Matching mittens

Objective

To engage toddlers in the cognitive skill of sorting by finding pairs

Materials

• basket
• various mittens and gloves (adult and children's sizes)

A great indoor winter activity, this one is super easy to put together as you likely have everything you need already!   I filled a basket with Bean, my husbands and my mittens and gloves and let my daughter do whatever she wanted.  I wanted to see if she would find the pairs of gloves and mittens and notice the size, shape, colour and texture.  This activity works well with more than one toddler as it makes it slightly more difficult to find a matching pair!  I've seen it done in daycare in the toddler room and it's always a lot of fun to watch.  Of course when there is more than one toddler, social and language skills are also being practiced.

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Salad Spinners

I've had to sacrifice many things as a mother and I have been more than happy to do so for most of those things.  The latest has been my salad spinner!  Bean has made it into her new favourite toy and figured out how to use it all by herself.  She thoroughly enjoys taking it apart and putting it together and spinning it, stepping in it (we no longer use it for salads) and it does not seem to get old.  Today I thought I would try to put a few items in it (she normally spins it with nothing inside) to show her what is actually happening in there.

I literally took the three items that were closest to where she was and put them inside for a spin.  She grinned from ear to ear when I spun them around in the salad spinner as she watched.  She of course wanted to try and then she attempted to put other items in.  When she is a bit older, I may do this again and put items that have very different masses, like a feather and cotton ball and some heavier blocks and she if she notices any difference. This could easily be a science experiment for preschool children.

What is the one kitchen gadget your child(ren) can't get enough of?  Do you remember your favourite?

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Bowling Boxes

Objective

To help my daughter with the skills of rolling a ball to a specific place (Gross Motor) and problem solving (Cognitive) by helping to balance boxes on top of each other

Materials

• cardboard boxes
• plastic cups
• take away containers

(basically anything from your recycling bin that is light enough to be toppled over by a rolling ball)

Today we had yet another extreme cold weather advisory so Bean and I stuck to playing indoors.  As mentioned in a previous post, she adores throwing and (attempting) to catch balls so I thought it would be good to use those same balls but for indoor bowling. We do not have one of those plastic bowling sets with the pins, but we do have tons and tons of cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes.  I stacked the boxes up into a tower and placed cups and smaller baskets near the top then asked Bean to roll the ball to the tower to knock it down.  I demonstrated first and she smiled and got excited and of course wanted to try her hand at it.  I began building again, but she was at my side, so I included her in building.  She did not really help, but it was my attempt to at least get her thinking about balancing all of these items to construct a tower. This activity is open ended as there is no right way to do it and there are so many possible configurations that could be built.

Have you tried this at home?  Do you have ideas for other material that could be used as stacking toys (blocks)?

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