Learning Tools Archives – Page 3 of 3

Phonics Muffins – Phonics Lessons With Muffin Tins & ABC Magnets

Posted by Pinparent — 20 Comments

Toddlers are incredible. The amount of information that they take in, learn and retain on a daily basis is astounding. I am fascinated by my daughter & also often surprised by her as well. From the time she was an infant, we surrounded her with the alphabet. I sang the Abc’s to her when she would cry, which was all the time. We also had a few visual aids…

Mai’s Nanna made this beautiful ABC quilt for her. It hangs on the fence in her playroom.

With all of the alphabet jammed down her throat, it was no wonder that she learned her Abcs early. She has been sounding out her letters for some time now. She will play with her refrigerator magnets often while I am cooking. “B! Bbb bbb boy” You are right baby, B is for boy. She is growing up so fast that I can hardly believe it. With Mai sounding out her letters so much, I came up with a game that could hopefully challenge her phonics learning and entertain her.

This was a cheap and easy to make activity for my toddler. Just line muffin tins with pictures of different animals & objects and let her match up the alphabet magnet to the coordinating word. For example, matching the A to apple or B to banana.

What you will need:

2 muffins tins

Printouts of clip art objects to cover every letter of the alphabet (There are only 24 spots in the tins but you can switch out the other 2)

Alphabet magnets

Using the muffin tin as a stencil, outline the clipart & cut to fit inside of the tin.

Gather your magnets.

Watch your little one with pride as they pick up the letters and place them on the correct pictures. “M! Mmmm mm m monkey.”

I was overcome with pride watching my daughter do this activity. I have to admit that my eyes watered a little as she completed the tins. I could tell she was proud too. Next step…reading.

DIY Toddler Learning & Playing Cards

Posted by Pinparent — 17 Comments

I know most mommies are biased about their children. We all think our children are the most beautiful, the most brilliant, the funniest kids in the world. I am no exception. I find my child absolutely fascinating. She is so bright and continues to get smarter everyday. She is very proud of the new things she learns and likes to tell us and show us how much she knows.

Mon
27 ^th

Learning Through Tracing Activities

Posted by Pinparent — 14 Comments

Sat
14 ^th

Learning to Count is Easy as 123

Posted by Pinparent — 19 Comments

Sun
08 ^th

Exploring my Toddler’s Imagination – The Rorschach experiment

Posted by Pinparent — 8 Comments

I think my toddler’s mind is a fascinating thing. I will sometimes sit and stare at her & watch as her brain processes what is in front of her. Today she turns 23 months old. She is entering a new stage in her development right now. Her imagination is evolving right before our eyes.
It started slowly, with simple copy cat acts such as pretending to talk on the phone or tucking in her baby to go to sleep.

Mon
02 ^nd

Christmas Sensory Box

Posted by Pinparent — 9 Comments

Up until about two months ago I never heard of a sensory box. I started seeing them popping up all over Pinterest. I remember thinking, “I don’t see how this would interest my daughter” , but still I was intrigued by the idea. It turns out I could not have been more wrong. It makes me a little angry that I didn’t know about these earlier, because they truly are a mommy sanity saver.

Since it tis the season & all, I thought a Christmas sensory box would be just the thing to get our daughter excited for the holidays.

The last box we made was filled with multi-colored rice, scoops & tiny little animals & creepy crawly critters. Mai loved it! It would keep her occupied for hours on end, but I was picking rice out of the strangest places weeks later.

I wanted one a little less messy this time around. The idea I had involved using cotton blankets of snow & mixing assorted Christmas themed items inside the folds of cotton.

I love the Dollar Store. The dollar store is perfect for finding affordable fillers for sensory play. Lucky for me, I work right next door to one & can shop on my lunch breaks for wonderful treasures. Here are a few of the items that I was lucky enough to find.

I had my ingredients, lets construct our box.

I use a Rubber Maid storage bin for ours. I pulled and stretched at the blankets of snow to make it loose & fluffy & placed it in the bin. I cut the garland into several pieces & lined the outside. I had hundreds of plastic mini ornaments. I placed them evenly throughout the snow, hiding them with the folds. I did the same with the pine cones, rubber leaves & berries. The cloth presents were just laid across the top.

Mai was so excited as mommy was putting this together. She kept yelling “box, box!”

“Ok, baby girl.” It is ready. Dig in!

The verdict: The Christmas sensory box was a hit. She played with it so quietly for about an hour before bed. Awwww.. Life is good.

Up next: Holiday Traditions

Teaching Toddlers Emotions

Posted by Pinparent — 13 Comments

I have always been one of those people that wears their emotions right on their face. When I am having a bad day, everybody knows it. I have an expressive face. I can’t help it. It is like my heart plays puppeteer to my face & I have no control over it.

Sun
10 ^th

What’s Your Favorite Children’s Book?

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

Like most parents, my husband & I don’t always see eye to eye in our opinions on how to raise our daughter. There are differences in opinions on meal choices, routines & even what she wears. One thing we both have agreed on from the start, was that we wanted to make sure that we read to her & encouraged her to read at an early age.

Our daughter loves books and we read to her everyday. It is interesting to me that even at such a young age, she has certain book preferences, some that are even surprising.

I found this list on Pinterest of the top ten children’s books…

It got me thinking about Mai’s favorite books. Did any of these books make the cut?

Not really. Which books did?

HERE ARE MAI’S TOP TEN

1. As an infant, it wasn’t Eric Carle’s ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ that we read to Mai while rocking her to sleep it was Carle’s ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear’

2.While all of Mai’s friends were grabbing for ‘Goodnight Moon’, it was the

‘Goodnight Gorilla’ that Mai would reach for.

3.And it wasn’t Dr Seuss’s ‘Green Eggs & Ham’ that Mai chose for her mealtime story, it was the Dr’s

‘One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish’

4. ‘ I Like It When’

This is an adorable board book. Mai loved this one & used to act out the actions as we read them. My favorite was “I like it when you hug me tight.” Mommy would receive a wonderful hug complete with an “awwwwwww” from my darling girl.

5 .‘If You Give A Mouse A Cookie’

This was a favorite of our munchkin. She also liked the similar tale ‘If You Give A Moose A Muffin’

6. ‘Owl Moon’

A lovely book with beautiful illustrations. The story of a father and daughter that go owling. My daughter loved the illustrations in this one. She would squeal and point out all the snowy animals.

7. ‘The Berenstain Bears He Bear She Bear’

Great book that shows the reader that they can do or be anything they want to be and it doesn’t matter if they are a he or she.

8. ‘Ten Little Ladybugs’

This is a cute book to teach counting with..as the ladybugs disappear one by one & reappear home at the end

9. ‘The Napping House’

This is a cute and silly tale with a repetitive style about a house where everyone is napping on top of one another. .a dozing dog on a dreaming boy on a snoring granny.

10. OK! So, I guess one of these did make the cut after all…

‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs’

Story of a town that rains food.

Do you see your favorite’s here? Please share your toddler’s favorites.

Up next…Fun Food Art

Treasure Hunt Bottles

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

A few weeks ago, we had to bring our daughter to the emergency room. She had what was called nursemaids elbow, a common toddler injury, which is basically a dislocated elbow. With a quick movement the doctor snapped Mai’s elbow back in place & within seconds, she was back to her happy, smiley, mischievous self. I was relieved. It is a nerve wracking couple of hours.

While we were there, a very nice nurse brought us a cylinder like toy, filled with sand and different assorted shapes and objects. She gave this to Mai to play with as we waited for her x-rays. The toy worked in distracting our little miss from her injuries. I thought this was a wonderful idea, but in all the stress and anxiety of the situation, it was quickly forgotten, until yesterday when I saw a pin for a treasure hunt game.

This reminded me of the cylinder and all of its’ random objects. I thought this should be easy enough to recreate and would have to be more fun to play with, without a big ouchie.

What you will need…

An old soda bottle 20 oz or 32 will do

rice or sand

food coloring

assorted plastic toys small enough to fit into a bottle top

I originally made this with a 2 liter bottle, but found that it was too heavy for Mai to play with, so we transferred it to a 20 oz bottle. This worked much better for her little hands.

Directions:

Peel the soda label of the bottle. Clean the bottle & let it dry thoroughly

Pour rice & food coloring into a ziplock bag & shake

Pour rice onto paper plate to dry

Insert mini toys into bottle. I went with assorted insects, bugs, butterflies and reptiles. I bought these at the Dollar Store.
Use a funnel & fill the bottle 3/4 of the way with rice.

Seal top using super glue.

Shake the bottle to mix up the toys

Let your toddler shake & play & point out all of the objects

With all the left over rice we had, we also made a sensory box.

The verdict: She loved the bottles. She was shaking it up and pointing to birds and butterflies and laughing. The sensory boxes are always a hit in our house. It was a fun day for Mai. It was a messy day for mommy.

Drop cloths, mommy..drop cloths. Some one hand me a broom.

Fri
01 ^st

Cool whip finger painting & more messy play

Posted by Pinparent — 9 Comments

As any mother of a toddler knows, toddlers have a short attention span and like to keep busy constantly. They are discovering and learning something new every day, every minute, every second. It is an incredible to thing to watch. It can be uplifting, amazing, funny, heartwarming, frustrating and oh so tiring.
It can be extremely difficult finding activities that will engage & hold my daughter’s interest. She, like her father is a runner. She does not like to stay still even for short periods of time, which is the reason I think I have such a hard time getting her to eat her meals.

One thing my daughter does like is finger painting. Like most children her age she also likes to put everything in her mouth. I found this recipe for edible finger paints last year on Pinterest.

Edible Finger Paint

2 Tbs. corn starch

4 Tbs. water

food coloring as desired

Combine and mix well.

I have made these several times. Here is Mai hard at work.

The verdict…
This is a great recipe but I found that with this and with other finger paint recipes that they were too soupy.
She would pour out her paint containers within minutes, and that would be end of that.

I saw another idea for playing in shaving cream and I thought this was a great idea but I didn’t want her eating it.

The image of the shaving cream brought to mind Cool Whip. Lucky for me I always have a tub of Cool Whip handy.
I portioned out the Cool Whip into 3 containers and added food coloring and stirred until I achieved the desired color.

Mai was curious about it right of the bat. I set up her painting area by putting down a drop cloth under her chair and set a piece of poster board down for her at the kitchen table.
Let the paint fly, Mai!

She, of course, had to start off with a taste test.

It passed with flying colors, now she is ready to paint.

I gave her a cork and a paintbrush to work with. I was impressed with my little Picasso. She used the brush to paint the cork and then used the cork to stamp the paper.

Mai’s finished Mess-terpiece.

The verdict…
The Cool Whip paints worked wonderfully. The denser texture made for a better contained mess & it was much easier to mix than regular finger paints. It tastes better too.

WATER PLAY
Mai loves playing with liquid. One of my daughters favorite things to do is to take her sippy cup and pour her juice, milk, etc into anything she thinks will hold it. I have caught her taking random toys and putting them in her play pots and making soup out of them.

Here is another simple activity. Leave the splash mat out.

I used a small Rubbermaid container and filled it halfway with food colored water. We added some play cups and bath toys. She held on the the paint brush, too. She became really attached to it.

I also gave her a pump bottle filled with the same colored liquid. She loved this.

The verdict…
This one was a winner. I was able to cook a whole dinner while she enjoyed her water play. Thank you, baby.

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