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 Animal Kingdom Revisited

No school for Mavi means brainstorming for future activities. He opened up lately that he wanted to study about animals again, so I took out our cards on The Animal Kingdom and checked what else we missed and haven’t explored yet.  He reviewed the cards and sorted out the things that he wanted to learn this year.  He picked arthropods, starfish and jellyfish! Yay, something new!

Here are the animals we have studied so far: 

• annelids
• arthropods ( we haven’t worked crustaceans and centipedes yet) (Part One, Part Two)
• vertebrates (birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, amphibians) (Blog Post, Vertebrate Sorting Cards)
• mollusc (Part One, Part Two, Snail Nomenclature Card and Definition Booklet)

And the ones we have yet to explore…

• echinoderms (starfish)
• cnidaria (jellyfish)

We love using our animal kingdom chart  as our guide in our zoology activities at home. It’s easier much easier to identify animals and Mavi can easily memorize it through constant exposure.  If you are interested, you can check out our Animal Kingdom printable here or click the image below.

 

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Small World Play: Giant Pandas

Early this year, when everything in Amazon was on sale, I got this one of a kind Panda and the Bamboo Forest Playset from Playmobil.  I’ve been eyeing this for months since last year and I was lucky enough to chance this set on sale! Giant Pandas are one of those animals that are in the endangered list and I think somehow, by having this playset at home I can introduce this beautiful animal to the kids, talk about their characters and habitat.h

PS. We’ve visited a lot of zoo, but we haven’t encountered a Giant Panda.  We didn’t chance upon them in Singapore Zoo either.

We love the the Panda Playset!  The bamboo, tree, hilltop and bridge plus the panda family!  It’s a perfect playset for our little pandas to play with their Moms and Dads.  In setting up the tray, I added a felt craft paper (grass) and a few more figures from Safari Toob to create a community of pandas.  Mavi assembled everything in this Melissa and Doug wooden tray.  Note that the Playmobil pandas are much bigger than the Safari Toobs’.

The boys love the bamboo objects included in the playset.  We talked about what pandas eat and in what environment they thrive.  We also discuss about bamboos and where we can find these. 

Vito loves the small cave in the playset.  He “hides” the pandas there as he counts them.

Day and night, this is Vito’s favourite play material.  He plays with this in the morning while I’m busy preparing Mavi for school.  Just make sure to keep an eye on those baby pandas, they’re quite small and toddlers tend to put them in the mouth or throw them anywhere in the house.

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Small World Play: Ancient China

Gong Hi Fa Cai!  It’s the Chinese New Year tomorrow and Mavi and I are currently learning about the Ancient China  (using STOW Vol 1 as read along book). With these, we set up another small world play which is inspired by the history of China.  Here’s what Mavi and I assembled.   Last month, we assembled an Australian Outback-inspired small play and it was a total hit!  This month, the boys are enjoying their free play with our new small world tray!

First, Mavi and Vito painted the newspaper with green and brown. This will be the base of our Great Wall! Painting is one of those activities that kids love to do together!

We placed the newspaper (once the paint dried) at the bottom of our wooden tray then stuff it with small world figures and materials from our Safari Toob collections, LEGO and Playmobil.

What’s in the tray?

You will first  notice our country profile card with the dragon.  I made this card for Mavi to read whenever he plays, and I added a dragon, as this is one of China’s famous icon and symbol.   The dragon is part of the Playmobil Advent Calendar which I got Mavi last year.                      

Qin Shi Huang and Chinese Buddha. Qin Shi is the first emperor of China and the country was named after him (the figure is part of Playmobil Advent Calendar) and the Chinese Buddha is from Hong Kong. 

                                                 

Other objects we added were

 the dragons from Safari Toobs

 the Giant Buddha from Safari Toob Landmarks

a DIY flag of China

the Great Wall of China made of LEGO (Mavi made this)

the rest of the items from Playmobil Dragon Advent Calendar.

Here’s Mavi loving the dragon. We were discussing the role and meaning of the dragon in China’s culture and tradition.

Vito loves our tray too! The tray is good for one to two weeks.  It is placed on top of the shelf for the boys to easily access and play with the figures as long as they want to. 

What a successful collaboration from Mavi, Vito and I! They enjoyed playing the materials that we have in the tray, most especially our dragon!  History, geography and imaginative play all rolled into one!

If you are interested, we did several China-related activities before.  You can click this (part 1) and this (for part 2).

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