Today's Activities

This morning my son said his first color name! Now, I cannot say that he actually knew which one it was in the box, but it was the name of a color nonetheless! Expanding vocabulary is a big thing in our house right now. I KNOW (in the logical side of my brain) that he is well within the range of normal for vocabulary and he understands FAR more than he is capable of verbalizing....but you know there is that non-logical side of my brain that says but his sisters were talking in complete (and for my oldest, elaborate) sentences by this age. My oldest knew the ABC song, and several shapes and colors....so there is this small part of my brain that says "Hmmmm." So him saying "Blue" while pointing at the box of markers was a BIG moment. Like I said, I don't know that he really meant he wanted the blue one, but I did give him the blue one again (he had already had it).

After he colored for a good long while, the longest amount of time he's ever been interested in coloring (I give credit to the use of markers here....usually I give him those boring old crayons..pffft who wants those things) his hands were covered in marker so I set up a hand washing station (He LOVES this activity.). He washed his hands and then I gave him fresh water and he played in the water with cups, spoons, bottles, and funnels. He also poured from one bowl to the other.

A couple new works

I can't take credit for this first one, as it hadn't occurred to me. I was at a birthday party on Saturday night, and was talking with the hostess and a mutual friend about trying to entertain the toddlers while schooling the big kids. I mentioned the spooning, and jar lids. And our mutual friend (someone whom I adore BTW, she's just full of fantastic ideas) suggested letting them put things into an empty wipe container. You know the kind with the pop up lid, with the slot to pull one wipe through at a time. She said she remembered doing pom-poms. It was an AHH HAAA moment. Not that long ago, someone on our birth board mentioned that their child loved putting coins in her piggy bank...this is a VERY similar activity, but yet I hadn't thought of it.




This morning I did this activity with Ben. I asked him if he wanted something to do, and he gleefully answered "UH huhhh" (he still doesn't say Yes or N0). So I sat him down at the table (a nice low table) and got out a bowl, the poms, and an empty wipe container (I KNEW there was a reason I had kept that....HA to my husband, my junk DOES have purpose!). I gave the demonstration and them let him get to work. He repeated it with all the poms I had given him 3 times! He would bring it to me and say "more", I'd empty the poms back into the bowl and he'd repeat the activity.





Here's a pic:

I can think of a couple variations for this: poker chips (I have these), and LARGE beans or buttons.

After he tired of this activity, I broke out the pegboard. I didn't snap any pictures of that work but this is the board we have: http://www.drtoy.com/1999_c/dtpeg.htm He likes to fill all the holes and he likes to see how tall he can stack them before they fall over.