Week 2: Zoo Theme Supplies

I almost gave up on my zoo theme this week because I was having a hard time producing what was in my head into an actual activity. I never got around to setting up our printer, so I had to get creative. However, I am glad I stuck with it, even if its not as "zoo-y" as I hoped it would be.

Here's what I came up with:

Feed The Lion:

 This is basically a reuse of materials we used last week. I drew a lion's face and taped it onto the empty baby wipe container. The hole is where his mouth is. The idea is that she will feed the lion the bottle caps with her name on them. When I got it out this morning though, she seemed to hate it and banished it back to the shelf. (It could be because he looks more like he just walked of the stage of Cats The Musical than an actual lion...I'm no artist).

Pipe Cleaners:

I didn't have an empty Parmesan cheese container handy, so instead I used a glass jar for creamer and made a "lid" using paper and a hole punch. I secured it on there with a rubber band. I was surprised at how well this held up. I expected the paper to rip or for the rubber band to slide out of place, but she played with it quite a bit this morning and it still works well. More on that later though.

Heads and Tails:

These are slightly less terrifying, (except for that "dolphin" over there who kinda looks like he's from the wrong side of the tracks). You match the left half (head) to the corresponding right half (tail). I only know how to draw a panda sitting up so he's not really a head/tail match. Apparently he is also very much not in the center, so when I cut them all together he only lost an ear, an elbow, and a knee. I put these in a ziplock bag in the bin, hopefully we wont loose them.

Sensory Bin:

 I added toys to her rocks and some scraps of fabric that looked like tiger stripes. I thought this would develop more imaginative play, but she just got upset and threw the toys out and played with the rocks again. So plain rocks it is! 

....and in case you were wondering, yes that one giraffe did start out life as a dog toy, but has since (to the great sadness of our pup ...and after a good washing...) been adopted by Scout.

Puzzle:

We have an animal puzzle so I got that out and our animal books for some more theme play. 

By the way that library trip did not go well. It was our first trip there and I know she loves books, so I anticipated our biggest problem being me running behind her picking up everything she pulled off the shelves. However, as soon as we walked in the children's section, she spotted the librarian's bath duck collection (we're talking around 50+ ducks lined up of every color and character imaginable). Lining up ducks is right up her alley, so all she wanted to do was play with them. She whined and whined until the librarian kindly gave her two to carry around. Then when it was time to give the ducks back and go home she screamed "Duck! Duck!" at the top of her lungs, but with her little toddler voice it sounded more like "Cuck! Cuck!" Everyone was staring as we left. I may wait until my husband gets home and go by myself next time...

I'll follow up throughout the week on what she played with, what she liked and didn't like, and any changes we come up with. Thanks!

Jes

Supplies

Okay, so obviously I have no training in Montessori Education, but I have read a bit about it and it basically seems like letting the child lead education in simple real life skills. Learning tools are at child level, and the child chooses which activity to do, and the duration, which could be 2-30 minutes. This is both liberating and slightly discouraging for me. "Yay I don't have to force her to do something" and "Boo that was a lot of prep work for half a minute of interest". I will probably deviate from some of this here and there, I'm not a purist in anything I do (e.g. sometimes we have organic salad and Spaghetti-O's in the same meal).

So how to give her options without my house becoming a disaster zone? I saw other people had Tot Trays or Tot Bins for each activity, and on shelves so their kids can pull one out and take it to a designated area to play. Then back away it goes until they want it again. Cool. I can do that.

We had an empty bookshelf that I wanted my husband to get rid of weeks ago, (thankfully he procrastinated). I bought five dish tubs for the bins. I was hoping to find some cute colors but this is fine for now.

Then I had to decide what to fill them with. Since I want to start with the basics, Letters, Numbers, Colors, Shapes, I bought some cheap things we can use for various activities: colored pompoms, label stickers, cotton balls, decorative rocks, colorful pipe cleaners. The type of stuff actual crafty people probably already had around the house.

The pink bowls I already had and have used at baby showers and birthday parties. I think I got those from Party City. The same with the giant spoon and small tongs. I had some blank index cards I used for recipes and stuck the stickers on those to make flash cards. They have the number written on the back. There is one-ten and I made two sets so we can eventually do some matching. Right now I will focus on just introducing them to her. I also wanted to incorporate some art stuff so I just threw the colored pencils in one too. I figure even if she doesn't want to draw we can work on recognizing colors and counting and such with them too.

The last one isn't pictured because she was playing with it. Its full of rocks. No toys or anything yet just the rocks. I think its her favorite so far too.

In total I spent $11 on some new things and tried to re-purpose a lot we already had. In the future I want to use ice cube trays for sorting, find some beads I'm confidant she wont choke on, get magnets and a cookie sheet, and clothes pins. I've also seen some cool stuff with shaving cream, which she would love because she loves getting dirty, but she hates being cleaned up afterwards so I think I'll wait for summer so I can just dip her in the pool or something.

Next I'll talk about the Rocks and Pompom bins.