The Rainbow Clouds Craft

I saw this beautiful rainbow craft a few weeks ago in Pinterest and I totally forgot the main site, so please if you own this craft leave a message and I’ll include the credits. 

I’ve been introducing Vito to the spring season using our Spring Season Picture Cards, books and outdoor activities.  Today, I’m sharing the rainbow clouds the boys made last week.  The weather was terrible at that time  and we couldn’t explore our yard so I made use of their free time doing crafts at home.  So I tried to scan through Pinterest in search of simple crafts that BOTH of my kids could work on, and this is one of them!

Crafts projects allow children to exercise their fine motor skills, improve manual dexterity and understanding of visual-spatial relationships.  They provide opportunities to use their imagination as well.  Just be vigilant when using small items and sharp objects like scissors.

Materials:

• strips of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple cardstocks
• white cardstock for the clouds
• cotton
• glue

Procedure:

1.  Pre-cut the white cardstock into a cloud shape.  I made one for each of the boys.  Apply glue on the clouds, and I suggest you provide each kid a glue as they tend to fight over one object when working.  In our case, I just instructed them of what to do, and they’re the ones who executed it. Mostly, Vito follows what his brother is doing

2.  Place a generous amount of cotton.  The fluffiness of the cotton bothers Vito though and he tried to avoid touching the glue as well.

3.  Apply glue at the bottom side of the cloud for your rainbow.  Place accordingly the strips of coloured cardstock to form a rainbow.  You can demonstrate this to the kids or instruct them of the order of colours if they are not yet familiar with rainbow.

4.  Strike a pose when they are dry!  See how Vito refuses to strike a pose in the camera LOL.  See what happens when your toddler is camera shy.

                                

5.  And don’t forget to put  them on display. They look adorable as wall decors and kids love looking at their masterpieces!  The cherry blossom was another project that we made earlier last month and will post the details soon.

 

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Goodnight Moon Storytelling Basket

Oh my, Goodnight Moon is one of my kids favourite books and I can’t wait to share with you the contents of our storytelling basket!  I assembled it over the weekend and both Vito and Mavi are having fun tinkering and exploring the objects. 

I read this book everynight. It’s calming, relaxing… makes them ponder of what’s out there in the night, letting them observe their room and the silence of the night.  And may I just say, there is so much love in the story.  The old lady as I would always say to the boys, is lovingly watching her little kid going to sleep, just like most Mommies do!

So this is our storybasket  where I placed all of our objects and the book. I put this on the top of the shelf. Some of the items here are small so I need to assist and supervise whenever they play with it.  Items here were from the following Playmobil playsets:

• Playmobil Dining Room
• Playmobil Children’s Bedroom
• Playmobil Master Bedroom

The clock was from Amazon, the moon is a DIY, the kittens were from Safari Toob Domestic Cats  and the bears were from Learning Resources counting bears.

Now, we’ve read this book a hundred times LOL. Vito knows this by heart.  So he knows each of the objects in the book and he was quite fascinated that he gets to see them and touch them personaly! Take a look at our three little bears sitting on chairs, the comb, brush and the bowl full of mash!

He obviously loves the bears!

But his favourite of all was the clock! Now I highly suggest that you read the book to your child first.  Give it a week of reading before starting the storytelling basket as there might be times they’ll get distracted of the toys. When that happens, just allow your child to play with it for as long as he wants.

Vito can’t take his eyes from this clock so we have to pause and explore this. We talked about the numbers and hands and he was fascinated!

I hope you like this post.  It  will give you an idea on how to put fun into your reading time.  We previously had the Papa Please Get the Moon For Me and it was also a hit!

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The Use of Funnel for Toddlers

Vito is 28 months old.

I recently introduced the use of funnel to Vito and boy oh boy, it’s non stop play!

The addition of funnel in our beans and water transfer has added an extra spice in Vito’s daily activity. He’s been doing activities like pouring and scooping for quite sometime now and let’s say he’s getting tired of it.  So to explore the other capabilities of pouring, I added funnel in his activity tray. 

Benefits of using funnel or tubing:

• the difference between wide and small mouthed containers.  Make sure that the bottle is clear so the child can see the flow for the elements.
• from one step water transfer to pour-funnel-pour procedure (additional step)
• learn the concept of water flow

Children are fascinated with water and by making the flow. The use of funnel is one of these elements that can help children understand about small spaces and  how the flow of water works.  They will discover that to easily transfer water to a small mouthed container, they’ll be needing a tubing or funnel to successfully pour elements into it.

To demonstrate here’s a video of Vito transferring  lentils and water using a funnel. 

Your kids will definitely have fun with this one, mine can’t stop playing!  Hope that this will work on you!

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Learning about Faces!

The boys (and I) had so much fun making faces!  This is a simple activity that you can do with your kids with minimal preparation.  It’s the perfect opportunity to learn about emotions and the facial expressions they can make! 

I printed and laminated this My Face template from Twinkl and each boy has one so they draw their faces on it using dry erase pens.  Vito was telling me he’s making a spider!

Another option is to use playdough to create faces!  You can get your kids practise their  fine motor skills  by letting them use some cutters and moulders. 

Matching cards is always part of our activities because Vito is obsessed with it.  I printed this faces printable from Natural Beach Living.

 

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Papa Get The Moon For Me Storytelling Basket

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I am very much inspired by The Imagination Tree of putting up objects as an additional tool for reading.  So I assembled a few objects for Vito’s current favourite book Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle.  My little guy is so fascinated with the moon and this is the best way we can explore, imagine and learn more about it through interactive reading and storytelling.

This is a story about a little girl who wanted to play with the moon. Her Daddy waited for the moon to get “smaller” until he’s able to bring the moon down from the sky and let his little girl play with it for awhile. 

This is a great way to learn and explore new words for kids as well!  In this story, Vito learned the following:

big and small

the moon (DIY Felt)

the ladder (from Playmobil)

little girl and Daddy (from Playmobil)

cat (from Safari Toob Cat)

the concept of up and down

dance and play

star (glow in the dark)

First we read the book together.  We’ve been reading the book for weeks before I introduced the objects so he knows it by heart already.  I suggest that before adding the objects in your storytelling, read the books first to avoid distractions. 

In between reading, he would take out an object from the basket and match it with the picture.  Mention the name of the object as frequent as you can for retention.  He also started to mimic the actions of the characters in the story through our Daddy and little girl figure.  Can you see him making the Daddy climb the ladder and reach out for the moon?  It helps if you reinact some parts of the story as well!  Like we did climbing up and down and dancing with the moon just the like the characters in the book

We will surely be doing more of this!

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Learning Activities for 27 Months Toddler

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Vito is 27 months old.

These are the activities I prepared for Vito this month.  Sort of a Valentines Day Unit as well, I combined the hearts and flower activities in this month’s activities.    Vito is doing well so far in all of these activities, especially in counting and all those related in fine motor skills.

1.  Gems and Flower.  Originally this is for Do-a-Dot activity but I wanted to keep the printed material so I made him use the gems.  The printed flower is from 3 Dinosaurs.

2.  Spooning heart table scatters to ice tray.  A one to one correspondence activity, basic concept for math.  But this was mainly for spooning practice. The heart scatters are from Amazon.

3.  Tweezing and sorting colored roses.  I have lots of tweezers so I made him use this Jumbo Tweezers from Learning Resources to see if his hand can control this gigantic tool. So far, he’s able to grasp it but still finds it hard to hold on to the flower for a long time. He’s able to sort the flowers correctly though.

4.  Flower arranging Activity.  Vito has no concept of flower arrangement as of the moment, but this activity is for hand-eye coordination practice.

5.  Sorting bear counters according to colours.  He’s pretending to put the bears to sleep (in the color tablets).

6.  One to one correspondece using counting cards and gems.  You can read about it here. 

7.  Matching flower cards. I am giving these cards for free till February 15, 2016 11PM GMT.  Check this post for more information.

8.  Punching the flowers into the styrofoam, to strengthen those hand  muscles!

9. Color mixing of red and white fingerpaints to produce pink.

 

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How We Learn Colours These Days

We finally started our colour toddler basket last week wherein we put red objects in the basket for learning colours.  We started with the colour Red, the colour of Valentines Day and Chinese New Year

There are so many versions of this basket, sometimes they are called discovery baskets or treasure baskets wherein Mommies gather specific or themed objects and place them in a basket for the baby and toddler to explore.  Now what makes our version different?

Vito is good in colour sorting activities but still a hit or miss when it comes to naming the colours.  It would have been easier if I assemble the objects myself but I realized that Vito will learn much more if HE DISCOVERS and ASSEMBLES the objects by himself with my assistance.

Yes, Mommies! Don’t assemble the basket on your own, do it together with your little one. It’s fun, engaging and they will love doing it for you! As Mavi described it, it’s like Easter egg hunting or treasure hunt.

To start the activity, we earlier had a painting activity to re-introduce the color red.  You can also do colouring activities using red crayons or pens.

The next day, we did a red colour hunting at home!  We roam around the house, open drawers here and there in search of objects that are red.    During the activity, I would ask Vito something like “where’s the red block?”, “is this a red train”, “can you pick up the red duplo”?  Then we placed the objects in the basket and let him play with it for as long as he wants.  When not in use, I just place the basket in the shelf.  Just side note, Vito tends to scatter them around the house, so the objects are in a ziploc.  Whenever he wants to play with them, he would ask me to open the plastic.  This will keep the objects intact and your sanity as well!

Items that we have discovered in the house that are red:

• Playmobil Children’s Train Set.  We got this for free!
• Red disk from Wonderworld Disk Stacker
• Red soft block from B Toys Squeeze Blocks
• Red felt craft paper from local store
• Strawberry from M&D Fruit Set
• Red tweezer from Learning Resources Jumbo Tweezers
• Red duplo from LEGO Amazon

Make sure that when you play with your kids, always use “red” as an adjective like “let’s play with your red train”, “can you stack your red block?”  This will further familiarize your child with the colour and associate the word “red” to the colour itself.

For more toddler activities, click here or visit my Toddler Board on Pinterest!

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Alphabet Picture Booklets (DEXQYZVWJK)

The third and last set of My Alphabet Picture booklet is now published in my Sellfy Shop. This set contains the pictures of objects starting with DEXQYZVWJK.

A little introduction for this activity and the reason behind this booklets can be can be read here.

To download your copy click the image or here.

Click the images below to download Set 1 and Set 2. 

                                            

Thank you and enjoy!

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