Cognitive | Hear Mum Roar

Mattel’s Laugh and Learn Learning Book

Written on November 2nd, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Baby, Cognitive, Fine motor, Language, Music, November 2010, Reviews, Toddler

Sponsored by Nuffnang

Look at what Missy 2 was lucky enough to receive in the post. It’s a Laugh and Learn Learning Book from Mattel. This title is called, ‘Counting animal friends’. It’s an interactive book with a cute sun button which lights up and depending on which page your child is looking at, makes different sounds. It:

- reads the story to the child
- counts the animals
- makes the animal sounds
- plays songs

I think this book is adorable, and the sound isn’t too noisy or annoying, like some toys. My kids are all obsessed with books, so this caught everyone’s attention. Anything that promotes a love of reading to my kids is encouraged by me.

This book is aimed at babies and toddlers between 9-36 months old. Missy 2 has become utterly attached to it. She sits down playing with it for long periods, pointing at the animals and making the sounds. She likes saying the numbers, too. Her favourite part is looking at the ducks in the book, pretending to flap her ‘wings’ and saying, ‘quack quack!’. She’s even taken to falling asleep on top of it every night.

This book is highly age/stage appropriate, being very simple and appealing to this age group. Mr 4 is extremely interested in counting and numbers at the moment, and as soon as he spotted the book, asked, ‘has this got numbers? Cool!’

I’d also like to add my own little story about Mattel toys. We have always bought a lot of Mattel toys over the years, because they last a very long time. My two younger kids are still playing with a lot of Missy 10′s toys from when she was a baby. They love pushing around her push-along activity puppy and playing with her Little People dollhouse, car, bus, and of course, the dolls that come with it.

As any parent could tell you, little kids can be rough on their toys. Most of our Mattel toys have been thrown around at some time or another, either due to a tantrum, or just from excitement. But all our Mattel toys are still going strong.

But what I am really wanting to tell you about it, is what happened with some of our Mattel toys during our flood in the childrens’ playroom. We had a Mattel Flip Phone on the floor, and a Laugh and Learn Learning Home, which you can see here, both got saturated.

At first, the electronics in these toys didn’t work. But after a couple of weeks, once they’d dried out, they were working again! So please, if your Mattel toys ever get wet and stop working, don’t throw them out! Let them dry out, and they should be fine. We’re very impressed here.

Now I’m going to leave you with a quick video of Missy 2 enjoying her new book. It shows you how the book works, and how much she likes playing with it.

What’s your child’s favourite Mattel toy? Or your favourite, even?

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Child art- ball painting

Written on October 30th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Art, Cognitive, Fine motor, Messy play, October 2010, Preschool aged, School aged, Toddler

If you have a child who loves to paint, but is looking for something a bit different to simply using a paintbrush, they will love this. It’s the weekend here, and Missy 2 was once again begging to paint. Missy 10′s been away at school when the little ones have been painting, so it was nice for her to get the chance to join in.

So, how did we paint with balls? I got a big plastic box, and Blu-tacked some paper to the bottom of the inside.

I sat each ball in a different bowl or container for separate colours. Then, the kids just picked up a slippery ball, dropped it onto their paper, and moved the box to make the balls roll.

Kids have so much fun with this activity and learn a lot without realising it. They get to:

- work their fine motor muscles, trying extra hard to pick up those slippery balls
- experiment with gravity and physics, tipping the box this way and that to make the ball go where they want it to on the page
- challenge their eye-hand co-ordination in a more intense way than usual. It’s one thing to try to watch something, and get your hands to work together with your vision, but imagine trying to do that when the ball has a mind of its own!
- learn about colours mixing together, as one coloured ball rolls over previous stripes painted by other colours.
- apply trial and error to see what happens if they use smaller balls, such as marbles (for the over 3′s, of course we have to be vigilant about choking risks), tennis balls, or even basketballs.
- learn about cause and effect: what happens if we use a four-sided container? What about a round container? The child will observe one is more likely to give stripes and criss-crossing lines, the other will give more rounded, spiral shapes.

One thing I’ve never gotten around to trying though, when doing this activity is painting with a football! If anyone’s child ever gives that go, let me know how it went.

Emotional development – how to help children talk about feelings

Written on October 28th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Emotional, Language, October 2010, Preschool aged, Social, Toddler

I’ve talked before about the importance of encouraging our children to discuss feelings.

I’ve made some very simple felt pieces to attach to circular faces which have been stuck to the fridge. Our little ones can have fun rearranging the the facial features into different emotions. This is an effective way for children to learn about self expression, reading the body language of others, and having empathy for others.

This is a language rich activity to also help children discuss colours, label facial features, but most of all, to give words to their feelings and become familiar with using them.

It’s handy to have little circles of felt for this purpose, especially for those times when a big felt board is not handy. I think it’d also look great on a child’s bedroom wall.

Best of all? It’s cheap, and very easy to do.

Do your children enjoy felt play?

Child art – string painting

Written on October 28th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Art, Cognitive, Fine motor, Language, Messy play, October 2010, Preschool aged, Toddler

‘Please Mum, I do painting?’ is the plea I hear from Missy 2 on a regular basis lately. She talks about it all day long. She just adores it.

So, my partner and my son went out to run some errands, and Missy 10 was off at school. This left just Missy 2 and I for some Mum and daughter time. Bliss.

I decided to let her engage in some string painting.

This couldn’t have been simpler to set up. I just tied some lengths of string to clothes pegs then let her dip it in the paint, and squiggle it across the paper.

What I love about this activity is that there cannot be any pressure on the child to make the painting ‘look like’ something. Regular readers will know that open ended art/craft/play in general is something I like to get on the soap box about!

Hands up who thinks she’s enjoying herself?

Missy 2, much in the adventurous spirit of any toddler, got all experimental after a little while. This is cool, don’t try to fight it… Even though an activity has been set up in one way, it’s great if it ends up evolving into something else entirely. Our children need to explore the paint, the paper, their hands, textures, concepts, and so on. Just roll with it.

See how she just immerses herself further and further into the experience? What have your children painted lately?

As you can see, I’ve shown where I usually write the child’s name and date (I didn’t put my child’s actual name for privacy reasons). Labelling artwork in this way reinforces name recognition, and writing it on the left side mimicks the pattern in which we typically read and write. I like to add the date for sentimental reasons, but it could easily be left off.

Child art – mesh dab prints

Written on October 27th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Art, Cognitive, Fine motor, Messy play, October 2010, Preschool aged, Toddler

No, you’re not seeing things! He, who hates messy play. He, who wouldn’t touch the fingerpaint or spaghetti paint, has busted out of his comfort zone, gotten paint on his hands and enjoyed it!

This wasn’t the plan, but of course I’m not complaining at all.

It all started with a humble sponge and a string bag from a bag of oranges.

I wrapped it tightly around the sponge with some string…

And we had mesh dab printing, ready to go!

Don’t stress, it’s an old plate…

Printing is a marvelous way for children to apply trial and error to their painting. They learn via cause and effect what will happen if they use something patterned such as a mesh-covered sponge to print onto paper.

It’s a nice, ‘safe’ way to get a child who doesn’t like mess on their hands to have a try at using paint. As Mr 4 has shown us, sometimes all it takes is the need to feel comfortable first, then it’s time to dive in. I think it also helped that his little sister was already using the paint for hand prints anyway, so he felt happy to try what she was doing.

How does your child feel about messy play? Do they love it, or does it bother them?

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Rainbow art

Written on October 25th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Art, Cognitive, Fine motor, Good times, Language, Messy play, October 2010, Preschool aged

Today was much like a hot summer day in the middle of spring! We took our spray bottles out the back, hung a sheet over the fence and Missy 2 and Mr 4 sprayed the heck out of it. Last time we played with spray bottles, we did it flat on the ground on paper, but hanging a large sheet of paper or cloth allows the children to be more free with it.

Daisy, as always, was faithfully hanging around the kids, you can see by how muddy Missy 2 was, that Daisy was happy to see her! The poor thing got knocked over in the mud. Not to be deterred, her and Mr 4 got on with the important business of playing.

Mr 4 instigated lots of experimental play with these spray bottles. He believed that if he sprayed lots of colour onto flowers that he could make them grow faster…

He was deeply dissappointed that they didn’t grow before his eyes! So, he turned his attention to our irises (some of which were taller than him) and painted them blue.

…Now that’s what I call art!

Also, you’ve probably noticed by now Hear Mum Roar’s new look. I have the wonderfully talented Violet Le Beaux to thank for designing the new graphic art, so thank you!!

Come play at the Childhood101 We Play link up

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Science experiments for school aged kids

Written on October 16th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Fine motor, Good times, Language, October 2010, School aged

Missy 10 had some extra pocket money to spend as a result of her recent birthday. She bought herself an Eco Forensic Lab. (This isn’t a sponsored post, nor a review, I’m just really impressed with what she bought!)

This needed adult supervision, so her Dad helped her with this.

The kit provided her with protective gear, because some of the chemicals were dangerous! She was handling lime water, which went smokey, and calcium hydroxide powder. As you can see, this is very fiddly work! Great for those fine motor skills. Here she is cutting up litmus paper, and trying very hard not to touch it.

She had a ball, testing soil and water in our yard for richness, organic matter and now she has to wait a few days for it to dry out. After this, she’ll be analysing it for chemicals. She is devastated that she has to wait!

Other things she’ll be able to test for are mini beasts in our water and soil, humidity in our air, and so many more cool things. I must say, it’s leaving me feeling very dumb… But I can see that this is an excellent activity for school aged kids, and my fiance and Missy 10 were out in the studio for hours, having a ball, working together.

I would highly recommend this kit if you have a bored school-aged kid, especially if it were school holidays! Have your kids tried any fun kits lately that you’d recommend? My man is dying to get Missy 10 an electronics kit, but she’s not convinced it’d be any fun just yet.

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Messy play – spaghetti paint.

Written on October 15th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Fine motor, Good times, Language, Messy play, October 2010, Preschool aged, Saving money, Toddler

Time for some messy play again! This time, I have mixed cooked spaghetti with fingerpaint for some squishy, slimey, squoozy fun.

(If you’d like a printout of the fingerpaint recipe, you can download it along with recipes for cooked and uncooked playdough.)

Spaghetti paint is great because it doesn’t cost much and uses ingredients most people usually have in their pantry. It is an excellent activity for sensory exploration. Children can enjoy the smell, the slimy feeling, talk about if it is warm or cold and how wet it is.

It encourages much social and language interaction between children and adults alike. Children can experiment with the paint by either handling it on its own or smearing it around on a piece of paper.

Don’t worry if the paper gets holes in it, always remember that children care about and need the process, not the product.

You can see in the photo above how a child could find out what the paint looks like if they lift the spaghetti off the paper – beautiful swirls!

Mr 4 isn’t a huge fan of messy play, but he liked watching this activity, which is a big improvement. Missy 2, however was willing to have a try. If only Missy 10 were home to really get up to her armpits in this mess. In fact, I think I’ll have to let her when she gets home from school.

(Note: if you are considering using this in a preschool or a daycare setting, please be sensitive to the fact that food play is offensive to some cultures. When in doubt, check first.)

What messy things have your children been up to lately?

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Learn by doing – laundry

Written on October 14th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Fine motor, Language, Messy play, October 2010, Preschool aged, Social

Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.

- Ancient proverb

Following on from my recent post about initiative, I involved Mr 4 and Missy 2 in washing some clothes. I had lots of laundry to catch up on and hang out to dry. So I set up a plastic tub with warm water and Ecostore laundry powder (nice and gentle for little hands) and some laundry that had minimal soiling. Being a water activity, of course it’s important to always supervise young children.

Doing household chores together is a great learning opportunity for kids. They learnt/talked about:

- the different names of clothing: ‘what type of clothing is this?’ Eg, shirt, dress, undies, etc.

- the concept of people having a place in the family, and their own possessions: ‘who’s shirt is this?’

- colours: ‘what colour is this shirt?’

- cause and effect: ‘why is the water becoming so brown?’

- the sequence of events: first the children used soapy water, then scrubbed the clothing, then we rinsed with clear water, squeezed the excess liquid out and finally we hung them out to dry.

- how to play together. Missy 2 and Mr 4 had a few disagreements during this activity. This gave us a chance to talk about their feelings and listen to each other.

- sensory awareness: children can learn about concepts such as wet/dry, warm/cold, etc.

The children also got a huge amount of exercise for their little muscles! Picking up wet clothing can be heavy work…

It also puts their fine motor skills through their paces as they squeeze… squeeeze… squeeeeeeeeze! the water out of the clothes.

You can also let them help with pegging the clothes out to dry on a small, child-height clothesline. I didn’t, only because we had two puppies with very dirty feet hanging around! But at least this kept my kids busy whilst I hung out all the wet clothes.

What household chores do your children like to help with?

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Flower play

Written on October 10th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Cognitive, Fine motor, Language, October 2010, School aged, Social, Toddler

I was outside picking more lavender for drying, only to discover that the daisies growing next to the lavender were growing out of control. It seemed such a waste to just leave them there, so I picked lots of daisies and brought them inside to put in vases, and do some fun things with the kids.

Missy 10 was keen to try my idea of giving the daisies a coloured water ‘drink’. We recycled the water from the spray paint we made, as you can see in the photo above.

Missy 2 saw the goings-on, and wanted to imitate what we were doing. So, I found a disposable plastic cup from Missy 10′s birthday party and taped it to the table. I then gave her a glut of daisies to put into the cup, then take them out, then put them in. Much like posting. She was in heaven and this kept her busy for at least an hour.