Two Ways to Have Fun with Shaving Cream

First, Squish bags! These are great for fine motor practice, relieving tension, talking about colors, color mixing and are also surely a sensory experience....and they're so simple to make!

You'll need:

Baggies (freezer baggies are best if you have them)

Strong tape (I used packing tape)

Cheap shaving cream (think Barbasol)

Food coloring or paint

  To create a squish bag, simply squirt some shaving cream into the baggie the add some color. Then squirt more shaving cream inside, and if you're using two colors to make a third color, add that now. Add a bit more more shaving cream without making the bag too full, as you want to leave plenty of room for squishing and squashing. Finally, seal the bag then tape across and over the top a couple times to prevent leaking. Done! Hand it over to the adorable toddler in your life.

This is pretty neat  Mommy!

By the end of one fun squishing session, the colors started to mix!  After a few days, the entire bag is now a pretty neon green and Ty still enjoys the interesting feel of touching and squishing his hands into the bag.

Another wonderful way to enjoy shaving cream, for the ultimate sensory experience, is to squirt an bunch of it on top of a table or highchair tray, add some paint (I wouldn't recommend food coloring!) and let your little one dive in. No instruction is necessary on this one! I added a train to run through the shaving cream for a little extra fun.

 

Ty ran into the kitchen and dove into this so fast I couldn't even put his new smock on him! As you can see from looking on the floor behind Ty, this became quite a messy ordeal. Some kids may be best off contained to a high chair or booster at the table! 

I had a paint brush nearby and he enjoys using them so I grabbed that too. The only problem with paintbrushes in our house is that when you label it a "paint brush" Ty confuses it with "hair brush" and comes directly at me to so sweetly brush my hair with it...dripping with paint and all...  :)  You just have to love toddlers! 

After he was finished (and cleaned-up!) I pressed a piece of paper on top of a colorful area of the shaving cream to make a print of his art.

Once dry, you have a soft, rather fluffy picture to add to your child's artwork display!

 As a side note, it can be fun for kids to also draw with their fingers in the shaving cream as it's easy to wipe away and start over!

Photographs of Our Week

I'm not sure if this will become a weekly post, but I wanted to share some of the other things that we did that weren't in previous blogs (or won't be in blogs in the future). I seemed to take a lot of photos of my little guy in action this past week!

Feeling like a big boy pushing his own cart at Whole Foods! I won't lie, he also enjoyed trying to play bumper carts with us...

                             

We practiced transferring oatmeal by hand and with measuring cups.

"I don't know what kid made this mess Mom, but I bet he's in trouble, huh?!"

"No, Ty, of course not, but that kid is going to help me clean-up!"

A good opportunity to practice Practical Life skills: Sweeping with his child-sized broom

Sometimes Mommy's broom just seems to work better I guess!

We bought beautiful bells from Schylling in the spirit of the Montessori bells! Each plays a different note. Tyler enjoyed ringing them and listening carefully to each tone. I played scales and a few songs for him.

We learned some new vocabulary with our Nomenclature cards: Pumpkin, Potato, Carrots

We practiced how to catch with a naturally slow-moving balloon. Likely Ty's favorite this week!

We worked on how to remove our shoes. It's not hard to see that Ty feels empowered!

Removing hat and coat

Tyler learned how to dust, another Practical Life skill on our curriculum for February

                                         

We explored nature as much as you can when living in a major city and the cold air requiring us to wear mittens!

The next day we were able to remove our mittens for a while and collect a few items for our nature basket.

                                       

While outside,  gross motor skills were practiced by riding a Scoot Along bike, and Ty also examined the laws of physics by letting the bike roll down the hill of our driveway and pushing it back up, over and over.

And one night we sat and watched the pouring rain hit the windows and slide down in little rivers...

Happy Weekend everyone. Hope it's a wonderful one for you and your families!

For more great ideas, check out Tot School!                 

Tiny Treasures...and Itty-Bitty Treasures too!

Today I wanted to continue to explore the small object love, as well as the fascination for new things, that most toddlers seem to have!

A big piece of Montessori for both infants and toddlers is a Tiny Treasures box. It is a container of some kind filled with safe and interesting objects from around the house and from nature that may appeal to the child's senses.

According to "How to Raise an Amazing Child The Montessori Way" the Treasure Basket is supposed to hold 50-100 objects. After at least nine months of providing a treasure basket, I've found it difficult to find new items to put in it! Thankfully, these have managed to keep him intrigued and curious.

A closer look at the items in our basket:

A zipper pouch with an interesting design to practice zipping and putting items in/taking them out, a small flashlight that Ty can easily turn on and off, a rough emery board, a lens from an old camera, a heavy and naturally cold metal lock, a shell and hemp braided necklace, an old compact with a mirror, a spool of thread, a slide open jewelry container with an Asian-inspired design, a glass votive with candle, a sponge, a ball of string with colors within the purple and pink spectrum, a soft paint sponge, a smooth glass candle lid, and a leather wallet with cards to take out and replace.

Knowing that I can trust Tyler (as much as you can trust a toddler!) to not mouth objects which are choking hazards, I presented him with a tiny, tiny treasures tray to explore, with my close supervision. I included small beads, puff balls, smooth sea glass, buttons, marbles, river rocks, small shells, paper clips and metal rings.

Examining one of his tiny treasures

I provided a few different containers to practice putting his objects in and out of as well. This helps the child perfect the pincer grasp learned as an infant. With continued practice, the pincer grasp will help the child with drawing and writing skills. 

Other small objects that we've used in this manner are river rocks...

...and marbles.

This is a zero to low cost activity! Happy hunting for the treasures that lie within your home!



Filling Activity with Glass Gems

Young toddlers are quite fascinated with small items as well as containers. This is an activity that combines the two and is delightful in many ways! The items used for this activity were a glass dish, glass gems that are typically used to fill the bottom of a vase or decorative bowl (I bought two bags with different shapes), and a glass vase. I was able to purchase all of these from the dollar store. I found the gems to be visually beautiful as well wonderfully smooth and the star dish very heavy duty!

 I showed Tyler him how to put the gems into the vase. I can't say that it was the most difficult activity, though it would be considered a sensorial activity in several ways. He loved it immediately and had great focus!

He filled the vase in no time.

The vase started to concern me, as the glass wasn't all that thick, so I grabbed a different vase from the bookshelf. He didn't like this one as much, as he couldn't see the gems after he put them in, and kept trying to look down into the vase. The visual was just as important to him in this activity. I decided to find a more suitable container and try again the next day.

By the next morning, I had found a heavy glass olive oil bottle and a glass spice jar to use, making this a science activity as well, as Ty would notice that it took less gems to fill the small jar than the large bottle. 

Filling the spice jar.

Let me take a moment to also point out our new rug for Montessori activities. I love how soft and beautiful it is! Tyler will later be taught how to take the rug out and to roll and unroll it for these activities.

Curious about the spice jar. Using real (heavy duty) glass teaches responsibility. I have some glass juice cups arriving from MontessoriServices.com any day now. Very exciting!

Shaking and listening carefully to the sound.

The sound of the gems hitting each other during the actual activity and the sound of the gems on the glass was really pleasing and as a child who is quite audibly sensitive, I could tell he enjoyed that quite a bit

Because the gems in this activity are small, parental supervision is, of course, necessary! I am very comfortable with Ty handling small objects because I know that he no longer mouths such things, but please know your child and decide on an individual basis whether this activity makes sense.

Work is calming

Tyler is typically a very fun, easy-to-giggle, happy little boy who loves to go off and play on his own, but ten days of exhaustion mixed with drugged hyperactivity from the lovely amoxicillin he's on, caught up with him for a moment last night. I was attempting to make dinner and Tyler wasn't in the mood for Mommy's attention to be elsewhere. I realized that he needed work, though I had nothing that I thought would keep his interest. I could tell he needed something new but not too difficult. Thankfully I had just read a post on the "Chasing Cheerios" blog about putting Q-tips into a hole in a container. Perfect! Thanks to my container hoarding ("I could use this for something someday, I'm sure...") I had a parmesan cheese container on my storage shelves and we were well stocked on Q-tips. In less than a minute the house switched from one full of whining chaos to silent focus.

Whew

As you can see by the amount of Q-tips, this went on for quite some time! He had great focus.

Realizing he could also use this as a soft sounding shaker

I admit I spent much of time that I should have used to make dinner, watching him and taking pictures. After he was finished he was calm and refreshed though, just as Maria Montessori promised! Making dinner was no longer an issue.

On our way to brushing teeth before bed, he noticed the work again and was eager to continue.

Impressive! I later counted 74 Q-tips in the container. This is certainly going on the shelf!