New Activities

 for Andreas that is =)

About a week ago, I added the six-piece jig aw puzzle to  our morning activities. Andreas will scatter and step on them for the first few days before allowing me to guide his hands on where to place the puzzle pieces. I just patiently sit beside him and assemble the puzzle repeatedly while he flips around the pages of his story books. Because this is the age where they want to be involved in just about everything, I waited for his curiosity to tick. Soon he was seated on my lap and understood the concept that the pieces had to be arranged so we can see the yellow school bus and the brown, fluffy teddy bear.

The jigsaw puzzle is a give away from Abbot during the Mother, Baby, and Child Show we attended last year.

Of course he still cannot put the jigsaw all together but i see him from time to time studying the pieces and uttering eeyow for yellow. It is the first color he recognized. His tiny hands will attempt to arrange the pieces and they end up stacked on the - at least inside the frame hihi.

We are getting there, darling. Mwaah!

Now this i'm guilty. I think we bought the magic slate a little too late. We have coloring activities from time to time so that when he got acquainted with color pens, I no longer thought of buying any other material for scribbling. Besides, I found them expensive when i checked once.

Over the weekend, while trawling the mall, I found this inexpensive magic slate with stamping pads for AED 35 (P438) at Toys R Us. I checked with hubby if we can buy it and he said yes. I'm glad we did bought one finally because Andreas is enjoying the scribbling - and erasing. He will sometimes ask us to guide his hands draw  a huge circle to fill up the board and he chuckles in delight.

As for his flashcards, I decided to stop them for a week now. I only want him to be familiar with letters and numbers but i do not want him to memorize C is for carrot.  Instead we bought him magnetic letters. The first time I handed to him the board with those letters, he recognized letters k, m,s, and z and made their sounds. I know the flashcards helped him a lot to know those and that is enough for now.

First Pony Ride!!

We didn't wrap any gift for Andreas' second birthday. His chocolate gateau cake was even complimentary lolz! So as he was about celebrate his 25th month, We treated him to his first pony ride.

He enjoys riding his Dada's back as they do carabao ride around the house. So I figured he was ready as well perched on a pony. Indeed, he enjoyed the ride without Mommy accompanying him around Zabeel Park. When I tried making him ride those little train and swirling helicopter, he wanted Mommy to come aboard as well hihi. Yun pala, he wanted to ride the real thing!

As soon as the pony made its first step, Andreas never looked back. He was smiling and behaved well on top of the pony. They went far to the opposite end of the oval ground. I was just waiting for the man accompanying him to say loudly that my son jumped off the pony but Andreas did made it back to the temporary stable.

When I took him down, he was grinning broadly so proud of himself. We asked if we could touch the pony and the people in-charge agreed. I let Andreas stroke the little animal before he ran off to another adventure at the park.

Well done, darling. Mwah!

Flashcard Report (1)

I mentioned before how my son enjoys the flashcard activity. Late last year, I decided to make the activity a little more exciting by adding his other toys and books while we go over alphabets, shapes, colors, and numbers.

I would flash red, and point his book of Cars that Lightning Mcqueen is also red. I show him C is for Cat and cat says "meow" as i press the Early Learning Shape sorter which also features sounds of animals.

Yesterday late morning, while we were going with our routine, my little Andreas gave a sweet surprise. While i flashed on a square, he rummaged through his ELC shape sorter and picked out the square shape. He held it up high and tried to fit it on the square shape as if convincing Mommy, they are the same.

I showed him the card with a triangle shape and he chose the yellow triangle and tried to do the same. He did this again for the shapes circle and heart. Needless to say, Mommy was soo happy and proud of him. I see that flashcards paved so much for Andreas' interests on pre-school skills. He appreciates his alphabet and number charts we have on the wall. His familiarity with the letters and numbers also made him interested in his alphabet and the likes video. It used to be Barney and friends all day!

So what made me chose flashcards? Truth is i am not into playing (maybe because i don't remember having so much toys). He and his Dada plays more (we read more). Maybe because most of his toys are for boys. We do the basic stacking rings, shape sorters, and some musical toys but i leave the lego, cars, and keyboard toys to his Dada. Andreas enjoys reading but he can only take a few minutes of it in the morning and afternoon. I needed something to make our playtime a more learning experience. And then I remember my Grandmother's flashcards. My siblings and I all went through it so I bought a set of alphabet and numbers at Kinokuniya Bookstore.

Right after we went home, i urged his Dada to try the cards. For the first time, Andreas sat down and listened to us. That was six months ago. Then we bought another set from ELC that includes shapes, colors and some animals. We go through all those sets and he would patiently sit down and listen.

I got to go now and make his favorite chocolate ring cake =)

Andreas and his books. This was taken over the weekend.