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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Arctic and Antarctica Activities for 2 Years Old

Vito is 26 months old.

Few days ago I shared Mavi’s activities for this month.  Now it’s time I share Vito’s. 

1.  Counting activity using Penguin cards and water bottle lids.  When I introduced this, Vito was more interested in rolling the bottle lids than counting. He identifies the number in he lid then would roll it around the house.  Yes, tiring for Mommy!

2.  Matching activity for visual discrimination using our polar animal cards from here.  Vito loves matching but I would only give him a maximum of 6 cards to match everytime we do this. 

3.  Counting penguins using the Hape Puzzle Numbers and Safari Toob Penguins.  Vito enjoys counting the penguins!

4.  Gluing black and white circles in a paper for fine motor skills.  I made him use the gluing stick this time so he’ll know how to use it (I did the same thing with Mavi).

5.  Montessori parts of a penguin puzzle. I got this from a local store, but you can also purchase this Montessori material from Tower High Learning (UK) or Leader Joy USA (US) or in Amazon.  Vito loooves working with puzzles, this is one of his favourites!  He knows where to place the pieces but finds it hard to fit them all together as of the moment.   

6.  Matching Safari Toob Arctic figures to matching cards.  Will share the cards once I fix the file.

7.  Filling the buckets with blue colored rice. I made him use a scoop instead of a spoon, but he prefers using his hands. But of course, it’s the perfect tool for sensorial activity!

8. Painting using black and white Giotto Bebe fingerpaints.  I am introducing black and white this month, the predominant colors in the Polar Regions.  I also used our Polar Regions Invitation to Play tray for introducing the said colors.

It was also a great way to practice color matching, by matching the lids to the paint bottles.

9. Scooping dark brown (almost black) and white pompoms.  Another activity for hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

These are Vito;s activities for the entire month of January PLUS the reading of books (daily), and letter activities for literacy (we’re working on P and W this month). Watch out for Vito’s activities for the month of February. Till next time, thank you!

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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!

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Letter N: Going Nuts!

I love nuts! We’ve got plenty around the house, thus I decided to come up with activities for Vito since he’s been seeing them around the house and loves to play with my walnuts.

Letter N Object Basket.  Reinforce literacy, letter ‘n’ symbol and phonics,  vocabulary, and verbal skills.  In the basket we have: nine, upper and lowercase N/n, necktie, DIY sandpaper ‘n’, nuts.

Hammering Peanuts.  This is a practical life activity that develops hand and eye coordination, and develop those hand and arm muscles.  I first set it up in a tray, but the peanuts were slipping so I had to put cling film to hold them. Vito loves physical activities so he enjoyed this. The only drawback is that the hammer that we used were so tiny  

Letter N Craft.  I always make sure to include crafts in our weekly activities.  My main goal here is for Vito to practice his manual dexterity like squeezing the glue, picking up small objects or pencils.  Now that he’s familiar with glue, I gave him a glue with small opening for him to squeeze it. 

Here he is applying peanut shells on the letter N. Improves pincer grasp through picking up small objects.  Note to parents: always supervise your children when dealing with small objects. 

Color Green. I’m introducing letter green this week.  I gathered a few objects from his toys and place them all in a basket. 

And we painted green in an A3 paper.  Working with one color a week works for him.

When they dried up, we place them on the wall for everyday viewing.

Nut Matching. For visual discrimination (difference in objects), widen vocabulary and concentration.

Counting Walnuts.  Builds early number and counting skills.

Forming Shapes using Nuts.  Teaches shapes, fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination. This is Vito’s idea!  I made a circle using the walnuts then he took the circle puzzle and place it in the middle, matching them together. Brilliant!  We practice some more by drawing shapes on a piece of paper and he would trace the line using the peanut shells to form the shape. He enjoyed it!

And that’s about it! And what I happened to the nuts? I’m still consuming them LOL. 

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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.

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Letter 'c' Sound Activities

This was a fun and quick set activities.  We basically finished all of these in a week.

Letter 'c' sound basket.  Our object basket was composed of a carrot, a toy red car and a cow animal figure.  The foam letter is from Munchkins Foam Bath.

Letter 'c' craft. I made Vito colour the letter c using our Do-a-Dot markers (which he really really loves by the way).  Afterwhich, I made him watch Mavi cut the letter and turn it into a letter c carrot.

C for colours.   This is again another colour matching activity I prepared for Vito.  The cups were from the local store and the cubes were from  Melissa & Doug Lacing Beads learning toy.  We do this activity everyday for Vito to know his colours.

C for cottons.  We tried this activity, painting using cotton balls but Vito was horrified of the cotton.  So we proceeded with finger painting instead.  We are using Giotto Bebe Fingerpaints at home.

Playing with pegs (pretend corns).  We played around with favourite FantaColor pegs and Vito is getting better fitting those smaller pegs into the hold

Steamed carrots.  Vito's snack for the entire week LOL.

C for cars.  We played with cars every morning and matched them to our homemade colour cards.  Read about it here.

Books this week:

• Caps for Sale
• The Carrot Seed
• BigCats Phonics From Cow to Carton Milk
• That's not my Car

You can also purchase these books from Book Depository, shipping is free!

Photos of Vito working.

More letter sound activities coming up in the next few weeks!

Thank you for taking time to read this post! Don’t forget to pin it for later.

Why not try reading our Letter ‘a’ Sound activities?

 Our Letter ‘b’ Sound activities might interest you as well!