Shapes sensory tubs

We have a shape sorter toy and only last month, he took more interest in the toy. Initially he was just interested in getting the blocks into the holes but he didn't know the different shapes, so he ended up so frustrated for trying to force a circular block into a square hole most of the time. A week later, he seemed to be 'enlightened' and learnt that the blocks are of different shapes. The first shape he recognised was a star and he even picked up our sign language for star. When we sang twinkle twinkle little star to him, we would close and open our palms like stars flickering in the night sky and he would do exactly that whenever he sees a star now.

When it comes to picking themes or activities for Xue, I like to adopt the 'one-step-ahead' method. During his playtime, I observe what he like to do or what he is trying to learn, be 'one-step-ahead' and provide him with more opportunities to practise the skill or build up the new knowledge. I feel that Xue is ready to learn more about shapes and so we declared an All About Shapes week at home.

I rummaged through all his toys and my craft stuffs for all the stars and circles to make two shapes sensory tubs. Only when everything is put together that I realised we have a lot of stars and circles stuffs around the house.

Here's the stars sensory tub:

And, here's the circles sensory tub! I think because Xue saw so many circles in that tray, there is no way not to recognise one after that. lol.

He's usually quite cautious when exploring any new stuffs, ok, at least for the first five minutes. How to tell that he's warmed up? See, everything will be on the floor. Anyway, the mess is easy to clear up and totally worth it because, learning objectives are achieved! Now, he can point out all the circles and will proudly draw a circle in the air with his little finger whenever he sees one.

Frootloops fun!

Sorry to all frootloops lovers, but I just got to say that these colourful stuffs taste so weird! I got a small box to try while searching for more breakfast options for Xue but I didn't even offer any to Xue to eat because they taste weird and too hard. Xue caught me opening the box and was instantly locked on to them. We ended up having some impromptu fun messing with these frootloops. Initially Xue transferred the frootloops from bowl to bowl. Then he got a little excited and swept them around his table and onto the floor.

He looked like he was having such a good time, so I didn't stop him and just let him do whatever he wanted. Besides, it was a good way to get him to remain on his high chair and finish his lunch which is like the hardest thing to do these day. Honestly, I'm at wits ends try to get my tot to sit down and finish his lunch, any tips fellow mums?

Craft pom poms

Sometimes the simplest stuffs makes the best toys for children. Like these craft pom poms, Xue has been playing with them for more than three months (and counting) but because there are many ways to use them in activities, he hasn't got bored of them yet. They beat many fanciful and expensive toys hands down. I bought these pom poms from Daiso, just $2 per pack. So.worth.it. Here are some activities we have done so far with pom poms.

When he was younger and he was learning how to pick things up, these pom poms were perfect to develop his fine motor skills. He would pick them up one by one, explored the texture and dropped them into small containers like the ice cube trays or Vitagen bottles. There was a day that he was very intrigued by these 'hairy pom poms', he sat down for a long time to pluck out the 'hair' of one pom pom. That one pom pom is all bald now!

Next, I gave him a little ice cube spade for him to learn scooping. Whenever he mastered a skill, I have to be quick enough to anticipate what he wants to learn next and switch things around. So when he was confident with using a spade, I gave him a Chinese soup spoon. He's getting quite good with it now and he can scoop up the pom poms one by one and transfer them to another container.

Looks like I need to increase the difficulty of the task soon, maybe giving him a smaller spoon or a pair of tongs. Maybe these pom poms will come in handy many years later when he's learning how to use chopsticks too!

Dinosaur week round up

Here is a roundup of the activities for our dinosaur theme weeks. The whole thing stretched over two weeks because I introduced just one activity per weekday and I only had 3 weekdays with him at home. Haha well you can call this part time home school. Anyway, this is my first time having a themed learning week at home and the challenge I had was coming up with age appropriate activities for Xue with dinosaur elements in them. Having said that, I still like having a theme because it provides a structure for lesson planning and it really squeezes the creativity juices out of me to incorporate dinosaurs into everything.

The highlight (I think I'm speaking for myself!) must be our first dinosaur sensory tub.

Xue had fun painting paper plates for his plate-asaurus. Xue loves hanging them on his arms these days and goes parading around the house with them. The two plate-asauruses go by the names Dippy and Steggy now.

I'm guessing that the unzipping exercise this month must be his favourite activity because he is so full of determination to unzip it and empty its content every time he gets his hand on the purse. He shows 'good knowledge transfer' and has went on to try to unzip everything else with zips, like my wallet and my mother-in-law's coin pouches.

During June, Xue and I made an excursion to Art Science Museum and visited the Dawn to Extinction Dinosaur exhibition. Halfway through the exhibition, Xue fell asleep and I didn't know whether to attribute it to the conducive dim lighting or his disinterest in those enormous dinosaurs.

We attempted some dinosaur sorting too which honestly didn't turn out too successful. He took interest in the dinosaur figurines but that didn't last too long and he couldn't get the four dinosaurs sorted out. Now that's a huge contrast compared to the animal sorting activity where he showed a lot more interest and succeeded in sorting the animals. I'm thinking that probably the difference in interest is because he has seen those animals before in zoos or farms, but not real dinosaurs. The dinosaurs displayed at the Dawn to Extinction exhibition were the closest to the real things but they were still not as engaging as seeing the animals in actions.

Last but not least we visited the National Library and borrowed books which were dinosaur related. I took out all the dinosaur books from our home library too and placed all of them on his shelves where Xue could access easily. There in the photo below, you can see all his dinosaur stuffs at the bottom shelves.

That's it for our dinosaur theme weeks and I'm feeling a little lost now as I think of activities for next week. Honestly, just three days of homeschool for me a week, I'm a little overwhelmed sometimes with the planning, preparation and execution and I wonder how some mothers can come up with so many awesome activities everyday, with more than 1 kid and getting all the housework done through the day. My full admiration for mothers who are homeschooling their children full time. Well I feel that I'm learning as much as Xue everyday and that's what I set out for myself to achieve too. Since I chose to work part time, I really want to make not just his time but our time at home as meaningful as can be.

Dinosaur Sensory Tub

For those who are new to sensory tub, it's simply a large container/tray filled with various stuffs for the children to explore with all their senses. There is usually a base material which fills the tub. Things like rice, pasta, pebbles, sand, shredded paper, beans, mud, water, oat flakes, cooked spaghetti (?!) or just anything so that the kid can do some form of digging with. Whatever that goes into the tub is totally up to your creativity, resourcefulness and on a more practical note, your tolerance for potential mess. Imagine the kid emptying the entire tray of sand in your living room. For most of us who don't have an outdoor garden, there are some materials that are really not suitable for our apartments unless you have an incredible tolerance for mess.

I was positive I would love sensory tubs to bits when I was a kid. Haha now that I'm a parent, and you know how once we turned parents, all standards will change, I'm not too sure about making one for Xue. The potential mess is unimaginable!! But so is the potential fun and learning and I just cannot pass up such a good activity for Xue. During our dinosaur week, I made our first sensory tub from the stuffs I found at home. It's filled with dried dinosaur pasta (how apt!) as the base, dinosaur figurines, a volcano figurine, a palm tree figurine, a dinosaur picture card and some flat marbles. These marbles are supposed to be the 'fossils' for Xue to dig out from beneath the pastas. And they were really the highlight of this sensory tub! Haha my son didn't really care about the dinosaurs but he was so interested in picking these flat marbles out.

Anyway before the activity, I imagined that he would go oooh and aaaah at the figurines and maybe spend some time to admire my set up. What actually happened was that he inched forward to take a closer look and he rested his hand on the edge of the tray. The tray flipped up and half the content were scattered over the floor. All these happened within THREE SECONDS. I didn't even have time to tell him 'that's a dinosaur' or 'oh look, a volcano'.

I must say using dried pasta was a wise choice because after that he emptied everything on the floor and these stuffs are really easy to clean up. It just gets a little powdery and a wipe is all that's needed. Not too bad (read: messy) for a first experience with sensory tub, I'm definitely encouraged to make another one!

Unzipping exercise

I like to see Xue engaged and motivated in an activity and this will only happen if the difficulty level of the activity is just appropriate for him. Like this unzipping exercise, it is a little challenging, but not too difficult that will make him frustrated and give up. He has been dying to get the contents out of my wallet and that's when I thought that it's probably time to teach him this practical skill.

This $2 purse from Diaso has a very smooth zip and firm purse that is good for him to practise unzipping. It's semi see-through so Xue can see what's in the purse. Since it's dinosaur week, I put in some cork circles (from Diaso too!) with dinosaur stickers on them and I call them his Dino-coins. 

You can see Xue is very interested in them! This is great incentive for him to unzip the purse and get them out. Hehe my impatient boy gets frustrated some times and I will help him along by unzipping midway and encouraging him to unzip the purse fully himself. 

This simple exercise had his attention for a good 15 minutes, totally beating a lot of expensive and elaborated toys hands down. When he got bored with the activity, I will keep the purse away for two to three days and re-introduced it to him with some new contents like unwanted name cards or paper with some cute stickers on them. This purse can be quite a life-saver to keep Xue occupied during train rides. So light and small and easy to bring along. Not a good idea to put any coin like stuffs if you are bringing them out though, since these round stuffs will roll away if your kid start throwing them on the floor. Put 2 to 3 unwanted cards instead. One month on, Xue is still at this and he is getting pretty good with unzipping my wallet now!