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Goodnight Moon Storytelling Basket

Thursday, 3 March 2016

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:

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

Tuesday, 1 March 2016

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

Sunday, 28 February 2016

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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 about Faces!

Tuesday, 23 February 2016

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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Learning Activities for 27 Months Toddler

Friday, 12 February 2016

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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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FREE Valentines Day Resources & Activities

Wednesday, 10 February 2016

If you enjoy having themed and seasonal activities, you will definitely love what I have for you! I’ve got tons of wonderful ideas for Valentines Day, activities that you and your kids will love PLUS, amazing FREE resources!

First, download your copy of our FREE Valentines Day Pack for your preschoolers! They will definitely love this!

Click here to download your copy.

Second, here are my features for this week’s link up!

How We Learn Colours These Days

Sunday, 7 February 2016

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! Open-mouthed smile

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!

Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, Instagram or Twitter for updates! More learning materials at Pinay Homeschooler Shop.

Tot School Snippets Week 1: Ice

Monday, 1 February 2016

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!