We love this one....

This is the set up for....

Five little speckled frogs sat on a speckled log

eating some most delicious grubs (yum yum)

One jumped into the pool

where it was nice and cool

then there were four little speckled frogs(glub glub)

dry them off and do it again!


Once we're done we pour the water back into the bottle and put the lid on.



L and I have both fallen in love with her little tropical frogs and always play with them so I set up this activity. We do it together because of the water component(okay and also becuase I like it so much :) I switched from the sponge in the initial set up to an old face cloth so it was easier to wipe the frogs and the table. At the moment this activity is on her shelf but luckily the bottle has a safety cap so she has to come to me to open it. She is also wearing an old top but in the future she will wear an apron or bib.

Puzzles, puzzles all day long

I found these animal puzzles and also some construction vehicle puzzles at the boot fair for 50p! They are 3,4,5 and 6 pieces and L can't get enough of them. This is the first time that I have really seen a sensitive period so blatantly in action! She does them over and over again. I like these puzzles because she has to first sort them into piles and once she has done one she has to push it off of the mat to clear a space for the next one. They are not only teaching her about puzzles but also how to organise her work space.

I also made up this song for cleaning the puzzles up. Something along the lines of This is the way we.... but we would sing L.... is putting the elephant away, elephant away, elephant away, L.... is putting the elephant away into the box. I've also tried it in other areas like clearing her table and it seems to be transferable. Woohoo! Simple but it works a treat at the moment and I'm milking it for all it's worth while I can!

I also found some great African animal cards at the boot fair for 10p. They have very detailed descriptions on the back which we can use later on. After looking through them L matched her animals to the ones on the cards. There was a similar activity posted on The Wonder Years a little while ago.

Europe, Africa....

About a month ago I was reading a post on Chasing Cheerios about her daughter learning the continents and singing the Continents Song. My first mistake was listening to the song on YouTube with L right there. She loved it and asked for it again and again. Now any time I'm on the computer she asks for the Continents Song. We've played it so much that we all know it by heart. She also watches the graphics on the screen and any time she she's a map or globe she starts to sing Europe, Africa...

Last week when I went to the boot fair I found this for only 50p!

What a find! It's like a continents Twister game. At the moment she just loves to dance all over it while singing the song but I'm sure she'll soon learn where all of the continents are. I know it's plastic and doesn't have Antarctica on it but for now it's just for fun. Once we really start to learn about continents and maps etc. I'll paint Antarctica on or something! We also put all of her stuffed animals onto their home continents and although she didn't really understand we had a blast doing it.
I fished out a little Koala bear that I''ve had for ages, because we didn't have any Australian animals. It has a hat and a boomerang. She was very interested and so we went to the computer to look at pictures of real Koala bears. L looked at me and said, "those ones having no hats"!

Making a rainbow and treasure bottle

The last few days have been really fun because we've had G.A.S. (aka Great Auntie S) staying with us. We did lots of projects and even went to a castle!
A few days ago I was perusing some blogs and found this fantastic idea on Unplug Your Kids.
Coloring rice!!! Love it, love it, love it! It was so easy and all three generations had a great time making it. I won't write out the instructions as I've posted a link if any one wants to try this.

We decided to make a rainbow. First we put the food coloring in and shook up the bags. I put tape across the tops just in case. It was also really cool to do the secondary colors and see how the two colors blended to make a new one.

Once we had all the colors for our rainbow L layered them according to one of our favorite songs I Can Sing a Rainbow.

Here she is singing and pointing out the colors. (anyone who is really observant will notice we got two of the colors mixed up!)

We also made the "treasure bottle" from Unplug Your Kids. I took a picture of all of the objects so L can see what she has to find. I have to say this was a really fun project for me as well and I can imagine I will be trying to find all of the objects after L has gone to bed! : )