Toys Around the House - Pom Poms

A few weeks ago Michael's had some crafting kits on clearance.  I know Xander is a ways off from crafting, but I picked one up  figuring I would find something to do with it.  The kit included a bunch of pom poms in various sizes.  I put the largest ones in an empty cocoa container to see what he would do with it.

At first I showed him all of the pom poms inside and closed the lid.  He played with the container for a while, but was unable to get it open.  Finally I took the lid off and he had a great time with them!  He knocked them around, felt them, and tasted them.  Many times I put them back in for him to dump out again.  He also thought it was funny if I tossed some in the air and let them rain down on us.  I think the pom poms turned out to be good motor development since he wanted to try to crawl after them.

Oh, and just a reminder how much babies like exploring normal objects, Xander spent much of one morning amusing himself with an empty cereal box and an empty orange juice container.

Caught Crawling!

Hooray!  I caught Xander on camera!  It took a bit of bribery, I set up some toys he hadn't seen across the living room from him.  Now I just need to find more ways to encourage crawling!

Crawling!

We're getting more mobile and vertical!  Xander is crawling in a cross pattern motion!  I am so excited for him, a little sad to be losing my baby, and a little scared of all the messes and accidents that will come with his new mobile status... Just part of being a mommy I guess.

He has also started pulling himself up.  He gets to one leg, but can't get off that second knee (I blame the thunder thighs).  He got stuck like the last week.

While my back was turned he made it across the living room and into the drawer with his movies.  Probably after his Your Baby Can Read.

Ever since he first started bathing in the tub, Xander has been fascinated with the faucet.  Pouring water from a cup is nice and all, but the faucet is so much better.  As I was warming up his bath water the other day he twisted himself to try to reach the water.  Unfortunately for him, he is longer than the tub is wide, hence the contortion 

Hooray for Baby Trays! - First Tot School Post

I have seen the idea of Tot Trays around the web for a while.  There is a good general description of them here. It is essentially a Montessori method of activity presentation contained within a tray.  I have been searching for trays to fit Xander's shelves for a while and finally found some at Michael's.  It is amazing how happy a few thin pieces of plastic can make me, but the possibilities are endless!

Since he is only 9 months we will just adapt the Tot Tray concept.  I love that it will let me provide his learning toys in a more organized way.  Plus, it makes rotating his activities easier to remember to do.  I can easily see which activities we have been doing most lately and switch them accordingly.

We have used the trays constantly since I bought them!

Playing with toys on two trays at once!

Apparently the tray even makes a wonderful seat.  Doesn't look comfortable to me!

This is where I store the trays.  Right now I only have three, to keep one shelf to rotate a puzzle (which he has really been enjoying lately).  We currently have a bug chain, stacking cups, and a tray of busy balls and peek a blocks from his giraffe.

The button below links to other Tot School posts.  It is a group of moms that blog about the learning activities they are doing with their toddlers.

Montessori At Home Giveaway

Just a heads up, there is a giveaway going on over at Olives and Pickles for the ebook Montessori at Home.  I have been wanting to read that book ever since I first saw it mentioned.  Head over if you want to enter.

Fun with Action Words

Since we try to make learning fun, I am always trying new ways of presenting things or turning them into games.  I love reading the ideas other mom's come up with, so thought I would make a Fun and Games section to share ours.

Being the curious little guy he is, Xander has to know what is going on at all times.  He loves to watch me do things like vacuum or sweep.  I decided to use this.

I got out a bunch of flash cards of action words.

I set him in the middle of the room and showed him one flash card at a time.  Then I would act out the action. When appropriate I would do it around him, or out of the room and back (for example, I would skip in circles around him).  Not only was it engaging for him, he thought this was hilarious.  For some of the words, like clap or stand, I would help him do the action.  He enjoyed that also, but not quite as much as Mommy being silly.

Organizing - Update

Back in March I wrote about getting organized.  Since then I have gone through a few methods of organizing our lessons and my flash cards before I settled on our current system.  I think I am pretty happy with it, so thought I would share.

Originally I kept the goal sheet on the fridge and the flashcards in one of the office file organizers.  I learned  early on that wet erase markers worked much better than dry erase ones.  The problem was the flashcards were in Xander's room and the fridge was in the kitchen, obviously.  I kept forgetting to go to the fridge to mark off where we were.  Eventually I took the schedule off the fridge and just kept it in Xander's room.  Unfortunately, even printed on card stock and in a page protector, it tended to wrinkle when I erased it.  For those of you who don't know, I am a bit of a perfectionist and having a creased page protector causes the ink to stain, meaning a messy goal sheet, bugging me.

After a while I moved everything to a three ring binder with a cover slot.  Putting the schedule in the cover was nice, and I was able to take the binder from room to room with me easily.  The downside to having the flashcards in the binder was that the Doman dot cards didn't fit.  Also, after about a week the schedule started sliding around in the cover, moving all my check marks, so I had no clue what day I was on.  To solve the problem I went back to the page protector and taped it to the front of the binder. 

Schedule:

As you can see, the current schedule involves two Little Reader and Little Math sessions a day, seven days a week.  He watches one of his reading DVDs a day (listed under SW because we are currently on Preschool Prep's Meet the Sight Words).  I have been having him watch our "current" DVD Monday through Friday and letting him watch an old reading DVD on the weekends since he loves his Your Baby Can Read so much.    

We do three sets of cards, three times each.  The goal is Monday through Friday, but as you can see from the picture, sometimes I do them on the weekends too.  Some days they don't happen at all.  There is one column for a power point, which we hope to do Monday through Friday.  I have downloaded many power points from BrillBaby in addition to making my own.  I usually show him one after we do Little Reader. 

The "PP" column is for perfect pitch, which is our music lesson of the day (post to follow soon), which we also hope to do Monday through Friday.  However, since he likes the music lessons so much, we might end up doing them every day.  

The final column is for our math lessons, which we were doing three times a day, Monday through Friday.  However, I ran out of Doman dot cards and the polygon flash cards I made after.  Since I haven't made new flash cards yet, we are skipping the scheduled math lessons.  Instead we do simple addition or subtraction problems with toys or food.

It sounds like a lot, but most lessons are less than 15 seconds and it DEFINITELY doesn't all happen every day.  They are "goals."  If we are busy, friends are in town, we don't feel well, we didn't sleep enough, etc, we just do what I feel comfortable with.  Some days LR and LM are the only thing that happen.  Some days we only do one set of word cards.  Some days nothing happens at all.  You get the idea.

Flashcards:

Originally I made the GIANT flashcards as recommended by How to Teach Your Baby to Read.  Sometimes we still use them.  However, those were difficult to deal with, not to mention store.  Now I print most of them on card stock from Little Reader, but have also used Microsoft Publisher.  One of our sets of flashcards currently consists of pre-primer Dolche words, which I just wrote on large note cards with a giant permanent red marker.

This is how I store them the majority of the time.  It is just a three ring binder with pocketed dividers.  There are three dividers, one for each word set.  To keep myself organized, set one always goes in the first pocket, set two in the second, and set three in the third.  I have a rubber band on one of the rings to hook my wet erase marker and pen.

Here is a picture of the envelopes we have in the three ring binder.  They just hook in and have Velcro to keep them closed.  I only use them if we are going somewhere and I take the binder with me, which almost never happens.  Usually we only do lessons at home and skip them while we are out.

This is how I keep track of my flash cards (you may have to click to enlarge).  Forgive me, it isn't very neat.  Anyway, there are three sections, one for each set of word cards.  Each section has a column of words removed and words added.  Ever day I take out the oldest card from each set (shown 5 days) and add the newest word.  The day I add one I write it under both the "added" and "removed" columns, so I can just glance and see what word is taken out next.  I sure hope I explained that somewhat clearly.  It may not be the best method, but it has been what works for me.  As you can see, not all three sets are equal.  Since I sometimes only do one or two of the word sets, those have been through more words than set three.