Shape Jump and Sort

Today's activity was inspired by a couple of blog posts I found through Pinterest. Here and here. 

We made a few different shapes out of painter's tape on our floor and then Erik practiced following directions as he ran or jumped or crawled to the different shapes.

 When he got tired of that, we went on a shape hunt around our house for items that were the same shape as the outlines on our floor.

 We had a lot of fun with this one and it kept Erik busy for a few days, although I didn't want to have any trouble getting the tape off the carpet so we didn't leave it on for as long as Erik would've liked. This is a great way to practice following directions, as well as to learn his shapes.

Field Trip: Albuquerque Museum of Natural History

A local radio station was doing a promotion of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science that made it so we could get our whole family into the museum for free, so we decided to go for it.

We were even able to get tickets to a show in the planetarium, which is something I’ve always wanted to experience. Most of the museum was over Erik’s head, so we didn’t stay as long as we would’ve liked, but he did enjoy their special hands-on exploration room. He made animal tracks in the sand,

 watched lizards, snakes, reptiles, and fish do their thing,

 and got up close and personal with some butterflies.

Someday, when Erik’s a little older, we’ll go back here and really enjoy it to its fullest. For this visit it was enough to just get a glimpse and relive some childhood memories. 

Face Time

I think it safe to assume that we all know the importance of “tummy time” for infants. It builds the muscles that baby needs to crawl and walk and sit and do so many important things.
I found this idea for making tummy time a bit more interesting for baby. All you need is a mirror.

Baby gets her exercise and a work out buddy. 

Shaving Cream Playdough

As I said before, there are tons of ideas out there for things one can do with shaving cream. This particular morning I asked Erik what he wanted to do for fun and he answered “play dough”. I went looking for my play dough recipe, and found this one that I had pinned a while back. We decided to give it a go. 

It’s pretty easy; you just squirt a bunch of shaving cream in a pile, add an equal amount of cornstarch, and mix it up. We decided to throw some food coloring in the mix, why not?

I do have to say this made way less dough than I thought it would. I kept adding shaving cream and adding starch and adding more shaving cream and more starch. We eventually got a pliable mixture, but by that time Erik had lost interest. Don’t get me wrong here; he loved squishing around in the shaving cream/cornstarch mess, just not long enough to still want to play with the dough when we finally got it right. Oh well.

Shaving Cream Free Play

I like to go to the dollar store occasionally and see what I can find that might be handy to have on hand for quick, cheap activities for Erik. Last time I went I grabbed a can of shaving cream, and it’s been a dollar VERY well spent. While you can find ideas for lots of ways to play with shaving cream, I decided for our first experience I’d just turn Erik loose with it and see what happened. He had a marvelous time!

I started by squirting a large mound of shaving cream onto a cookie sheet (silly me, I thought somehow that would contain the mess) and stepping back to see what Erik would do. He dove right in!

After a few minutes I added a few drops of food coloring to the shaving cream to keep things interesting (and because Erik is really in to talking about colors right now).

It didn’t take long before Erik was up to his ears (not even kidding) in shaving cream, he had a blast! 

Look, this makes a great pre-writing activity too!

Yes, he had to have a bath after this, but it kept him entertained for nearly an hour. I’d say that’s worth it!

Colorful Bubble Eruptions

Here is the part 2 of Wyler Week, Hope you enjoy!!

Carolyn says:
I've seen different versions of this on Pinterest and Facebook.  I just threw it together from memory.

I took a 9x9 inch baking dish and covered the bottom of the pan with baking soda.  I then filled a glass with vinegar and food coloring (first time I did this I did two different colors)

 I used 2 syringes (that came with our baby Tylenol) I wish I had eye droppers, then this would be something Wyler could do on his own, but he doesn't quite have the finger strength to fill a syringe easily yet.  I filled a syringe with the yellow vinegar, passed it to him, and we watch the foaming bubbles as he shot it into the vinegar. 

 While he emptied one syringe I would fill the other, as he was too excited to wait for me to fill only one, he didn't want to pause the bubble action at all. 

  After we had emptied the vinegar into the pan he stirred it up with the syringes to get the last of the vinegar and baking soda to react.  He would have kept at this activity longer, but he ran out of the baking soda. 

  Next time I'll use a larger pan, and hopefully have the eye droppers for him to use.  And the syringes are going to make an appearance in the bath so he can practice filling them, and strengthening his fingers.

Toy Matching Game

So you may or may not remember Erik's cousin Wyler that we met a while back through this post. Well, this week is going to be Wyler Week, and I'll be featuring a couple of activities that his mom Carolyn put together for him. These are things I've been wanting to try with Erik and just haven't gotten around to doing, so I'm super excited to see someone enjoying them. 

Here's what Carolyn had to say:

This was inspired by some matching activities that other moms set up for their kids on a Montessori Facebook group I'm in.

I gathered up a handful of toys and traced them on a sheet of computer paper, then went over the lines in permanent ink so they would be easily visible.  I called Wyler in to check it out, and showed him how all they toys had a matching outline.  He caught on pretty quickly and had everything nicely matched.  He pulled everything off and did it again.  Only his hammer got turned around.  It was backwards according to the outline. 

He started to rotate it in different directions, but didn't realize he needed to flip it.  After a couple tries I flipped it for him, though he probably would have figured it out pretty quick. 

 I have it set up on a tray (cookie sheet) on a book shelf so he can go back to it when he wants.