Invitation to play - Fail!

(Goblin is 33 months)

 This is how my colour sorting invitation to play worked out......

Need I say more!

Goblin's First Venn diagram

(Goblin is 30 months)

The other day Goblin was playing with his plastic animals and I started talking to him about where they lived, some live in the water and some on the land. My conversation stemmed from a great post I saw ages ago on LivingMontessoriNow which was a round up of various people's units on land, air and water. I decided to avoid talking about animals that lived in the air because no animals actually live in the air. Many spend a lot of time in the air but they all come down to earth to sleep. I also thought that a 2 option conversation was simpler for my 2 and a half year old. But then I realised that there were a bunch of animals that spent a lot of time both in the water and on the land. Should I say these were land animals or water animals?

This question stuck with me, and I realised it was a great learning opportunity. So while Goblin was napping I drew him his first Venn diagram. Green is for land, Blue is for water and the yellow middle is where the two over lap.  Our conversation suddenly covered biology/zoology and maths.

I selected a group of animals that Goblin could easily identify (yes this now includes a sea cucumber - its amazing what kids absorb) and that would fit into one of the three categories.

Goblin seemed to enjoy this extension to our earlier conversation. Although he did think it was highly amusing to put land animals in the water and make me do the voices of the drowning creatures - "Help! I'm a giraffe, I live on the land, I know I have a really long neck but this water is too deep, rescue meeeeeee!"

And here is our final diagram with animals in their right places. 

I'm sharing this with 

On the Shelves - Colour matching

(Goblin is 27 months)

I decided to do another blitz on colour. We do talk about colour a lot. Goblin knows Yellow, Orange and Pink. He recognises Blue and Purple most of the time, but he never recognises Red or Green. I started to wonder whether he might be colour blind (Paranoid mum alert!), because Red-Green colour blindness is the most common. But if you give Goblin red objects and green objects he can sort them, and match them, he just can't name them. So it isn't colour blindness, its just forgetfulness. 

So the activities I put on the shelves this week to help him with his colour naming (and matching) included:

His Christmas present colour and count stacker. 

His salt dough colour sorting bowls.

His Melissa and Doug Shape puzzle.

I found some great colour matching printables on The Princess and the Tot blog. I printed off two lots and put one out with crayons so Goblin could colour the right circles with the right colour (he hasn't shown any interest in doing this yet though).

The other one I put on the shelf with a board covered in coloured stickers so Goblin could match the stickers to the right coloured circles. 

We have lots of half used sticker books from when Goblin went through his sticker obsession. He was obsessed with stickers but only if they were vehicles. We bought a couple of amazing sticker books with a variety of stickers in them only to find he lost interest as soon as all the cars and lorries had been used up. They have sat unloved on the book shelf for months. But as you can see he was interested in this activity - although not very good at it! We talked about the colour names a lot though. 

One thing I didn't put on the shelves was his colour matching cards. He has had these for ages but to be honest I forgot about them. But I was looking for something the other day and I found them. Goblin spotted them and instantly started to pull the matching cards off the laminated sheets (I velcro them to the back of the card for storage) and match them up. He loves them. I downloaded these from http://www.homeschoolcreations.com/preschoolcolorsandshapes.html. 
I also put some of his cars on the shelf with some colour cards I had laminated. These were a big hit. First we matched the cars. Then he went and got a whole bunch more and we did those too.

And later we sat at the other end of the room and rolled them at the right coloured card - we were both really bad at this. But we both enjoyed it a lot. Not sure how much colour learning went on. When I showed Goblin the red bus and said "what colour is this" he said "bus" - hmmm!

I'm linking this to

  

  

Colour Matching - home made equipment

(Goblin is 24 months)

Goblin can now say most of the colours names. In fact for a while everything was "blue", at the moment everything is "big". Not that everything was actually "blue" or is actually now "big", he is just practicing using the word. He likes saying "yellow" and "purple" and rolls the words round in his mouth. But he still can't match the name of the colour to things that are the actual colour. To help him I made some colour matching equipment. 

These are salt dough bowls painted with Goblin's ready mix paint and varnished with clear varnish. I made them the same way as the Diwali candle holders. And they contain felt acorns made in the same way as the christmas decoration ones.

When Goblin first discovered them on his shelves he was more content just stacking them in the trailer of his push along tractor and riding them round the room. But eventually he took them out and started to play with them. At first he just put handfuls of any colour in any bowl. But when I started to say, "look this is a yellow one, what bowl should it go in", he got the hang of it and put them in the correct bowls. 

He even improved the game by using the sugar tongs which meant as well as colour matching and learning the colour names he was also strengthening his pincer grip. 

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.