Exploring the five sense - Touch

Despite my lack of blogging we are still here, and still continuing with our five senses activities. To read about our first one you can click HERE. This activity is super easy and can be done with items around the house. 

I gathered together a few scraps of fabrics from old projects.  I looked for fabrics with different types of textures. Here is what I used and the words I used to describe them to Bear. 

1. faux fur (soft, furry)
2. felt (smooth) 
3. burlap (rough, scratchy)
4. feather, not a  fabric but since we have been talking about owls and birds it was perfect (fluffy, soft)
5. minky fabric (bumpy)
6. PUL (slick,smooth) 

I would hand him each fabric one at a time and ask him what he thought it felt like.  He used words like soft and fluffy on his own. I would describe the rest of the items to him having him touch them  as we went along. He loved rubbing  the items against his cheek, until he got to the burlap. 

This was a quick and easy project with not a lot of set up or clean up required, but it helps introduce textures and build on your little ones already growing vocabulary. 

Instagram and a Christmas gift idea

Has everyone gotten on the Instagram band wagon? Well if you haven't you should! I know it's been around for a while but it is still super fun. I love that it makes it so easy to share photos on Twitter and Facebook.

I have been thinking of fun and easy Christmas gift ideas for family and friends. What about an Instagram photo book? I love that these photos document all the little moments of our day, perfect for grandparents. Plus they are very reasonably priced and now until November 21st Blurb is offering a promotion for 15% off any book you make when you use the code FALLTHANKS. That sounds pretty awesome to me. If you want to follow me on Instagram my username is @cuteandpeculiar.


**this is a sponsored post**

Sound Hunt

 Thank you again to Thomas for sparking up Bear's latest obsession. "The wise old owl" I can't recall the episode but somehow there is an owl in the plot.  Now,that is all he talks about.  My MIL and I were talking about where we should take the next curriculum (she helps write it). In conversation I told her about the "wise owl" story and how B talks about them all the time. We thought it would be great to take that subject and run with it for a while. Incorporating the five senses was a perfect way to expand on this a little more.

Our first day we started with hearing. We went over the sounds that owls make. We found this YouTube video that really captures a clear owl sound and watched it a few time trying to mimic the sound that we heard. I explained that we listen with our ears, having him identify his ears as well as the ears of the stuffed owl we had. Then we were off on our sound hunt.

Here's how to play.

1. Identify the sound you will be looking for. In this case it was the owl sound from the YouTube video  that we listened to earlier.

2. Have your toddler walk away or cover his eyes. Then hide the "sound"( I used my phone and played the video once I decided on the hiding spot) I also hid the stuffed owl along with it.

3. Have your toddler come back or uncover his eyes and try to find sound. Tip: Make sure that the track  or video is long enough to give them enough time to locate. The clip I used was a minute long and that was just enough time for both the boys to find.

4. For younger toddlers make the hiding spots more obvious. I noticed that W (15m) was able to find the general location of the sound but if the spot was too tough he wasn't able to find it.

5. Continue hiding as long as your little one wants. Bear played about 4 rounds of this game before loosing interest while W only played twice before walking away to play something else.

Don't feel limited to just owl sounds this game can work with any sounds or music. The main objective is having to listen to find the object.

**This post was submitted to: Kid's Co-op, Tot School Tuesday