Wordless Wednesday: What a Difference a Few Days Can Make!

Feb 18th, 2011 - high 60's, sunny, blue sky, beautiful spring teaser!!

Feb 22, 2011 - low 30's, 8 inches of snow, reminder that it is still winter!

How to Create a Ball Ramp

A ball ramp is a fun, free, educational toy with staying power that you can create quickly and easily in your home.  I was originally inspired by the idea for this from an issue of Mothering Magazine.  I think it used empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls.  I modified the idea to use empty cereal boxes.  The sides of the boxes can be cut to create the ramps.  On this second rendition of the ball ramp, I cut holes to let the balls fall from one ramp to the next.  Previously, I opened a side of the ramp like the very top one and let the balls shoot into the next ramp.  They are affixed to the door with sticky tack.  We do not have a lot of wall space, but this is customizable and could be as large as you wanted to make it!  Gumby loves this toy and plays with it often.  She experiments with putting light balls, heavy balls (she learned that heavy balls will cause the ramps to fall off of the door), crayons and all sorts of different things down the ramp to see what works or what doesn't work. 

Wordless Wednesday: Our Winter Visitors

Gumby's World: 2/5/2011-2/11/2011

The Gumby's World series is a journal of how we spend our days with Gumby :)

This past weekend, we went out and about with Gumby.  We had lunch at our favorite fast food Italian restaraunt with a good friend.  Gumby loves going out to eat.  We take her puzzles, coloring supplies and the iPad.  When we travel, we put her little potty on the back seat of the car.  It works just fine for potty breaks on the go!

Gumby got a couple of new toys.  One is a 18" tower with a funnel/spout that sand, water, rice and who knows what else can be poured into to make 2 wheels turn.  This led way to a renewed interest in the rice box.  

The other toy is a set of huge foam letters and numbers.  It is also a puzzle.  She has a lot of fun building, unbuilding, running, walking and romping on it.  I will admit - it is a very fun activity for Mamma too :)

Gumby mailed the Valentine's Day cards that she made last week for her Grandparents.  She was so excited.  She wanted to watch the episode of Special Agent Oso where he also mails a letter to a little girls Grandmother.  She really enjoys tieing shows into what she is actually doing. 

We made two trips to the library to play on the computer and with the large bead toys.  She is enjoying learning to use the mouse and is getting better at controlling it.  There are coloring games, bubble popping games and puzzles.  The puzzles need the most precise mouse control to select a piece then place it in the proper location.  It is nice because no button clicks are neccessary.

We played on the iPad, Cover Orange, of course.  She knows how to place pieces, which pieces roll, which ones do not roll, how to bump an Orange on one side and cause it to move, how to bump bombs and make them move pieces into place and more.  Along with hand eye coordination, cause and effect and basic physics concepts, the game is also building her vocabulary and her confidence. 

Gumby made several finger paintings this week.  We displayed them in the living room and kitchen.  The top one is done with brushes and sponges, with one hand print in the top left corner.  The bottom one is a more rare one done with her fingers.  She really loves using tools to paint; the ones where she puts her fingers and hands in it are always extra special. 

She has a kid's table that has letters and numbers embossed along the edges that can be rubbed over with crayons to make the letters on the paper.  She really enjoys this.  She names off the letters as she sees them appear.  Thanks to her Grammie and Grandpa for this table that used to be mine when I was little. 

We had loads of fun with her Nano HexBugs that she got for Christmas.  We built them a habitat out of blocks and gave them a paper towel roll tunnel.  These are awesome toys and have staying power.  They are always fun and there is always a new way to play and learn with them.

Gumby and I spend our days immersed in play.  She is constantly learning what she wants, when she wants and how she wants without having to separate life experiences into subjects or play time versus learning time.  It is all intermingled, inseparable and fun.  We follow her interests wherever they lead and encourage her to explore her world.  It is impossible to go through life, even one day, and not learn something - try it!  All learning is valuable.  Life is learning.

Wordless Wednesday: Little Angel, Big Bed

Gumby's World: 1/29/2011-2/4/2011

The Gumby's World series is a journal of how we spend our days with Gumby :)

This past week I re-organized Gumby's toy shelves by putting away things that she is not using and making what she does use (or would if she could easily get to it) more accessible.  Gumby now has a new space for arts and crafts that is within her reach.  It is still a little cluttered, but I hope to also be able to rotate some of the items to keep it new and interesting. 

We also got a large plastic flower shaped plate to hold current projects and/or new items.

The rearranging resulted in a re-discovery of forgotten music items such as music shakers, piano and drums.  We have been having fun making music and dancing! Putting her markers, crayons, glitter, window crayons, paper and coloring books where she can get to them has renewed her interest in art.  This week we colored, drew - she is refining her own Mickey Mouse drawing - and created Valentine's Day cards for family members.

Gumby's Mee Mou (Mickey Mouse), drawn by herself

We read books, built jigsaw puzzles, played with her Potato Heads, buried each other and built with pillows, played ball with her huge 24" ball (she kept laughing if we would bounce it on her head), ran around the island ... all favorite actives of hers!  She was also able to get to her rubber ducks easier so we sorted them into squeaking and non-squeaking kinds. 

Gumby also loves cooking and has since she was 7-8 months old or so.  She loves mixing, dumping, pouring and tasting.  This past week she helped me to make veggie paella, home made spaghetti sauce, veggie enchiladas and cookies. This time, she noticed the ingredients on the box of cookies showed that we needed eggs and water.

Another new and exciting thing she did was correctly read a book out loud to herself.  I know she probably has the story memorized and is describing the pictures, but it was both accurate, adorable and exciting!

The book Gumby read aloud to herself

Gumby loves having the TV on with either Mickey Mouse or Special Agent Oso, usually for company, background noise or ideas.  Sometimes, I worry about having the TV on all of the time, but looking through this list of what we did last week, I guess we do things!

We definitely are not opposed to technology, Deeda and I both having degrees in Computer Science and we always partake in technology together.  As such, Gumby is quite proficient at working our touch screen cell phones, Wii, and iPad.  Her favorite thing to do on the phones is a sliding puzzle of Mickey and company.  Who else? :)  On the Wii, she likes to ski, race cars and shoot targets.  Usually she watches myself or Deeda play, but sometimes will play herself.  She does know how to take games out, put them back into the case, get a new game out of the case and load it into the Wii. 

Skiing on Wii with Mamma

On the iPad, she enjoys cooking food and rearranging furniture in a restaurant, puzzles, drawing, coloring, hopping frogs or just about anything else.  Lately, her favorite game is this physics strategy/puzzle game called Cover Orange. 

 

Gumby Enjoying Cover Orange on the iPad with Deeda

Gumby and I spend our days immersed in play.  She is constantly learning what she wants, when she wants and how she wants without having to separate life experiences into subjects or play time versus learning time.  It is all intermingled, inseparable and fun.  We follow her interests wherever they lead and encourage her to explore her world.  It is impossible to go through life, even one day, and not learn something - try it!  All learning is valuable.  Life is learning.

Creating an Indoor Sandbox with Rice

Come on in!  The Rice is Fine!!! :)

Making and playing in a rice box is a fun way to spend a cold winter day, a rainy day or really.. any day!  I have seen kids from one to four enjoy this activity for hours.  Yes - hours.   And, it is something that keeps interest time and time again. 

All you have to do is get a container of any shape/size that you want, as much rice as you want and not worry about the mess.  It vacuums or sweeps up fairly well.  We also found putting a sheet down helps to curtail a lot of the mess.  A couple words of caution: this can be slippery on hard or tiled floors and if you have any house kitties, you may want to make sure this is covered when left unattended. :)

We started out with the small rice box (approximately 9 lbs of cheap white rice) in the top right of the above picture and later upgraded to the larger size (12-15 lbs).  Gumby liked having the multiple containers so we kept them.  This is a wonderful open ended, sensory activity because it involves all five of the senses.  In addition, pouring and transferring the rice improves balance and hand-eye coordination and introduces basic mathematical concepts such as full/empty, more/less and counting.  Sometimes, it leads to us cooking a meal with rice.  Gumby likes to pour the rice, sit and touch the rice, run her feet through it, put her animals and favorite characters in it, bury them in it, etc.  The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. 



Gumby loves arranging other toys in the rice.

It could also have variations, try oatmeal or beans for example for different textures.  We added a bag of 16 different beans into the box below.  Gumby enjoyed the large and small, yellow, green, blue, red, and white beans.  She wanted to taste them (and she did), but I also bought another bag that we are going to put half into the rice box and cook the other half so she can *really* taste all the different beans and see how cooking the beans changes their texture (and taste!)

Have you made a rice box?  What type of variations have you tried?  What other 'things' are good for getting your hands diry and playing in?

Wordless Wednesday: Mallards, Muscovies and Geese... Oh My!