8 Month Learning Activities

This kid loves stimulation and being engaged.  We still follow his lead and do things based on his moods, but I have found that as he gets older he wants more activities and experiences.

Physical Development:

This month was HUGE in physical development experiences.  Archer learned to crawl just after 7 months, and has become an expert.  He wants to get into everything and learn to do everything.  He really wants to be able to go from crawling to standing, but he is having to settle for pulling himself up on things.  I've tried to give him plenty of opportunities.

Crawling through his tunnel. Xander wanted in on it, too.

 While visiting some friends in Chicago we were able to go to the Ball Factory.  There were lots of places for Archer to crawl around and lots of balls for play. 

Recently we added a Pikler's triangle to our playroom.  My husband is amazing and made it for Archer.  It has two height settings, but we currently have it on the "flatter" setting.  Since he is not quite ready to climb yet, Archer mostly crawls under it or uses it to pull himself up.

As you can see, he also really enjoys throwing toys though the bars and then picking them up.  I'm hoping that we will eventually make a ramp for it.  (If you're a little less handy, Amazon has this beautiful triangle that I initially wanted before he offered to make it).

Another huge addition to our playroom was this foam climbing set a friend of mine was kind enough to lend Archer.  It has been wonderful to have, allowing him to learn to pull himself up.  He likes putting toys up on the steps and moving them between the steps.  He also likes retrieving toys from the top.  We have had them for a couple of weeks and he can now get himself up onto the steps, which of course, translated into trying out the real steps.  Luckily, he only goes up about one step.

He's now gotten good enough at pulling himself up that he is able to do it on the moving footstool of the glider in his room.

Reading:

Reading is pretty similar.  We do one set of English words flashed three times a day.  He watches Your Baby Can Read or Tweedlewink maybe 2-4 times a week.  We also just started adding in one English Little Reader Lesson several days a week.  He really enjoys Little Reader now, so I'll keep encouraging it!

We try to read as many books as he wants.  Current favorites are That's Not My Puppy, Never Touch a Dragon, Your Baby Can Read books and My Favorite Food/Mi Comida Favorita.

Math:

Still doing about one Little Math lesson a day.  We also added in flashing Doman Dot cards three times a day (we do them after words.  Each session takes about 5-7 seconds). Above is what a lesson looks like. He really likes looking at all the cards, so tends to chase after them when I'm done.  I figure that as long as he's looking, he's learning, so it is fine.

Spanish:

We are doing one Spanish  Little Reader Lesson several days a week.  He does not have as much patience for these as the English ones (probably because the words are less familiar), so we only do the multisensory parts, not the entire lessons. We read some of the early readers I made, as well some math early readers he got for Christmas.  

Practical Life:

Archer loves feeding himself.  He has pretty much decided he is done with pureed baby food, although he still has no teeth.

Not a huge fan of the snow.

Practicing drinking through the straw of his water bottle.  I was a little worried he would not be able to do it, since he has to both squeeze and suck, but he figured it out pretty quickly.

Baby Learning Shelves:

Since this post ended up being so long, I posted more detail about our learning shelves earlier this week.  You can check it out here!

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