Paw Patrol and Robocar Poli meet in one game. Screen free inside activity for a toddler.

In our family there is limited time for youtube videos or any other screen activity. It is complicated to manage this with a toddler, I recognize it, so, every time we have to invent new games for our kid. The last idea, was to keep our toddler busy with his beloved toys from paw patrol and robocar poli.

I created a miniature city where paw patrol dogs and robocar poli help citizens, all toys meet each other in one simple game. Our toddler loved this idea, he felt as he is inside of the cartoon.

 I needed for this: our living's room table (it is big enough to create miniature city), foam blocks, citizens (our toddler's toys) and of course paw patrol and robocar poli.

What I have observed from this experience:

1. Our toddler enjoyed playing alone with his toys. Usually he wants us to play with him if he is not waching something.

2. He developed his leadership skills, as he had to manage with all his toys and help citizens of miniature city.

3. Damian created his own story of paw patrol and he didn't need cartoon to play or to stay quiet for a longer time.

I am happy of this experience and for sure we will repeat it.

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Gardening with a toddler. Growing strawberries.

We live in a flat, and I think that it is obvious that our toddler doesn't know where and how fruits and vegetables grow. The perfect way, to explain this process to him, would be to go to a farm and show him. Even with such activity, I suppose that our toddler would not really understand all the process. We thought with my husband that it would be great to grow something easy on our balcony, and our toddler to have the opportunity to see all the process of fruit growth.

What we did?

We bought strawberries' plant that already had flowers. We encouraged our toddler to take care of these, and water strawberries. He enjoyed the idea, and even wanted to water these various times a day. But, the biggest present for him was eating red strawberries from balcony and not from supermarket.

How do you like the idea? Have you done something similar with your kids. Let me know.

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Number recognition. Learning activity.

My toddler knows numbers from 2 years old, as I was singing and playing with him a lot with 1 to 10 numbers, even I have sew him these numbers. Now, I just try to repeat them with him, and I like when he recognize numbers in different manners. Here I would like to share with you some of ideas to play with numbers.

1. Draw houses with numbers. Explain that in a house live a number.

2. Apple tree, counting apples on a tree.

3. Sew numbers and play with touching them.

4. Playing with cards.

Other ideas you can find on my previous articles below:

1. Number recognition, perfect inside activity for a toddler

http://happymamasecrets.blogspot.com.es/2016/02/number-recognition-perfect-inside_22.html?m=1

2. 1 to 10 counting educational activity

http://happymamasecrets.blogspot.com.es/2015/06/1-to-10-counting-educational-activity.html?m=1

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Watercolor discoveries, painting with red color

Watercolor is always good inside activities, that capture all toddlers attention and you can enjoy playing with him. The only thing that I do not like is the mess that I have to clean after this activity. To keep my toddler busy and to make the activity fund and not so easy I have opted for other way of painting.

For this activity I needed:

• toilet paper roll
• piece of sponge
• watercolor, I choose red color
• special kind of dress that can get dirty

This activity develops fine motor skills of my toddler as he learns the texture of a sponge and how this changes once he use it to paint, learns red color and how he can paint with that color, and then paper roll, to paint it is not the easiest task for them as it is not a plane like a paper. I feel like I gave him a good lesson of feeling shapes and color.

Once finished the task, Damian enjoyed painting with fingers on the white paper, I think he loved the idea to get dirty :).

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