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Small World Play: Giant Pandas

Friday, 19 February 2016

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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March Activities and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Thursday, 18 February 2016

March is fast approaching and I’ve been doing some planning for the boy’s activities for next month. I am also looking forward for a warm weather so we can do outdoor play and exploration. For this week’s featured activities, let me share Vito’s first “themed” unit:

We had a lot of fun with these, especially the scooping of pompoms and the paint works!

Now, for this week’s featured posts, I am sharing the activities that you can do for the month of March!

Study of Ancient China

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

Few weeks ago, Mavi and I were learning about Ancient China. I decided that this year, we’ll be focusing in country-based studies rather than continents. Last month we worked on Australia, and because of Chinese New Year being celebrated during February, I guess this month is the best time to conduct Chinese-themed activities.

To start with, we created a small world play tray with Ancient China objects on it. To know more about this, click the image below or here.

Then we worked on learning about the location, biomes, lifestyle and culture of the people of China. We used our China Picture Book and Cards in these activities. I printed the Asia Map from here and the fact cards were from our Asia in a Nutshell. Here you can learn about the way of life of the Chinese people and their religion.

This picture book is Mavi’s current favourite obsession. He reads it, enjoying his discoveries about China and love working on the coloring/writing pages. So funny that Vito saw Mavi working on the cards that he couldn’t resist matching the cards to that of the outline pages!

My 2 year-old toddler loves the cards! He matched the control cards to the outline pages.

They’ve been practising how to write Chinese characters in school. He’s good (But I coulnd’t understand what he wrote in the cards LOL)!

Lastly, we made Chinese lanterns on the eve of Chinese New Year. The boys had fun making the lanterns and observing the lights. We used this Hands-on HIstory Ancient Chinese book from the library for our arts and crafts. I highly recommend this book!

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Papa Get The Moon For Me Storytelling Basket

Monday, 15 February 2016

** contains affiliate links **

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 Smile

We will surely be doing more of this!

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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!

Practising One to One Correspondence

Vito loves counting. He’s been counting since he’s 1.5yrs old. He recites and recognizes the numbers from 1 to 10 before the letters. This is unlike Mavi who recognizes and recites the alphabet first (1.5yrs old) before he became interested with numbers (3yrs old).

And because of Vito’s interst, I am always giving him different counting activities to feed this interest. One of his favourite is using our counting cards for one to one correspondence. These were Mavi’s and I barely used it with him.

Mavi can only finish 5 cards when he was Vito’s age. So I prepared the same amount of cards for Vito. We counted together as he placed one gem on the picture. When he was done with the fourth card, he asked for more cards to work on. The cards that we are using are from here. You can also get these gems from Amazon.

So I added the first card, which he finished breezily and still asked for more. I added one card at time after the fifth card, observing up what number he can count without getting tired. Open-mouthed smile