Learning is Fun! Weekly Post

So, I have not taken the time to get my ducks in a row for next week.  Or however that saying goes.   I have been working on another project so that's part of it.  I can only put so much time into actively finding challenging and educational and fun things to do with Autumn.  I mean, I do have to take care of her 24/7 :)  Literally, 24/7 with the Hubs gone!  I get breaks from her when I go to the doctor!  haha

The project I was working on was "acitvity boxes" (called "quiet boxes" on other blogs).  But mine aren't necessarily for quiet time so I changed them to activity boxes.  My dad watches TV at night and recently Autumn has become very interested in it so I made 5 boxes to explore and play with before bedtime so she doesn't watch all that TV.  We tried out the first one tonight and it went really well! She played with the stuff in her box for 30ish minutes and then I sat down and played with her so she played some more!  I hope that track record keeps up.  We only need to kill about an hour because she goes to bed at 7:30 and dad doesn't normally turn the TV on until 6pm. 

So, anyway...all that to say I don't have any activities lined up for this next week!
But here's how last week went (age attempted 18 months):

1. Learn where her ankle is located: yep!
2. Learn to sign cat: kind of.  She kind of grabs and pulls at her face...but she'll get it :)
3. Cloth Pull: We did this and she enjoyed it.  I think she likes opening and shutting the lid (via the little button) better than pulling the cloth out though.
4. Leaf Bracelet: Um, no not so much.  She did not think it was cool at all to stick things to her duct tape bracelet and in fact, kept saying "off, off, off" :)
5. Pushing Puff Balls: Mommy fail

6. Glue primary color shapes to paper: yep...

But we used double sided tape instead of glue because we're cool like that.

To my knowledge we didn't do anything extra either :( 

Well, I took her to a baby gym for a MOPS playdate which is fun and a good learning opportunity so I say that counts.  But, yeah, that's it.  Hey, you can't win them all :) 

I will come up with more to do with the munchkisimo soon and post again!



An experiment

So, Jon Acuff wrote a blog post called "The biggest lie about travel we all believe" from his website Stuff Christians Like.  To summarize it in one sentence as he did: "You don't need a plane ticket to be distant from your family".  He talks about how he travels a lot, but he makes it a priority to stay connected and when he is home, he is home.  Not off in facebook or twitter or blog land.

At first, I thought, "Amen Jon!" And then I thought, wait a minute...do I do that??  So I spent yesterday evening lying in bed analyzing our day and being consumed with guilt.  It was not a typical day...I don't think at least... but nonetheless it was not my most stellar day as a mommy.

My daughter does an excellent job of entertaining herself.  She has a wonderful imagination.  She talks to her stuffed animals and "reads" (note: looks at pictures) and takes her toys apart and puts them back together.  She will even just look out the window sometimes!  It is a good thing, of course, but unfortunately, it feeds my laziness.  And if there is anything I HATE in this life, it is my natural inclination to be lazy. 

The thing that is so convicting is that while she is happy playing by herself, she is super duper happy when her mommy plays with her.  She, like every other child ever born, loves attention and affection and fun!  She loves her stuffed Elmo (who was having a conversation with her little red bear a few minutes ago:) ), but she loves talking to her mommy more than her Elmo and she would rather read a book with me than by herself.  That's the simple, but profound, truth.

So, I have challenged myself to be 100% internet free while I am with her from tomorrow until Thanksgiving.  That's right.  100% free.  I don't know if it sounds easy to you or not, but when the Internet is literally at my fingertips via my smart phone, it is not going to be easy for me.  It is going to be challenging.  It is going to test my self discipline.  It is probably going to test my patience.  But I also think it is going to enrich my daughter's life.  I think it is going to make us closer.  I think it is going to be hard, but worth it and in the end, awesome! 

Pray for me ;)  No, really, pray for me!  I'll let you know how it is going in a day or two!

Learning is Fun Weekly Post

So, yeah, I might have to not call it a weekly post if this track record stays strong. 

So to recap, here were my goals from 2 weeks ago (age attempted 18 months):
1. Play with hats-I knew that wasn't going to happen.  Why did I even put it down? 
2. Bubbles-check, check.
3. Color with red, blue, yellow-we have done this a lot!  I think I was making up for slacking the previous week or something.   She is starting to notice the color red.  I think.  Maybe.   :)
4. Learn where her thumb is: Yes, that was easy.
5. Learn to sign "daddy" and "help".  She can do both of them, but doesn't do them unprompted.  I'm not too worried about daddy since she can say that, but I would like for her to use help since she just gets mad and starts crying when she can't do something.
6. Boo at the Zoo: so much fun!  Crazy and chaotic, but fun!
7. Crunch in some leaves: We did this last week and today.  She has a lot of fun with it.  I should take some pics.  Or maybe a video.  We also made a big pile and she walks through it and kicks it around.
8. Hula Hoop: mommy fail.

Extra Activities:

9. Fall Sensory Tub.  Pine needles, acorns, holly (with the thorns cut off), and pine cones.  She didn't really enjoy playing with that one.  What I did instead  was get some heavy cardboard and cut out a wreath shape and we glued all the goodies to the wreath (she stuck the pine needles on and I glued the acorns and the holly) .  It turned out quite beautiful :)  The coolest thing about this activity was all that stuff was in the back yard!
10. Halloween Sensory Tub.   Black beans, pumpkin seeds, little skeletons, pumpkin erasers, fake spiders, and Halloween finger puppets.  She enjoyed this one much more.  Her favorite thing to do with the tub was did out the pumpkin seeds and the little pumpkins from the black beans.  Here she is giving a black cat finger puppet she found a kiss :)

Luckily it was warm enough to play with outside because sensory tubs are quite messy! I'm not sure how we are going to do them this winter. 

11.  Does trick or treating count as an activity?  I think it should :)

SO...for next week, we have:

1. Learn where her ankles are on her body.

2. Learn to sign "cat"

3. "Cloth Pull" found here.

4. "Leaf Bracelet" found here.

5. "Pushing Puff Balls" found here.
6. Glue red, yellow, blue shapes onto paper (probably just circles and squares).
7. Song/Nursery Rhyme of the Week: "This old man...he played one"
8. Book of the Week: "The Potty Book for Girls".  Not that I am comitting to anything, but it never hurts to prepare...

Learning is Fun! Weekly post

Gosh, I can't believe I haven't been posting between these learning posts.  I guess I could try to do better ;-)


So, this is how we did this past week: (Age attempted was 18 months)


1.) Practice climbing down stairs: Check.  She did so good with this.  She kind of knew how to do it before, but not very well and now that I have purposefully taken time to practice with her, she does really well and I don't have to freak out when I am putting away clothes and she is running around :)
2.) Sidewalk Chalk: OMGosh she loves sidewalk chalk!!  She is obsessed now.  I don't love it since it gets ALL OVER her clothes, but she loves toddling around everywhere "chalking" everything and making her mark.  All the bricks and rocks and tree trunks now have chalk lines (or at least they will until it rains!). 
3.) Color again with Red, Blue, Yellow crayons: Mommy fail.
4.) Learn where her "bottom" is:  I think she knows.  Sometimes she points to her belly, but I think she mostly knows.
5.) Signs "dad" and "help":  Mommy fail with "dad" :(  With "help" she does pretty well mimicking me, but she doesn't do it on her own yet.  She did, however, for the first time ever sign "please" today totally umprompted!! 

6.) Drop clothespins in a bottle: check.  Proof:

She did very well with this.

7.) Pumpkin Patch:  Lots of fun!  

Love her :)

8.) Dance:  we did this a lot!  Mostly with me holding her (not for very long.  This preggo chick gets tired easily!).  I should give her more practice and encourage her to dance all by herself. 

Additional Activities:

9.) We rode on a train which was a fun learning experience.  I heard "choo choo" for several days afterwards :)

10.) Played with bubbles!!

Next week's activities:

1.) Play with hats (I don't really have any hats, but maybe I can scrounge some up)

2.) Bubbles again

3.) Color with red, yellow, blue (why am I such a slacker when it comes to this simple activity?!)

4.) Learn where her "thumb" is (should be easy since it's always in her mouth)

5.) Keep learning how to sign "dad" and "help"

6.) Go to Boo at the Zoo (yay! I'm so excited about this!)

7.) Crunch in some leaves if we can find any

8.) Play with a Hula Hoop if I can find one at the dollar store

9.) Featured Book (a book we read every day): "Elmo's First Book of Colors"

Learning is Fun! Weekly Post

I'm a day late!

Here is how last week went:
(By the way, age attempted is 18  months)

1.) Stacking Blocks:  I actually have misplaced them at the moment, but she did play with them several times and really liked them.  She can stack 3 blocks.  
2.) Sidewalk Chalk: Mommy fail
3.) Color with red, blue, and yellow crayons:  We only did this once and she kept eating them which was really driving me crazy!  She is sooo much better about putting stuff in her mouth when I say no.  I guess we better try this again.
4.) Learn to point to eyebrow: I thought she would have some trouble with this, but she learned it in about 10 minutes!  It's so unpredictable what she will understand and what she won't.  I have been trying to teach her "chin" for weeks and she still just looks at me or sometimes points to her mouth or nose!  But, eyebrow?  No problem! Maybe it's because she already knew "eye"?
5.) Learn how to sign the word "dad":  Mmmm, kind of.  She knows how to sign mom and dad is very similar so she sometimes signs mom instead of dad, but I think she will distinguish them easily if I keep working on it with her.
6.) Clothespins in a bottle:  Mommy fail :(  I have the bottle ready to go-I just have to cut a hole in the side of it.  We will definitely get to do this before next Monday!
7.) Pumpkin Patch: My friend's schedule didn't work out so we are supposed to go this Thursday.
8.) Stained glass leaves:  We made these, but unfortunately, Baby Girl couldn't do as much as I was hoping.  I wanted her to tear up the tissue paper and she did for about 2 minutes and then got bored.  She did help me stick the tissue paper on the glue...for about one minute :)  Oh well, maybe we'll try again next year!
9.) Read: of course, we do this every day.  I'm not even going to put it on the list anymore.

Additional Activities that we did:

10.) Made this:

11.) We painted pumpkins

So, we did 6 out of 9 activities.  67% success rate.  Not very good :(  Bummer.  However, if you add in the 2 additional activities we have a 88% success rate.  Ok, enough math.  We'll do better next week!  Speaking of next week, here's what we have planned:

1.) Practice climbing down stairs
2.) Sidewalk Chalk!!
3.) Color again with red, blue, yellow crayons
4.) Learn where her "bottom" is
5.) Keep practicing "dad" and learn how to sign "help"
6.) Drop clothespin in a 2-liter bottle
7.) Pumpkin Patch
8.) Dance to some music!

Learning is Fun! Weekly post

One thing that I do with Autumn and love love love to do is to play constructively with her.  What I mean is I get ideas from other blogs about learning and education and then do something with her other than just reading or letting her entertain herself.  My goal is to do these activities several times a week, plus do one artsy/crafty thing a week with her.  She is young (17.5 months) so some of these things are very simple.  For example, one day we might work on "kicking" a ball (which she still can't do!) or taking a homemade streamer outside and talking about wind.  Some are more complicated such as transfering cereal with a spoon from one bowl to another.  I would also love to have a themed book focus for each week, but that's not happening yet. 

So, why am I writing about this?  Well, because some days (weeks) I do better than others and I thought it might help keep me accountable if I have a weekly post about our "goals".  I am thinking I can go over the previous's weeks activities and how they went and also write down the next week's planned activities.

SO, for the upcoming week our goals are to:
-Have lots of practice playing with and stacking blocks
-Experiment with sidewalk chalk
-Color with Red, Blue, Yellow Crayons
-Learn to point to the body part "eyebrow" :)  (hee hee she may not be able to get this one)
-Learn how to sign the word "dad"
-Drop clothespins into a 2 liter bottle (fine motor skill maybe?  I don't know, I just saw the idea somewhere)
 -Go to a Pumpkin Patch (this may or may not happen depending on my friend's availability)
-Make stained glass leaves, found here.
-Read, read, read (which is a given and we do every day whether I want to or not! (My child is a bookaholic!)

That's not too much, is it?  Some of those are really easy and will only take minutes to do.  Plus, I don't work and I only have one child (for now) so I have lots of time to play with her!

I need to figure out what to call these weekly postings.  Playtime with the beast?  No! Just kidding.  Ummm, learning is fun?  I feel like I've heard that somewhere before, but surely it's not copyrighted so we'll go with that for now I guess.  I guess I'll update on Mondays how the previous week went.   Who's excited?  Me!  :)