(tiny) tot school - Chicken theme

14 months

Continuing with our Easter animal theme this week was chickens (egg, chick, hen and cockerel).

Learning Basket
themed books

themed toys
  


ball (eggs!) and hammer similar to this

  


wooden eggs

Activity File

 

 eggs into egg cups  (I have recently bought these with a view to painting them but I couldn't let Easter pass without using them).  I set up the eggs and egg cups on a tray and Luath enjoyed putting the eggs in (and sometimes out) of the cups.  It was interesting that sometimes she would notice an egg cup was empty and instead of using a free egg she would use the one from the egg cup next to the empty cup and then would pick up the free egg from the tray.

working while sitting on the tray

We also used the balls from the hammer game and the eggs for a few other games , make that a lot of other things, they were a huge hit,  including

putting them into a jar, closing the lid and shaking.  Sometimes the lid would pop off (a bit hard for Luath to close) and all the balls would come flying out which she found very funny.

pushing them down through a kitchen roll tube.  Fun when they got stuck

trying different "spoons" for an egg and spoon game. Too difficult for Luath to hold the spoon to balance an egg, but she liked putting the eggs onto a spoon as I held it.

bouncing with them on an exercise trampette

rolling them down a plank

chicken theme treasure tub

I made Luath's first sensory bin (of sorts)

craft
While at messy church we made a bunny card for daddy (OK it was very much mummy who made it but Luath did help with the glue and writing a message to daddy) and Luath painted and decorated an egg.  The paintbrush was very small so I loaded the egg with paint and Luath used the brush or her fingers to paint with.

Toy Basket hit of the week
We found a (musical) fox to complete our Gruffalo story bag.  Luath has fallen for him in a big way. 

source

I took out some wooden bricks and  this is the first time she really has showed much interest in bricks other than chewing on them.  She was especially interested in the cylinder ones and would hunt  the bag or pile, checking out each shape and only keeping or handing to me the cylinder ones.  She was keen to stack these. 


Other things this week

We started this week away from home for a night and on the way home had a very shallow paddle while wearing shoes and Luath loved throwing some pebbles into the loch.

I finally got Luath a metal child size fork so she could properly stab her food, we were both getting fed up with her plastic ones.  She had some chicken shaped mash one night.

I made an indoor adventure soft play area for Luath to embrace her new passion for climbing (and her lack of a safety valve)

 We had an indoor camp out one night.

We had a lovely time at an Easter messy church.  Luath especially loved helping me use a hammer to nail a message to a cross.  The cross was made out of tree branches still covered in moss and was carried to the church.  Our message was "we are grateful for the love of friends and family".

Find out what others were up to this week at 1+1+1=1

Treasure Tub - Chicken Theme

I have done treasure baskets (what a treasure basket is here, here and images here ) with Luath since she was about 6 months old, but have shied away from sensory bins (what a sensory bin is here, here, images here and here). I think there is quite a cross over between treasure baskets and sensory bins.   In my mind a treasure basket is a collection of (usually) natural everyday objects in a container and a sensory bin is a collection of objects in a container which is filled with a medium (rice, beans, cotton balls etc).  Both are used for exploration of the senses and can have many uses.

The main reason I have avoided sensory bins is that Luath explores the world by mouthing.  This has lessened slightly recently but I prefer not to give her something that I would constantly be needing to stop her putting in her mouth (from a safety viewpoint but also I prefer to try and give her freedom to explore without me needing to remove/redirect, so I try to make her environment a Luath safe zone). I decided this week to try out a slight combination of a sensory bin and a treasure basket.  I called this hybrid a treasure tub.

This week's theme is chicken so I stuck with that for the tub.  I ripped up some thick packing paper for straw and then added some chicken related items:

wooden eggs
wooden egg cups
duplo chicken
soft chicken (that cheeps)
wooden egg shaped shakers

So far Luath has pretty much ignored the paper - she pulled one piece out - but has removed and played/explored with all the contents.

update - Luath discovered the paper one afternoon and enjoyed taking it out of the basket.  I'll bag the paper up and keep it for a future tub