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. 

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. 

Butterfly WindChime Craft

~Medha is 30 months old~

I have bought "Do-It-Yourself Color Windchime" for Medha when she was around 2 years 3 months old. This pack contains butterfly shape, paint colors, brush,pipe strings and key chain.

Book Review : Room on the broom

~Medha is 32 months old~

After seeing the recommendation of this book by Falak, I decided to get this book for Medha. And I got this from library first to see whether Medha likes it or not as this book is recommended for 5+ ages. This book is magical journey with a delightful witch who loses lots of her accessories as she flies. I must thank her for recommending this beautiful book to me and Medha.

Title : Room On the Broom

Author :  Julia Donaldson

Publisher : Dial Books (2012)

What is Fine Motor Skills?

Hope all of you know what Fine Motor skills are! Okay if not, it is the ability to use the mussels that control the movement of fingers, thumb and hand, in co-ordination with the eyes.

By preschool age, a child normally will be able to these simple tasks by themselves:

• button up a shirt
• using a pencil or a crayon
• paste objects
• pick blocks and stack them
• use of a scissors
• cut pieces of paper into small pieces
• tie a shoe lace
• pour water from a jug to a cup
• the use of cutlery

Skill O Fun Wooden Learning Toys

I had first picked up their products at Toys n Toys, Bangalore 2 years back, to encourage Medha's fine mortar skills. This was my first purchase from Skill-O-Fun toys range for Medha. 

Peel n Stick Craft : Parrot

As Medha liked No cutting no gluing peel and stick Butterfly craft, I bought one more similar to this but PARROT this time.

As the activity process is same as butterfly, I am not repeating it again except that sharing picture :)  :)

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 :) 

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.

On-U-Mind

While browsing for some unique yet fun and learning included toys for Medha , I came across this toy in online. Though the concept is not totally new I thought this would be interesting for Medha to play with as this is with the balls and colorful balls. :) I bought this for INR 350/-

This has following features: 

• Montessori Toy
• Trains the child's graphical cognitive, hands on ability and patience.
• Nurturing the child's imagination, space preceivation ability and logical thinking.

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.

Connect 4 Game

The Original Game of Connect 4 is a fun game which comes with coins in two colors and a board with slots. The players have to choose their color and drop coins into the slots one by one turn-wise. The player who completes a row of four first, wins the game.  This is the color of the board and coins I received in my order.

Kitchen Tongs

Today, at first I asked Medha to sort out all magnenic alphabets we have at home color wise. She sorted out all the letters twice. When her interest started to wane, I added something that I guessed she would love and that would practice Fine Motor Skills and Hand-Eye Coordination. (Actually I need to think/find out some activity to teach her alphabets in the order, she is able to recognize each and every letter individually before her second birthday itself. But I am not finding better fun activity to do this.)

KITCHEN TONGS!!

No Cutting! No Gluing! Peel & Stick Butterfly Handicraft

Today I have introduced Medha to "No Cutting! No Gluing! Peel & Stick Butterfly Handicraft" . She loved doing it. And I loved too as it doesn't require any CUTTING. Thanks to Keyanna Des for showing me this wonderful item. I have got this for INR 100/-.