On Our Shelves

We have a few new activities this week that Nicholas is particularly enjoying.

The first is a variation on the spooning activities we have been doing. We went to a pottery shop and found some salt spoons in the bargain bin. The spoon is the perfect size to go with the miniature flower-arranging marbles we bought in the House of Marbles.

Nicholas loves this activity, though it is quite tricky and once he has reduced the marbles to a single 'layer' in the bowl it is too hard and he gives up and pours. It is excellent excercise for his hand-eye coordination and wrists, though.

In the pottery shop, we also found this olive bowl. I don't like olives, but it has been masterfully re-purposed into a simple 3D maze for Nicholas. He takes a small craft puff (miniature pompom) and traces the swirl of the bowl. Great for pincer grip and practicing 'writing' curves.

Lastly, our maths activity. We have taken the number flashcards from our Jones Genius Early Learning Kit and are using glass nuggets (flat marbles) to learn quantity alongside the numeral. Each card has a number 0-9 on one side and dots placed within the number (corresponding to the value of the number) on the other.

Nicholas takes the glass nuggets and places them carefully on the dots in the correct order. We count them on and we count when they're all there. Once Nicholas has learned the placement using the dots, we'll switch the cards over and place from memory. So far he needs a lot of guidance, but will count with me to four!!!

All these activities are carefully supervised, due to the fragile/small quality of the materials, as well as the difficulty. By allowing him to handle the fragile things, he learns to treat them properly.

Bye Bye Hoover

This morning I woke up to calls of 'bye bye hoot'! (meaning hoover)

Nicholas has developed a phobia of loud, noisy appliances. Particularly the hand blender (he has a panic attack if he even spots it in the cupboard) and the hoover. There never used to be a problem - he would always watch me blend his meals quite contently, and the hoover actually put him to sleep!

When I want him to finish an activity to do something else, we say 'bye bye kitchen/blocks etc.' - he now comes up to me several times a day and says 'bye bye hoot'  with a rather worried look like I might decide that the carpets really do need cleaning today.

Blackboard

Nikki has discovered the fun potential of his blackboard. He loves to write on it, and clean it off afterwards!

Did I Say Table Manners?

Despite the fact that he sits nicely, makes relatively little mess and uses his cutlery, Nicholas has yet to learn that less is more when it comes to the amount of food on your spoon...

Sorry

Nicholas has learned the word sorry. Whenever he ends up in the naughty corner, I ask him to say 'sorry' before he leaves. I accepted a kiss and a cuddle instead of the word, then last week he just came out with a very clearly pronounced 'sowwy' (like all babies he struggles with the 'r' sound).

A couple of days later he found himself in the corner again and after about thirty seconds he started chanting 'sorry sorry sorry' so that I'd let him leave. It's amazing how quickly they pick things up! 

Tan Lines!

My son has something (apart from the obvious) that I will never have - the ability to tan! While he was playing on the beach, despite the not-too-hot cloudy weather, there was obviously enough sun in the air to do this:

I realise the picture looks a bit on the pink side, (he actually looks more brown than pink) but he was not even the slightest bit burned - as someone who only has to look at the sun to roast, I am very conscious of staying in the shade and slathering on the factor 50.

Attack of the Ponies

On the way back from Dartmoor prison, we spotted some of the famous ponies gathered in and around a small parking area and decided to pull in so Nikki could get a closer look. We didn't expect quite such close encounters!

One pony came to Nikki's window:

Another came to the other side:

And then they boxed us in!

We couldn't drive around them, as there was a ditch a few feet in front of the car. We settled for slowly backing out and making them move! Eventually we got free. When we went to open Nicholas' door to get him out, there were tooth marks where the pony on his side was actually chewing off the paint! My mum is not happy about the pony vandalism of her car!

Table Manners

When we went away, Nicholas suddenly developed table manners! I think he was showing off. He went from rarely using a spoon (ignoring it in favour of his fingers) to spoon-feeding like a pro overnight. I knew he was able to use a spoon, as he showed me when we did spooning games, but he never wanted to use one for food. Suddenly, he decided to use it for eating and he did so with almost no mess!

This week, he has moved on to using a fork. He was struggling to eat blueberries with a spoon, as they kept rolling off the plate, but he refused to pick them up in his fingers. I decided to give him a fork and see how he managed. With a lot of praise and very little help, he was spearing the blueberries nearly every time! I didn't expect the quick success, since blueberries are not the easiest of foods to get a fork in, but he managed it.

Now, he is no longer interested in using a spoon - at least for anything with a consistency of mashed potato or lumpier. He asks for his fork every meal and is doing wonderfully. He even picks the mess up off his tray onto his plate, and wipes the table afterwards!

Now if only he would stop pouring milk on the tray to splash in...

Going to Prison...

Believe it or not, we went to prison on our holiday... Dartmoor Prison Museum that is! It is in an old building associated with the prison on the other side of the road to the working compound.

It was really interesting. It is incredible how much life has changed for prisoners in the last century. They had a cat o' nine tails in one of the displays - it was one of the most feared punishments in the early days of the prison. I can't imagine that one passing health and safety today!

There were some absolutely amazing models made of matchsticks - cars, gypsy caravans, ships, trains.. even concorde! All things that have been made by prisoners over the years.

There was also a display very remniscent of 'Escape from Colditz' with all the various escape tools and weapons that had been fashioned by prisoners, and another with items used for smuggling things into and out of prison.

All in all, it was interesting and I expect we will go back when Nicholas is old enough to understand a bit more what it is about.

House of Marbles

While we were on holdiay, we took Nicholas to the House of Marbles.  He was very interested in watching the marble runs and not very excited by the glass blowing! I was going to get his handprint in glass, but he was determined to play in the sand rather than make a handprint, so we gave up and will go back when he's a bit older.

There is a giant granite marble in their garden, 1.2m diameter and weighing 2.3 tons! It is the biggest marble in Britain.

Time for Tea?

Last night, while browsing the web for inspiration, I came across the idea of making felt teabags! I have recently bought Nicholas a new tin teaset (his first, pound-shop set didn't survive me tripping over it) and bravely gave him a real teabag to put in it. After getting the idea to make one, I decided tear-resistant felt might be safer!

Here is the finished product:

We couldn't wait to taste it, so he put the kettle on first thing this morning!

Water Baby

Nicholas is very much a water baby. He proved this undoubtedly at the beach - he would have spent all day 'splash splash a water' (yes, his linguistic skills are improving in leaps and bounds!) and was quite happy to play for ages in the rather chilly English Channel.

In fact, he was crawling face-first into the waves!

He wasn't even bothered when a massive wave crashed into his face! After five or ten minutes, we would head back to the beach to warm up and and help bury uncle Harry in the sand.

Then he was off again...

First Time at the Beach!

His first trip to the beach didn't start as well as I thought. He really didn't want to go on the sand! I think the idea of the ground moving beneath him was an unnerving one. However, within a few minutes, he was so engrossed in filling a bucket with sand, he was no longer bothered by sitting on it.

I fiddled with the camera settings...

 

He even consented to be buried to the waist!



Then he went for a walk down to the sea with his godfather:

Where they had great fun jumping the waves!

By the time they left the sea, Nicholas was hanging freely and pulling his legs up to 90 degrees every time he saw an approaching wave. 

Crawlathon

 While we were away, Nikki seemed to be participating in a crawlathon! He crawled miles and miles, chasing Uncle Harry (and the cat!) all over the place.


We went to his godfather's birthday party and he spent nearly seven hours constantly crawling! I couldn't believe it, but between my brother, his cousins and the big garden with lots of shrubs and flowerbeds to chase each other round, I barely saw him all afternoon!

Nikki playing with Uncle Harry and our cousins Aiden and baby Joseph.

After an initial panic over sitting on soft sand, he loved the beach and did plenty of crawling - heading straight to the see every time my back was turned!

Also, he also did lots of crawling simply being in my gran's house. It is a lot bigger than our small flat, and we had to go down the whole length of the house, up the stairs and back down the whole length to get from the kitchen to our room.

By the end of the week, he was getting up on his hands and feet (rather than knees) and imitating a crab! My gran was certain this meant he would be walking in a day or two... so far he's showing no intention of doing so!

 

Back from Holiday

We're back from holiday now. I tried blogging before we left, but blogger wasn't publishing any text. I thought this was fixed when I published this yesterday, only to find this morning that it had also published a blank entry.

I have now found out that, for reasons unknown, firefox is no longer cooperating with blogger and I can only post using internet explorer. Which is annoying, but at least my posts are no longer appearing blank.

Russian DVDs

I've been saving up to get Nikki Russian dvds with a bit more educational value than most of the cartoons on youtube can give. As I've mentioned before, he loves Pim. Unfortunately, when I went to buy their Russian dvds and actually watched the clip I was thoroughly annoyed to see that they had Romanized the Russian words. And not only that, but they'd done it badly! I can understand why non-Russian speaking parents would find it beneficial, but would it not be better to have the option - or at least the ability to turn it off?

So, very unhappily, I turned away from Pim. I spent a long time searching for other options. There are some quite funky singing-dinosaur vocab-builders, which I thought Nikki would love. He didn't seem very interested. The other down side is that you can only watch an English clip, so I have no idea what the Russian is like anyway. But I was ready to go for it until...I was sent the link to these fantastic Russian-made dvds!

Nicholas loves them almost as much as Pim. In fact he had a meltdown when the two clips available on youtube were finished and we ended up watching them twice more each.

There are 5 hour-long dvds in the set - I expect we shall have them all memorized in short order! They are quite pricey, especially considering the shipping on top, but definitely worth the money.

Toilet Training

As soon as Nicholas could sit independantly, I had him sitting on the potty at change time. I wasn't expecting him to do anything, it was more that I wanted him relaxed sitting on the potty when it came time to train him.

As it happened, in January we had nearly two months of horrendous nappy rashes, and he spent a lot of time in pants to help reduce the irritation. This led to him being almost potty-trained, as he would often hold on until I sat him on the potty (though there were a few puddles).

Suddenly, at the end of February, he started refusing the potty. He would actually scream when I tried to put him on it, so I put it to one side and tried every week or so to see if he'd changed his mind. He still hasn't.

Two days ago, we had a breakthrough. Out of the blue, he came up to me and said 'toilet' and when I asked if he wanted to sit on the toilet, he got excited. So we sat on his 'special' toilet seat (which he has always seemed afraid of) quite happily for about ten renditions of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep'.

Yesterday he didn't ask, and I didn't want to push the idea. Then today, he asked again. Amf this time he used it! I am really hoping that this is the start and my plan to try and be out of nappies by his birthday micht actually happen! 

Spooning Fun

Nicholas really enjoys spooning at the moment, apart from at mealtimes (when he can't get the food in quick enough and resorts to fingers or my assistance)!

As a game, he really enjoys it. He even collected his bowl and spoon when I gave him a snack of raisins, so that he could spoon them out of the pot before eating them!

But his absolute favourite is spooning cakes. I bought about 50 dolls-house cakes off ebay a while ago, thinking that they would be good for various sorting-type activities (there are four colours) and the moment he saw them, he wanted to play. Now he asks for them every time he spots the box.

He carefully spoons the cakes from his red bowl into a little glass jar. He likes the clink they make when landing in the jar.

Sometimes the cakes make a detour on the way...

Don't worry, though, he doesn't actually put them in his mouth. Just pretend eating!

Shape Sorters

I didn't write much yesterday, as although I could finally use my new computer (yey!) due to recieving my new monitor, it came to light that the keyboard was broken and so I had to type with the onscreen keyboard which is slow at best. The customer service was great, though, and I had a new keyboard by lunchtime today.

Anyway. Pre-writing. As I said, there was actually a lot that we already do which can actually be classified under this heading.

Nicholas has always shown an interest in fine-motor activities, especially ones that involve putting things into holes. At just over a year old, I created this button jar for him:

I selected some large colourful buttons and cut a large hole in the lid of the tub. The tub is from hot chocolate powder, which works well because the plastic lid was easy to cut and it has a metal base that makes a nice noise when he drops the buttons in. It also has a lovely chocolatey aroma that several washes couldn't get rid of. I covered it in green paper entirely because it looks better on the shelf (and less like I hoarde 'rubbish').

I have since cut a new lid, as narrow as possible for the buttons to still go through. He will still play happily with this activity, though it is now easy for him.

We have progressed from putting random stuff into an empty tissue box, to shape-sorting puzzles. We have this lovely shape board that I found on ebay:

He still finds it a challenge with the more complicated shapes as it is quite a tight fit.

Today we got the Melissa and Doug Shape Sorting Clock. To my mixed delight and dismay, he had zero trouble with the shape sorting part of it. I was hoping this would be a trickier progression from the sorting board, but apparently it is easier. He still enjoyed it, and there is some challenge getting the right hole for the shapes, as there are several similar ones. He also loves the clock - he keeps saying 'tick-tock' - and it has somewhat stopped him from asking me to take my clocks off the wall for him to play with (not that I did!).


I have also found the website Early Learning at Home which has loads of great ideas that I am in the process of adapting to use with Nikki.

A Table

You wouldn't think it was a hard thing to find. Apparently, it is.

After seeing how well Nicholas worked at a table with the psychologist on Monday, I decided to get a cheap and cheerful low table to work with him at.

Unfortunately, the only cheap options are bright pink and girly and not really that cheap at £30. Ikea do a nice low coffee table for a fiver, but it is ten pounds shipping which makes me think its not worth it. Although it is at least that in fuel to the local shop, so maybe it is.

For now, I'll have to keep using his highchair base-table, which is not ideal as it means I have to keep taking apart the highchair...