Dad's Night Out

While I have been basically useless these past couple of weeks(other than telling people what to do ;) my husband and mom have had to look after L. Thankfully our new community has this great programme called Dad's Night Out! Every Tuesday night they have a free activity for dads and little ones to attend.
The first one L and Daddy went to was at the library where the librarian read them some books on monsters and then they made their own masks. When they got home L ran into the house and scared me with her mask.

This last Tuesday they made these neat tennis rackets and ball which was very timely since we've been watching the Australian Open religiously. Such a simple idea of putting knee high tights over a bent coat hanger and then taping the end. The dads put the balloon inside a stocking and then blew it up. They then set up a net between two chairs and the kids had a fantastic time running around trying to play tennis. They ended the night with yummy fruit smoothies.

Next week is free skating at the local skating rink. It's a win win situation as L and Daddy get to spend time together doing things they'd never usually do and I get a break! We are truly lucky to have moved to a community with so many wonderful free services for parents and children.

Animal Sounds and a few other bits

I haven't been able to do much lately but was able to set this activity up mostly from the couch. It's my own version of animal sounds. So simple to make and free! I found this Youtube video of animal sounds, found pictures of all of the animals and printed them out on a piece of paper. L covers the animal who makes the sound with a penny. It was a great hit and we did it about six times today.

L started wanting to pull the golf tees out of her ladybug activity so I changed it for this one where she presses the colored toothpick into the dots of the correct colored shape.

I saw this super cute counting activity on The Adventures of Bear and just had to make one up for L. Not surprisingly she was more interested in having the polar bear eat the fish than the counting.

And lastly L got this totally cool map for Christmas with animals, people and place names to Velcro on to it. So much fun and will be a challenge for many years to come!

Magnets

The last couple of weeks we've been doing some activities as an introduction to magnets. These were all inspired by Amy's posts from The Wonder Years.
The first thing we did is dig through a bowl of lentils with the magnet to search for different items. When L found one she would place it in the correct outline. This way she would know when she'd found them all.


We then put the magnet on a ribbon and picked up objects one by one.

Next time I added some non-magnetic items and she categorised them. This was easy for her but she only wanted to do it a couple of times. I thought she would then want to go around the house trying things out but she wasn't that interested. She seemed to be like so it's magnetic no biggie!

I'll re-introduce these activities again in a month or so and see what she thinks then.

Adding color to a grey day

Braving the elements to collect our little canvases.

Washing and drying the loot!

Add the paint

A basket full of color to brighten our day!

The upside of having to get a new appliance....

Okay this was one of those things that started off innocently and just got totally out of hand! My mom got a new (huge) microwave yesterday and while my husband was installing it I decided to make a simple house out of the box to keep L out of the way.
Today I thought we could decorate it a bit as something to do on a rainy day. Well I should have realised when Daddy got involved that this wasn't going to stay a simple cardboard box house!

L was quickly delegated to decorate the inside (only) of her house!

Yes that is a chimney and latch on the door!

Hopefully she'll get lots of playing enjoyment out of it before it disintegrates!

Me and My Amazing Body

We've been learning all about our bodies the last few weeks. L is fascinated. We started with this great book called Me and My Amazing Body by Joan Sweeney. It talks about the different parts of the body and how they work in a way that L can follow.

We also got this body parts game from the library. You roll the die and whatever part your counter lands on you have to point to. We kind of made up the rules as we went along, sometimes putting the counter on the girls body part instead. This would be a really simple game to make.

I printed off this skeleton puzzle from here. I'll laminate it once my laminator arrives as it's a favorite. We are keeping it simple at the moment by just learning the skull, rib cage, spine and pelvis. I'll have to look up the names of the other bones before I can teach them to L ; )

I saw this body puzzle on Chasing Cheerios quite a while ago and couldn't wait to get it. Unfortunately the only store that has them around here was sold out of girls so I got a boy. I thought I would have some explaining to do but L just dove into the puzzle and was much more interested in the muscles, and skeleton and "skin bits".

I would never have thought to introduce the workings of the body to L in such detail at such a young age but after seeing other blogs I realised it would be MY reservations holding her back and I was right. She is SO into it! She gets the book out at least three times a day and loves to talk about all the parts of her body inside and out.

New Activities from Santa

That sneaky old Santa managed to stuff a lot of new activities into L's stocking this year.

Walking the line

No not L but these adorable little lady bugs. I'd gotten these ages ago for L's stocking and then was lucky enough to find this great activity over at Making of a Montessori Mum!

I think for the moment these have taken over from our beloved frogs. In this one L balances them on golf tees or "trees" and then flies them back to their dish.

I've been wanting to start L on using tongs for ages but haven't been able to find ones small enough. Finally while looking on the Ikea web page I saw a tiny baking set with these small tongs. They are perfect for her hands and she has a great time transferring these bugs into their pool for a dip.

This next activity definitely wins the prize for the best find. It is a foam Continents puzzle from the dollar store. That's right folks it only cost a dollar!! L and I can't get enough of it and I actually went out after Christmas and bought another one just in case this one gets worn out.

My mom and I were talking about how L knows some of the continents but really has no context to learn them in. To her at the moment they are just colored blobs so I decided to have her place one animal on each continent. Now I can ask "where does the Koala bear live?" and she will point to and say Australia. This is such a fun way of learning the continents. (I'm hoping to get better animals for South America and Antarctica soon)

I also thought I'd outdone myself with brilliance by taping colored circles on the bottom of the animals so she could self check. Ha ha I should have quit while I was ahead as first of all some continents are the same color and all she wanted to do is pick them off!

Happy New Year/Christmas thankyou cards

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas and New Year. We really enjoyed our first holiday season in Canada. It was wonderful to be able to celebrate with my family. Today January 1st we took down the advent calendar and put up in it's place the "calendar". L got this as a gift for her birthday but I was waiting until we moved to use it and thought the first day of the year was a perfect time. We have done some work on numbers, days of the week and seasons before but she obviously doesn't get the whole idea at the moment. I'm sure as we go she will understand more and more. She loves looking outside to figure out the weather bit and of course all of the Velcroing!


L also made up a bunch of thank you cards for her relatives. I took down all of our Christmas cards and cut them up, folded over some colored paper and L glued on all of the bits. I think they turned out really well and I was amazed at how L placed all of the pieces in themes. A cheap and environmentally friendly way to make thank you cards.

We finally seem to be settled here and I have a lot of activities planned for the new year. Thank you everyone for all of your bloggy inspiration and I'm looking forward to seeing what you're all up to in the new year!