December Home Activities

Besides his daily dose of flashcards and words reading, I've been doing more hand-on activities with him this holiday month, especially when his enrichment classes have ended and I've more time spent together with him at home.

We mainly did activities like...
working with paint, crayons stickers, playdoh, tracing with maker, matching numbers and alphabets.
Reagan enjoys every session and he is able to follow instructions and complete each activity well.

 I hope to work on more right-brain activities with him again, such as memory games, tanagram, mandala, foreign language and etc. Probably next month onwards I shall try to focus on these areas.

Beads Sequencing Kit

During the last baby fair at expo, I happened to come across a booth that showcased early-learning toys. I put baby Reagan at the kids' table to play with the toys displayed on it and took my time to browse at the other toys. It was then I noticed that my 15 months old was able to sit at the table quietly for a good whole ten minutes playing this bead sequencing kit all by himself. And needless to say, I was sold by this toy. 

It stated for 3 years + and above, probably because the child is supposed to sort and match the different shapes and colours of the beads to the templates inside. Of course baby Reagan can't do the sorting by himself, but he enjoys exploring the beads one by one and stringing them together. It's definitely a good learning activity to work on his hand-eyes coordination. And when he is older, I can teach him to do the sorting and classifying. 

The kit consists of 60 beads, 5 double sides pattern, 3 sticks, 1 lace and 1 stand. 

 I think I've said it a countless times that I'm totally obsessed with my boy's serious look of concentration each time he attempts an activity.

Wooden Puzzles

A plastic toy with flashing lights and sounds from Toy r'us , OR a piece of wooden puzzle.... I will totally opt for the puzzle! Wooden puzzles are one of his favorite toys now, or maybe I should say that I would prefer to watch him play with puzzles than any other toys. And that's because I'm so attracted and completely mesmerized by that serious and deep in thought expressions when my baby boy tries to figure out how the puzzle works.

I'm still trying my best to avoid using DVDS and gadgets like smartphones or Ipad to teach my baby boy. The limited exposure to television programmes and gadgets activities seem to play a part in cultivating his patience, prolonging his interest and attention span in reading and playing these puzzles.

 Of course hands-on learning activities and real human interactions definitely beats screen-time!

Tracing Sandpaper Alphabets

Vowels are mounted on blue background and consonants on pink background. Sandpaper letters are used for babies to study the shape of the alphabets with their sense of touch, before they acquire the gross motor abilities to hold a writing tool to write the letter.

This is one of Reagan's top favorite learning material. 

I allow him to trace 2 different letters a day and he is able to relate them to his alphabet poster. 

A few times right after he finished tracing the sandpaper letters, he would crawl over to the alphabet poster to find the letters he traced. My boy is so eager to show me what he had learnt!

At 13 months (adjusted age), he is still loving his alphabets, good job baby boy!

Shapes sorter and Matching wooden alphabets

While I was tearing the packaging of this shapes sorting toy, Reagan was already climbing all over me excitedly, trying to lay his hands on it. The shapes are supposed to be inserted in the right holes of the same shapes, which helps in training IQ and finger-control. However baby Reagan has not understood how the game is supposed to be played. He picks up any shape randomly and tries to insert them in any holes. Mummy has to explain repeatedly and helps him with it. But each time either me or him successfully dropped the shape into the box, he will look at me and starts giggling. He would want to play the toy each time I brought it out, but it can only hold his attention spa for probably less than 6 minutes before he starts crawling away looking for new excitements.

 Baby Reagan is still in love with the wooden alphabets I bought recently. He can spend quite a while fondling the letters and observing each of them like some priceless antiques. And what he enjoys most is picking up the letters and pass it to me one by one while I say out the name and phonics sound of each alphabet he chose . And if he tries to pass me the alphabets and I shake my head, telling him I do not want to play anymore, he starts CRYING! Once I take the letter from his hand and starts reciting, his smiles immediately return. It can be quite hilarious actually!

 After baby Reagan is able to recognize the names of some of the pictures especially from his flashcards, I try to bring it to the next level by teaching him to match the alphabets to the picture that begin with that letter. So far he is able to match A, B and C to the right picture cards. I'm also in the midst of getting him familiar with more alphabets letters, other than those he already knew. At 13 months now, he is able to recognize and pick out the right letters,  A,B,C,O,T, X (well he gets at least 90% of the time right, the last 10% is when he gets tired of the game and just pick up any random letter to shut you up haha).

Now with the wooden alphabets, I'm gradually trying to introduce 1 new letter a week, and at same time practicing the previous ones he already knew. Baby Reagan is enjoying his alphabets game and I'm having lots of fun with him as well.

Wooden Alphabets

A new learning toy to his collection...wooden alphabets! 

 Every night I will go through 3 letters with him. Basically I just say the name of the alphabets and make its phonics sound repeatedly. Then for the next 5 minutes I'll allow him to fondle with all the alphabets by himself haha!