Indoor Garden Play for Counting Bugs

Vito is 42 months old.

So we are seeing a lot of bugs lately.  Vito is enjoying it!  We do nature walks in the morning to see the honeybees, flies and unidentified flying objects in the field. And we even caught the wasp that went inside the house last week for exploration.  Lately, we would walk our way to Mavi’s school to pick him up.  During these walks, we would count the number of bugs we see in the bushes and trees.  Vito enjoyed it and I thought that we could also do it at home as an extension.  So I made this “garden” setup for him, wherein we will pretend to catch bugs with our tweezers and place the right number in our number cards. 

Food Preparations That A 3 Year Old Can Do

I don’t often share the practical life activities (in the kitchen) of the kids because I seldom take photos of them while working.  Mostly, because they handle some delicate materials and I wanted to give my full attention whenever we work in the kitchen.  Now that Vito is quite adept in this area, I started taking pictures to demonstrate some of the things that he can work on independently.  These are mostly breakfast and snacks preparations.  And because our main meal involves boiling oil or water and meat, only the big brother can participate on this not Vito (3 years old).

Montessori Inspired Study of Snails for Preschoolers

We’ve been getting a lot of morning showers which resulted in a bunch of snails popping up everywhere.  Vito is loving it, now that he’s older, he’s enjoying the sight of these little fellows.  One time, we caught one sticking out my husband’s car.  Vito was excited!  I made Vito watch as I removed the snail from the car, placed it in our disposable plastic container and brought it inside for him to observe (and explore). 

Learning About Farm Families

I shared in my Instagram last week that Vito is obsessed with the concept of “mommy, baby, and daddy” thing.  He would always pair our animal figures into families and do play pretend.  This made me decided to introduce Vito to the farm animal families which I introduced to Mavi a long time ago (Farm Families - FREE Sorting Cards).  There’s a deeper explanation why we teach kids about animal families.  We teach kids to distinguish and describe objects to form them into bigger groups.   Commonly, we group inanimate objects according to their size, shape and color which is an easy task for the child.  But when it comes to real organisms with no definite shape, size and color, it is more difficult to recognize similar characteristics. 

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Gonge River Stones And Why We Love Them

Oh I can’t tell you how much we love these Gonge Riverstones!  I was really skeptic of these at first.  I mean, why purchase a plastic makeshift rocks when you have the entire backyard as a playground.  We don’t really need it.  Then as the boys were spending a lot of time in the yard these days, I realized that we don’t really have those flat rocks the boys can hop around with or use for play pretend.  I was thinking that if we can have those, the boys and I can play games involving gross motor and some relays.  So I decided to try the Gonge Riverstones.  They were on sale, and I picked them over the Gonge Hilltops because we already have three large rocks at the backyard which are way better than the plastic ones.  Anyway, I tell you, the moment these Gonge Riverstones arrived, it’s been non-stop play for the boys!  We liked them right away, and so does my husband!  This is my honest review of the river stones, and I bought this for our personal use and was not paid to do a review. 

Here are some reasons why we love it and totally recommend!