Stacking : Trial & Error

As we were playing the other day, 

I looked over, 

and saw Henry building this:

I was quite impressed!

Those are skinny blocks and they stood as tall as him!

I'm not quite sure what they are exactly, or where we even got them.

But this could easily be done with any kind of box. 

The thinner and taller the block, the harder it is.

I noticed as Henry was stacking them,

he began counting them as he put them on.

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Activity Course with Balloons

Every child I know has a fascination with balloons.

At every birthday party, every kid wants to take one home.

They are usually the highlight of the party.

[unless you have one of these at your party.]

So this week I thought :

Why do the balloons only come out at birthday parties?

They bring lots of entertainment in just being balloons.

But there's so much more you can do with them!

[Check out the previous post : Balloon Badminton.]

I asked Henry what he wanted to do today.

As usual, his answer was to build a road with his mat.

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Counting [1-5] : Grain Bins & Cupcakes

I've been having a little bit of a hard time getting Henry to want to do any kind of activity lately.

Especially anything that's remotely educational.

I brainstormed, trying to figure out what he'd like to do, but still work in some numbers.

This is what I came up with :

Counting with Grain Bins

I numbered five empty baby food jars.

[I'm overstocked right now, but I'm finding lots of uses for them lately. 

What do you use them for?]

I numbered both the sides and the lids of the jars 

with matching colored paper.

[I only did five so Henry wouldn't get overwhelmed, 

since he seems to be struggling with counting.]

I filled each jar with the corresponding number of marshmallows.

[I did this to show Henry the number to begin with so he wasn't expected to know it.]

I set out Henry's track tractor and wagon 'grain cart' along with the grain truck.

Henry's a farmer to the bone, 

so I figured this would get him more involved.

It did.

I set out a toothpick, as well, with the intention for him to poke the marshmallows 

to transfer from the 'grain bins' to the grain cart.

This wasn't fast enough for Henry, so he just dumped the bins out.

Henry loaded up his grain cart with all five bins worth of marshmallows corn.

Then transfered the corn to the grain truck.

Which then hauled the corn back to the bins.

When it was time to unload into the bins :

 Henry unscrewed each lid off, 

filled up each bin until it was 'full' (to the correct number), 

then quickly found the matching lid and screwed it back on.

[nice work for the fine motor skills, my toothpick idea didn't work, but this did.]

Henry had no problems with counting 1-3. 

At 4 he added a few too many.

When he got to 5, he realized he didn't have enough and was puzzled.

So, I redirected him back to 4 to recount.

He hauled the corn from bin to grain cart to grain truck a few times, 

until he eventually ate all his corn.

[He then found Cheerios beans to haul and did the same.]

I also found this nice printable for counting : 

Counting Cupcakes at FileFolderFun 

[same place where I found the ABC = abc matching printable.]

Henry pretty easily matched up the 

numbered cupcakes with the 'sprinkled' cupcakes.

[they're actually cherries on the cupcakes, 

but to make it more fun and easier for Henry to understand, 

I called them sprinkles.]

Henry first tried matching their colors, 

but the colors weren't right to match 

and he quickly understood that he needed to count them. 

He still struggled a little with 4 and 5. 

The printable includes cupcakes up to 10, 

but to keep Henry from getting frustrated, 

I only used 1-5.

I'm glad to have found a way to include Henry's interests in counting. 

Hauling anything is always a hit with him - 

the Grain Bin activity wasn't solely focused on counting, 

so it was much more fun for him.

And me too.

   - Henry is about 35 months - 

Counting Cheerios & New File Folders

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Don't forget to enter to win a Custom Subway Art in my first giveaway! [Ends 2/23]

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When Henry was gone today helping Dad work, I set out this book and some cheerios.

The Cheerios Animal Play Book

The book has blank spots to put cheerios that are 'missing' and also suggests counting how many are needed. 

I was surprised that he actually got excited to count Cheerios! And he didn't eat any! [Granted, it was just after supper]

I also found some more exciting printables for file folders at 1+1+1=1 (wow, that name is hard to type)
I printed out two for today.
Big Machines and Farm
These 'Tot Books' have a variety of activities, such as:
Name RecognitionColoringCountingSize SequencingPuzzlesMatching PairsMatching Heads and Tails

Henry did better with size sequencing this time, 

maybe because it was tractors instead of cupcakes!

He still had a few goofs, but overall, a huge improvement!

He is excited his name is on there and likes to read through the letters.

I never thought of this as a skill to learn now.

He already knows his name starts with H.

For some reason, 

I think this will help him learn that reading is from left to right 

(since he knows where to start in this situation).

We also broke out the first file folder we tried : 

ABC = abc

Henry still had troubles with d, b, a, e, g the first time around.

But by the 2nd time, 

he had it down perfect!

Oh, and we DID get outside today!

Sorry this picture is horrible. 

We went for a walk this morning when it was still only 50.

It got sunny this afternoon and I'm sure hit 60. 

It was a gorgeous day!

   - Henry is about 34 months - [166]

Patterning and a Heart Hunt

We didn't just do crafts to get ready for Valentine's Day... 

I've noticed other blogs with toddler's doing patterns. I've never once tried to explain what a pattern is to Henry. Things like that don't cross my mind unless someone points it out to me.

I ran across this super cute printables at Pre-Kinders and thought I'd give it a try. There's simple ABAB patterns and more difficult ones like ABBABB or AABBAABB.

We only did an ABAB pattern and had difficulty with that.

 I did most of the patterning you see in the pictures.

I don't see it as a loss for the activity - just something I now know that Henry doesn't yet know.

  

I can think of lots of everyday things 

to point out patterns:

shirts

rugs / blankets

The Cat in the Hat (his hat)

... and so on...

Remember the Valentine Countdown Tree?

Henry's been taking a heart off the tree each day.

Today I decided to do a heart hunt with those.

During Henry's nap quiet alone time, 

I hid the hearts around the toy room and living room.

I didn't so much as hide them, 

but tape them up in obvious places that he can plainly see.

But he had to still look for them.

Henry had a blast searching for these. 

I numbered an egg carton to 9 (we're only to day 9 today...)

(Edited to add: Wow, just realized today is the 10th. Completely just lost a day!)

When he found one, 

he put it in the correct spot in the egg carton.

I'm going to continue to hide the hearts each day until Valentine's Day, 

adding the latest heart we took off the tree.

- Henry is about 34 months -

Scavenger Hunt - Indoor

Henry and I did an Indoor Scavenger Hunt. I came up with a list of things that he could find around the house and put in a bag... this was our first scavenger hunt and I wasn't too sure how well Henry would do, so we started out simple.


First we did some objects:
- Spoon
- Pen
- Mitten
- Comb
- Piece of Paper
- Ball


Then I tried to be a little pickier with those objects:
- a PINK car
- the letter 'V'
- a DIRTY sock
- THREE books
- ONE Kleenex
- a picture of your BROTHER


Then I tried just using descriptive words for items that were open ended as to what he could find:
- Something that keeps you warm
- Something blue
- Something that makes noise
- Something you put on your head
- A tool you use to measure things


I was impressed with what he knew to bring. 


The only fault I see to this - what do you do with the items once they've been collected? I felt like it was very open ended and needed something to be done with them.


So, I'm trying to come up with a 'daily' scavenger hunt to prepare for the day ahead.
- a book you'd like to read with Mom today


However, that's all the further I've gotten... everything else I've come up with, he can't get himself... I've thought about making flash cards with the choices and he could pick which one he wanted. But that takes out the 'scavenger' part of the game. Got any good ideas?


Eventually, I want to get into hunting for objects that start with a letter that I tell him, but I know we're not there yet. He does know what some objects start with, but that's only because we have books that say - L is for Lion - and he has those memorized. 


I didn't get any pictures of our hunt - but Henry really liked the challenge of looking for stuff. This is usually a problem he has when he thinks of toy he wants to play with - he doesn't usually try to look for it... he just assumes he can't find it. Hopefully this will teach him that sometimes you have to look around and dig to find what you're looking for.


Have you guys done any indoor scavenger hunts? I'd love to hear of objects that you have them look for.

Hit or Miss?

Hit or Miss? These were two activities I just was not sure how Henry would react to. Neither were a big hit. But one was definitely a miss.... to begin with at least.

First up, I've been working with Henry on his numbers (He has had his ABC's down pat since he turned 2). For the most part, he recognizes most of them (1-9). But counting things actually is another story. He can tell me how many there are of something up to four with no problem - doesn't seem to count them, he just can tell. But past that... I can't get him to go through and count - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. About 9 times out of 10, if he's in the mood, he can tell me what comes next - sometimes up to 14 or 15. But actually doing the counting, he just won't.

So, I found this Number Match Game, again at my favorite blog - No Time For Flash Cards. I made up some cards with the numbers 1-9 and another set with 1-9 stars on them. I even coordinated the colors to give him hints as to which ones were a match (this came back to bite me later). 

The first time we played... not a hit at all. He did fine matching 1-4 with the stars. But the rest... he didn't want to attempt counting the stars to find out which ones matched. Later that day, Henry asked to play it again - I was surprised since he really seemed to be annoyed by it that morning. So we tried it again. This time, he was a whiz! Matched everyone in seconds... but not by their numbers or stars... but by their colors. He figured that out in no time... 

So this one was a dud - but I think we'll come back to it in time.

Next, we tried a Sensory Tub that I also found at No Time For Flash Cards (she does this a lot and usually themed, I just did a random one with stuff I had lying around). I haven't read about them all, but from what I have read they're supposed to focus on all five senses - I didn't put that much thought into mine though.

So, I ripped up some batting (I had it leftover from an attempt to quilt at one time) to be 'snow' and added some buttons and pom poms and some gold leaves leftover from my Grandparents' 50th anniversary cake that I made them. And I gave him a couple clothespins to use to pick stuff up with. I thought he'd get a kick out those -- I tried to play them up to be cranes since that happened to be one that I read about...

He attempted the clothespins for awhile, but didn't really care too much for them. 

 

As I thought he would, he split everything up - he really hated the 'snow' and took that out pretty much right away. 

 

Then he took out his buttons and leaves - he seemed to love them... then the pom poms just sadly stayed where they were.

This wasn't a HUGE hit with him, but it provided him with some entertainment while I finished up on one of MY projects that I'll post about next (okay, I realize this is a contradiction to me being a more hands on mom... but, to me, being 'hands on' doesn't always mean being with him or guiding him constantly - he needs his guidance, but then needs to explore himself). 

I'm so excited - another part of my New Year's Resolution is to do a ME project once a month. I already have a few lined up that I've been wanting to do - so I'm very excited to actually make myself get them done!!