Tag: Toddler

Dear Reader,

I have been up to my ears in canning, and I’m getting pretty tired of tomatoes, so it was kinda nice to have some other commitment and goal that took me away from jars and canners and boxes and boxes of tomatoes to play with my kids. We didn’t do anything fancy, today, just grabbed a few rubber bands and some bread pans and made … well, they’re not really guitars, lets be honest. But they would make some semblance of music while I was testing them out and getting them ready.

This activity was really easy to set up! It helps if you have plenty of rubber bands and can be selective, but the bigger variety, the more enjoyable it is. Just slide the rubber bands onto the bread pan, and then pass it to your kid.

At first, when I handed them to the girls, they kinda stared at me like, “okay, and?” But by the end of playing, they knew the general idea enough to explore on their own.

I was kinda hoping we could focus on finger isolation (using different fingers for individual tasks. Totally looked it up, haha!) because I noticed that although one girl was great at pointing, her sister hadn’t really figured it out, yet; so I wanted to strengthen her ability to point. This activity *could* help with that, And I showed them how to use 1 finger to strum, but in all honesty, it was more fun to just let them explore the world of sound and get all fingers involved!

I sat with them and showed them how to strum the rubber bands for about 15 minutes, and then just let them explore! They pulled on the bands, and pushed, and even turned the pans over to figure out what would happen by playing with the rubber band from the other side! I left them out while I canned, and they’d come back to play throughout the day.

And yes, I know my bread pans are well loved… I don’t make fresh bread enough that it’s worth buying a different set! In fact, I am terrrrrrible at making bread. even pre-made, Rhodes-type stuff! There’s a trick to getting it to rise, and I just don’t know that trick (send me all your tricks in the comments!)

Dear Reader,

I know, I just said I didn’t think my girls are ready for different sizes in nesting toys. And then my toddler brought me this game her sister set down for her and I thought, “eh, why not?” Obviously we didn’t play the real game, but I realized that although they’re not really ready to nest the objects themselves, a step to helping them get there would be to let them pull each toy up and discover a smaller one underneath. And, since we already had the game (found on Amazon, but I’m not an affiliate, so I wont get anything if you get it from there. we won our copy from a library reading program), and I was a few activities short in my planning (toddlers are hard, yo!), I took the game and ran with it (which is a much different visualization when you have toddlers, lol).

It’s pretty easy to get set up. Simply stack all the figures and then just let your kids lift them up. The felt “hair,” came in really handy in this case, because it is much easier to grasp than the figures. But if you dont have this particular game at your house, you could use anything Russian Doll-ish in it’s ability to stack. Or some of the toys I said we owned last week. I will say, though that these toys are uniquely situated to simplicity for little fingers and being able to … Un-nest. And the hair making it easy to lift is actually a good way to develop pincer grasps in toddlers.

Really, they enjoyed playing with the little figures, even if they didn’t stack them on their own. Every time I had enough to set together, I would, and the game would continue. It is interesting the different personalities of these 2; One liked lifting the figures better and particularly liked the bigger figures (she later stuffed a napkin in it and pulled it out, over and over). The other kept running off with all the littlest figures, as they were just the right size to fit inside her little fists (Disclaimer warning: they are much too small to be left with your children unattended as they’re about as wide as an extra-wide crayon).

I’ve put the game away again, since I don’t want to lose all the pieces, but I will definitely bring it back out and see what their minds do with it again! Maybe they’ll even be ready to stack them by themselves sooner than I anticipated.

Dear Reader,

I have been struggling to get my child to stop playing with her spit. I don’t understand why she started in the first place, but she will spit on her hands and rub them everywhere.

As you no doubt know, this is very unsanitary and really really gross. Nothing I have tried so far has worked.

I have been at my wits end so I finally asked my other childs Occupational therapist for some ideas. Thankfully she had some.

The therapist suggested that we play with things like slime or playdough when she has the need to play with her spit. There was a significant drop in playing with spit when I finally let her play with the playdough.

A problem occurred though when I realized that some of the time she plays with her spit is in the car. Playdough/slime do not go well with a car.

That’s where this idea comes in. Placing the playdough in a ziplock bag she gets to play with the playdough without making a mess in my car.

There has been even less playing with her spit since taking the playdough in the bag, with only one instance where I had to tell her to take her hand out of her mouth. Even with this instance though she wasn’t sliming up her hand in spit, just placing it in her mouth.

So if you are struggling with a child playing with thier spit, like i was, or just want something for your kids to do in the car this is a good idea. Just place the playdough in a Ziploc freezer bag, tape it up, and let your kids have fun.

Dear reader,

There are a ton of nesting toys for kids, and we even have some. Toddlers love them. I would assume it’s kind of the same thrill people get when they complete a puzzle, but I have no real idea. We have this ball, and rainbows like this, (no affiliate links, just toys we own), but I wanted something that they could just collect and stack together no matter what order they were in, and all of our stacking toys have a very specific order. I feel like that is a later skill. So I walked around my house looking for things that stacked together. At first I was going to use real cups, but then I remembered we had these plastic ones, and I had more of them than I had regular cups, so I could scatter them around and let the girls collect them, instead of just handing each of them 2 or 3 cups.

It was a nice day, and the girls were all being super destructive and dangerous in the house (seriously, I’ve gotta come up with a way to convince my toddlers to stop trying to climb onto the piano!) so I scattered the cups onto the deck and sent them outside. Score some points for hand/eye coordination and spatial perception skills, and I sound like a cool and with-it mom! All for distracting a few toddlers with some cups.

Actually, it was a great reset, since we were all getting a little wound up from all the “don’ts” that had been happening just a few minutes earlier. And I’m convinced sunshine is a good thing for little kids. I mean obviously, this activity could have been done indoors, but let’s soak up all the cool weather while we have the chance.

Dear Reader,

My kids were sick over the weekend and I decided that now they are starting to feel better playing with soap would be a good thing.

To make the foam all you need is water, some soap (I used baby bath soap), and some food coloring. Mix the solution together with a blender, hand blender, or even an electric mixer.

As you can see I chose to mix this in my blender. The solution is 1/2 cup water, 2 T soap, 4-5 drops of food coloring. For most of my colors 4-5 drops was enough but you can’t really tell that the green is green in my foam.

I made 4 batches, but by the time I was able to get my foam out for my kids to play the first batch was already returning to water state, so I suggest you don’t do more than that or somehow make bigger batches.

My kids loved this, though the youngest was wierded out by the whole thing. He got a little on his hands because older siblings were flinging the soap around and didn’t know what to do with it.

As I said earlier the kids started flinging the foam around, so be prepared for this to be messy. I knew it would be a little messy and so I had them go outside to play with it. The great thing about this is that you can just hose off any mess.

Hope you enjoy this activity as much as my children did!

Dear Reader,

I didn’t exactly know how well it would go, but when my preschooler asked if she could play with chalk, I decided to see how well the toddlers did with it. It was nice weather (although the forecast said it was supposed to be cold today), and these two love to go outside! They beeline for the door if anyone grabs any shoes, so they were more than happy to get to go outside with permission this time.

And boy was that an adventure. I will say, they did “draw.” But it was about 10 seconds in duration. Then I spent the rest of the time chasing after one and then the other to keep them on the concrete instead of booking it to the rocks or the grass or eating the chalk. Part of me hoped that by leaving them barefoot, they’d be more apt to stay on the flat surface but the bumpy rocks didn’t even slow them down.

I mean, I didn’t expect much, they’re still really little for chalk, but I figured that exposing them is the first start. And since winter is right around the corner, now seemed like a good enough time. They knew that holding the chalk and touching the concrete was the general idea, and made a few marks. But, alas, the joy of being outside was much more of a pull than putting color on the cement.

The preschooler, however, did enjoy her time to be artistic, so all the chasing was worth it. She started with drawing lines (or 1’s), then we drew shapes. She just discovered that she can spin around with the chalk and it makes a circle. I was kind of impressed when she turned those circles into fruit. One was a pear, one was an apple and one was an orange, all with added green leaves.

I’m sure there will be more time to play with chalk, but it may not happen until next spring, so it was a good time to get in a little practice. And some sunshine. Around these parts, we could always use a little more sunshine.