December 5 - 9th: Getting Christmassy

I didn;t prepare as many trays this week as, being completely honest, I did not have the energy or inclination to put them together. I had a lot of ideas, but with a 6 week old baby, trays dropped significantly on my priority list. We still managed some fun activities including playgroup and the Please Touch Museum. I did, however, have a crying breakdown on Sunday, and I'm convinced that I'm trying to do too much on not a lot of sleep. So, I'm going to go easy on myself and I'm posting a small slice of our week - the moments I remembered to grab the camera and some stuff I was able to capture after the fact.

R. helped decorate the tree this year.  We took a trip to meet Santa with some friends and bought a red bauble. R. is thrilled with it.

This is our homemade magazine wreath; a project more for me than R! She did love using the stapler, but searching for the red and green magazine pages was soon dull for her.

While I glued on all those magazine petals, R. created this berry M and M collage with the glue. For a couple of weeks, R. has been collected berries on our dog walks. We are slowly deberrying the entire neighborhood.

On Friday, I was so exhausted that I had a pajama day and we failed to make it to playgroup. Instead we made some cookies using a wonderful, simple  snickerdoodle recipe from my mother-in-law. Rose rolled the dough balls in a mixture of red and green sprinkles with cinnamon. She enjoyed the process, but it doesn't come close to the enjoyment of eating the results.

I found a packet of glitter glue "pens" in the office and got R. working on some homemade christmas cards. I cut out the christmas tree shapes and rose squeezed on the glitter glue and added round stickers. Big success!

November 28th - December 3rd 2011: Pouring, lacing and stickers

My first week of actively planning activities and taking photos. T turned 5 weeks old, so I am very proud of myself for managing to put anything together at all. It does, however, make life at home feel so much more control if I know I have one or two things planned for the day. Hopefully I can continue this.

So...this is a selection of  activities we did. Many of these ideas are adapted and down-right stolen from some excellent blogs I have found recently.

R, like all toddlers, adores stickers, so I gave her a sheet of simple round stickers and a balloon shape and let her create. I attached a string after she had finished and she ran around the house with it flying behind her. The balloon is now proudly displayed in the playroom. I'm going to adapt this next week with a more christmassy theme. Yay stickers!

This was a huge success.  Our dollar store has a aisle full of beads used for hair accessories in every colour imaginable that are the perfect size for toddler fingers and a dollar a piece. I set up a tray with different coloured pipe cleaners and a small bowl of beads. R. immediately started lacing and created "necklaces" she has been wearing for days. I will definitely keep this tray in rotation and change the color of the beads and string item.

I attempted to get R. interested in bread making and baking, but instead she gravitated towards the sink. She spent a wonderful thirty minutes perfecting her pouring skills with jugs in the sink (she also insisted on washing her brother's pacifiers). This was a perfect teaching moment for me: I am understanding more and more that I cannot push her into anything, her interests are going to guide her. Plus, while she was pouring, I was able to make a fantastic loaf of bread!

Another thing I started this week was letting R choose her own snacks. This has been a huge success. I put the usual suspects (crackers, cheese sticker, fruit) into individual tupperware containers and let Rose choose what she wanted. She seems to love this freedom of choice. So simple, but so effective.

A Walk in the Park

Fairmont Park is the biggest urban park in the country and we live ten minutes away from it. In six years, we may have explored 5% of what it has to offer. This morning, I loaded R. into the car with picnic and nature basket (her dollar store easter egg basket) and we went for a walk in the woods. We parked at the Japanese House and wandered along paths filling the basket with stones, sticks and at one point, broken glass (quickly removed). We lifted logs and stones for bugs. The jackpot was under a particularly large rock which covered some very active worms. I love that R. has absolutely no qualms in toughing and examining bugs. I really try not to squeal as she squeezes a pillbeetle or picks up a worm, but my stomach does go over.

We didn't see another soul the entire time. Following random paths we discovered a huge "treehouse" structure (below) perched 100 feet over a gorge of oaks and redwoods. Our private picnic spot. Yes, we could still hear the traffic on 76, but at times it was drowned out by cicadas in the trees.

The World of Pouring

Over the last week, R. has developed a fascination with pouring. Pouring anything and everything. Water from one cup to another, rice from one bowl to another, her water onto her tray, blocks onto the floor. In the spirit of Montessori, I have created some homemade "works" in an attempt to hone her skills and explore her interest in this fundamental cause and effect action.

First, I started simple: two small glass bowls, one empty and one filled with uncooked dried penne pasta (a great use for the half-empty boxes filling the pantry!). I showed her how to take box containing the bowls off the shelf to t

he table. Then, demonstrated pouring the pasta from one bowl to the other. (I first did it one by one and then showed her lifting the bowl and pouring it in). I deliberately spilled some and put all the spillage back in the bowl. She pretty much immediately ignored the one by one method, instead, she chose the fast option - grab and pour. Needless to say, pasta has been spilt, but I'm reinforcing the clean up as much as I can. I'm thinking I will gradually switch the pasta to smaller grains like lentils and rice as har skills become more refined. She'll be pouring the wine in no time.

Today, I introduced a sort of extension - a work I'm going to call "Poker Posting". I think I read somewhere that posting in another important skill. I guess it's along the same lines as all the shape sorting toys out there. Like pouring, it's another cause and effect exercise. For this one, I took 15 white poker chips out of the unused set from upstairs and put them in a bowl. I took a glass jar with screw-on lid and cut a hole in the top. (I reinforced the edges of the hole with tape and labels to avoid sliced little fingers.) Voila - a posting game. I demonstrated taking one chip and turning the chip above the hole so it would fall into the jar. Such a satisfying tinkling sound. Once all the chips were in the jar, I twisted off the lid and poured them back into the bowl.

This one seemed to really spark her interest. She had some trouble turning the chips to make them match the direction of the hole, but worked through it. At one point she was posting two or three at a time. Twisting is still difficult, so she worked out she could just place the lid on top and it would still work. I'm thinking of extending this one with poker chips of other colours and maybe separate jars for each colour. Also changing the size of the hole so only certain things can fit into certain jars.

Can there be too much routine?

I'm approaching my new stay-at-home status with the same organization as my old work status; I'm keeping a to-do list, daily schedule, and even alarm time. My days are split into a morning activity (playgroup, music class, story time), mid-day nap, and afternoon dog walk, singing/stories and play time. I'm attempting a Montessori-inspired work time for the afternoon play and using a whole load of blogs and websites to come up with "works" based around R's interests. B comes home and we have dinner, bath, milk (with Elmo clips on YouTube) and bed.

I appreciate a routine, and I've read repeatedly that children thrive with structure, but I'm concerned I may be taking it too far. I like knowing what we are doing each hour and I have come to realize a unscheduled day scares the living crap out of me. The anal me taking control and I'm not convinced I like this me.

Table Top Easel

My first day as an official stay-at-home Mum delivered my first crafty project. R. has been showing a lot more interest in painting and drawing, so I was inspired to make a table-top easel. (My first plan was to buy the $14 one from Ikea, but haven;t quite been able to justify a trip just for that.) Also, I read that toddlers have a much easier time painting upright, rather than horizontally as we had been doing.

So... nap time arrived and I gathered my supplies.

One large sheet of sturdy cardboard (I used the back of a large pad of chart paper)

Three washing pegs

Paints of your choice (I used some left over yellow interior paint and black acrylic)

Scissors/Stanley knife

String

Superglue

Ruler

1. Cut your cardboard to the needed size - mine had to fit on R's child table.

2. Score a line across the midpoint (make sure you do not cut all the way through!)

3. Punch four holes into the bottom corners and attach string.

4. Paint the easel and glue the pegs to the top

5. I was going to cover the easel with contact paper, but I decided to leave it and R. can add her own artistic flare to it as she uses it.

Who knows how long it will last, but I'm pleased with the finished product. A very easy homemade easel for little artists.