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1+1+1=1’s Pacman had fun with a Where’s George $1 sticker set from Target so when I saw the same set, I thought we would give it a try. Sweet Pea liked looking at the stickers and seemed excited by the book, but the stickers were so tiny she couldn’t really work with them. I tried peeling them off for her, it didn’t seem to help much. I’ll put the whole thing away for a while and try again in a few months when we have had more practice with bigger stickers.
Rating: 1/2 star (I’ll give it 1/2 a star for fun because she sort of liked it.)
I found this idea at Aday Family Memories, but used pom-poms instead of pasta as another reader suggested.
Sweet Pea really had to concentrate to get the puffs into the bottle. She was very intent on getting every last one of them into the bottle and then loved shaking them back out again. We talked about the color of each of the puffs as she put it into the bottle.
From the Trenches: When we were doing this Sweet Pea kept putting the little pom-poms up to her lips and saying “No Eat” while shaking her head back and forth. I guess the pom-poms might look a little like candy. In any case, I found it worrisome enough that I made sure I didn’t so much as turn my back on her during this activity.
Rating: 3-4 stars (fun, easy, independent, frugal if you use pasta or cut-up straws instead of pom-poms)
I bought some plastic animal shaped cookie cutters and Sweet Pea had a fun time using them on Play-Doh. She is still learning to regulate how hard she has to press to make the cutter actually cut, but she was always thrilled when we would pull away the extra dough to reveal the animal that was left behind.
She liked playing with the cut-out animals more than cutting them out, making the bunny hop, etc.
Notes from the Trenches: We had little tubs of Play-Doh and I had trouble smashing it out wide enough for Sweet Pea to use the cookie cutters with. Before we do this again, I will probably buy a regular sized tub of Play-Doh and a cheap rolling pin.
Rating: 2/4 stars (easy, fun)
I read a tot school idea about crumpling paper and was inspired to have Sweet Pea crumple pieces of yellow tissue paper for a mane and then glue them onto a lion head (a cut-out yellow circle w/ construction paper eyes, mouth and nose).
Her idea of crumpling was not quite as thorough as mine was. She was more interested in just shoving the (mostly uncrumpled) pieces of tissue paper into the cup I provided to hold them. After several demonstrations she got a little better at it, but never seemed to be having a super good time.
She was very excited about the gluing however. It’s amazing how many things that I take for granted that I know how to do without even thinking about them. It seems as if it would be so easy to glue one piece of paper to another, but watching Sweet Pea’s mistakes were fascinating. First, she sort of thought the glue stick was a crayon and spent a lot of time just drawing on the paper. I had to keep telling her, “Okay, that’s enough. Put the glue stick down now.” (Part of this may be that it is a Crayola glue stick that goes on blue.) Then she had a lot of trouble actually putting the wadded up pieces of paper onto the glue spot. She couldn’t quite hit the target, so to speak. When she did get the paper in the right place, she just set it on top. She didn’t know to press the paper down to make it stick. Towards the end, she started getting much better, but I was sort of stunned about how bad I was at teaching her. I think I need to read more about the Montessori style of teaching how to present a new activity.
She also didn’t know or care that a lion doesn’t have a mane on his nose or eyes. It sort of drove me crazy that she kept sticking the paper everywhere. I wanted to grab her hand and put it where the mane should actually go. I was very pleased with myself that I fought that impulse down and let her have fun gluing the paper wads wherever she wanted.
Rating: Crumpling gets 2/4 stars (Easy to set up and Frugal) while gluing the paper to the lion gets 3/4 stars (Easy, Frugal and Fun). Nothing about this activity could be done independently from mom yet.
We have been doing a “Letter of the Week” for the past couple of months. Each week I draw a letter on a piece of paper and put it inside a magnetic pocket on our fridge. During the week I’ll show the letter to Sweet Pea and we talk about what it is and what sound it makes. Then I just swap it out with the a new letter the next week.
I made the magnetic pocket by sticking a sheet protector onto an adhesive backed magnetic sheet and then cutting it to the right size.
For some reason, Sweet Pea loves to run and get this sheet off of the fridge and then talk to me about it. I can be anywhere in the house and say, “What’s the letter of the week?” and she will run and bring it to me.
Rating: LOTW gets 2/4 Stars (Easy, Fun)
I got this idea from the 1+1+1=1 Tot Trays site. You punch a few holes in an empty cereal box and then provide some dry pasta for your toddler to punch through the holes. It was super easy and Sweat Pea loved it. She played with it for 30 minutes before wanting to move on to a new activity.
Notes from the Trenches: I taped the top of the Cheerio’s box closed with packing tape to give it more support, which then made retrieving the used pasta more difficult. I don’t think I’ll be able to reuse the cereal box more than a few times before having to create a new one. However, I think the box would have collapsed when she pushed the pasta through otherwise. I tried both penne and elbow macoroni. The penne worked much better for her. She couldn’t maneuver the elbow macoroni to get the ‘curve’ into the box and quickly wanted to go back to the penne.
Rating: The Cereal Punch Board gets 4/4 stars (Easy to set up, Frugal to do, Fun for Sweet Pea, and can be done mostly Independent from mom).
I’ve decided to start rating activities based on the 4 things that are most important to me.
- EASY: How easy is the project to set up? The project will get 1 star if I can I make it in a few minutes while Sweet Pea is hanging onto my leg and begging me to play with her.
- FRUGAL: How cheap is this project? The activity earns another star if we can do it without purchasing anything. If it uses stuff I have around the house (toilet paper rolls, cotton balls, beans, etc), it is considered frugal.
- FUN: Does Sweet Pea like doing this? I’ll give the project another star if it keeps Sweet Pea entertained for at least 10-15 minutes? Obviously this might change as she ages.
- INDEPENDENT: How involved do I have to be? Obviously all these activities require supervision, but it gets another star if she can work independently once I get her set up.
It has been a struggle for me to find really engaging activities to do with my little Sweet Pea. She likes coloring and play-doh, but we can both only do that for so long every day before growing bored. I wanted to find more structured activities that were fun and appropriately challenging for her. Searching the internet for stuff to do with toddlers, I found this great blog called 1+1+1=1 written by Carisa. She describes something called “Tot School” using “ Tot Trays” to provide fun things for toddlers to do. After an hour browsing her site, my head is full of new ideas to use with Sweet Pea. I am going to try to document our “Tot School” activities here to keep track of what works and what doesn’t and hopefully to give other moms some good ideas for their toddlers.
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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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