Top 10 Toddler Learning Opportunities - No Planning Required!

I noticed that my last few posts made it look like there was a lot of planning and set-up required to facilitate learning for a toddler. There certainly can be, but toddlers can learn just as much on their own with a few open-ended toys and materials and some thoughtful guidance from a loving parent. I thought I would post some of the unplanned learning that took place in our house over the past few weeks.

#10 - Use the Environment

We were fortunate to spend a lot of time at the beach this summer, and there is so much to learn at the beach! Here are a couple of pictures of M exploring sea foam - how fun! You don't have to be anywhere special to learn from the environment. Take a walk around your house or to a local park. Notice interesting things - especially things that have different textures for your toddler to explore like bark, leaves, stones, dirt, etc.
 

#9 - Follow the Calendar

Did you know there was a Blue Moon last week?  We took a late walk out to the beach to watch the moon over the ocean - amazing! Watch the calendar and talk about changing seasons, phases of the moon, and constellations.

 

#8 - Pay Attention to the Weather

There was a tornado warning in our area while we were visiting the beach. Maggie Pulido (according to this news article) posted this picture of a water spout off Ponte Vedra Beach where we were staying! While we sat in the bathroom (interior room with no windows), we remembered the Twister ride we experienced at Universal earlier this summer. Again, it doesn't need to be something this extreme - just noticing whether it's sunny, cloudy, raining, or snowing helps to make your toddler more aware of weather patterns.

#7 - Make TV Real

There aren't a lot of people who don't watch TV with their toddler. We closely monitor what M watches, but she definitely has some favorite shows - Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Doc McStuffins, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That, Sid the Science Kid, Dinosaur Train... you get the idea. Most of these shows have a theme, and it would be fairly easy to expand on these topics by making crafts, reading books, or looking up videos on YouTube.

We happened to be watching an episode of Project Runway while we were at the beach (not usually a show that M watches, but we were without our DVR at the beach, and M was up late). They were "glamping," and M started asking questions about camping - Where do you sleep? What do you eat? Does a tent have doors and windows?

I happened to have graham crackers, chocolate and mini marshmallows in the pantry that I had bought for a different recipe, so I threw together some quick microwave s'mores for her to try. Yum!

#6 - Embrace Technology

There really are a lot of great toddler apps out there. M has learned very quickly how to operate my android smartphone (unlocking the home screen, navigating to the pages with her apps, choosing the app she wants to use, exiting the app when she's finished - it's pretty incredible). I mostly download free apps, but did purchase Kids ABS Letters and Kids ABC Phonics because she liked the Kids ABC Trains Lite so much (there are lite versions of all of these). Other favorites are Toddler Memory Lite, Kids Piano Lite, Kids Doodle, Toddler Musical Instruments! - Free Edition, Toddler Coloring, and the free versions of TabTales books (Goldilocks and Aladdin). Beware of ads (I deleted the Jumpstart app because it had gambling ads- ridiculous!) and make sure you have blocked in-game purchases (all purchases should be password protected if you plan on giving your phone to your toddler!).

Here you can see M listening to the sounds of different instruments (Toddler Musical Instruments), coloring a picture of the genie (Aladdin), and learning to use the touch pad on my laptop.

#5 - Teach Social Skills

Toddlers learn important social skills by watching how we, as parents, act around other people. I'm always careful to be polite when we are out- thanking the librarian for helping us find a book, telling cashier to have a good day as we leave the grocery store, holding doors for people behind us, etc.

I was amazed when we were at the library yesterday and M played for close to an hour with another little girl who spoke barely any English. Despite the language barrier, they played with the castle and dolls, worked on a puzzle together, played hopscotch, and put on a puppet show. I don't think she needs any lessons on tolerance!

#4 - Strew

We struggle with having too many toys, which is a really common problem these days. I have started trying to rotate toys and books, and by limiting the number of toys that are out at any given time, it helps M to focus on the few things are are more visible. As Sandra Dodd said, "I just strew their paths with interesting things." Laying out interesting toys, objects and materials in accessible locations can really peak the interest of a toddler.

Below is a picture of M playing with the Leapfrog Fridge Words. (As much as M loves the word builder, I can't recommend it because it occasionally says the wrong letter name, which is kind of a big deal.... I'm pretty sure they discontinued it for that reason anyway.) The other picture is her creation from a bin of magnets and pipe cleaners I left near the fridge (do you see Mickey Mouse?). It doesn't have to be anything elaborate - just set out something you think your child will enjoy. Interesting combinations are a favorite for M - play doh and beads, blueberries and toothpicks, shaving cream and bath toys.

#3 - Novelty

Take advantage of other people's toys! We love to go to the library because they have lots of toys (and obviously books) that we don't have at home. M can stay engaged so much longer because she has materials that she isn't normally exposed to. Libraries are a great (and free!) resource, as are children's museums, or friend's houses.

#2 - Go with the Flow

I love Montessori because it helps me prepare materials that will be interesting and engaging for M. I also love that it allows me to go with the flow and follow M in any activity she wants to do. She often combines the activities I have made to make them even better - or tosses them completely and makes up something of her own. 

When we were in Florida, M wanted to help cook pasta, but we didn't have her learning tower or an easy way for her to safely help with the meal. She decided to flip over a large plastic tub to make her own stove, and asked for a small pot and a wooden spoon so she could cook on her own. We threw in some of her laces as spaghetti.

The pictures below look planned, but I just quickly threw the materials onto a tray for a picture. I bought a cute small bud vase for M at Walmart, and put it on the shelf in her play kitchen (strewing...). When she noticed it she immediately wanted to go outside and pick some flowers. I was in the middle of attempting to show her the sandpaper letter b, but decided it was best to do what she wanted to do, and dropped everything to go pick flowers in the yard. It turned into a great practical life activity - picking flowers, using a funnel, pouring water, cleaning spills, arranging flowers. I'm glad I listened to her!

#1 - Teachable Moments

Take advantage of all the teachable moments! Mistakes, spills, times of frustration - these can all be turned into learning opportunities. Whoops, we spilled a whole bowl of dried beans on the floor! Let's practice cleaning up. Fortunately (unfortunately?) we have tons of these teachable moments every day - endless learning opportunities!

Linking Up With:
Top Ten Tuesday at Many Little Blessings

Even lazy weeks can be productive

This past week was another lazy week. It is still summer, right? We spent a few days at the beach, then had a long drive home, unpacked and spent a couple of days "recovering," and then had TWO birthday parties on Saturday.

So here's why I like I like writing a blog - If you asked me what we did last week, I would have said "absolutely nothing." But when I skimmed through our pictures to see what I could pull together for a blog post, I realized that we actually did quite a bit. And this is just what I happened to get pictures of. It's so cool to realize how much M is learning just by living our normal lives - no extra planning required!


So here's what we did last week:

Practical Life

Lacing beads / Sorting
M found a bag of these foam beads and wanted to make another necklace. I gave her a lacing string, and she decided to sort the beads and put them on her necklace in groups. I was so amazed that I just sat there and watched (and took a few pictures). First, she separated out all of stars into a pile on the side. Then, she decided that she wanted to string all of the yellow beads together.

Next, she added all of the orange beads. There were two different shades of blue and two shades of pink, so she stopped sorting colors and moved on to shapes. She rolled one of the round beads on the table and talked about how circles are round. She cracked up when I asked her how many corners a circle has - "There are no corners Mommy!! It's round!" This led to a discussion of how many corners squares have while she she added all of the squares to her necklace.

Transferring Water
M wanted to get some water from her large pink bucket into her smaller green bucket, but the pink bucket was too heavy to lift. I showed her how she could use one of her shovels to transfer water from one container to the other.

Washing Clothes
I tried to get M to put on her long sleeved swim shirt so we wouldn't have to keep reapplying sun block as often (it has built-in SPF). She was not interested in wearing it, but she said she would wash it for me instead. She rubbed it in the sand until it was completely covered, then rinsed it out in her bucket, squeezed it out, and laid it to dry on one of the towels. Then she immediately picked it back up and repeated the whole scenario three more times!

Hammering Nails
My husband and I decided to do some straightening up in the garage. M wanted to help, but I wanted her to stay out of the way so she wouldn't get hurt while we were moving some large boxes. I grabbed a big cube of florist foam and stuck in a few large nails. She spent quite a while hammering the nails into the foam over and over. Pretty soon she'll be ready to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity!
 

Sensorial

Sand
There are so many different textures in such a relatively small area at the beach. M spent most of one afternoon sitting at the edge of the ocean digging in the wet sand and watching the waves erase her markings.

We sat together and let our feet sink into the sand and M covered her legs in sand and shells to be washed off by the waves. We watched for the little bubbles in the sand as the waves retreated and dug for tiny sand crabs. M moved back a little further from the water and dug down until her "pool" filled with water.

Sound Cylinders
This was our not-so-successful attempt at some DIY Sound Cylinders. I was reading about some pre-reading activities, and saw this site that talked about how learning to discriminate between similar sounds is an important skill when getting ready to read (think about how similar many of the letter sound - like t, d, p, etc.).

I didn't want to fork over $40 for a real set, so I bought three cheap sets of salt and pepper shakers from Walmart ($0.98 per pair). The shakers were clear, and that kind of defeats the purpose, since you are supposed to just use your sense of hearing to match the sound pairs.

I saw a neat post on Pinterest a while back that showed how to put some paint in a flower vases and swirl it around to line the inside to make it whatever color you wanted. I thought I was being so brilliant, and had M help me to paint three green and three blue containers.

However.... I didn't think about the part where I would fill the containers with something like rice or pasta and SHAKE the containers, which would very quickly chip away all of the paint from the inside of the container. Oops! So these have now been washed out and are ready to try again later.

Play-doh
The perfect sensory material! M had fun using our play-doh press to make "spaghetti" and "snakes." We also got in a little math by comparing the lengths of the "snakes" and putting the pieces of spaghetti in straight lines.

Salt Box
I made a quick DIY Salt Box with a small, shallow gift box I had laying around. I painted the inside pink as a contrast color and filled it with salt. This will hopefully eventually lead to some language activities (tracing letters), but for now M just wanted to make hand prints and dots and shake the salt around in the box.

Language

Shell Letters
I drew the letter "m" in the sand, and M helped me fill in the shape with little shells we found in the sand. I encouraged her to try to copy my letters in the sand, but she wasn't interested.

Library "Writing Center"
I absolutely love our library. I love that their website is really easy to navigate. I love that I can search for books from their online catalog and then find them easily when I get to the library. I love how helpful the librarians are when I can't locate one of the books I'm looking for. I love all of the activities they have to keep M entertained while I'm finding her books. Did I mention that I love our library?

Usually when we're at the library M either finds a book (or 5 or 6) and sits in the lounge chairs in the children's area and looks at the pictures, or she will play with the castle dollhouses or magnet board or hopscotch or any of the other games they have set up in the children's area. She has never ventured over to the "writing center" and I assumed that it was a little too old for her anyway.

On this most recent trip, she decided to go over to the writing center after we had already found all of our books and had already been at the library for nearly two hours (which is why I don't have any pictures...). I was really ready to leave, but I just couldn't say no when I saw what she wanted to do. They had a mini mailbox along with small slips of paper, pencils and crayons where children could write "letters" to mail. M drew a person (seriously - it actually looked like a person with a head and arms and legs!), and decided to take it home for her uncle who is visiting.

She also wanted to try the letter stencils. They had a box of stencils - one for each letter of the alphabet - that had the outline of the letter and spaces to practice writing the letter independently. M recently broke her travel magna doodle (we paid a dollar for it at Target's Dollar Spot, so frankly I'm shocked that it survived as long as it did), so I'm wondering if it would be worth it to buy the Lakeshore "magic board" and the set of practice cards. Hmmmm....

Magic Board Printing Practice Cards

Mathematics

Shape Scavenger Hunt
This picture was from one of our evening walks around the neighborhood. This particular walk was right after she had finished making her necklace, and we had just been talking about different shapes and how many corners they had. We went on a shape hunt and looked for as many shapes as we could find along our walk (octagon stop sign has eight corners, rectangle storm drain has four corners, circle sewer cover has no corners).
 

Counting Sand Castles
M wanted me to build a whole city of sand castles. She was the developer, and would level out the sand and point to where she wanted the next castle to go. She kept counting the castles as we went to keep track of how many we had built.

"Messing About" Montessori Style

I saw a meme on Facebook with a John Holt quote saying "Children need what we rarely give them in school - time for "messing about." Granted M is not even three yet, but I feel like a lot of parents of toddlers get so caught up in being "kindergarten ready" that they forget to give the kids time to just be kids. I'm working to find that balance between pure play and taking advantage of the "sensitive periods" to allow M to explore and learn as much as she can.

Here's what we've been "messing about" with lately.

Practical Life

Eating, cooking and nutrition definitely fall under "practical life" in my book (I'm still figuring out the "official" Montessori classification...). Since we're back at the beach, I decided to try some ocean-themed snacks this week.

Hammerhead Banana Pops!

This was not a very successful snack if you're looking for a final product that actually resembles a shark, but it WAS a successful snack if you're looking for something fun, messy, and delicious!

I decided to cut the bananas in half, use pieces of Hershey's chocolate bars for the "hammerhead" and the fin, then coat them in vanilla yogurt and crushed graham crackers. This was VERY messy, so I don't have pictures of the actual assembly. I let M help cut the bananas in half. I stuck toothpicks into the bottom (we're on vacation and I didn't have popsicle sticks with me). I realized that the toothpicks would be sharp, so I added straws over them to cover the toothpicks.

Next, I stuck a piece of chocolate into the top of each banana for the "hammerhead" (this was a little too hard for M), and cut another piece of chocolate on a diagonal to make two triangles that were added as fins.

We covered the banana sharks in vanilla yogurt, then pressed them into the graham cracker crumbs. We put the in the freezer overnight and enjoyed them for snack the next day!

Go Fishing Snack
I know I saw this on someone's blog, but I can't remember where. I bought some honey wheat pretzel twists (which are bigger and thicker than regular pretzel sticks), and showed M how to dip the end into almond butter or Nutella, then try to "catch" some goldfish on a plate.

I thought this was so cute! Apparently M did not. She wanted nothing to do with the pretzel "fishing rod" and wanted me to leave her alone with her goldfish snack. Oh well!

Octopus Spaghetti
After the goldfish disappointment, I almost didn't try this at all, but I'm glad I did. I broke up the spaghetti into thirds before cooking it so the pieces would be shorter, then cooked the spaghetti and meatballs. M thought this was the coolest thing ever! She helped and watched as it cooked, and we talked about how an octopus has eight tentacles instead of arms or legs. (Interestingly, a quick Google search taught me that six of the tentacles are used as arms, and the other two are used as legs!) She helped me assemble it on the plate by adding eight "octopus legs" and a meatball for an "octopus head."

 

Fruit Kabobs
Not ocean-themed, but we bought a bunch of fruit to snack on this week, so I decided to give M some toothpicks and show her how to make fruit kabobs. She really liked this, and even started trying to make patterns with the different pieces of food.

Tilapia Parm
We have tilapia on a fairly regular basis - it's one of my favorite fish, and M really likes it. In honor of our ocean theme, I figured it made sense to throw in some fish for dinner. M decided to eat hers picnic-style in the little alcove under the TV with Tigger.

On to some other practical life activites:

Transfer objects with a net
M mad a mini "ocean" in her bucket at the beach. She filled the bucket with water, then added handfuls of sand and shells to the bottom. I thought that was so smart! I showed her how she could add some sea creatures, like her turtle, crab and starfish sand molds, and scoop them out with her net.

Lacing

I brought out M's ocean sensory bin again, which was met with only mild interest. She pulled out a few beads from the bin, and showed them to my aunt, who told her they were beads for a necklace. Well, let's make a necklace! I grabbed one of the laces from her lacing kit, tied a knot in one end, and helped her pick out as many beads as we could find from the ocean sensory bin for her to thread onto her necklace. This kept her attention for over an hour, and she was so proud when she finished it!

More Lacing

M had so much fun making her necklace, so I added a box of lacing cards to trays of activities to choose from.  She sat inside the fort she had made (her "house") and "sewed" a horse. She was very insistent on doing this completely by herself.

Keeping House

M is very much in the imaginative play stage, and loves making houses and taking care of all of her babies. She turned the alcove under the TV into a house, complete with a bed and snack area, as well as suitcases positioned to create a door. 

Earlier in the day she had asked me to please wrap Paci Bear on her back so she could take care of her while she played.     

              

Sensorial

"Pink Tower"
This is obviously not a true pink tower, but I thought it was funny that M decided to stack these cut pieces of a pink pool noodle. This was a little more challenging because of the wind, but I think that actually made it more fun. When I originally cut these, I cut different sized pieces. I didn't push M to arrange them in any particular order (and she didn't), but if I gave them to her more often she may notice the size difference. Since they all have the same diameter, it isn't any easier to stack if the larger pieces are on the bottom, like with the real Pink Tower.

As I watched her play with these, I wondered if there may be an easy way to turn this into a cheap knobless cylinder activity, but that may be more trouble than it's worth.

Sink or Float
M filled her bucket with water, then dropped different objects into the bucket to see if they would sink or float. We have played and explored with this topic before, and this time she made predictions as she dropped the objects in ("This shell will sink! This boat will float!").

Water Beads
This was the clear winner for the week! M had an absolute blast playing with the water beads, and there were so many different activities to try!

First, we looked at how small the beads were, and I told her that they would absorb water and get bigger. We filled a container with water and poured in a packet of green water beads.

They didn't "grow" as quickly as I was expecting, but I think that actually made it more fun. The water turned green immediately, and I gave M some small plastic shot glasses to transfer some of the small beads and water so she could look at them more closely.

She liked scooping them out with her melon scoop to see how much bigger they were getting.

Pretty soon, she wanted to transfer them to more containers. We got out a couple of different scoops and several containers. It was a little messy, but I gave her some paper towels and she mostly contained the spills on her tray.

She liked picking them up with her hands and feeling how slippery they were. She was also counting some of them as she moved them from one container to another.

The one small packet made a LOT of beads! Next time I would probably make fewer at a time, but we honestly had so much fun with this. When she was done playing with them (I actually had to wait until she went to bed that night), I cleaned them up, dumped out the excess water, and stored them in a ziplock bag. Not only would this make a cool filler for a sensory bin, but I think there are a lot of  other ways these could be used! (These are non-toxic, but could be a choking hazard for smaller children who still put things in their mouths.)

Language

Letter Puzzle
I got this foam letter puzzle from the Dollar Spot at Target. M hasn't been too interested in puzzles lately, but for some reason this one caught her eye. As she put the letters back in the right spots, we practiced saying the sounds of each of the letters. In the past, I had always said the names of the letters (A, B, C), but after reading more (like this post), I have started using the letter sounds instead (a as in apple, b as in baby, etc).

M thought this was really interesting, and kept asking "Why does it make that sound?" She did the puzzle four times in a row, and started saying some of the sounds with me toward the end. I think it may be time to invest in some sandpaper letters!

Talking!
M is almost 3, but I still love to babywear (or "toddlerwear" as it may be...). We're currently on vacation in Florida, and are staying in a really nice community with wide sidewalks and lots to look at. We have gone out on several evening walks, and I like to wear M so we can see the same things and talk about what we are seeing. We watch for birds, lizards, ducks, different kinds of trees and ponds, and listen for dogs, crickets, cicadas, owls, and birds. There are so many topics we have discussed that just wouldn't have come up if we weren't out walking and talking together.

Math

I made a kind of DIY spindle box out of felt, ribbon, magnets and popsicle sticks. I thought it would be nice to have one that was magnetic and could stick on the fridge. The one I made is only for numbers 0-5, since M is still just starting to grasp one-to-one correspondence and I didn't want to overwhelm her.

First, I cut out small rectangles of felt (12 rectangles total), and hot glued pairs of rectangles together on three sides to make 6 pockets (for numbers 0-5). I traced some cardstock numerals onto felt and cut those out and hot glued them to the front of each pocket.

Next, I hot glued a ribbon across the back of the pockets. Be careful to put the numbers in the correct order, so that when you flip it over the zero is on the left (the zero is on the far right when face down). I added a strip of magnet to the back of the ribbon at the top of each pocket (I added six individual strips of magnet instead of one long strip so it would be more flexible and so it will fold up easily.)

I added stickers the top of 15 colored popsicle sticks (just enough to fill the pockets). I showed M the numbers on each of the pockets, and how to put the right number of popsicle sticks inside each of the pockets. We counted together as she added the sticks, and she was so proud when she finished.

 

We did this activity again later in the week, and we talked a lot about how the numbers increased from left to right - each pocket had one more stick than the previous one. We also moved the sticks around to do some basic addition and subtraction. If there were already two sticks in the #2 pocket, and I added one more, she would say "No! There were already two in that pocket and you added another, so now there are three and that's too many!" She thinks it is so funny when I try to do something wrong.

Field Trip!

I've been looking for some unique places to visit while we're in Florida, and decided to take a trip to St. Augustine to see the Alligator Farm. I had been there when I was much younger, and I knew M would really like it. It was quite pricey (adult admission is $22.95), but it was really well done. The walkways were very shady, and it made the Florida heat bearable, even in the middle of the afternoon. M was amazed at all of the different species of alligators and crocodiles (I was too!), and they had other animals on exhibit too (birds and reptiles). Overall it was a nice trip.

Check out more ideas from the Montessori Monday Link-Up!