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Go Get It

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There are so many games I’ve been waiting to play with Veronika with the caveat that she needed to be a crawler first. Well, now she’s a crawler and we’re playing!

Today, it was a simple game of pointing her towards her toys and saying, “Go get it!”

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First, I rolled two balls away from her. She barely needed me to say the words before she was off.

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I asked her next if she could get the purple one.

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Of course the fact that she went for it was probably pure coincidence at this age, but it’s never too early to build the vocabulary for colors.

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You can also turn it into a game for following instructions. Any toys on the “pillow fence” are irresistible to her, so she was off and crawling for them in a heartbeat.

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“Can you put them in the bucket?” I asked, aping the movement for her.

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She crawled happily over to the bucket and… ker-plunk!

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You can even make the game into a “race” with mommy or daddy, which will have your little one giggling. Who would get to the toys first?

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In sum, there are lots of variations you can play with this baby version of fetch, and your little one will love building those crawling muscles during all of them.

Baby-Friendly Ice Sensory Activity

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Here’s a way your baby can cool off while fitting in sensory play on a hot day!

I took Veronika outside before the sun was too high in the sky, along with a bowl of ice cubes and a few tools.

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First, I simply wanted to see how she would react to the ice. Some babies may want to grab it and really get in there! Veronika seemed a touch nervous about how cold it was but liked the sensation on her toes.

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For added fun, I buried two shape toys in the ice. She loved reaching in and grabbing them out.

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A wooden spoon added to the fun, too. She could “stir” the ice, or tap against the bowl. I put a few pieces on the hot patio and we watched together how quickly they turned to water.

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You can also use measuring cups as scoops. These were fun for her to reach into the bowl with. Or just nibble on!

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Don’t forget about sound! Put a few pieces of ice in one of the measuring cups and shake it for an auditory sensory experience.

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And when you’re done, clean-up simply means dumping out the ice to melt in the grass!

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Letter Detective

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For 26 days, Travis has been playing detective. Letter detective that is!

For the assignment (a neat suggestion from his summer pre-k to kindergarten workbook), I purchased a small glass jar with a lid and set aside a collection of pennies.

Each day, he was tasked with finding one letter of the alphabet. Every time he notices it, a penny goes in the jar. Fair game includes magazines we read, food labels, street signs around town, and more.

When we started with A, he needed lots of prompting, but over the course of the day he spotted 8 As.

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8 pennies in the jar!

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Truth be told, it was hard for Travis to find the letter of the day as we drove; his recognition isn’t fast enough to keep up with the speed of a car. But at-home materials proved more fruitful, and the goal is to count up the pennies at the end and perhaps earn a small reward!

 

Community Matters

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I’ve moved three times since having children, and each time, there are two places in a new town that I head to first: the town library and the town recreation center. Both are a goldmine of information and opportunities – usually free or low cost – for children of all ages. They are also focal points of the community, which can be a great way to connect with other parents, find a way to get involved in the community, or just have a place to go on a rainy day for play.

To wit, Veronika and I have already found a baby yoga class at our new town library, a fantastic chance to connect with babies about her age. Make sure to pick up a local flyer or calendar so you know what’s coming up next: story hour and toddler singalong are both on our list!

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Rec centers usually have many options, too, and we’ll be checking out the open gym play for her gross motor skills in the fall and winter.

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What’s your favorite baby program in your town? Please share in the comments!

Share the Chores

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If daily tasks around the house feel like drudgery with your baby around, then it’s time to invest in tot-sized versions of some daily household chores. This not only keeps your little one entertained while you work, but will be so darn cute you don’t mind all that drudgery (truly!).

Today, Veronika joined me with her own little “laundry” machine. She loved everything about this; the felt paints and shirt she could put it in and take out of the washer over and over; the door to open and close; the spinning feature on the door that went round and round; the iron to zoom back and forth.

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Plus she had a laundry detergent bottle that could safely go to her lips!

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Meanwhile, I got all the folding done next to my little helper.

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Babies and toddlers love to imitate you and that’s what makes toys like this worth the investment; big brother Travis loved playing mini-me with toy vacuums, toy mops and brooms, toy dish washing sets and more, and Veronika can help with all of these, too, as she gets older. Toy oven sets are also perfect for this in the kitchen.

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Another idea, if you’re feeling bored of your chores, is to swap with your partner for a day or a week. If one of you tends to do one thing and one tends to do the other, consider a temporary switch. Truth be told, I prefer to do the lion’s share around the house, but I challenged myself to tackle a chore I’d normally hand off to my husband: hanging pictures that were idling on the ground still after a recent move. It was unexpectedly fun be the one wielding hammer and nails.

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So mix it up, and perhaps you’ll find a new task to make your own. How do chores get divided up in your house? Please share in the comments!

Coach Whistle

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The sports coaches at Travis’s camp have whistles… which means Travis needs one too! Well, it turns out that we couldn’t exactly make a whistle sound from this Highlights craft, but it was fun to make and Travis was so proud to wear it around his neck.

First, cut a strip of paper that is 1 inch wide and 9 inches long. I love letting Travis help with a ruler for sneaky “math” practice.

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Cut out the strip and cover in duct tape; we used a colorful blue. Cut a u-shaped notch in one end.

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Grown-up step: Hot glue two juice lids to the opposite end from the U.

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Roll up, continuing to glue, until there’s only a 1/4-inch gap open between the lids and tape. Fold back the U so it overlaps this gap. I knew we needed to get this exactly right for a true whistling sound, but because we were working in those quick minutes before camp, I had to sort of fudge it.

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Snip the end of the tape so there is an opening to blow into.

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Attach a pony bead to the back of the whistle with hot glue, and thread through yarn to go around your “coach’s” neck.

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As I mentioned, Travis did more of a hoot hoot into the whistle, and didn’t get a true whistle sound, but he loved it and proudly showed it off to camp counselors.

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Picnic Scene Craft Challenge

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Travis loves the open-ended craft challenge he finds in his Highlights magazine every month, having crafted robots and camping tents in the past, among others. Today, we wanted to make a picnic scene using nothing more than colored paper, cotton balls, and paint.

I loved the little method that Travis came up with. First he needed a paper base, and he chose green grass. We glued down a separate square of colored paper for the blanket.

Everything else in the little scene was made of cotton balls, which he dipped into paint and then glued on!

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It definitely was a five-year-old’s take on a challenge for kids as big as age 12, but I loved watching his process. There was green cotton ball grass:

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Orange cotton ball food:

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And pink cotton ball people! He then made some black cotton ball ants.

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He loved carefully pouring the paint onto each cotton ball before gluing them down, and enjoyed it so much that he wanted to make a second version. This time his pink person dined on yellow lemonade.

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Dropping Objects

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Impish Veronika has discovered the joy of dropping objects and making mama pick them back up again; this is actually an important skill, both for her motor skills and for object permanence (and for sense of humor!). Whether from the highchair…

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or from the grocery cart…

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…she is a little imp about it these days.

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You can use baby’s enjoyment of this game to your advantage with at-home dropping games!

First, I sat with Veronika in front of a bin of toys that needed cleaning up and showed her how to drop one in.

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Say a cheerful “oopsie!” or “dropsie!” with each toy that lands, to up the entertainment factor.

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Pretty soon she was cleaning up all her toys without knowing it.

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You can also do this game with socks in front of a low dresser drawer.

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Okay, Veronika isn’t really helping me put away the laundry, but she loved watching me drop in the socks, or trying it herself.

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The drawer wasn’t the right height for her to play by herself, so I set her up with an open box to continue the fun.

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Perhaps if you play this enough, your little one will tire of it and you can end round after round of highchair dropsie.

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Or maybe not!

Pick Which Bowl

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Here’s a little challenge for your baby if you want to keep him or her entertained the next time they sit in a highchair.

I let Veronika see a few pieces of banana (cut into safe pieces) and placed them on her tray.

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Note: Any other soft fruit would work just as well here, like soft ripe peaches or apricots. Cover the fruit pieces with one bowl and place a second bowl next to it. Ideally, I would have liked my bowls to match but certainly Veronika didn’t seem to mind the mismatch.

Encourage your baby to find the fruit and pick up the bowl it’s hiding under.

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If the fruit was underneath, I made a big show of it and celebrated with a hearty cheer.

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Arguably Veronika was more interested in the bowls themselves than in the fruit she discovered, but it still made for a fun little game as I prepped dinner. It certainly kept her hands busy!

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If your child seems excited about it, play with three bowls to make it more challenging.

 

Butter Art

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Travis loves butter (our favorite is the original from Earth Balance!), so much so he’s been known to ask for it by the spoonful whenever we make recipes with butter. So when he read an article in his latest Highlights about a butter artist, we had to give sculpting with butter a try.

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I pulled two sticks of Earth Balance from the fridge (the colder the butter the better) and gave him a dull knife to carve.

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At five years old, Travis didn’t actually make anything recognizable, but that wasn’t the point. First he told me he had sculpted Darth Vader, and then he was at work on a city.

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Every once in a while he’d have a nibble of course!

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I felt a bit like a kid again as I put my own skills to the test on the second stick of butter. This one was a shoe:

 

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And this one was a bed:

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We had such a laugh during this whole activity, washed our hands really well after, and otherwise learned something new about butter and art. In other words, highly recommended!