Eliot has been working a series of evenings shifts this week. I always plan activities when this happens partly because I am a camp counselor and teacher through and through and I like to have my little campers focused. Last night we made crafts in honor of the 4th of July.
Lydia has been working hard on using her scissors and so I had an old pack of calendar pages from on of those page a days. The whole week before Independence Day had various festive images. I let her practice her cutting and then glue.
For my two year old a glue stick is like magic. You wipe it and things stick to it. This could entertain her for hours. This project is also a great Earth Day project because everything involved is recycled even the sheet she is gluing on is a random piece of found paper.
In between crafts, I always have an activity. I love the Melissa and Doug reusable sticker pads. They work sort of like window clings. The first packet we had was various animal habitats and animals, now we have acquired the Play House! and Make-A-Meal. As she has gotten older she has enjoyed these more and more, last night was definitely a success.
I was trying to get ready the next activity which was making a cotton ball flag. I took a piece of red paper, drew a square on the upper left hand corner and added stripes. I cut a blue square for her to glue in the corner. She added glue spots to attach cotton balls onto every other row. Later we had stars of many colors she glued onto the blue square.
Finally our last craft was simple. We have been working on letters. I made the letters USA for her. We traced them with our fingers. We looked at each one and talk about what it started with. She then used the magic glue stick and we were done with our USA poster!
She called it a house when she put it on her head. I took this as a teachable moment to tell her Yes, the USA is a house for all people. We live in Florida which is apart of the USA. She wasn't quite ready for the civic lesson.
So what was the 10 month old doing? Well at this stage it's all oral and it's all sensory. So I collected a bucket of stuff that I put on her high chair. As she threw things on the ground I put something new on there. She touched it all and put it all in her mouth and it went well.
I have a set of measuring cups that bend down and pop up. I would occasional stack these, she would push them down. Somehow she almost seemed to be stirring and playing kitchen.
I also put the items in a clear container I normally use to storage stamps and she enjoyed taking them out. We did this several times.
Eventually it was time for some milk and she played with the frig magnetic mini-puzzle. This has been great for both the kids.
No doubt there is some juggling going on in these moments, however, we all had a good time developing our senses in different ways. Tomorrow Freedom Cake.
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