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.