-
Sensory Week
My kids have been showing more and more interest in pretend play – so this weekend I adjusted our toy bins to reflect that – removing the textured balls, sensory bottles, squeaky blocks and squishies and replacing them with things like toy phones/camera, glasses, dress up hats, baby care toys, play tools and doctor sets. With the lack of sensory play happening in our playroom I decided to focus all of our projects/activities around messy sensory play this week! But why do I care so much about Sensory Play? It is so important and good for your child’s development. Think about your own childhood or what brings back those memories?…
-
Babies & Snow Days
This winter I’ve been couped up in the house for several snow days. While going out in the snow with your kids is basically a built in playground – I’ve got non-walkers and who wants to lug babies around or just literally lay out in the snow?? So instead of bundling them up and trying to drag them outside I brought the snow to them. They have never had so much fun! First thing I did was gather up a few plastic spoons from our recent take out orders as well as some play kitchen tools we had lying around (I’m sure regular silverware or kid friendly cookware…
-
Seasons – Winter
We recently got some books about changing seasons and have been talking a lot about winter and fall coming back (especially since my snowblower/shovel obsessed toddler keeps asking when its going to snow). As we’ve been stuck in the house all week anyway with the rain we decided to make our very own indoor winter despite the heat! This morning’s play was cooking ice. An incredibly simple basically mess free sensory activity where we fill a bowl with a couple cups of ice cubes, bust out our cooking utensils (LOVE these dishwasher safe ones from greentoys) and a couple plastic take out spoons that we’ve been reusing from our recent…
-
When Something That’s Totally Wrong Is Right: Helping Build A Child’s Attention
One of my babies has always had a hard time with attention. Even as a baby those little arms and legs would be flailing all over the place – never that calm, serene, peaceful baby even at a few weeks old. We had early intervention from the very beginning to try to help with fine motor skills and build that attention up second by second. And then we moved and we had to move to a new early intervention. At first I was very worried when the new worker started working on gross motor skills the whole session. I always felt those were our strongest skills – walking and running…
-
Beach Days
We are just coming off our vacation high and I’m not sure if the laundry will ever end, but I’m giving myself a quick break to check in with you all about beach time with the babies. With summer in full swing and July 4th coming up here in the States I’m sure many will be at least thinking about hitting the beach over the next few weeks if not already spending long lazy days camped out with the littles. While we all now know to be careful about the sun and vigilant about water safety there are still some benefits to beach days that can get wrapped up in…