I’d like to share some of the activities and books that I found to be very useful for spending time with my toddler.
I’d like to start with this Cheerios Play Book. I even made a gif of the first page to show it in action. I’m just very happy that I found this book because Scarlett is a VERY picky eater, and to get her to eat anything (even cheerios) is such a struggle. So I’ve been trying to come up with some creative ways to play with food, and this book is a great help for me. Each page has spaces where cheerios should be placed. I place cheerios there to complete the picture, and she eats them 🙂 Mom wins!
These reusable stickers are recommended for the age 3+, and I can see why – there are a lot of small stickers in the set. But we couldn’t miss on a chance to play with the sticker animals. Small stickers can be put away, but I prefer to watch her closely when she plays. So far I haven’t seen any attempts to put it in the mouth. We either play with stickers or look through our animal toys to see if we have a matching animal.
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Manipulating zippers
I have these bags with zippers in our Sunday box as well. After reading Maria Montessori’s book I was inspired to develop Scarlett’s self-care skills, and opening and closing zippers are one of them. I hide a toy in each bag, and help her open the zipper to find the toy. It turned into a great discovery game!
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Sticky note peek-a-boo
Any book can have flaps if you add sticky notes. I love this book First 100 Words
- Scarlett just takes off flaps to discover what’s underneath them. We get to learn the names of objects each time she takes off one.
- Scarlett lifts tabs to see what’s underneath it.
- I ask her to guess where one of the objects is, and she looks for it.
This book is very cute. Bright colors, large illustrations, full-page sized flaps opening in different directions, great things to learn.
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Small toys drop
I’m reading another book about toddler development now by Makoto Shichida, and he recommends to diversify the same activity each time a child does it. We’ve been using a wipes box and a bunch of jar lids to drop lids in the box, so I thought about other things that we can use for dropping – we came up with small toys. Scarlett loved to open the box after to check how the animal toys are doing inside the box. For next time, we’ll have to come up with something else – perhaps, pom-poms, straw pieces, bottle lids, cheerios, blueberries, shapes from a sorter – these are some of the ideas I came up with. What else do you use for drop activities?
This book is so great I like to play with it myself. I really like a collection of books in this box 🙂 This book has 8 pages with 8 moving images. I like a new book to be different from the ones we already have, and this one is definitely different.
Scarlett loves discovery games, and this board greatly serves that purpose. I’m really surprised that she remembers where each animal lives, considering we play with this board once a week. So I started to diversify and put other magnets behind the doors, so she gets an element of surprise each time.
I was wondering what your learning time looks like and how you got it started with your little one? Do you have a set time/place each day that you work on the daily boxes?
Unfortunately Scarlett doesn’t sit still for more than 5 minutes, so we spread out activities throughout the day. But I found she is most concentrated and interested after waking up after her afternoon nap, so we try to do as much as we can then. Hope it helps.
I love your blog. Very insteresting and the information about Sichida Method is priceless. Thanks a lot. I just wanted to say that I’m a twin boy Mom , bilingual and I find it very difficult to do some activities with both at the same time. It is a “mess”and on the other hand I speak Spanish and their dad English so all the books and materials recommended are in English language and I wonder if it is a litttle bit confusing for them at the time to learn the words by observing the objects written in one language different than the spoken one. Thank you very much
I have no idea how you manage with twins! I barely can handle one crazy toddler! You can spread out activities during the day, as it’s probably harder for you to keep their attention at doing one thing. As far as 2 languages, I totally understand. Our family is also bilingual, and while I do speak russian to Scarlett all day, her dad speaks english to her in the evenings. I use materials in both languages as well – some flash cards I have are in english, and some are in russian. Use the materials you have. It will all makes sense to your kids later on. At the time of writing this comment Scarlett is 26 months old and she knows words in both languages, so it’s worth the effort!
Obsessed and inspired! Thanks for taking the time to not only nourish your minis, but to share with others! I sometimes feel like we get in a rut of repeating the same activities, especially since we do site word flash cards and baby sign language. Can’t wait to create some of your printable activities and divide our things into activity boxes. 🙂 Also, I love, love, LOVE that you let her set the pace for age appropriate and don’t hold fast to the age recommendations. I have this quarrel with my husband all the time. I think a well supervised child is often ready for so much more. So kudos to you in so many ways!!!
Thank you for inspirational words! I totally agree that kids should have access to a lot more activities as long as they are thoroughly supervised. My daughter is almost 3 now, and we still use daily boxes. I changed the content a lot, but it’s really fun to see how she gets excited each day to see what’s in a box.
Thank you for the ideas! I am inspired so much by this post and can’t wait to set up something similar in our house. Thank you for taking the time to put this series together.
It was very helpful for me, so I’m glad to share!
Thank you for so many wonderful ideas. I am a first time grandmother and watch my now 18 month old grandson twice a week, which I absolutely love! I am looking forward to making some activity boxes for us to play with each day I have him. Thank you so much!!