Favorite Activities at 43 months

Here are Vito’s favourite things to do when he’s at home and not playing with Mavi outdoors. Most of these activities promotes independent play minimal supervision, improves fine motor skills, vocabulary, hand-eye coordination, creativity and discovery through play.

GEOBOARD

When I gave this to Vito for the very first time, he worked on it for a long period of time.  First he was fascinated with the rubber band and the boards, and struggled a little bit on how to position it on the board.  Once he got the hang of it, he started making random lines (as seen in the photo) describing it as big and small.  Later on I showed him other things that we can make on a geoboard like shapes and letters.  He was totally excited and asking like “how did you do that?”.  He managed to create shapes but finding it hard to form letters in the board.  But all in all, he’s enjoying our geoboards.

COMMUNITY WORKERS

I was so excited to work this with him!  I love people figures, especially those of people in our community like doctors, police etc.  They are perfect for pretend play and learning!  These figures are from Miniland and of perfect size.  I made a matching card for each, and initially asked Vito to match them checking if he can identify some of the workers.  So far he knows the doctor, police, fireman, mechanic, teacher and DIY man.  I introduced the others like the cook/baker, pilot and nurse.  We then talked about what each of these professionals are doing in their work, like doctors help the sick, mechanic fixes cards, teacher is for the school, and more.  Though Vito has encountered these workers personally, but those he sees frequently are the ones he knows the best.

DOMINO

I can’t tell you enough how much the boys love this classic toy! I talked about how we use it here,  Hape Domino Set.

GEORGE LUCK PUZZLES

A post shared by Jae (@pinayhomeschooler) on Mar 4, 2017 at 6:13am PST

We own two of these puzzles and Vito loves them.  I mostly talk about his obsession in puzzles here and in my Instagram account.  Puzzles are a life saver, because they are engaging toys with minimal or no preparation at all.  All you needed to do is sit beside your child (except for older ones), and assist them in solving the puzzles.  We have tons of layered puzzles at home, but currently he loves the George Luck puzzles.

COLOR MIXING

The use of colored water for mixing and producing other colors was Vito’s idea.  He asked me to fill up our Jumbo Test Tubes with matching colored water and asked for extra bottles so he can make “black”.  Now instead of black, what came out was actually brown.  From here, he realized that he can produce a variety of colors out of red, green, blue, purple, yellow and orange.  I love that he can discover and learn this on his own through playing of colored water!

PEG BOARDS

We’ve been using this peg board for years now, kept it for awhile because Vito lost interest and now I reintroduced it again and he’s hooked!  He enjoys putting all the pegs into the holes.  I would sometimes hear him counting as he places the pegs on the board, or just sort the pegs according to size.  My plan here is to show him that we can form or create shapes, letters or landscapes out of this pegs so we can exhaust its use

BRISTLE BLOCKS

I would occasionally take out this open ended toy when Vito’s too tired and bored with his Magnatiles and Duplo.  This is another variety of those building toys wherein the child is able to create endless possibilities through these bristle blocks.  He loves making cars and structures out of these bristles!

GEOMAGS

One of my favourite materials at home is our Geomags.  I find these very helpful in demonstrating the 2D shapes to Mavi.  He later on used this in constructing bridges and towers.  You can read here, Creating Shapes with GEOMAGS, on how I first introduced this Vito.  Now he’s using it to form simple 2D shapes like triangle, square and rectangle.  I have these control cards and we used them to form the shapes.  In here, I introduced the concepts of “sides”, like for example, “how many sides are there in a triangle so we can make it?”

LINKS

We use this manly for counting and measuring activity, but Vito loves to just snap them together and matched it to our Montessori Color Tablet 2.  He also loves to make necklaces out of these links. This is a great material for hand-eye coordination.  Vito (at first) finds it difficult to snap and link them to form a chain, but because he uses it frequently and with my demonstration, he’s able to link them together and is obsessed over making necklaces.