toddler games
Moses has found a few things he LOVES the past two days. I thought I'd pass them along to the other toddler mommies.
1.) Pressing the sides of Matchbox cars into Play-Doh. This makes an exact impression of the car in the dough, which is really cool for a three-year-old boy. You can see the doors, windows, lights, etc.
You can split a can of Play-Doh into thirds, if the cars are small. Then you can make those dough cars pretend they are driving, stretch them, wad them up, etc. He probably spends twenty minutes a day just doing this.
2.) We have this game called Bananagrams. It's sort of like Scrabble tiles in a bag. Moses likes to pour out the letters into the floor and sort them. Then he 'feeds' those to his stuffed bunny (voice and actions provided by Mom). This week, the bunny likes the letters: O, I, A and E. Bunny says, "No thank you," if you give him any other letter. Well, except if you give the bunny a letter "S." If you tried to feed the bunny an "S", he spits an angry zorburt and throws an awful fit. Then we have to scold Bunny. It cracks Moses up.
3.) Another option for using Bananagrams tiles? I hand him a pile of vowels only. He gets to put those in any order he wants, and then I have to point to one at a time and "sing" a made up song using only those sounds as lyrics. So, it might sound like, "EEEEEE, OOOOO, A, A, EEEEE, I, UUUUUUU." (Wow, that is hard to put into print.) Anyway, it makes him laugh to make me sing something that sounds so weird.
I also learned NOT to teach toddlers "The Grand Old Duke of York." Moses went crazy about that song and kept saying, "Again! Again!" every time we were finished. He expected me stand up and sit down with him all two hundred begillion times we sang it. Man, what a workout.
I'd love to hear a few of your favorite toddler games/songs if you get the chance. He's just turned three, but since he's still learning English, we can do activities for younger kids as well.
Oh shoot. There was something else I was going to post, but I can't remember what it was. If it resurfaces I'll add it in later.
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Jocie loves to use letter-shaped cookie cutters with playdough. It gives us a chance to talk about letters and their sounds.
Also, she can entertain herself pretty well with just a clean dishrag, a plastic bowl, and a couple of ice cubes while I cook dinner. We can talk about how they're cold, taste like water, melting...and she makes them do all sorts of other things before they melt away. I'm amazed at how fascinated she is by something as simple as an ice cube.
She also likes to play with some little plastic toys in a plastic dishpan with about an inch of water in it. I put a bath towel on the kitchen floor and put the dishpan on it so the floor doesn't get slippery. She ends up soaked so I just plan to change her clothes afterwards, but she has a blast.
I'm enjoying reading your blog! I think it highlights a lot of issues that Americans without international connections don't think about. It's easy to have tunnel vision in our comfy cushy culture. If people get upset, it's probably just because their reality has been shaken up a little, and it happened to be this blog that did it, so I wouldn't take it personally if I were you. It could have been anything they read, because the issue is probably not with your writing, it is with their cultural experience (or lack thereof).
My experience in an inter-racial, inter-cultural marriage parenting biracial kids is that some people are simply not going to understand, because they have not had the same experiences we have had. The disconnect is not anybody's fault, it's just there as a result of different life experiences.
I am so stealing your toddler game ideas! Since all Cade wants to play with is cars I haven't let him put them in play doh but I am sure he would like it. And the letter game is a fun way to teach letters.
We play the fishing game a good bit and puzzles a lot. Floor puzzles and shape matching are the best.
I have a spreadsheet of craft ideas for Cade that I will try to share with you if you are interested.