Outings - Jimmy's farm

(Goblin is 22 months)

Today we went to Jimmy's Farm (as seen on TV http://www.jimmysfarm.com/). 

What a great place for a toddler. The farm and nature trail are free for under 2's and £4.50 for adults which makes it a pretty cheap day out. The whole site is pretty huge. The grassy farm area is very buggyable but the nature trail is not. So we opted for the baby backpack. 

Goblin's aunty and uncle joined us on our outing which made Goblin very excited - aunty was also excited and displayed it by buying 6 bags of animal feed - thats a lot of animal feed. 

In the farm area there is a playground as well as a chicken safari and the two large heated polytunnels containing butterflies. We stumbled upon a fish pond where a Jimmy's farm worker helps kids to catch fish. This was the most amazing thing. The man casts the rod for you. Then Goblin held the rod and within seconds there was a bite. He caught a tiddler first time round, but on the second cast he caught this rather large fish. In this picture Goblin can't decide whether its awesome or horrifying. 

Goblin loves all animals so he was very excited that he got to feed some. Here he is feeding the ducklings with his uncle and aunt and of course the hublet.  

This was going well until the ducks dispersed and the Goblin decided to take chase - fast - right in the direction of the pond, which didn't have a fence around it. We managed to grab him before he took a swim. We headed to the nature trail to let Goblin burn off some steam - and burn it off he did. Here he is hurtling down a hill. 

And here he is with his aunty scaring passers. 

Goblin thought the men folk weren't looking manly enough so he equipped them with sticks. 

Jimmy's farm has a designated area in the woods for building dens. After lots of building Goblin and aunty sat and drank pretend cups of tea. Then Goblin demanded that everyone went into the den. This was certainly an interesting exercise for our 6 foot plus men folk!

After the nature trail we had lunch in Jimmy's farm's amazing restaurant which has a comprehensive kids menu and high chairs, as well as some stunning food for the grown ups, in giant portions. And when we had eaten our fill we went and fed some more of the animals. The sheep were very friendly. Goblin giggled when they licked the food from his hand. 

The Alpacas on the other hand were too aloof to be fed. 

Emergency vehicle sorting and matching

(Goblin is 22 months)

Recently Goblin hasn't shown much interest in the educational activities on his shelf. He just wants to play with his vehicles. So I thought I'd tailor some activities to match his interests. Last month I made this vehicle matching card using my bargain basement laminator from Tesco. [http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.202-6578.aspx] The Goblin was really excited and matched the vehicles correctly first time out. I have stuck an envelope on the back of the A4 laminated sheet and popped the 4 laminated cards into it to keep all the bits together. It lives in an A4 holder on his desk along with some colour matching cards. He often fetches this one and brings it to me so we can do matching. 

When I first introduced it I needed to hand the cards to him one at a time or he would get confused. But now I can give him all 4 and he'll sort them himself. 

Lots of blogs on toddler development/activities/education for this age group (18 - 24 months) show sorting activities: sorting felt balls by colour; sea shells by shape; coloured beads by shape or colour. Its a good way of developing an understanding of what makes some things the same and others different (as well as fine motor skills, picking the objects up and putting them in different groups). I have tried getting Goblin to do sorting activities but he has shown absolutely no interest what so ever.  That is until now. 

I used the same card I use for the matching game, but I printed lots of little copies of the pictures on the matching card and laminated all of them (otherwise Goblin would eat the paper). I popped them down in a pile and asked him to find me a helicopter and pop it on the helicopter. I didn't even need to tell him the rest, he just went ahead and sorted them all onto the right pictures. Then he wanted to do it again. Finally a sorting game he likes. 

After that we used the A4 card to sort his toys. He found me a helicopter, two fire engines and an ambulance but I had to help him hunt around for the other fire engines, police cars and helicopters because he'd been playing with them earlier and they were scattered around the room. I used this as an opportunity to tell him about big and small. I showed him that he had one small fire engine and one big fire engine. 
That reminded him how much he loved watching fire engines. So he started shouting for fire engines. That means he wants to watch clips of fire engines with their sirens going. I searched the internet and have made a playlist that loops. It keeps him happy for quite a while. I've added one clip here just to give you an idea - If your toddler is also obsessed there are plenty more on youtube. 

Paper Mache bowls

(Goblin is 22 months)

The other day I found 100 sheets of coloured tissue paper for 99p in a weird little book shop where we live. I decided to do some paper mache with the Goblin. So I sat Goblin down and handed him a sheet of tissue paper to tear. He loved it. I had to help him start the tear and show him how to use his fingers rather than his fists. But once he got the hang of it he was really absorbed by tearing.

The colours were so vibrant and he loved being given different coloured sheets. Each time I handed a sheet over I'd tell him the colour and he'd repeat the word back to me. His speech isn't very understandable yet but his "purple" was crystal clear. 

He was so into tearing he wouldn't stop when we had enough. I started putting it away in a bag so it didn't get damaged before we could use it, but Goblin had other ideas. He tipped the bag up and then drove his cars through the magical tissue forest. 

The next morning I tried to get him interested in tearing up newspaper but he wasn't having any of it. Either he just wasn't in the mood for tearing, or boring grey is no match for purple, pink, green, yellow - you get the picture. So I ended up ripping the newspaper on my own. Then I set up our paper mache zone: Plastic mat; bowl of watered down PVA glue; ripped up tissue paper and newspaper; and a balloon. I dipped the tissue paper into the PVA mix and Goblin stuck the bits onto the balloon.

Unfortunately I drastically overestimated how long the Goblin would remain interested in this activity. In the end Hublet had to take the Goblin into the garden so that he didn't rampage around with gluey hands touching stuff, while I finished the job. Unless your toddler has amzing staying power I would recommend you do the first tissue layer and the newspaper layer while your toddler is napping, and then let your toddler do the final layer of tissue paper. 
Its also worth noting that the coloured tissue paper stains your hands. 

Once we'd finished the balloon with one layer of tissue paper, a couple of layers of newspaper strips and a final layer of tissue paper I left it to dry for 24 hours. 

When it was dry and felt really solid I pierced it with a craft knife to pop the balloon. Then I cut it in half. I used a craft knife but scissors would also work. 

And this is what the finished article looked like. 

The inside of the bowls are wonderfully shiny. I am so pleased with how they turned out. I can't wait for Goblin to wake up so I can show them to him. They are actually quite robust as well. I might be able to use them on Goblin's shelves. 

Fun with Cardboard boxes

(Goblin is 22 months)

Goblin's uncle works for an organisation that gets parts delivered in giant cardboard boxes. Every so often he brings one over for his nephew to play with. I think there are a lot of similarities between toddlers and cats when it comes to cardboard boxes - they just can't stay out of them. 

When we get a new box I often think "What can I do to make this box exciting for Goblin?". But to be honest I don't need to do anything. Goblin makes his own entertainment as this little clip shows. 
 





Amazingly this box survived the zorbing and Goblin had a yogurt based picnic in it. He even took his little stool into the box, and shut the flaps so he could eat in private.

The next day when I came home from work Hublet had made it into a fort. 

We had to add a porch because at 20 months Goblin wasn't very good at remembering to duck. He kept trying to walk out of the fort and taking the whole box for a walk across the room. It survived for about a week before a second zorbing episode killed it off. Still thats half the fun of cardboard boxes, they are disposable (recyclable) entertainment.


My latest cardboard box adventure required a bit more creativity from me. I'd been planning to buy Goblin a street map play mat to play with his cars on. But I found they were either quite small or quite expensive. So instead I decided to make my own using a flattened cardboard box I found in the back of a cupboard. 

I was so pleased with how this turned out. It didn't look like much until i added the white lines, then it came alive. As well as a little helipad for Goblin's newly acquired rescue helicopter, I added a farm for his tractor. The advantage of making your own play mat is you can add some educational bonuses. So at the top left you can see some numbered parking garages - to encourage Goblin to park x number of cars in each space; There is a colour car park - I used the coloured disks from the colour matching peg game and put velcro on the back - now they can serve a dual purpose; And at the top right corner you might be able to make out a fire station with parking spaces big, medium and small for Goblin's fire engines. 


For other ideas on how to use cardboard boxes, possibly for slightly older kids, I found this great link. 
http://sunhatswellieboots.blogspot.com/p/when-is-box-not-box.html

Outings

(Goblin is 22 months)

Today we went to an Airshow. I took my camera, all ready to get some great snaps to post. But unfortunately due to the incredibly bad weather only three planes and a helicopter were able to fly - I'm not sure that even qualifies as an airshow. Goblin and I saw more planes than that at the light aircraft airport near my parents' house. 

Incredibly we still had a great time. The Goblin was very excited about this Chinook helicopter. We were even able to go inside - although its pretty boring inside - just padding and cargo nets. We did see a Sea King Rescue Helicopter performing rescues. I think I may have been more impressed than Goblin. He was more excited about running up the steep bank by the sea wall and then hurtling back down (which was distracting as I kept having to make sure he wasn't about to hurtle straight off the wall, or worse straight into some poor stranger who would then be thrown off the sea wall). 

This is not a great photo of the helicopter, and doesn't really show that we actually had a good view, but it does show the very dark clouds which rapidly closed in and then drenched us. 


So I thought instead of focusing on todays outing I'd write about some of our more successful outings. My main priorities when looking for somewhere to take the Goblin are 
a) No busy roads near by, or a really sturdy fence;
b) lots of running space - nothing enclosed with breakables;
c) possibly something interesting to look at or do. 


The Zoo
A firm favourite in our family is the zoo. Its enclosed, lots of space to run around and it has interesting animals. 

We can easily spend three hours there and not see everything. I love pointing out new animals to Goblin and reading the signs that tell you where they are from and what they eat. My current obsession is trying to explain to Goblin the difference between apes and monkeys. Although Hublet explained that that rule only works one way - no apes have tails, but there are some monkeys without tails - Damn that makes it tricky again, I hope I haven't been telling Goblin that some monkeys are apes.
It drives me nuts when I walk past a parent at the zoo and they are loudly telling their child that a gopher is a rat. Most zoos have signs clearly stating what each animal is. If your child is old enough you get them to read the sign, and if they aren't you can set a good example by showing them that you are reading the sign. Why do people just make up what the animal is, surely the point of going to a zoo is to see new and interesting animals and learn about them? Goblin was very brave last time we went to the zoo and he fed an elephant. 

Local Parks
The local park is always a huge success. We are lucky that one of the parks in our area has no roads around it. I feel safe letting Goblin run wild. The other day he went there with his friends and he ventured quite far on his own. It was great to see his confidence growing so much. Not that he has ever been lacking in that area.

He loves climbing on all the equipment. He did dislike slides for a while after a few hair raising experiences shooting off the end of them, but he seems to have fallen back in love with them recently. 

He also loves the swings. I play a game with him where I get him to try and grab me as he swings forward, then I act like he's hit me and I'm mortally wounded and I fall to the ground. He thinks its hilarious and will play it for ages. I read about this game in a book. The author - a psychologist and play therapist - said that toddlers need to be given opportunities to feel powerful, because they are always falling over and don't get many opportunities to take control. You can empower them through play and make believe. I really liked that idea and Goblin seems to as well. The book was called "Playful Parenting". As with a lot of parenting books I only read half of it, then it seemed to get a bit repetitive and I got bored. But it certainly had some good ideas in. Maybe one to borrow from the library. The author is Lawrence J Cohen. 



Country Park

We are very lucky that quite near us we have an amazing country park with a play trail. The Goblin loves running wild in the open space and burning off energy. But he also likes the play equipment which is great for his gross motor skills.

Goblin is quite good at the digger. Its complicated - you have to move one handle, pull it up and then move the other but he has mastered the sequence really well. Its just too heavy for him so he needs Hublet or me to help him pull. However the digger machine is always busy during the school holidays. One of the things I have realised is that if we do home school we will be able to go to the park when other kids are at school, and Goblin can play on the equipment to his hearts content. But for the time being it is good socialisation practice having to wait his turn and not try and get on at the same time as other kids. He is usually quite good at going and doing something else if the equipment is busy. I see other kids having a total melt down because they want to go on the equipment NOW, and I wonder whether we will be able to avoid that tantrum stage of whether it is just inevitable. 

Long Walks
I love taking Goblin for long walks. There are a few wooded areas near us which are perfect for letting him scamper about without needing to keep track of him too much.

Until recently Goblin would flat out refuse to hold anyone's hand, so we invested in some reins. The traditional kind had quite a short strap and I wasn't keen so we bought a Littlelife backpack with reins. He can carry his own drink and a spare nappy.  Quite often we'll unhook the lead and let him run but we can still use the bag handle to steer him in the right direction. 


Although he's been walking since he turned one he is still not hugely reliable on how far he'll walk. The other day he made it all the way to town holding Hublet's hand, but on other days he will get as far as the main road and want to be carried. My back is not great so trying to carry a 2 stone plus toddler on my hip for any great distance isn't a good idea. Its also really hard to take a buggy and use the reins. So we invested in a backpack baby carrier. 

Despite my bad back I do find I can manage Goblin in the backpack for a few hours - although if Hublet is around I always let him do the honours. Goblin loves being in the backpack because its high up and he can see what's going on. Its great for long walks when you need your toddler to be safe. In the photo above we were in Wales - cliff walking with a toddler is not a great idea unless they can be contained. 
When I want Goblin to do most of the walking the backpack is a bit cumbersome to lug around so I have also bought a cheap mei tai sling. 

Here is the link to babyhawk who make the super deluxe original kind. Now maybe if you were going to have it from birth I'd say "sure spend that much money on one". But I only bought mine when Goblin turned 16 months so I opted for a cheap rip off from ebay. It does the job and I can fold it up and pop it in the changing bag. I find that it hurts my back if I cross the straps over my boobs, but if I tuck them under my arms and round the back under Goblin's bum the sling is much more comfortable. Here is a link to a tutorial on how to tie it as I described. She makes putting your baby in look quite tricky - I think its easier for me because Goblin is older so he does a lot of the work.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfck0-x7Z3E&feature=related


And anywhere with tractors
When Goblin's obsession was trains we went to see a place that had a working steam train. Now his obsession is tractors, and we have been fortunate in finding quite a few in random locations.  

Sometimes we find more than one. Birdworld in Hampshire had several so I was able to please the the older generation too. My dad looks quite at home on this one. It just goes to show this is not an obsession the Goblin is going to grow out of any time soon. 
And this one at the Gower heritage centre in Wales has been a favourite since Goblin was really tiny. 

Montessori inspired

(Goblin is 22 months)

The Goblin goes to a Montessori nursery one day a week while the Hublet and I are both at work. Before deciding to send him there I read a lot about montessori methods and theory. I am no expert so I'm not going to attempt to sum up the principles. But some of the things that appealed to me about the Montessori approach are:
Child led learning - activities are laid out on shelves and the child picks what they want to to do and when. Furniture is made specifically to fit the children, no huge chairs that their feet dangle off of. And kids learn in mixed age groups so they are under no pressure to master something within one academic year.  
Practical life - early years focus on practical life skills like doing up buttons and lacing shoes, undoing latches and pouring your own drink. Rather than pretending to make toast, montessori kids are encouraged to actually make toast and butter it using a real knife. 

While reading about Montessori I found loads of suggestions to help your child develop. For example I've started using a shelf that is easy for Goblin to reach (I know it doesn't look like he'd be able to reach the top but he's such a climber that he gets to the stuff very easily). On the shelf I put a mixture of educational activities (mainly montessori inspired), toys (like a shape sorter or a tea set), jigsaws and books. 
I'm just not neat or organised enough to go the whole hog with Montessori shelves. You are supposed to have each activity on separate trays and encourage your child to do one activity at a time and put it back before doing the next. If you want to see what Montessori shelves should look like check out the Counting Coconut Flickr pictures.
As you can see mine are somewhat more haphazard. And I commit a cardinal montessori sin - I have a toy box. Montessori practitioners would not approve because a toy box is a messy way of storing toys and kids find it harder to access them, and can't easily see all the toys at once. My way of dealing with this is to rotate the toys out of the toy box and onto the shelves so Goblin gets fresh toys every week or so. Its quite satisfying restocking the shelves on a Sunday night - it feels a bit like cleaning the house but is easier. 

I also have a child sized desk and chair for Goblin to work at.  This is a picture of him looking at colour matching sheets that I have put in an A4 holder on his desk. You can just see the corner of his mirror on the wall. That's another montessori idea, having mirrors at kiddy height so kids can look at themselves.


Activities
I have been teaching Goblin to pour since he was about 20 months old. We started with dry pouring. I used a ridiculously huge amount of beans. One pack of lentils would have been enough, I think my tub contained about 5. I realised that it was a mistake when I could feel my stress levels rising every time Goblin wanted to play with this activity. He would start off just pouring from one tub to the other using a little cup, but the lentils and beans felt nice and he would end up sticking his hands deep into the tub and then flinging them everywhere unintentionally. 

I finally worked out that if I put a big blanket down (a double bed size one - lentils fly quite far) I could let Goblin make a mess and then I could wrap the blanket up and slowly shake all the beans back into the tub. That made my life a bit calmer. 

As well as pouring activities we used the beans to bury some of his schleich animals. He really enjoyed digging around to find them. And once we had established this game I brought out some flash cards that matched the animals we were hiding. I'd get Goblin to find the animal and then match it to the flash card. The cards were actually a good reminder of how many animals we'd buried - I put the tub away more than once with a stray penguin buried at the bottom. 
Schleich animals are really well made, sturdy and beautiful. But they are expensive. I bought a mixed bundle on ebay, but even there they are too popular. It took me about two weeks of bidding on various bundles to get one at a price I was wiling to pay. 


Once I felt that Goblin had mastered the basics of pouring I let him loose with liquids. The first attempt was not a huge success. 

Since then he has improved. He loves it when I let him pour his own drinks. He will get the milk bottle out of the fridge and sits down on the floor with it and wait for me to give him a cup. I realised quite quickly that he doesn't know when to stop pouring and we got quite a few overflows. So now I keep an empty milk bottle in the fridge. When he wants to pour I put the right amount of milk into the empty bottle and let Goblin pour from that. This usually avoids spills. But I discovered another problem with this pouring practice. When I gave Goblin a cup without a lid he did not comprehend that the pouring game was over when the cup was full. He would carry on pouring by upending the entire cup of milk onto the floor. Now I quickly snatch the cup away and stick the lid on while asking Goblin to put the bottles back in the fridge. He's then happy to drink from the beaker.


Today he had two drinks on the go, milk in an open cup and squash in a sippy cup with a straw. He has only just started drinking from an open cup. He came over and asked me to take the lid off his sippy cup. I assumed he wanted to practice drinking from the open cup so I obliged. Next thing I know he is pouring from one cup to the other. It made a horrible curdled orangesquash/milk combo but I was really impressed by his pouring skills. 

 When he did miss the cup, he even went to the shelf and got some tissue and wiped up the spill. That's something I have been trying to encourage but its the first time he did it unprompted. 

As well as pouring practice Montessori encourage fine motor skills. I have been doing a few of these activities with Goblin and have mentioned them in other posts but I will mention them again here to put them in context. 


One activity is putting sticks into holes. The classic example is the kebab skewers into a parmesan cheese shaker. Goblin mastered this activity at about 16 months. He really enjoyed it and would bring me the shaker all the time. In our latest version of this I got him to put golf tees through holes in a serving spoon filled with playdough. Pushing the tees into the playdough is satisfying and the holes in the spoon add the skill element.

Goblin has also been moving objects with tongs. I read somewhere that using the tongs helps prepare a child for holding a pen correctly and manipulating it for writing. I started Goblin moving pingpong balls.

And he has moved on to cars. I thought the balls would be more difficult because they slip out of the tongs and bounce away, but they are actually easier than the cars. Pingpong balls are a uniform shape. The cars offer more of a challenge because the tongs only fit round then one way. Goblin got quite frustrated with one car and abandoned it. 

Montessori have lots of specialist and often expensive equipment. One piece of equipment used in their practical life teaching is the dressing frame. Dressing frames are frames with zips, laces or other fastening on them which allow the child to practice doing up clothes without actually having the clothes on. I'm not entirely convinced that they are necessary - can't you just practice with actual clothes? Having said that, I decided that Goblin could use some button practice (he's already quite good with zips, and too young for laces).  

 I got this idea from What did we do all day. She had much nicer felt, I used the colours left over after I made my felt fish and alphabet bean bags - so basically all the borring colours.
I don't think I've ever given buttoning up much thought, but its actually quite a complex use of finger and thumb. I thought Goblin would be able to do this easily, but he struggles with it. I think it will be a while before he can get the felt on and off the button snake.