Fun with play dough!

Zech had been asking for new play dough ever since I threw the old ones away. So one night, I decided to make fresh play dough. This time, the texture is much better than before. Love the feel of the play dough myself.

Play dough is becoming a part of Zech's daily play now. He loves squashing them in his hands.
Besides moulding the play dough into small balls, pancakes and sausages, I used it to hone his fine motor skills. Taught him to make a porcupine with toothpicks.

From my kitchen, I took out some spaghetti, penne pasta and cheerios. We poked the spaghetti through a small piece of play dough then thread the penne pasta and cheerios into it. Zech enjoys threading the cheerios.

Bought a set of cookie cutters from Ikea. Using these cookie cutters was the first thing Zech learned with play dough. This time round, we improvised a little by adding details onto the human shape.

More ideas can be found here - http://handsonaswegrow.com/pretend-create-learn-with-play-dough/

Storytelling eggs

Was inspired by a mummy's blog on storytelling pebbles. Brought back memories of school days as a teacher. A technique that uses creativity to tell a story in sequence with pictures as stimulus is a rather common method I used in teaching creative writing. Never imagined this could work for young kids. What amazed me was the ability of a 32 month old who can comprehend and enjoy storytelling in this way. Especially for busy mummies, this is very simple to prepare.

Searched for cute clipart from mycutegraphics.com. Printed and laminated them before placing each clipart in a plastic egg. These eggs were in fact Easter eggs.  Now I can maximise their use. :)

Got Zech to choose one egg at a time. As he took out the picture from each egg, I'd spin a story based on each picture. The main character in the story is of course none other than Zech. I guess that's why he likes this so much.

At the end, I'd lay out the pictures in order and repeat the story again.

Have done this with Zech a few times and every time we do this, the story is different. Sometimes, Zech even attempts to tell the story. The most motivating part for me is when Zech told me, 'This story is nice.' Realised it takes so little to make a child happy. We will be having these eggs around for some time.