's really funny.  If your child is ready for it, you could have him/her try to pour the water from container to container to work the fine motor skills and coordination.

Homemade Counting Toys

There are tons of counting toys I could buy, and we have a few.  But as interesting as they are at first, they lose their magic after awhile, and so it creates this endless cycle of always having to buy more toys.  Since one of the things I want most is activities I can do with my toddler, and since it is less expensive and less wasteful just to use things around the house in a new way, I decided to come up with a way to create new counting toys for my toddler.  This is what we did today, and I'll record some of my other ideas, too.

I used a teaspoon as the "stick."  I used construction paper to make some little "rings," which became the counting objects.   My toddler's job in making it with me was to press really hard when I put the scotch tape on the paper to make them stay as rings.  We counted them as we put the rings on the spoon, and then as we put the rings on her fingers (her idea! - it was so much fun).  This was fabulous for developing her fine motor skills.  Most of her store-bought ring toys are wood or plastic and relatively big and sturdy.  Small, flimsy paper rings were much more difficult for her, and so it took more effort.

Other ideas for sticks:  

1.  Stick from the backyard and pasta (Mezzi Rigatoni worked really well - I found it at the store - it's a good size).  I could just use one stick and let pasta slide down it, counting as we go.  More complex, I thought about taking 2 or 3 sticks of differing lengths and then using string or something to attach them parallel to one another to a perpendicular 4th stick, which would be the base.   Then we could work on concepts like, different length sticks hold a different number of pasta pieces.   (This worked great!  For some reason my computer won't let me put a picture of it here, but you can do it really simply.  We started with just one long, thin stick and let pasta sliiiiiiiiiiiide down it, counting as we went.) 

2.  Yarn and pasta.  To keep the pasta from falling all the way off the yarn when it slides down, I could maybe tie it to something, like one of her sand buckets.  Oh, good idea!!!  And then when we're done with the counting, we can swing the bucket, she can kick the bucket while I hold the string, we can jump over the string, we can dress the bucket up like (or just pretend) it is a dog and run around with it going "rough! rough! rough!"  (This one didn't work so well as far as counting went.  But we had a TON of fun playing with the yarn and bucket.  I wrote about it in the Sand Bucket Pendulum post, and there is a picture there.  Seriously, this is her favorite toy in our house now.)

Other suggestions welcome!

Tunnels and Balls: Motor Development and Counting

We have endless fun working on coordination, motor skills, and counting using tunnels and balls.  This has been a great way to burn energy on a cold or rainy inside-day.  We have several variations on the same theme.  Here is the gist - I lay out a tunnel placing 2 rows of blocks side-by-side.  As I put them in place, I count 1,2-3,4-5,6-etc.  Then we gather a ball or 2 (or 3) and roll it through the tunnel back and forth.  Then we kick it through the tunnel, throw it through the tunnel, run with it through the tunnel, jump with it through the tunnel, etc.  

One of the neat things about working with my daughter at this age is that she naturally takes the role of a co-creator with regard to our activity as her attention wanes every few minutes.  Today, while we were playing this game, we ended up doing these other things as well as we sort of naturally flowed with her attention and interest:

1.  I placed empty plastic water bottles at the end of the tunnel and used them like bowling pins.  We would kick, throw, and roll the ball through the tunnel to knock them over.  It took a little while for her to get the gist of this - at first she just carried the ball over to the "pins" and knocked them down directly.  But as she watched me she figured out my suggestion and ended up getting into it.  I was super impressed, too, as I watched her develop from knocking down the pins directly to kicking one ball to knock down one pin and then another ball to knock down the pin beside it!  

2.  We moved the rows of blocks together so that they formed a balance-beam-like row.  I walked along it, and she thought that looked like fun, and so she walked along it, too.  Obviously, I held her hand because the "beam" was unsteady and I didn't want her to sprain her ankle or something.  But she did really well with it and walked the beam over and over and over...

3.  She got out a flash light, and so we turned it on, shined it on the floor, and the light on the floor became the "ball!"  I moved the light down the (reconstructed) tunnel to the water bottles and shook the light over the bottles like I was knocking them down.  She thought this was hilarious.  The I had her "kick" the light and we did the same thing, "knocking down" the bottles.  

She also dressed up the ball (and then later the light on the floor) with her hair band, moved the blocks around some, and practiced attempting to sit her doll upon one of the tall, skinny blocks standing upright (that one didn't quite work).  The whole thing was tons of fun.