Books - Baby's Favorites

The books my toddler likes sometimes surprises me. They are catchy in a certain way and that's why I am sure she likes them, but they are not always my favorites...although sometimes we both enjoy them equally.

Cleaning Activity

Sweeping / Mopping
Our toddler loves to help clean up. She wants to be the one to sweep and mop, which is kind of tricky. I have to quickly do the work first and tell her that she can have a turn when I finish. Then I give her the broom or mop. I have her stand on a dry towel when I hand her the mop so she doesn't slip on the wet floor.

Putting Clothes Away
When I put clothes away I try to get our toddler involved. I give her socks or something she can put away, then we walk into her room together and I show her where the items go that she is holding. I give her a lot of praise after she helps and she seems to really enjoy helping.

Washing
Sometimes when I'm cleaning up in the kitchen, I will hand our toddler a dry rag and ask her if she would like to wash something specific. She really enjoys helping out in this way.

Putting Dishes Away
Lately, I have been putting the silverware organizer on the door of our dish washer so that our toddler can unload the silverware and put it away easily. She isn't able to put the utensils in the right direction or even in the right spot within our organizer, but I let her unload the utensils the best that she can. Then I put the organizer back in our drawer and quickly move things around into the correct place. This has been fun for her. I unload the rest of the dishes.

Toys
I sing a song when we put toys away that goes "toys away, toys away, lets put all the toys away." Sometimes I'll sing another song that goes "clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, cleanup, everybody do your share."

Kitchen Activity

I was really wanting a kitchen play area for our toddler, but we just don't have the space for it right now. So, one day I decided to get our some of our pots, pans and cooking utensils and let our toddler play with them in our front room. It was a lot of fun and I realized that we don't need to get a baby kitchen just yet.

Library

The library is great for a number of reasons.

1.) Books
This is the biggest reason we use the library. You can put up to 25 books on hold and we often have our limit maxed out. Our toddler loves books, but it's hard for them to sit still through reading time. So, I usually read to them while they eat lunch in their high chair.

2.) Summer Reading Program
For our toddler, we just had to read to them for 10 hours and they were able to go to a carnival at the end of the summer. There were other optional activities that we did to that allowed them to be eligible for winning other prizes.

3.) Story time
A volunteer will read and sing songs with the kids. They get to shake these musical toys for one of the songs. I like how it brings kids of certain ages together too.

4.) Discovery Room
There is a large room in the library that has toys and activities for kids to play. The theme changes. The theme for this summer was the "discovery/science" room theme. There was this water play area that was fun.

They also had a tent full of plastic balls and other play areas.

5.) Toys / Puppets
The libraries usually have puppets and other toys to play with inside in the main areas too.

Hair Curlers Activity

A few weeks ago our toddler dumped my hair curlers out onto the bathroom floor. I asked her if she could help me clean them up, and thats when I discovered that putting the hair curlers away was a fun game for her.

So, I started to use it as an infrequent activity to sharpen her fine motor skills.

Songs to Sing

Here is a list of the songs that I have complied over the last year or so.

1) My Hands
2) Rain is Falling All Around
3) Little Birdies Song (We don't sing the last verse)
4) Alligator Song
5) I'm a little Cuckoo Clock
6) Frog Song
7) Six little ducks that I once knew 
8) I'm a mean old witch with a hat
9) Head Shoulders Knees and Toes
10) Smiles
11) Rock-a-bye baby
12) Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
13) Pat-a-cake
14) Trot, Trot Pony
15) Left foot in, Left foot out
16) To do song (i.e. mopping the floor is fun to do)
17) Hey Little Bopidy Bop
18) Clean up song
19) Once there was a snowman
20) Itsy Bitsy Spider
21) Bee Song
22) The wheels on the bus
23) Popcorn popping on the apricot tree
24) Spaghetti Meatball song
25) The Ants go Marching
26) Birds and the Bees
27) 3 little fishes
28) k-k-k-katie Song (use childs name)
29) If you're happy and you know it
30) I'm a little tea pot
31) Walking, Walking
32) If all of the raindrops
33) Red Wagon

Make a Snack Together

My toddler and I made cookies recently. I didn't think making cookies with a 18 month old would be possible, but I was motivated to try it after learning that "making a snack together" was one of the activities for the summer reading program at the library.

I choose to make a simple recipe - fruity oatmeal cookies. The recipe has 4 ingredients - oats, applesauce, banana, cinnamon (See recipe at end of post.)

I had everything set up on the floor.

I let our toddler dump the ingredients into the big bowl. Each ingredient was sampled first, but after some encouraging, most of the ingredients made it into the bowl. Next time, I will make sure there are handles on each measured ingredient to make it easier for our toddler to grab/dump.

I did most of the stirring, while our toddler sampled the batter, which is actually pretty good.

Of course, I did the oven part. We both munched down on cookies afterwards and I was surprised by how big of a success the activity was. There may even be more snack making in our future.

Cookie Recipe
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 small banana, mashed
1/4 cup apple sauce (more or less depending on consistency)
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix all the ingredients together. The consistency should not be too wet. You want it to be a little dry, but not so dry that the cookies won't hold together. I measure out the cookies to be 1 Tbsp in size. I bake them for 8 min at 350 degrees.

Play with Colors and Shapes

I want to teach our 18 month old about colors and shapes. There are some good toys and books out there that can help foster this kind of learning.

Park

Going to the park is a good activity. There are so many parks around where we live. It would be fun to visit a new one everyday and find some favorites.

Play Make Believe

Recently, I made it a point to play "make believe" with our toddler. I didn't realize how often we do this on a day to day basis. Oftentimes I pretend to be her animal toys, by holding them up and acting like they are talking to her when I really am.

This time we did a little more pretending. We acted like we were eating some of her toy fruit (carrot, apple, pineapple.) I was surprised by how she stopped and grabbed her bear and started to feed it the toy fruit. 

We pretended to talk on the phone to "Dad" too.

We also, put a diaper on her large stuffed bear. We talked about how he had the potty and the poops and needed a diaper. Then I told her he was all clean once we finished. I wish I would have thought to give her a wipe to use on the bear before we put the diaper on. That will have to be another activity.

Play with Blocks

My husband made our toddler some blocks. For a long time, we would stack them and our toddler would knock them down.

Lately, I've been handing our toddler a block and asking them to stack it on top of the other blocks. They've been able to do it, not perfectly. Sometimes they don't have the precision when placing a block on top of a stack and all the blocks fall over, but sometimes they do.

Counting

My toddler may be too young to count, but exposing them to counting is the best way for them to learn when they're ready.

I made it a point to have "counting" be the focus of this activity. We used yellow fuzzy balls for counting. I handed them a ball and said a number. They repeated the number and put the ball in a small bowl I gave them. Then I would give them another ball and say the next number.

We repeated this counting method until we got to the double digits. They were to hard for my toddler to say. It was cute to see them say the numbers we did count so well.

Make Animal Noises

When our toddler first started talking, they mostly made animal noises, which wasn't surprising, because we read them so many animal books. Now they are saying more words and making less animal noises. I haven't thought to quiz them on their animal noises for awhile, until recently. I'm glad I did, because they have learned  some new ones (crocodile, elephant.)

I questioned them about animal noises in this way: "What does a duck say?" Their response, "quack."

Other Animals
Bear
Cat
Dog
Duck
Chicken
Bird
Pig
Horse
Sheep

This time I asked "what does a crocodile say" and they responded by putting their hands together and making chomping motion.

Then, while I was trying to think of the next animal to quiz them on, they decided to be an elephant. 

Peek-a-Boo

Our baby is almost 18 months old and for some reason I thought they would be a little less excited about playing peek-a-boo now. Maybe it's because we hadn't played it for awhile. But I learned that I was wrong. Peek-a-boo is still really fun to play around here. We both took turns covering our faces with a blanket, pulling it down and saying peak-a-boo. There were lots of laughs and giggles.

Obstacle Course

I created this obstacle course in our living room with chairs, pillows, cushions and a towel. Our toddler (16 months) crawled through the tunnel I made a handful of times, before saying she was "done."

Beaded Plate Drum

I got the idea for this beaded plate drum from this blogger.

First, I poked holes in two plates and tied ribbon with jewels attached to them. Then, I hot glued the plates together and inserted a plastic utensil for a handle. I hot glued and taped some more to make sure the drum was secure.

Our toddler figured out how to use this drum right away. They liked to look at and play with the jewels on it too.

I secured the jewels on the drum really well, even though our toddler (16 months) hasn't been putting things in their mouth lately. I wanted to be extra careful.

I kept an eye on her while she played with it too.

Painting - Mess Free

I got this mess free finger painting idea from this blogger.

How it works - you put a piece of paper in a gallon size zip lock bag with paint, seal the bag and tape the edges to a table. Then, you're child can finger paint.

 This activity was fun for our toddler (16 months), but I didn't use a lot of paint, so it was kind of hard to spread it around. I helped, but next time I'll use more paint and have her do it on her own.

Egg Shaker

I made this little rattle with a plastic egg, two plastic spoons, tape, and lentils. Our toddler really liked it.

Playdough Balloon

I made our toddler a balloon filled with playdough for her activity today.

At first she ran around with it holding the balloon by the knot at the top. So, I put her in the highchair and showed her how to make indentations in it with her fingers. Saying things like "look it's squishy." She got the hang of it.

I liked how there was no mess. The only problem was that after awhile she wanted to bite the balloon. I remade it once after finding a hole in it, but I couldn't keep her from biting them.

I did walk around the house with her too, pointing out other green things, since her balloon was green. That was educational, since she is learning her colors right now.

Here is a recipe for the playdough.

Soap Jar

Today, I filled a baby jar with water, soap and food coloring. After screwing the lid on tightly, I gave it to our baby to play with.

She liked to shake the jar and she liked the bubbles inside. She's learning colors, so I used this activity as a teaching tool, by pointing out it's color and other red things around the house. 

She packed the jar around with her for quite awhile this morning.

Balls and Tube

This idea came from this blogger. I used fuzzy balls from the dollar store. It kept our baby entertained for about 5-10 minutes.

How it works -  You and they drop balls down the empty paper roll tube.

Coloring

Our baby can color! 

Here is a picture the baby colored.

Here's a picture we colored together. She liked the pictures I drew, especially of the kitty.