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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St. Patrick’s Day Activities for 28 Months Toddler

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Vito is 28 months old.

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and we are excited to watch the parade in the city this year!  To introduce Ireland’s big celebration to Vito, I prepared a bunch of work trays for him this month as he turns 28 months old.  I featured 9 activities here but in reality we’re doing so much more, so I’ll just update the blog of other activities that are not included here.

1.  Ireland Matching Cards.  These cards are similar to the picture books that I have already in the shop.  The cards here are all about the icons of Ireland.

2.  Sorting Erasers.  Owned this since last year and it is just now that Vito enjoys sorting it.  You can get the erasers from here.

3.  Sorting Colors.  Using the Montessori Colour Tablets #2, Vito will be sorting the rainbow colors using our Learning Resources counters.  In the picture we’re using the insect counters, he likes them!

4.  Letter R and Round Magnets.  This Rainbow Do a Dot was printed from here and I saw this from Deb’s page.  It’s a good practice of hand eye coordination.  Vito makes sure he places the round magnets exactly into the dots.

5.  Creating a rainbow using Do a Dot Markers.  Similar to the Rainbow do a dot but this time we’re using the markers.  I showed Vito how to color the rainbow and he finished half of the page. And no, he didn’t follow the order of the rainbow colors (as expected).  You can get the rainbow pattern from Making Learning Fun.

6.  Pouring lentils using a funnel.  Out of all the activiites, this one is Vito’s favourite.  More on this later.

7.  Scooping lentils. He’s quite bored with scooping activities lately, I guess its because we’ve been doing it all throughout the week.  And besides, he enjoys using his hands more than using a scoop or spoon.

8.  Counting gold coins.  I bought the gold coins in Amazon for our Pirate Unit last year, and this time Vito gets to use it for St. Patrick’s Day.  We have more counting activities than letters because believe it or not, Vito is more interested in counting than letters.

9. Patterning.  This is for colour recognition and introduction to patterning.  We are using the link cubes I bought from Singapore years ago, but you can also purchase this in Amazon.  This March, we’re working on orange and green colors, so our color activities will revolve around this two.

10. One to one correspondence using clothes pins.  A new addition to our monthly work trays is this counting cards and clothes pins.  We have lots of pins at home but found them difficult to open, so I bought the wooden ones for Vito to practice on.  He’s able to open and close it, and now his biggest challenge is to clip it on the picture. This activity is counting practice and enhancement of hand-eye coordination skills.

 

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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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Tot School Snippets Week 1: Ice

I was reading my old blog the other day (private) and I am amazed on how I recorded Mavi’s learning curve week by week. Mavi enjoys reading that blog now! I just have to say that it is quite different when you have one child, you have focus, you have MORE time  and well,  I was organized.  Now, I’m managing and engineering a bigger household, with a school boy and a hyperactive toddler, I barely have time to blog. 

So  now, I will start writing about Vito’s activities in a week. I have to put a little effort on this, for keeping memories and for Vito to read someday.  Currently, we’re not following schedule of doing totschool weekly.  There are days when we do a lot of activities, and there are times when I just whip anything that goes into  my mind. 

Vito is 26 months old.

THEME:  ICE

This is still in line with Arctic Theme for the month of January.  I dumped some ice in a tray, place a sea lion and polar bear from Schleich and tiny bucket.. and he had a blast!

With just ice, he learned a lot of vocabulary words:

big and small

cold

slippery

melting

hard

COLOR:  Red and White

I ran out of blue so I picked red and white.  Aside from painting, we also mix color to form pink.

His first color mixing activity.

LETTER OF THE WEEK:  I/i

Vito knows all his letters and the sounds they make, so we’re heading towards learning small and big letters and objects . The letters used here were from Melissa and Doug.  I have two sets.

This was also the time we read the Alphabet Booklet and identify the objects starting with letter i.  You can refer to my post here about the baskets,  and booklets on my Sellfy Shop.  You can get them for free!

                                                                               

SHAPES:  Square

Gluing cut out squares.  We are using the Maped scissors for kids (2yrs +).

FINE MOTOR SKILLS:

Lining up Hot Wheels cars, learning how to use the glue spreader, cutting using a real scissor (supervised) and using our miniland abacus.

          

             

ART/CRAFTS:

Oh Vito made a big letter i. 

 

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Practical Life Activities @ 24 Months and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Vito turned 2 years old last month.  Aside from the letter t sound and tree themed activities, here are the practical life activities Vito worked on:

1. Do-a-dot marking.  I prefer drawing the circles instead of printing those which are available in the web to save ink.  Vito loves this activity.  He enjoys stamping the circles with the markers. This is also a good shape activity because it allows the child to identify the shape in the paper before stamping it. Which reminds me that that next time we’ll do this, I’ll use squares or triangle instead of circles. 
2. Pouring rice.  I’m using two small jugs and a colored rice.  We’ve done this before using water, this time I changed the medium. 
3. Stringing.  This is just a portion of Melissa & Dough beads which I got earlier this year.  I attached a wooden skillet in the string so he can easily insert the beads. 
4. 2 Piece Farm Puzzle.  At first I gave him 3 sets to work on, and then added as he progresses.  He also loves this activity and would work on it in the afternoon.  This is a good introduction to part-and whole concept.
5. Stickers in a line.  This is a directed sticking activity wherein Vito has to place the stickers in the lines.  He’s good at it!
6. Scissor and playdough.  I made Vito use this plastic scissor whenever he plays the playdough so he’ll get used to it. Playdoughs are soft and can easily be cut, unlike paper which needs a sharper scissor so I think that this is a perfect material to cut for little ones.
7. Tweezers.  We have a lot of tongs and tweezers but I have to purchase this plastic tweezer because Vito was having a hard time using the ones that we have.  This new tweezer is just perfect! It is soft, and can be easily manipulated by Vito.  It has teeth on its end so it can easily grip the object.  Vito loves using this.  But note, the end is pointy so adult supervision is a must even if this is made of plastic.
8. Water transfer using sponge. “squeeze squeeze squeeze”, that’s Vito’s new favourite word!  he just learned that few weeks ago as he was doing this tray.  Water activity is always a favourite and Vito works on this for about 30 to 45 minutes.  Once bored with squeezing, he would automatically switch to pouring water between bowls. 
9. Glue with brush.  There’s just so many way to glue and one of my favourite is the glue with brush.  I made Vito use this and he works like an expert!  Those are paper cut-outs with letters on it (handwritten) so that we can name the letters as we glue them!

 

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Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured Christmas-themed activities for this week!

 

 

Fine Motor Skills  Christmas Tree from Living Montessori Now

Paper Plate Christmas Tree from Creative Family Fun

Nutcracker Unit 2 w/ FREE Printable from Every Star is Different

Printable Advent Calendar from Sights and Sounds Readings

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
• Homeschool
• Sensory Play
• Tot and Preschool Trays
• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
• Arts and Crafts
• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
• Family-Oriented Activities
• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

• Please link up 1-3 posts
• Follow each of the hosts on social media
• When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
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• Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

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Exploring Fruits for Toddlers

Vito is 23 months old. 

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After, the zoo, farm animals and parts of the body, I decided to do a fruit unit for this little boy as he loves to name fruits whenever we are in the supermarket.  I like to come up with themed activities as it helps the child to expand their knowledge of certain objects and occasions, practice communication skills and improve their vocabulary.

 

Beginning Sounds. We’re using Hape Lowercase Puzzle.

Apple Prints. Color recognition and sensorial activity.

Bagging Fruits. A practical life activity that develops hand/eye coordination, concentration plus helping Mommy tidy up!  We’re using Learning Resources Fruit Counters.

Matching Real Objects with Pictures. Developing early discrimination skills (difference between objects), hand/eye coordination and concentration.  I made the fruit cards and you can get a copy from here or here.

Fruit Color Sorting using a Tong. Improving fine motor skills, pincer grasp, concentration and color recognition.

I love this tong from Ikea. 

As of the moment, our color sorting activity involves two colors, but I introduce one (new) color at a time.

He’s seriously concentrating.  Goodness!

Slicing a Banana. I was with him the whole time he’s doing this, reason why I don’t have an actual photo of the activity.  Another great practical life activity to introduce to kids.  This is an introductory activity of actual “slicing”, though we’ve done a lot of this using playdough.  He still has difficulty coordinating his hands.  We’ll get there though… need to practice more

And that’s about it! Thanks once again for taking time to read through the post.  Don’t forget to PIN this for your reference.

Check me out on Pinterest for more toddler and themed activities.

Practical Life at 21 Months

Last week I shared the learning activities that I prepared on Vito’s shelf.  Learning activities are usually done in the morning, after reading books.  It would about 15 to 30 minutes of play, depending on his interest.  Practical life activities are done in the afternoon, after se pick up big brother from school.  All our practical life materials are stored in kitchen, stored in the shelf but I can’t share it because it is a sight to behold

So for this month, here are the practical life activities Vito is working on.  These are rotated once in a while.

Stringing 

Scooping (hands) & Pouring Corn Kernels 

Shape Stamping & Wiping Afterwards 

Shape Sorting 

Using a Columns

Button Slots

Using left and right hand

Spooning 

He loves touching the kernels!

Look at the chubby hand.

And that’s about it!  I am sure your kids will love these activities as well!  Don’t forget to pin this for later!

Don’t forget to check out our collection of Practical Life Activities, click the images below for more information