every new word

WORDS

Every day M. is saying a new word! It is amazing to hear her pronounce perfectly, sometimes trying to say or say in her own way a word that the previous day she didn't know. She is bla bla speaking with the usual words and suddenly there you have it a brand new word that just fits right in with her sentence and instead of a pointing or a sign there is a very clear well pronounced word!

Also we have already started the phase of "what is this mummy". It happened four days ago, at the tender age of 23 months and it didn't stop, I know it won't for a long time. For now I am very happy with her curiosity, answering to her questions in a polity, calm and motherly way. Of course she is asking me about things that have always been around her and she surely know their use (carpet, umbrella, cream); I think that she just want me to repeat the world for her, so she can learn it.

To improve on her already fab progress we used our flash cards and now she is willing to try and say more words whereas before she wouldn't even attempt to. I noticed that she takes a long time to learn a new world in my mother tongue, but she registers an English word so quickly she can repeat it back the second after it was pronounced! She knows so many English words that I never taught her, she just learnt them because she overheard me talking to someone or from the TV. She would probably speak first in English if i wouldn't put so much effort for her to learn our mother tongue.



EYE-HAND COORDINATION and MANUAL DEXTERITY

M. is having a big fun time with mega blocks recently. She used to build only tall towers made of the single unit blocks, or add to my constructions some single unit blocks here and there. Now her imagination has grown. She is building "aeroplanes" and "houses" and she wants to use all the blocks, adding them on and on until there aren't any left. The way she fits the blocks together as developed a lot in comparisons to few week ago.

Mega blocks are really good to play with in M.'s age because there isn't a real goal to achieve, just put them together and see what will come out, it is an enjoyable toy for all the family, it is probably the activity that will keep a small child interested the longest, and also it helps with eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity.

I love the mega blocks my self!

COLOURS

We done some colour in activities. Sitting with her I let her give me with crayon or felt-tip she wants me to use and then I label the colour (oh M. is giving mummy red), so that she will also learn the names of the colour. Then I ask her which part of the drawing she wants mummy to colour in, and I colour that part that colour until she gives me a new colour. It doesn't matter if a girl's hair will get colour in red rather than in brown or yellow: this is her drawing and she can choose to do it in any colour she likes. This will be more enjoyable for her instead of listening to mummy saying "no, girl's hair aren't red". I believe she likes to say to mummy what to do for a change!

I enjoy seeing how confident she is making choices of colours and what drawing she wants to do the colouring on.

MESSY PLAY

We played with water: I filled up with some water her bath tub and put her dolly, different size containers and her tea set to make a tea for the dolly. Of course she had lots of fun and after 15 minutes I had to stop the activity because she was totally wet!

We also had fun with finger paint where M. splat and splat her hands and then spread the paint all over the paper. It is quite messy but she didn't want to stop splatting.

ROLE PLAY

We usually play with her kitchen and plastic food, but this time I tried to introduce real food like pasta and rice and wasabi nuts (sure enough that she won't eat them). I didn't have anything else suitable but I guess dried lentils, chickpeas and fruit are good too.

I showed her how she should pretend to put water in the pot, add the pasta and then the salt... mix and then put the lid on the pot. When ready the pasta is put on the plates and served...mmmmmm.

She then copied every thing I did, adding the rice and other things to her dish too.

This activity is also good to experience different texture; for this point it may be nice also used cooked pasta for different textures.

one step in the right direction

Today was a really grey and rainy day...it is the third day in a row that me and M are not going outside for some fresh air. It is also saturday and both of us felt like relaxing.

In the morning M. had lots of fun bathing her plastic dolly, while mummy was giving her a bath.
The we watched some Cbeebies and I explained the cartoons in my mother tongue
I use my mother tongue when I speak to her, I am really keen on her learning our mother language, but of course she is picking up lots of English words too from TV and children centres sections. We also jumped and danced to the Cbeebies songs which she enjoys very much.


After lunch we read some of the books in M's home library. She knows all of them by heart and sometimes she even "reads" them by herself. I started reading to her since she was two months
old, I don't know if it because of this early start or because I also enjoy reading so I injected this passion in her, but M. loves books more than TV: she can keep focus on the cartoons for 5 minutes, but she can read with me for 30-40 minutes and more.


M. had 3 hours nap (really unsual mind you), and I had time to exercise on my new mini stepper machine and cook dinner.

In the afternoon we did some activities.


WORDS


We looked at the flash cards. With this activity I show her a picture and I say out loud the word, slowly and divided into phonic sounds (su-n, ho-me) and she will try to repeat the world.
Aworld must be repeated lots and lots of times
before a child can say it, so this activity must be done a number of times before you can see (or better, hear) the results.

What I use are the "Usborne look and say First Words" which are 30 chunky, actractive flash cards. Under and at the back of each picture there is the written world, so that you can use them also when the child is learning to write and read.

Everytime M. try to say the world I give her lots of praises, clap hands, smile, so that she is encouraged to learn the sound of the world.



After this we learnt the names of the colours RED, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE.







To do this I made her paint a white paper for each of the colours and kept on repeating the sound red, when she was paint the paper in red, yellow and so on. When they are dry these can also be used as flash cards for the child to say the name of the colour.



After this we had a bit of free drawing with all the colours.



NUMBERS:


M. sorted out a wooden peg puzzle that has numbers on it from 1 to 10. She took off all the pieces and I asked her to find the number 1 showing her how it looks like in the puzzle, when she found the piece and put it in the right place, I asked her to find the number 2 and so on.



SCIENCE:


This was not meant as an activity but M. started it by chance and I explained her what was happening.




M. wanted a mandarin to peel, she loves peeling this fruit. I draw a face on it as I always do to make it more fun.


when she finished she started squeezing the juice and making a mess everywhere. I was almost about to tell her off when I stopped and thought that this was a very good idea actually.



I explained to her that the mandarin was made of water, that's why this liquid was coming out, and that it was juice, like the one she loves drinking (and that she actually only sees coming out from a box). She was really excited and she asked for another mandarin to squeeze.





There you go, as I said every experience is learning for little kids: we, as parents, can't waste an apportunity like this one just because it makes a bit of mess and makes our home a little dirty.



















ART and CRAFT and FAMILY VALUE


We played with playdough. I made a small family made out of playdough: a little girl, mummy, daddy and a cat. While I was doing this she was trying to make shapes and tearing the dough to pieces (this help manual dexterity). each time Imade a piece for the body of our figurines I tell
her the name of the body-part (head, leg, arm, hair, tail etc).

We put all the figurines next to each other and we put their hands together: they all love each other like it should be in a family.




















































For dinner we all had chicken cous cous. I posted the recepit.
Good night