I love crafting. It is the thing that started this blog after all! To me, it’s only felt natural to craft with Hen! It’s something we can do together that’s just for her and I. (Quinn wants no part of craft time!) Here are my favorite activities! I put them in age ranges based on when I introduced them to her, but we still do all of these.
0 - 3 months:
- Textile play: I would find different textures and let her touch it, rub it on her feet, and talk to her. Things like her blanket, stuffed animals, sensory balls, and feathers. Books like “If I were a hippo…” were great as well since they have a different texture on each page!
- Mimicking her movements and babbles
- Playing peek-a-boo
 |
| The schedule that lived on my fridge for 3 months. |
3 - 9 months:
- Letting her put her hands and feet in paint
- Pouring water from cup to cup in the tub
- Washing her hands in the sink
9 - 18 months:
- Coloring (markers, crayons, chalk, map pencils) and watercoloring
- Stamps and stickers (The first time she stamped our Yorkie pink!)
- Letting her mimic me. She has her own purse, makeup brushes, doll, and hairbrush. She “does” her makeup when I do and when I do her hair she’ll fix her baby’s hair. She also started reading to us at this time.
- Playing with shaving cream in the tub.
- Building block towers and lego inventions
 |
| Her poster for the Women's March. Nothing says peace like pink stamps + Zootopia stickers. |
 |
| Reading at her craft station. |
18 months - now (my favorite!):
- Writing her name in big block letters on a piece of paper and having her put stickers on the letters to introduce the idea of letters and her name
- Scooping cheerios (or pom pom balls) from a Tupperware container with a kitchen spoon into a muffin tin to work on fine motor skills
- Flipping a pasta strainer over and letting her stick pipe cleaners in the holes to work on fine motor skills
- Stringing cheerios on a pipe cleaner. We use play doh to keep the pipe cleaner upright so she just has to worry about putting cheerios on the pipe cleaner.
- Creating “routines”: We do happy feet (running fast in place), jumping, twirling, hands in the arm, and shaking hands. She does them based on us calling them out to work on memory + gross motor skills.
- Sorting pom pom balls by size, by color, or both in a muffin tin. She likes the way they feel as well.
- Letting her bake. I buy the premade dough that pulls apart into squares and she puts them on a cookie sheet. She likes watching them expand in the oven.
- Using a hula hoop to sing Wheels on the Bus. When the windows go up and down so does the hoop, when the wipers go swish, swish so does the hoop, etc.
 |
| Pom pom sorting! |
Ideas I haven’t tried yet:
- Having her sort pom pom balls by color by placing them on the matching color of construction paper
- Create large circles using chalk and have her stand on the color after we call it out
- Hole punch a piece of cardstock so she can “sew” a pipe cleaner through
- Use cookie cutters with play-doh or cookie dough to talk about shapes
Hopefully, you can enjoy some of these with your little one as well! I also have a Pinterest board here.
No comments :
Post a Comment