Friday Post - Bathtime

 We've gotten a lot of bath toys, we've made a few purchases, and we've tried a lot of different hand-me-downs.  Here is a list of toys and gadgets that worked for us.

 My sister had a proper baby bath, like the one pictured here, and it worked really well for her.  It would have worked with our first baby, but we had a little baby sling and a large oval shaped bin instead.  It worked fine.  We had to use that same big tub for baby number two, because when we borrowed my sister's special little bathtub he started trying to roll himself out of it the minute he had any muscle.  This is the kid who at 8 or 9 months was crawling ON HIS BACK USING HIS HEAD FOR LEVERAGE.

 Somehow we managed to get by bathing the first baby without ever needing a faucet cover.  We got one immediately for baby number two, and good thing too, because he's managed to bash his head against it numerous times.  He's also figured out how to take it apart, because it has a pretty simple design.  That hasn't caused us problems, though.  Yet.

 The bathtub floor stickies were essential for baby number two as well, because he gets excited and decides to run or stomp in the bath.  Even with the stickies he has fallen down at least four times.  But I don't want a full mat because they're so much harder to clean.  (He's pretty much learned his lesson at this point, anyway.)  These can just be shoved to dry in the toy holder.

 We got the kids a rubber duck, of course.  We bought the big one, of course.  I didn't really think about how big 32 centimeters was when we purchased it.  It's huge.  The kids like to pretend to ride this thing. They're both CRAZY about it and talk about it even when it isn't bathtime.  He's their friend.

Now, the rubber duck holds air and has a hole in it, which is a big mistake for a bath toy.  They fill with mildew and become dangerous and impossible to clean.  My husband cut a slit in its mouth so that we can bleach the inside of it and water can pour out of it easily.  It will be the only squeezy toy we get.

 The kids like to pour water.  These Ikea stacking cups are fantastic for that, because they have holes in them, and slits for pouring, and they stack. 

The kids also like to drink bathwater, so sometimes I skip putting these in.

These cups are no longer available.  :(

 This Green Toys Tugboat is our favourite toy for pouring, by far, though.  And we have TWO of them in different colours.  Which means they each get to hold one.  They can't figure out how to drink from it, either.  Green Toys does a whole load of awesome bath toys that are designed to drain properly, pour and float.

 We fill out the tub with a pack of foamy letters and numbers.  We got them when my daughter went through her alphabet obsession.  My son doesn't seem to be that interested, so I don't know that he'll catch on as fast as she did.  Also, we're missing a load of them.  But he likes to stick them to the tub, or the wall, or his sister...

 That's pretty much it for toys.  The kids are satisfied with that, and it's easy to keep track of.  We do have a random bath book, but I use it for diaper changes so that I don't have to worry about their bathroom reader getting poopy.  I'll have to get more for potty time.

We store everything in one of these sliding bath toy trays.  Everything else we looked up was hung from a suction hook.  We had suction hooks on a few things in our bathroom and they were constantly falling down in the middle of the night.  Plus, the toy holders made with netting take forever to dry and are a pain to get into.

I have a drawer right next to the tub that this rack fits in perfectly, so when everything is dry, I just shove it in the drawer.  We are completely satisfied with it.

Friday Post - Easter Cut-Outs

 By Elizabeth Teddler

Easter is coming fast, so I whipped this out and started assembling it all.  My daughter isn't ready to cut paper nicely, but she is ready to handle the decorations mostly gently while she plays pretend with them on the table.

It comes with carriages and weird bunny costumed cupid babies and real bunnies in human costumes and so many lambs and chicks.  The big carriage is made from the card on the back of the book.  It's pretty incredible.  My daughter was particularly amazed.

 We got this years ago at a book sale because we loved the art.  It seems to be out of print, so I probably should have scanned it all...  but I don't really want to print and cut it a second time and we're turning into such hoarders here...

 I'm being really careful to cut them out with generous borders or now.  I could always scan them later if need be.

Friday Post - Candyland

 I win.  I got the 2004 version of Candyland.  And I didn't have to drive to someone's house and pay them a whole $5 for it.  (Seriously craigslisters.  Just because YOU paid $7 for it 10 years ago and then lost half the pieces.  It isn't worth even close to that much.  Not even if you package it with a game I don't want.) I paid no more than $1 for this and there was nothing missing whatsoever.

Why did I want this edition specifically?  Well, the earlier editions are hard to find.  For a start.  And the newer versions just bizarre.

 But as far as game-play goes, Candyland is the only preschool game that uses cards to advance the players along the board.  It means that there's no counting and the game is super easy to play.  Newer versions have a spinner instead, which is so difficult to use.

The art is terrible, and the player pieces are ugly, and boy do I hate this game, overall.  But the reason I hate it is because the first time I ever played it, I was 12.  And really, my daughter loves it for the make-believe aspect.  So I play it with her because it makes her happy.  And when we get tired of trying to make it to the castle, I make my gingerbread man talk to hers and we make up a little story together.

But I'm getting reaaaaally impatient to play strategy games with her.

Friday Post - ¢25 colouring books

I found both the Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz colouring books from the Treasury of Illustrated Classics published by Modern Publishing.

I was pretty excited because we watch the Disney version of Alice, which is totally botched, and it's a nice way to introduce her to the real story.

As far as the Wizard of Oz goes, we like to watch the Japanese television series from '86, which is pretty accurate for the most part.  She recognized every scene in the colouring book, as a result.

The art is bubbly and cartoony, and nothing like the covers.  It looks like the books are still available for super cheap from Modern Publishing.  I'll probably order some other stories.  These are so much better than the average franchise promotion colouring book.  They're still cheaply made, for sure, but we've gotten so much enjoyment out of them, and sometimes my daughter likes to just sit and read them.

Friday Post - Number Mats

 This is a "Teacher's Friend" product published by Scolastic.  I found it at the thrift store for a dollar.

Not all of the resources in this series are useful.  A lot of them are redundant or too simplistic.  This one is great for a few reasons.

First off, we love identifying numbers.  It's a favourite game.  So a box full of foam numbers that you can match up on cards is a fantastic activity on its own.

The cards with stars to count are great right now, too, because they're organized in basic dice patterns.  I'm learning a lot about teaching addition now that my daughter is working on beginner math.  It's interesting to see which concepts are easy and which are difficult.  She can count forwards and backwards to 10, and she can count up to 29 (Sometimes 30), but adding two numbers together makes no sense to her.  She has, however, memorized that 2 plus 2 is 4, and if she sees two groups of two, she will recognize it as four objects without taking the time to count.  Learning by rote and repetition has helped her understand elements of addition already, so I'm totally embracing the idea of her memorizing dice patterns and not bothering with written out math equations.

Lastly, the wipe off cards for practicing writing are fantastic.  She gets so angry when she makes a mistake and can't erase it.  This way there's no stress. 

This is the best dollar I've ever spent.

Friday Post - Chutes and Ladders

 Retroland has a pretty good post about this game.

This is a pre-2000's version.  Ebay says it's from 1999, which makes sense, I guess, looking at that boy with the burgundy vest.  That's a pretty dated style.

But, as you can see, it's totally PC by this point, at least.

It was really interesting to read the article on Retroland and discover that this has always been a game about morality. I've never had a copy in my house growing up, so I never played a version like this. They got a bit carried away here, too.  Just look at the arbitrary rewards.

On square 9 we have a boy who mows the lawn and gets to see sad animals at the circus.  That cat on 28 features a fair bit, sometimes dealing out punishment, sometimes rewarding with cuddles.  Higher up at 51, a girl sweeps the floor and gets movie tickets.  At 71, a boy returns a damsel's purse and she buys him ice cream.

It's all pretty ridiculous, and I can't imagine that there was ever a good edition of this crummy game.  The spinner is supposed to be easier than dice, but my daughter can throw dice now and can still barely play this game because counting to 100 is not very fun for her and the pictures are too distracting.  If the game wasn't so long and these weird stories weren't everywhere, maybe we'd get through more than half of it.  The best part is, none of these moral lessons make a dent on her anyway.  She's convinced of her own moral superiority and is quick to judge the kids on the board.  It's kind of hilarious.

Friday Post - Ravensburger Puzzle no. 089888

 

Illustrated by Steffie Becker

Two puzzles in one!  and for $3!  (I'm always thrifting, never buying new.)

They're pink and purple, which stinks.  And it's all princesses and maybe a prince or two (kind of vague, though).  But it's easy to put together, and due to the influence of her cousins, my daughter *loves* pink and purple, so this one's a winner..

But she also randomly tells me about how much she loves yellow, so she hasn't been completely hypnotized by the Disney machine yet.


One puzzle has a plain backing, the other polka dots, so you can separate the pieces before you begin.

Friday Post - Fanta Color

 This is a great little Italian peg board with coloured pegs.  It comes with some suggestions for pictures you can make, but the booklet contains pictures made on all different sized boards with different sizes and shapes of pegs...  I guess it's advertising for us to upgrade.

We only have the little portable one, which is enough for us.  The box that stores the pegs snaps onto the frame so that you can carry it around or hang it on the wall to display your picture.  This has been a great alternative to Lite Brite, which is sort of dangerous because you have to plug it in and is wasteful because it requires all that black paper.  Also, lite brite pegs are way too teeny for our household.

Friday Post - Curious George "Great Big Puzzle"

You may recognize this as the scene from "Curious George and the Bicycle".  Notice he has the bag over his shoulder because he's supposed to be delivering the newspapers, but instead he made boats and floated them down the river.

Don't blame George.  Blame the man in the yellow hat for leaving him at home unattended.  Or, better yet, blame Bill for dumping his paper route on a monkey.  Seriously.

$1 at Value Village.  Not bad.  It was made by "Mudpuppy Press", 24 pieces, 24" by 36".

It was a way to tricky for my 3 year old to do herself.  But each break has a bug or duck or something going over it, so it isn't that hard.  She was delighted that I brought it home.  "Good job, Mama!"  She says, "Good job on bringing that puzzle home!"

Friday Post - Christmas Wrapping

If there's one thing I hate about Christmas, let's say it's the ONLY thing I hate about Christmas, it's the wrapping paper.  Mounds of it.  Heaps of it.  And it all gets thrown out.  I've been making my own bags out of discount Christmas cotton for  few years now.  I did a new design this year.

I made a base square and  cut out a strip long enough to sew all the way around.  Then I folded over one of the short sides of the strip to make a clean edge.  I started sewing the strip onto the base from the folded side.

 I was pretty wobbly around the corners, because who cares.  Nobody is going to check for wrinkles, and it doesn't have to fit a person, just a lumpy present.

 When I got to the end, I let the long strip overlap.  I then sewed overtop of it, leaving the seam visible.

I cut two pieces of ribbon that were long enough to meet in the middle and tie into a bow along the width of the bag and sewed them onto the side edges.  I then cut one long piece of ribbon that was the entire length of the bag and sewed it onto the top edge.
I wrapped all of those ribbons around, and tying them to each other so that they tugged on the edge and closed everything off.

It looks a bit lumpy, sure.  But It's so much less mess, and they store so easily.  Heck, when it's time to put them away, you could use them for packing up all of your ornaments..

Plus, it's an excuse to buy crazy Christmas fabric.

Friday Post - Whistlefritz Program

So, we took out the "Dedans Dehors" DVD by Whistlefritz and it's pretty great.  I've had such bad luck with French DVD's for kids, but this basically met all my needs.

It isn't perfect.  The animation is pretty cheap, but at least they didn't try to make it 3D.  The acting is so hokey, but my daughter really enjoys all the fake laughter for some reason, and even mimics the French lady's laugh.  The songs are okay: not inspired, but actually mildly educational.

The big difference between this program and any other DVD we've seen is that it focuses on some basic concepts, has a lot of repetition, and works the concepts and needed repetition into a narrative.  It's methodical, so that by the time you're finished a video, especially if you've seen it a couple of times, you can come up with a few sentences.

For instance, they count cookies.  Every time the lady counts the cookies, one of the kids steals one, and she ends up counting to a different number.  So she repeats the counting, she repeats the phrase "Where is the cookie", and she also talks about how they are eating the cookies, so that the whole segment ties into other segments about eating.



I really can't stand watching it because of the dreadful acting.  My daughter has seen it 3 times and excitedly brings it up in conversation randomly.  When I ask her what they're saying on the video she says, "I don't know..." in her far away voice and with a grin on her face, because she is too embarrassed to talk about it.  A little frustrating, but a little cute.

There are only two French videos made so far.  I hope they make more and that the library stocks them.  I wouldn't say that you could learn French watching them, but they're incredibly useful for supplementing haphazard French learning at home.

Friday Post - Math Rabbit

 Math Rabbit is an excellent game.  I found it for my daughter and we've been playing it together.  I was skeptical at first because it seemed to be a weird mix of way too easy and way too hard.  But then I realized that each mini-game can be set to a different level of difficulty and that at each level there is a different list of options.

 Any game can be set to a beginner level where the user is only ever asked to count objects up to 10.  But at their hardest, the games use numbers up to 99 with addition and subtraction.

The detail with which you can customize each game means that you can tailor the questions to the student.  Best of all, the questions never automatically get too hard once you've done too many of them.

 The elephant show at the top is a game for matching numbers to equations or numbers to a group of dots.

The Calliope game is just counting to 8 and doesn't have a harder setting.  It does have a free-compose setting, though!

The sea lion show is about patterns using addition or subtraction.  (We have currently mastered "plus one" and I'm trying to teach my daughter how to do "plus 2" to any number.)

 The Balloon Matching game is just a memory game, but memory is my daughter's favourite right now.  She'll happily play this game endlessly.  I'm excited that there's the option of "number to number name" because I'll use that when she starts reading...

There's a lot of repetition in this game, but there's some serious incentive; every time you win a game, you get a ticket, and if you have enough tickets, you can buy prizes.  The game saves your prizes, there are tons to collect, and once you've purchased them, they dance around at the bottom of the screen. 

My daughter happily plays the mini-games over and over, especially if I'm around to play with her.  It's great practice!

Friday Post - Pouring - a bread recipe

I took a Montessori preschool book out of the library a while back just to get a bit of a checklist of things that I should be working on, seeing as I'm not sending my children to real preschool.  One of the activities on the list that we haven't been doing is pouring.  They say I should start with large beads, work towards beans, grains, and finally water.

I started with beads and they just ended up being carried around the house.  I gave up.

A few weeks later, I decided instead to get my daughter to help me make bread.  It worked out really well; she was riveted.  The thrill of standing on the stepping stool and being at counter height!  The the look of pride as she holds measuring spoons and dips their contents into the pan!  The squeals of delight as the bread comes out of the machine!

Yes, we have a bread machine.  It's been so completely vital to our routine, that I don't know how we'd function without one.  Oh, wait, I do know; we'd be paying $5+ per loaf of bread.

We got our machine as a wedding present, and we had asked for the Panasonic 'raisin and nut' dispenser model because it has a timer on it (hello, fresh bread baking in the morning), but also because it's one of the few models that doesn't have a poor track record for breaking down.  We priced it out, just because we were curious, and if you're making two loaves a week, you could even get a fancy Zojirushi and break even by the end of the year.

We've come a long way in just two weeks.  My daughter might be able to make bread all by herself in a year, except that the pan is too heavy and the machine is too tall.

We've tweaked the recipe a bit from the book.  This is what we do:

1    tsp yeast (either bread machine or regular dry yeast.  doesn't seem to matter.)
1    cup white flour
2    cups brown flour
1/2 cup rye flour
2    tblsp sugar
2    tsp salt
2    tblsp oil
2    cups water (usually a bit less than that, and then add more depending on how the dough is mixing up.)
1    cup or less of a 10 grain mix, or a handfull of sunflower seeds or whatever is in the house

I measure pour the flour and oil, and I prepare the 2 cups of water to be poured.  My daughter does the rest and has started to memorize the ingredients.  She knows which buttons to press on the machine to make it start, and I like to show her the dough being mixed so that she knows what kind of a consistency it should have for it to turn out right.

I'm in love with this bread.  It's gritty but moist.  It's dark and flavourful, but rises well.  It melts in your mouth.  Plus, it doesn't have that weird cardboard flavour that most store-bought bread has.  Probably because it doesn't have preservatives in it.

Friday post - Halloween -Kwik sew 1141

This year's request: an orange cat with black stripes, but NOT a tiger.

It's basically impossible to get an orange tracksuit, so I made one.  I sewed stripes on rather than paint them, because I wanted it to look decent if I was going to go all out.

I made the stripes out of black ribbing.  I added cuffs to the pants, even though they weren't in the pattern.
The tail is temporary.  I may make a better one another time.  The ears are full of buckram and sewn in a curve so that they pop up.

Because I was so unsure of the ears, I didn't line the hood.  I wish I'd been able to, but it just wouldn't have worked out.

The whole thing cost me about $50 in the end, which isn't cheap, but isn't bad.

I've come across 3 different polyester tiger suits in the $10 range in the past month, but I'm glad I stuck it out and made this thing anyway.  I'm super happy with it.

Friday Post - Magna Doodle

 I have this thing about not buying my kids toys ever.  Because, why?  They get so many toys.  They play with them for five minutes apiece.  And then they get this attachment to them and I can't throw anything out without being a serious bad guy.  But my house is a mess!

But we also have this dilemma whereby I can't feed, dress or put the baby to sleep without the toddler crying for attention.  I can get by if I put on her favourite show of the moment, or by handing her my phone so that she can play a game.  I'm not adverse to screen time, but I want to limit it.

We bought her a magna doodle to keep her occupied in these situations, and she's in love.  We hid the stamps from her, because they usually end up lost, and I can't afford to have teeny objects hidden in the living room with a crawling baby.  But I do let her use the magnetic letters that we got her.  I've worked on phonics with her a bit this way, and she loves it because she doesn't have to do printing, but she still gets to place the letters herself.

Sometimes we just make patterns and faces, though.  She loves that, too.

Friday Post - Digitized Children's Audio Books

This is an incredible link that I came across many years ago and have kept in my back pocket.  I pass it around to teachers and parents whenever possible, and now I have the opportunity to use it for my own kids.

This is a collection of children's records from the 50's and 60's.  They're all stories, mostly read by very famous actors.  Some are read by Danny Kaye.  The best of the bunch are highlighted.

Down near the bottom is the absolute best of the bunch:  the 13 clocks, read by Lauren Becall.  This is one of my favourite books of all time.  Lauren Becall is an actress that I have the utmost respect for.  She reads the text perfectly with a dry severity.  It's so compelling.

There are many more links on this page, so this is a great jumping off point if you're looking for more recordings of this kind.

Friday Post - Memory

This was another thrift store find.  It's pretty easy to find second hand copies of this game, but maybe not so easy to find copies with no missing pieces.  But this is such an easy game to make, and there is so much great free art on the internet already.

For instance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an online collection of art that is free to download and use for your art projects.  Input the search terms Fish Ginter N8 for the "Fish from American Waters" series of cigarette cards.  I've got to say, if you had the right resources to make playing cards, you could make a pretty adorable game of Go Fish.

Friday Post - Place and Trace

This is an amazing toy that I got for a dollar at the local thrift store.  Three large yellow stencils that hold four traceable objects each.  The objects are animals, dinosaurs and vehicles, they're three dimensional and can be used as cookie cutters or molds for play-dough or sand.

Currently, we just play with it as a puzzle.  Which is great.  The kids love it, and they're going to use it for a long time.

Made by Discovery Toys

Friday Post - Watch and Learn French with Professor Toto

 What the deuce.  This is the second time that I've taken a "Learn French" DVD out of the library and struck out.

Can you imagine these two characters rattling off basic vocabulary in French with only their lips moving (although Professor Toto's eyebrows and mustache move too) through the magic of Flash.  There is little to no repetition.  The accompanying graphics seem to be poorly drawn animal clip art that doesn't match the style of anything else.

Each scene is spliced with the same 3d animation of a bus with static wheels jerkily moving down the street with an angular giraffe at the wheel.  This same animation is played over and over with a different song in the background each time.

The songs aren't all that bad, except that they did the cheapest recording job, they don't have subtitles or any kind of corresponding pictures/animations to help the viewer determine what in the heck they're singing about.  In fact, there's no English on the DVD at any point.

The "Eric Goes to School" cartoon is passable.  It would be good if they actually talked about it and explained any of the words or phrases that were used.

My favourite thing by far is the giant sticker on the bottom: this DVD won 6 awards.  There is no information anywhere else to indicate which awards were won.  The list of credits is huge for something that looks like it was made by two guys in a basement with open source software and images.