Pom-poms and Fruit Loops

After swinging widely through a variety of convictions -- everything from "I should plan an activity every day for Levi!" to "I should be allowing all unstructured play so that he can follow his own interests" -- I've settled on a modest goal for our educational activities: two a week.  That gives me something special to do with Levi while Owen is taking his morning nap, on the days when we're at home all day, without my feeling super-pressured to have an elaborate, handmade activity ready to go every day.  (In truth, it matters very little whether the activity is elaborate or handmade!)

The past three activities we've done have all been from The Princess and the Tot blog.  

[Side note: I started to panic a little when I first browsed her site.  It went something like this:

me: Her tot is only a few months older than Levi and she has a different tray for every day and sensory bins for each holiday and I don't have all of those cool learning toys and oh my gosh my sticker collection is so lacking and and and and and . . . 

Isaac: How many other kids does she have?

me: One.

Isaac: How old is the other kid?

me: Ten . . . 

You get the idea.]

Anyway.  Up first: dropping colored pom-poms into toilet paper tubes using tongs.  I don't remember where I read it, but apparently playing with tongs and clothespins are good for strengthening the muscles in little hands that will later be used for holding a pencil correctly.  Our first attempt at this wasn't a great success.

Sorry for the blurry picture. 

It was more fun to try to pinch his shirt with the tongs!

For our second attempt, I put away all but two colors, and that was much more manageable -- in fact, quite successful! 

Pick it up . . . 

And drop it in!  [It looks like he's doing the wrong color from these two photos, but really these were just the best photos.  He knows the difference between blue and white.  :)]

[Update: I forgot to mention when I posted this yesterday, but the tongs I have are these from Pampered Chef. :)]

Up next: a Fruit Loops graph (you can find free printables of the graphs at that link, too)!  When I first saw this activity, I knew Levi would love it -- numbers, colors, and cereal, three of his favorite things.  But we don't generally buy sugary cereals, and the Meijer brand organic "Fruit Rings" only have three washed-out colors, so I figured I'd have to adapt it somehow.  Later that week, though, Isaac and I left the boys with my parents and spent the night at a hotel, and lo and behold at breakfast: a box of fruit loops and a travel cup with a lid!  I took it as a sign and brought home a cupful.  (That's not stealing, is it?)

The steps: pick a Fruit Loop, name its color, color one box with the appropriate crayon, eat the Fruit Loop.  What fun!  I talked him through the steps each time and helped color a few, just to demonstrate "coloring in the box," but he did most of it himself!

The finished chart.

And lastly, we practiced drawing lines from one object to another with a free printable that I snagged from Fun With Mama, but which I cannot now find on her site.  I demonstrated several times how to start at one animal (they happened to be pairs of animals) and draw a line to the next, but Levi insisted on starting his line in the middle between the two animals, going up to one, and then re-tracing it back down to the other.  Whatever!  :)

One last comment, referring back to my first paragraph: I'm still not at all convinced that, at two years old, Levi needs to have structured, educational activities like this.  I go back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth).  The bottom line for me is this: it's fun for both of us.  And, as I've said in the past, I'm worried about my own self-discipline, particularly another few years when we really get into homeschooling.  Planning two 10-minute activities a week seems like a good start for ME!