All in the numbers

12 months has each year... One of the things I've been working on with Calvin lately is the concept of time - more specifically, the concept of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Calvin is a very visual learner, so to help him out a bit, I made my own version of a "perpetual calendar": Each sheet is mounted on a separate clipboard and hung on the kitchen wall. The month and days of the week sheets have a paperclip at the edge for him to slide into place every morning. This daily ritual definitely has helped and prompted excitement for his birthday ("Is it March yet?! Because when it's March, it's almost April Mommy!") Here are the PDF links in case you want to try it out: The 12 Months of the Year The 7 Days of the Week Number the Days February 14 For Valentine's day every year, instead of handing out cards to each classmate, Calvin's teacher has every student make just one Valentine for the whole class (thank you Miss Coventry! You just made my life 17 times easier!) Anyway, the point is to spend time with your child making a Valentine of some sort (a huge card, a drawing, a big piece of candy, whatever... we were told to be creative...) and then have him bring it to class for a mini show-and-tell. So with my scrap fabric piling up, I decided to have him make his very own heart-pillow-Valentine: After drawing each classmate, I had him sketch a heart-shape around all his little friends. I sewed along his heart and had him stuff the final product (I was tempted to sew "off-line" so as to make the heart a bit more symmetrical but managed to resist the urge...) 100 pieces About two years ago, I came across these clear Magna-Tiles in our local Lakeshore store. I immediately wanted to get them. But at $50 for 32 pieces... eh, the oh-so-pretty translucent tiles weren't so pretty anymore. A few months back, I received their current catalog and after seeing the tiles again, I just had to get them. So Jeremy and I looked on eBay and found a 100 piece set for roughly $99. Still pretty steep, but in my opinion, worth every penny. The kids can play with it for hours, and sometimes, even I have trouble sharing pieces with them :) I rarely buy toys for the kids these days because we're constantly being flooded with them from friends and family... but this toy... let's just say it's fun for the whole family! (Please excuse Calvin's very uncoordinated outfit... and focus on the tower he built and promptly bulldozed down after I took the picture...)

Tags: Education, Kids, toys

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Crafts for Little People, Things for Little People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.