Invitations to Learn

(Goblin is 31 months)

Every so often I have a minor freak out that I am not teaching Goblin enough. This week was one of those weeks. Goblin has lots of 'educational' toys on his shelves and I rotate them to try and keep them fresh. But for a couple of months now he has been pretty much ignoring the shelves, opting instead for sensory play with rainbow rice or his trucks. Goblin is still young and I have no desire to push him down an academic route so its only my own insecurities that lead me to have my minor pancis. But all the same I was looking for something that might lead him back to the more stretching toys. 

And then I read about "Invitations to Play" at The Imagination Tree. Its such a simple idea. You take a toy and you set it out in a new way so that the child discovers it as if it were new. 

I tried it with Goblin's snail shells and paint pallet. This game improves pincer grip (essential for hand writing) and encourages one to one correspondence which is a maths skill. He hasn't touched it in months. I laid it out on his table on its own. When he came down from his nap he saw it and started playing with it straight away.

I was so impressed with how this worked, the next day I tried it with his shape puzzle. This time I had barely finished putting the shapes out when Goblin came along and started sorting them and doing the puzzle. He did it over and over again. I was amazed. This puzzle has pretty much never been played with before, no mater how many times I put it on the shelves or get it down and suggest we try it together. 

So "Invitations to play", or should I call them "Invitations to learn" will definitely be a regular feature in our house. Thank you The Imagination Tree 

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Pincer grip activities

(Goblin is 30 months)

When Goblin was younger he went through a phase where his favourite thing was scribbling with felt tip pens. He'd do it several times every day and I was really optimistic that contrary to the apparent norm that boys tend to be "reluctant mark makers", he was going to be enthusiastic. Unfortunately I hadn't appreciated how quickly toddlers change and their favourite activities shift. Now I'm lucky if Goblin picks up a pen once a week, and even then his activity is usually brief. So I wanted to find alternative activities to keep him practicing his pincer grip so that when he does get back to using pens and crayons he will have the muscles he needs to help him control the implements.

I had some polystyrene craft eggs that I failed to get round to doing anything with over Easter. So I put them on Goblin's shelves with some cocktail sticks. While watching an episode of 'Dora the Explorer' (His new favourite TV show) he took the tray to the sofa and started to play. 

He carefully inserted the cocktail sticks into the eggs. He did try cheating and putting loads in at once but he quickly realised that it wasn't as easy as putting one in at a time. I helped him to put some extra ones in so they looked like hedgehogs. He liked this and sat cuddling his spiky hedgehogs while he finished watching his TV show. 

As a little aside, it did occur to me at one point when he cuddled his hedgehog a bit too close to his face and stabbed his cheek, that some parents might not let their kids play with spiky cocktail sticks at his age. I'm more of the school of thinking that if you don't give a child enough rope to hang themselves, they can't discover all the other uses for that rope.  And if they've never seen the rope how can you teach them how to use it safely.

The other activity we did was moving coloured water with a turkey baster. Not only is this a great pincer grip strengthening activity but it is good for teaching a child to follow instructions, sequence events and have some patience.When Goblin first tried to use the turkey baster (without instruction from me) he kept squeezing the bulb but lifting the tube out of the water before it had filled up. But once he started listening to what I was telling him he realised he needed to leave the tube in the water and let go of the bulb so the water was sucked up, before he lifted the tube out of the water. A turkey baster is not as intuitive to a toddler as you might think and Goblin needed quite a bit of practice before he got it. And even then when he got over excited he'd pull the tube out to fast again.

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Money Box activity

(Goblin is 29 months)

Hublet is all man when it comes to coins. I normally try to avoid using stereotypical descriptions of male and female 'actions' but there is no getting away from the fact that I do not know a single woman who feels the need to empty their pockets and purse of all their coins and leave them lying in piles around the house, and yet it seems a very common and accepted practice among my male friends. I gave up panicking about the choking hazard in every room of the house a long time ago.

Next to Hublet's side of the bed there is a giant jar, and every night without fail Hublet empties his change from his pocket into the jar - including £1 and £2 coins - so there is a lot of money in that jar. We used to have a computer next to the bed, and Goblin would regularly open the jar and stuff the coins into the CD slot of the computer.
A few days ago Goblin discovered an old money box that I had on a shelf. He took it to the coin jar, emptied a bunch of coins onto the bed and started slotting them into the money box.

This is a great activity for fine motor skills and accuracy. It is slightly more advanced than putting spagetti or kebab sticks into a parmesan cheese shaker, because you need to manipulate the coin to the right angle to fit in the slit. And it gives the child an opportunity to handle money. You can talk about the quantity of the coins while the child plays.

I took the moneybox and some of the coins down stairs and put it on Goblin's shelf. It was the first thing he went to the next morning, and he has taken it off the shelf and played with it a lot since then. Its funny how the simple activities often prove the most popular.  

A nice extension for this activity would be to ask your toddler to find specific coins to put in the slot. 

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On our shelves

(Goblin is 28 weeks)

I switched out some of the stuff on our shelves this week and added the following:

Number pegs - These are great for strengthening pincer grip while learning numbers: number recognition and number order. Goblin needs a lot of help with the number bit but he's good at the pincer grip and attaching them to the shoe lace.

Leapfrog Fridge Phonics  - as Goblin has been singing the alphabet song a lot, I thought I'd bring this out again. If you hit the note button at the top it plays the alphabet song, and if you put a letter in the hole it tells you the name of the letter and the phonic - although I think some of the pronunciation is very questionable - for example its phonic for L is "ull" as in "pull" rather than "leh" and in "leg"

Letter matching cards (M, D and S) - I made these using Picassa and google images - they took about 15 minutes each (mainly sourcing the pictures). I printed off two copies, Laminated one and chopped up the other.

As you can see I have an upper case and lower case letter and then four things that begin with the letter M. I used stuff Goblin already knows the name of because the idea is to get him to learn the letter through the things he's familiar with - thats why I am on the M card - M is for Mummy.

Here is the S card. I added velcro coins to the back of each matching card and the back of the sheet, this is to enable me to store the cards with the sheet. It also lifts the cards slightly off the ground which makes it easier for your toddler to pick them up.

Tonging bells - This was originally a Christmas activity but the bells make such a lovely noise that I brought it out again. This was Goblin's first choice activity this morning.

Hammering corn crisps - This may sound like an odd activity but its really good for practicing accuracy and its really fun. And it stopped Goblin using the hammer to smash anything else.

Goblin really concentrated on getting every last crisp smashed. We both squealed with delight as pieces of crisp flew across the room. Then he ate most of the smashed pieces.

Although Goblin ate a lot of the crisps this activity did still make a huge mess. But fortunately Goblin decided he wanted to hoover up the mess. He's usually terrified of the hoover so I was quite surprised that he volunteered. Lovely bit of practical life activity there. 

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Back to basics

 (Goblin is 26 months)

This week I have gone back to basics with Goblin's shelves. I think I have been pushing him towards activities that are too difficult and beyond his ability. I got carried away with the fact he showed an interest in counting, and tried to turn all his activities into number based ones. The result was he ignored his shelves all week and just played with his cars and did lots of sensory activities like cooking, playdough and water play. So I observed him, and listened to my instincts and opted to go right back to the simple stuff. Goblin likes this stuff and has fun, and thats whats important.

 So on his shelves this week I have:
pouring - Christmas themes with red and green rice and sparkley 'happy christmas' glitter;

matching - I found some gift tags with double sided tape on the back so I have stuck 4 down on a card and left the rest in a pot for Goblin to sort under the ones on the card;

Tonging and one to one correspondence - I found some glittery pine cones in our random book shop and put them in a bowl for Goblin to tong into a muffin tin; 

Pincer grip and accuracy - I bought a bag of those christmas present bows, and I am using my pot from the gnome counting game and some craft tweezers so Goblin can lift them and slot them into the hole in the pot.

I also have his christmas house with balls that go down the chimney, a pasta shaker and kebab sticks, and his sound cubes.

I changed up his shelves while he was taking a nap. We were due to go to Nanny's in the afternoon so when he woke up I got him dressed and put his shoes and coat on. We were just about to leave and I nipped into the living room to get something. Goblin followed me and saw the shelves. The shelves he'd ignored for about a fortnight. And before I could stop him he'd taken down two separate games and started to play.  I think this demonstrates that I simply had the wring stuff out last week.

 The glitter pine cone one to one correspondence work was a great hit. He has played with it again and again.

 When he fills up all the slots he gets me to put them back in the jug and starts again. 

 And again!

 As well as his activities on his shelf we have been doing a bit of art. Goblin gets really excited by rockets. So we made one out of a kitchen roll tube. And Goblin painted it.

 He also painted his hands - again!

 And finally I wanted to post about another activity I tried with Goblin. I found it on another blog and I even left a post saying how great it was and that I'd need to try it out, but now I can't remember which blog it was I found it on so I can't reference them (Sorry if it was you).

 Anyway, it was pasta threading, on spaghetti. You pop spaghetti into playdough and then get your toddler to thread penne and shape pasta onto the spagetti. Goblin found it very difficult to do when the spaghetti was in the playdough. I should probably have done this on the floor because by the time you put the spaghetti in the top of it is at Goblin's eye level which is quite a stretch if you are practising fine motor skills. He cheated and took the spaghetti out of the playdough, threaded the penne and then put it back in the playdough. The spaghetti was actually too delicate for Goblin and he ended up breaking quite a few bits so I eventually swapped it for wooden kebab skewers.

But before I did he got quite into pushing the spaghetti into the playdough. This was a really good exercise because he had to be firm but gentle, if he was too rough he'd break the spaghetti and if he wasn't firm enough he wouldn't get it to stand up.  Next time I do this I will use penne with straight edges, the stuff I had was cut on the diagonal and that made it even harder for Goblin to thread. He enjoyed trying though.

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