Flinto : March Theme - I Love My Vegetables

~Medha is 3 years old~

Vegetables and Nutrition is one of the tough topic when it comes to convincing the kids eating balanced food. I must say Flinto put all the activities very very well that are required to explain the importance of vegetables and their nutritional values and also importance of having them.

Sneak-peak of the "I Love My Vegetables" Theme Box contents from Flinto is here.

Box at a glance

Kick Start of Medha's 4th Year

It's not even a week we celebrated Medha's third birthday last week on 19th, (sorry separate post is on the way on how we celebrated her birthday) - She gave me a big surprise yesterday with a great gift.

She made her own greeting card from the book gifted by her dear neighbor aunt, Meryl, which is about craft tasks that kids can do of Level 3. And when I asked her whom this card is for, she said its for AMMA.

Then just simply I said, write my name on it by mentioning TO. I pronounced it as "T - O, TO" and in the new line my name "LEELA". She knew the spelling of my name except that sometimes she don't mention double E - "LELA".  She took it seriously and got a crayon and started writing it.

And here is the final card she gifted me yesterday night i.e. 24th Feb, 2014.

Card made by Medha with my Name 

Play dough Moldings

To improve her finger muscle strength and her fine motor skills, I have thought of this activity and she spent nice 2 hours of time with this.

I gave her a batch of play dough and the plastic mould trays I received as part of Mould n Paint Kit by ToyKraft and asked her to make the moulds with play dough.

She liked the idea and started doing it immediately.

This has following benefits :

• Working with clay improves dexterity and uses both small and large muscles. Children use their arms, back and shoulders to mold clay. 
• Working with clay also increases a child’s eye-hand coordination.
• Self-pride of creating shapes using the molds. 
• Filling the molds gives enough exercise to the fingers and hands.

This can be tried with younger kids too with the supervision of not putting clay in the mouth. 

Sensory Play, Is this Really Necessary?

If you frequent kids activity blogs, you know that “sensory play” has been a hot topic for quite awhile now. There are even entire websites devoted to sensory play for your tots, and while they are super fun to read and full of creative (and sometimes elaborate) ideas, you may find yourself asking, “Is all this REALLY necessary for my child’s development?”

So this post is written as per the research I did on Sensory play in the internet and from the experience of doing one sensory tub activity with Medha.

Blowing Activity for Oral Motor Skills

I had brought couple of thermocol ball which were at my mom's place, guessing I can use those in some craft activities with Medha. But the very next day we reached Bangalore, Medha happened to see those packets and remembered that those were used in my sister's marriage. (Yes, These are used by the bride and bridegroom in South Indian (Telugu) wedding ceremony for merriment and celebration after they are pronounced man and wife. Bride and groom sit facing each other and pour the mixture of yellow rice and candy pearls on each other's heads. Towards the end of this playful act, families and friends of bride and groom create competitive spirit between the couple screaming for their candidate to come out as a winner ! It is real fun to watch this joyous part of the wedding !! Medha also enjoyed this part a lot in my sister's marriage which happened in October.) And she insisted me to open the packet and give to her so that she can play. I gave one packet of them and she was very happy to touch them as they are soft. 

Pattern Match Activity

Pattern Match is an engaging pattern matching exercise for kids. It is designed to enable children to learn and grasp the concepts of patterns and sequencing in a fun way. In this simple exercise, kids study the given pattern and identify the missing shape or symbol, to complete the sequence. This exercise will help to lay the foundation for logical thinking as well as teach kids the names of some basic colors, shapes and symbols. It will help to reinforce the child’s understanding of the basic concepts of maths.

I wanted Medha to do some pattern making activities hence I thought of creating some pattern cards myself instead of buying. I was thinking which would be good to start with pattern make. Then I remembered the wooden shapes pieces puzzle bought recently. 

Learning Letters Game

~Medha is 33.5 months old~

The people who was reading my blog from beginning already knows that Medha had learned all the alphabets and numbers mostly by playing matching games. Here is another variety of matching letters. 

To play this matching game, you'll need:

• Post-it notes
• An ABC poster or floor mat (We used our foam floor mat, but a poster on the Wall would work as well)

Sun and Moon craft

~Medha is 30 months old~

I happened to see Sun, Moon, Stars peel and stick stickers online. I thought I can teach differences about the things we see in sky in Day time And Night time. So I ordered those stickers.

Color Collage Making Activity

Again for the color recognition confidence activity, I got Medha to do Color Collage Making Activity. For this I thought of starting with 3 basic colors Blue, Green, Yellow.

Materials:

• Chart papers of colors I wanted to teach/practice. I didn't find exact green color chart hence I went ahead with the shade of green and explained Medha that it's LIGHT GREEN color.
• Various pictures in the colors I picked above. This I googled for few pictures with color mentioned. ex: 'green color pictures for kids', 'yellow color pictures for kids' etc.

Book Actvities Brown bear Brown bear what do u see?

To increase the confidence in identifying the colors, I wanted to get Medha to match colors with the color of each animal in Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see? book. But the question is which one to give for matching. First I looked for crayons she had right now, but I didn't find some colors which are in the book. And then I checked her pom-poms, even in that I didn't find few colors.

Later I decided to print/buy some color papers and thought of asking her to match. But suddenly I remembered that I have an unopened play dough  box I bought for Medha. Luckily it has every color I need for matching with those of book.

Tissue Art

From the day I saw the Tissue Art for Kids in Pinterest, I was searching for tissue papers to make this at home for Medha. But luckily I found Tissue Art Kit itself for Kids online. Big Time Saver for a working mom like me :)  

If you have time you can do this at home too with different color tissue papers by dipping available normal tissues in color and dry them. Instead of sticky papers, try school labels just to begin with. If you want to try more, you can cut a chart paper into various shapes and apply fevicol or fevistick all over the paper and ask them to stick the color paper pieces you prepared. Easy right?? 

I thought of trying this at home, but I couldn't find time to do. And before I invest time, I found the one in online. Thought of trying it if Medha likes it. Unfortunately she didn't like it much. But I don't give up and will surely try same activity after few days again :) 

Flinto Subscription Boxes - September Theme

As I mentioned in my previous post flinto-subscription-october-boxes I bought their last month box too. It is SPACE ADVENTURE. 

Here is sneak-peak of September month's theme box of FLINTO. 

Jigsaw Puzzles

Yes, Jigsaw Puzzles are great for children especially from very early age. Jigsaw puzzles have a lot of educational value for children of all ages. This is because to do a jigsaw requires a child to use several different aspects of the thinking process.

A baby learns to recognize objects by their shape and not necessarily what position the object is in. A chair is a chair whether it is upright, lying down, or upside down-it doesn’t matter. The simple puzzles produced for younger children develop more refined and defined skills and recognition. One of the first things a young child will learn is that it does matter which way up the pieces to fit in the hole. 

A typical early childhood puzzle is wooden with a picture and has spaces where the pieces fit to complete the picture. With a street scene, for example, there might be a separate car shape, bus shape, and a truck shape that complete a puzzle. These puzzles are typically robust as the first response of a child is to try to force the piece into place taking no notice of its shape. With adult guidance the young child learns to manipulate the piece until it does fit exactly. 

There are several learning experiences that can be drawn from these very basic puzzles. Firstly it’s the hand eye coordination to manipulate the puzzle piece into position. To get the piece in also involves observation of the shape of the hole and the shape of the puzzle piece. At first the child deals with the problem by trial and error. The example and guidance of an adult begins to solidify the thinking process. The child starts to apply spatial awareness and mental manipulation as well as physical. This comes however, after the child has learned to put the piece in correctly through trial and error and memory. 

Pom-pom Drop

For 1-year-Olds, and toddlers, the best ideas are usually the simplest. Here is a great toddler game that I re-created based on an idea that I found on Pinterest. You could try it too!! :) 

Just gather any paper towel tube/cardboard tube or you can use any plastic tube too which has both sides opening and pom-poms and any cup That's it.

Review : Flinto Subscription Boxes - October Theme

Since I heard "Monthly Subscription Boxes for Kids" from a friend who had subscribed to some in US it's haunting me a lot. And one day in my leisure time, I browsed for this if we have any available in India. 
There I found "Flinto". I was impressed with the idea and snapshots of previous month boxes. 

Every month their early childhood education experts will prepare a box which contains special book and hands on activities based on theme that'll contribute to healthy development and learning in child. And they concentrate on how important kids should be learning these topics.

Playful parenting Tips

When playing with children it’s less about what you do and more about the way you
do it. Here are some handy ‘dos and don’ts’ to get you thinking about the way to play with
your kids:

• Do give them the chance to choose what games they play and how they play them. Forcing them to do something doesn't make play-time much fun!
• Don’t solve every task for kids – encourage them to solve the problem themselves.
• Do remember kids are all different. Think about the kinds of activities your child likes and let them take the lead.
• Don’t be a competitive mum or dad. Learning how to lose is an important social skill for a child, but try to keep games enjoyable and let them win too – sometimes!
• Don’t be afraid to join in with make-believe games. Kids love it when parents play-act and it lets their imagination run wild.
• Do let them enjoy physical challenges like climbing trees. Kids learn through taking risks. Don’t be over-protective if the worst that can happen is a bump or a scrape.
• Do get outdoors and play: it’s healthy, and if they get dirty or wet, well that’s what baths and washing machines are for.
• Do share a game you used to play as a child. Think of the things you most enjoyed, the chances are your kids will enjoy them just as much!
• Do enjoy playing. If your child is having fun but you aren’t, just leave them to it. If they’re not having fun, suggest something else.

Source: Google Searches

Flower Painting

Toddlers love to paint. They love everything-color! Medha also no exception. She loved this activity! The best part is, you really don't need anything else except for a few flowers and the kiddie paints.

Items you need for this:

• Kid friendly washable paints 
• Drawing sheets, ( I have used note book pages as I am running out of Drawing Sheets)
• Flowers ( Any flowers, I plucked flowers from the plants in my balcony garden).

Why you should encourage children to play outside ?

Allowing kids to play outside has lot of benefits. Do read some of them mentioned below.

Learning shapes through play dough

Medha is not so creative in creating shapes and models using Play dough. She just loves using play dough moulds to create shapes or just repeats whatever I show to make. I was thinking about new ways of exploring Play dough then I came up with following idea.

I remembered that I had printed shapes sheet from 1+1+1=1 sometime back which looks like following.

Roller Stamp

Roller stamps are the stamps that create fun patterns. After purchasing this I felt it is costlier as they are just similar to other kind of roller stamps that available for 30-50/- but the difference is it create some Micky mouse related patterns.