17 month old activities

Some of the things I have been doing with Cherry over the last month or so...

I was so excited when this set arrived...for Lamb who has not shown any interest in making pictures with the blocks. He wants to work out how many diamonds or triangles make up a hexagon which has worked out to be a fabulous precursor for fractions.

Cherry on the other hand loves to match the blocks up helping her learn to identify colours and shapes.

Putting popsicle sticks into a cannister that I cut a popsicle stick sized slot in the top of. She loves this and did it every day for the first couple of weeks.

Making some scones with Mum. She is very good at stirring but wasn't interested in pressing the dough. She gave it one try before exclaiming "Dirty! Hands?" while holding her hands out for me to wipe them!

Spooning rice from one cup to the other...we're getting there. She tries very hard and gently tut tuts herself when she drops it.

Squeezing lemons though she kept taking the squeezer out of the bowl and licking the lemon!

Salt Dough Hands

In theme of our first 'sense', the sense of touch', I decided we should make some hands from salt dough (recipe is at the bottom)

Rolling out the salt dough

Following which Lamb and Cherry held very still while I traced around their hands. We baked them in the oven.

So now we play 'the hand game'..."Can you touch something that is smooth? dry? sticky? starts with 't'"...whatever it might be. Lamb has to think for a while on some of them and Cherry just wombles along following Lamb. Funnily enough without the little hands to use this would be a game I would struggle to get them to play along with!

SALT DOUGH RECIPE

100 grams of plain flour

50 grams of salt

1 teaspoon of cooking oil

80 mls of water

I doubled this and we made some beads at the same time that Lamb ran a toothpick through. We'll paint them up later and use them for threading.

The sense of touch

I decided it would be a great idea to delve a little more deeply into the five senses.

Lamb knows what they are and the body part responsible of course but I thought it might present an opportunity to hone those senses by isolating them and doing activities associated with them.

Cherry is also at the age where she is fascinated to learn and repeat the names of body parts.

Starting with the sense of touch I made up a puzzle of the bones in the hand from cardboard

The labels are obviously quite involved so it becomes a lesson in remembering the names of the bones and then finding the first letter of that word in order to 'label' them. He was quite cross about the word 'phalanges' to start with because of course that starts with 'ph' not 'f'. I explained to him that I would have to teach him the blends and now when he does the puzzle he leaves it until last then states that I still have to teach him the blends.

I also printed up some body part three part cards.

This is the first time I have given Lamb three part cards. I think at present he works out which label goes where based on the first letter again.

I also printed out some digit cards and we've been number ordering and 'adding' with them.