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From: My mother suggested this activity.
Procedure: We bought plastic sandbox tools from Babies R Us for $1 each and a marigold plant from the local grocery store. My mom had a couple of terra cotta pots and a small watering can.
We gave Sweet Pea one of the pots and showed her how to shovel dirt out of it to make a hole for the new plant.
Next we put the marigold into the hole and gave her another pot filled with dirt. We showed her how to scoop dirt from that pot back around the sides of the plant.
We filled up a little watering can and let her pour it into the pot.
Then we posed for pictures with our newly potted marigold.
Observations: By far, Sweet Pea’s favorite part was the watering. In fact, we are pretty sure that the marigold isn’t going to make it. 🙂 I may do a future activity with only a watering can and buckets.
This activity was messy, required quite a bit of parental involvement and was not especially frugal, but I would do it again. Sweet Pea seemed to take it seriously and was engaged for a very long time.
Notes from the Trenches: Definitely an outside activity. Also, you certainly would want to get a sturdy (and cheap) plant because a toddler isn’t really equipped with the ability to treat it gently.
Rating: 1 star (Fun) *
From: I got the idea for this type of art work from Carissa’s tot school post at 1+1+1=1 and I bought the Do-A-Dot Rainbow Painting Set from Micheal’s Craft Store.
Procedure: There isn’t a whole lot to explain. I just put a piece of paper in front of Sweet Pea, unscrewed the cap on one of the paint daubers and then pressed it on the paper a few times to show her what to do before handing it over.
Observations: She had a really good time with this although she had some difficulty understanding the concept of the dotters. She kept trying to use them like markers and smear them across the paper. When she seemed to get a little bored, I started drawing some shapes on paper with a Sharpie and let her color them in.
She especially liked coloring in my rendition of Elmo.
Notes from the Trenches: These can be somewhat messy. The second time I let her play with these, she didn’t have on a bib and got some ink on her shirt.
Rating: 3 Stars (Easy, Fun, Independent) *
Sweet Pea is 24 months old.
From: A family friend told us about this great “Does it Fit?” activity.
Procedure: Cut an empty paper towel roll in half and gather a collection of objects that do and don’t fit through the roll. We used a dog bone, a chap stick tube, a ball, some keys, a large and small crumpled piece of paper, etc.
Present the tube and objects to your toddler and demonstrate putting an object into the tube. If it will fall through the tube say, “Oh, look it fits!” and if it doesn’t say, “No, this one doesn’t fit.” Show your tot a couple of different objects until they get the idea and then let them do it themselves.
Observations: I would definitely recommend this for other tots. Sweet Pea really had a good time with this. She especially liked working with objects that would fit in one dimension, but not the other (like the dog bone). She would hold it the bone lengthwise against the top of the roll and say “No. No Fit.” Next she turned the bone vertically and let it drop through as she said, “Fits!”
Notes from the Trenches: Obviously anything small could be a choking hazard, but this actually seemed to go off without a hitch.
Rating: 4 out of 4 Stars (Easy, Independent, Frugal, Fun) *
I bought a pair of plastic tongs for under $1 at a Party America and put them on a tray with 1 basket of counting bears and another empty basket. Still enamored with the teddy bears, Sweet Pea was ready to bring this tray to her table as soon as she saw it.
I very briefly showed her how to transfer each bear from one basket to the other using the tongs. She had lots of trouble at first and often used her hands to help steady the bear, but really stuck with it. She liked this activity quite a bit. She wanted to try it several different times during the week and got better each time. I was actually amazed at how well she was eventually able to use the tongs.
Notes from the Trenches: If I could do it over, I would not use teddy bears to start teaching the use of tongs. I think cotton balls would be a much better first transfer activity. The teddy bears were really hard for her to pick up. Although, maybe she wouldn’t have been so persistant if it had been just cotton balls.
Rating: 3 Stars (Fun, Easy, Independent eventually after some initial help on my part)
Sweet Pea is 23 months.
After Sweet Pea’s trouble with the tiny Where’s George Stickers a couple of weeks ago, I was really excited about finding this Kumon Let’s Sticker & Paste book at Target. It has pages designed for sticking and gluing specifically provided stickers and cut-outs. For example, the first page is an ocean, and there were 3 fish stickers for Sweet Pea to put on the page. As the book progresses the positions for the stickers / glued cut-outs get more refined (like suggesting that your tot put a monkey in a tree, instead of just anywhere on the page).
There were a couple of other books for tots on coloring and cutting, but I didn’t think Sweet Pea was old enough for them quite yet. She loved the sticker book though. I only let her do 3 pages (per a suggestion in the book), but I think she would have been happy to keep working for a while longer. One thing that was especially cute was that she wanted to show some of the stickers to her bunny before she put them on the page.
Notes from the Trenches: Sweet Pea wanted to pull the stickers back off the page after she had stuck them, but they weren’t really designed for that.
Rating: 3 Stars (Fun, Easy, Independent)
Sweet Pea is 23 months old.
A few weeks ago I wandered into The Supply Closet (a teacher supply store) and found some counting bears that I had read about on 1+1+1=1 . The bears I bought were actually a little different and more expensive than the ones Carissa recommended because there are more bears and they come in more sizes. I could see a lot of potential for tons of different tot school activities with these. To start, I wanted to try to do a sorting activity with her so I mixed blue and red bears in one basket (From the $1 section at Target) and put it and 2 other empty baskets on her tray. Sweet Pea is in love with teddy bears and started yelling “teddy teddy teddy” as soon as she saw the bears. She really wanted to pick up the bears and play with them. Then she started kissing them.
I had a little trouble getting her focused on what I wanted her to do with the bears because she was so excited. I showed her how to separate the red and blue bears and she quickly caught on, but then seemed a little bored.
I decided to step it up a notch so I brought out some yellow bears and scattered all the bears on the tray.
I showed her how to sort them and she seemed to understand, but got up and wandered away before she was halfway done. She didn’t seem interested in sorting by size either. We were quickly done with sorting the teddies.
I felt like I’d sort of taken the magic out of the teddies for her by showing her so explicitly what to do with them. Later when she started asking “Teddy, teddy, teddy” again, I decided we should use them in a much less structured way. I just let her have them and she really seemed to like playing make believe with them… walking each teddy around on the table. She loved playing with them this way.
I don’t know why the sorting didn’t work very well. I was surprised it didn’t go over better. Maybe she was too old for it or just had a better idea of what she wanted to do with them.
Notes from the Trenches: There is an obvious choking hazard here (especially the littlest bears).
Rating: 2 stars (Easy, Independent, and what is the opposite of Frugal?)
Sweet Pea is 23 months old.
We got this Little Tikes Tap A Tune Play Piano from Great Aunt Jackie for Sweet Pea’s first birthday and it had been out of circulation for a while. I try to rotate out Sweet Pea’s toys so they stay fresh and interesting. I left it out on her desk the other day and she was so excited when she saw it again. She played with it for a long time and was much better at hitting the keys than the last time she used it. She also tried holding down the metal bars while she played the keys and listening to the changes in sound. This seems like a great age for music making toys so I might try to look for other toys like this for her upcoming birthday.
Rating: 3 Stars (Fun, Easy, Independent)
I used to love “Paint with Water” books so when Sweet Pea’s Great Aunt Jackie brought one over for her, I think I was as excited as Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea spent a lot of time looking through the pictures of Spot’s Busy Day, even before I set her up to paint.
It came with it’s own brush and we used a leftover egg dying cup from Easter to hold the water. I would definetly recomend this activity for other toddlers.
Notes from the Trenches: Despite the picture above, I eventually ended up tearing the pages out of the book and only giving Sweet Pea one at a time. There was just too much potential for a water+book disaster.
Rating: 3 Stars (Fun, Easy, Independent)
Sweet Pea had a great time with these scent bottles. I have forgotten where I originally saw this idea, but when I went searching for it again, I found a good description at MontessoriMom. Essentially (E-scent-ially, hah!), you make up bottles that contain different smells. There are two of each scent and your tot is supposed to try to match them.
I have wanted to do this for a while, but didn’t know what to use for containers. A few days ago I found the perfect bottles at Penzey’s Spices. I bought 6 empty spice bottles (shaker jar A). Since the ultimate goal is to have the child be able to match scents, you only need half as many scents as bottles. I chose 3 that I just happened to have around the house (Truffle oil, Lavender, and Vanilla) and put a few drops of each on 2 cotton balls. I dropped each cotton ball in a bottle and then added a teaspoon of vegetable oil to each. The spice jars are really nice because they have shaker lids to keep the cotton balls from falling out (read: being forcible removed by a curious toddler).
Sweet Pea never understood the concept of ‘pairing’ up the similar odors, but she spent at least an hour unscrewing the lids, smelling the contents and putting the lids back on. I tried to tell her the name of each scent, but she called everything she smelled ‘truffle’. She loved this activity so much, we did it again the next day for another 15-20 minutes.
From the Trenches: These are glass bottles, so obviously this activity needs to be super supervised. Also, I really don’t think I’ would do this in bottles that don’t have spice jar style (shaker) caps under the lids. I am sure that Sweet Pea would have gotten oil all over herself and my furniture without them.
Rating: 3 Stars (Easy, Fun, Independent)
Blissful Moments [Link Removed because the blog is now private.] had a great idea for tot school of using plastic Easter eggs as a sound matching activity. I had seen something like this a while ago and was interested in the idea of using the eggs as containers. I was pretty enthusiastic when I finally bought them and as soon as we came home from the store, I decided we needed to get started on this Right Away.
My first mistake was pushing to fit in an activity even though it was really lunch time and I was dealing with a hungry and cranky toddler. But I thought this looked like lots of fun, so I was excited to do it anyway. My next mistake was letting Sweet Pea watch me fill the eggs. I grabbed some empty Easter eggs and filled them with beans, bread crumbs, and M&M’s. She could not wait to get her hands on the eggs. (Note how similar this was to me not being able to wait for a more appropriate time to start the activity. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.) Sweet Pea was very impatient as I set up the project and had trouble paying any attention as I showed her how to shake them and listen. She seemed to have the idea though, so I picked up my camera to snap a few pictures. Of course, she did what any toddler worth her salt would do and immediately tried to open the eggs.
Before I could set the camera down, we had bread crumbs all over the floor. Next we had a brief lesson in using a dust pan and broom. After cleaning up, I got the bright idea to tape the eggs shut so Sweet Pea couldn’t get into them. When I got us set up for the second time, Sweet Pea instantly tried to open the eggs again, but discovered she could not get into them. This made her very very unhappy.
So we put the eggs away and Sweet Pea had a good lunch and a nice nap.
In the meantime, I have read a more explicit description of how to implement the sound egg activity at Teaching Tiny Tots [04/08/10: Blog No Longer Exists] and a description of how to do sound cylinders at Shu-Chen Jenny Yen’s On-Line Montessori Albums. I noticed that the recommended age for the sound cylinders is 4 years. Perhaps 23 months is just a bit too young? The Wonder Years has a sensory sound activity that looks more appropriate to do with younger tots called Loud and Quiet Shakers.
Notes from the Trenches: Be patient grasshopper. Don’t start an activity with a toddler when you know they should be doing something else. Don’t fill the eggs in front of a curious child. Oh… and keep a dustpan handy.
Rating: 0 Stars (but I’m sure I’ll try it again next Easter)
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Need Ideas? Do you need some inspiration for activities to do with your own tots? You are in the right place!
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-Shannon
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