On Our Shelves

This week, I have finally removed all the Christmas Toy Excess and whittled down a select few things to go on Nikki's shelves this week.

As always, he has his bells. He loves to play with them, and although the initial interest has waned (thank goodness!) he still plays for a few minutes every day. I name the notes every time he lets me ring them, so it also works as a kind of music lesson.

From C to C, Nikki's handbells are so colourful (and labelled)!

For sequencing practice, he has his Ded Moroz dolls - he just can't give them up! He doesn't seem too interested in lining them up at the moment, though!

Russian dolls with Grandfather Frost (Dedushka Moroz)

He has a bowl of buttons and felt numbers to learn quantity: He really needs help with this one, because although he is good at counting, he still doesn't really associate the numbers with the quantities. He does enjoy playing with the buttons and 'helping' me to count by guiding my finger to touch each button.

Quantities using buttons and felt numbers

I have set up a shortened version of the fantastic marble run he had for Christmas. This is fine motor for the most part, but he also has to line up the final piece if he knocks it. He really loved it when Uncle Harry set up the whole run for him, but within five minutes it was knocked over and both boys were upset (it took about half an hour to set up!) so now we just have a really simple setup which I hope Nikki will learn to fix on his own.

Mini marble run

I have a set of colour flashcards to remind him that not everything is blue or green! We simply name the colours together in English and Russian. The perfectionist in me is annoyed that none of the sets of kids coloured paper I had (or have seen) include red paper, so I had to use some of my craft paper which was a different size...

A5 colour flashcards (with words on the back)

 And finally, his Bible, to read together in the mornings.