Toddler Challenge: Better to Give than to Receive

This week's Toddler Challenge is Better to Give than to Receive.

We started this theme with Arin when she was 17 months old. I thought it was important to teach Arin the joy of giving to other people. Also, Arin loves to help me in the kitchen. So our Better to Give than Receive themes almost always involve making some sort of food and her giving it as a gift. Unfortunately, I don't have time this week (because of Thanksgiving) to help Arin make something for someone, so I am going to post pictures from our very first "It's Better to Give..." project.

Arin made banana bread for a lady at our church.

Toddler Challenge: Little Red Hen & Baking

This week's Toddler Challenge is Little Red Hen and Baking. We started out by reading the story on these sites: enchantedlearning.com, starfall.com and First Class.



Then we made bread together.


Gathering the Wheat

Milling the Wheat

Mixing the Ingredients

The Finished Product

Three Weeks Old

Today, Ella is three weeks old.

Balancing Act

My Butterball

Ella had her two week check up this week. When she was born she weighed 8lbs 7oz and was 20.5" long. When she left the hospital she weighed 8lbs even. When I took her for her check-up, the doctor said that he expected her to be back to her birth weight at this age. She wasn't. Instead, she was 9lbs 6oz and 21" long!

Easing Back into a Routine

Today, Ella is two weeks old. It is so nice to have her here. It is amazing how fast the time flies once a new baby is born.

My little sister, Candace, came over to visit today. It was wonderful for me to have someone to talk to and it was great for Arin to get some extra attention. We were also able to start easing back into our routine today. It's been about five or six weeks since we've done "school". I know that Arin was missing our one on one time to play together. So today, we played some games. It was nice to have Candace here participating with us too. First, we played with Arin's marbles. I found the idea for this game on this site. The yellow pad with the suction cups is made for the shower, but we are using it for Arin to place one marble on each suction cup. This is super simple for her, but still a lot of fun. Sometimes she just fills the whole pad with random colored marbles and sometimes we try to make more of a pattern with the marbles.

Next, we all played with Arin's new Dora Dominoes. Arin had never played dominoes before, but she had a great time with it. These dominoes have pictures on them, so it was more like playing a matching game. This was also great because Arin had to take turns, which she was actually very willing to do.

Next, we played Arin's new counting puzzles. These are self-correcting puzzles that help teach numbers 1-20. First, I handed Arin the numbers 1-5 and the matching puzzle pieces. She counted the pictures on the first side of the puzzle and then picked the right number to go with it and then put the puzzle piece together. This was too easy for her, so we added numbers 6-10. She can count to 20 on her own, so counting the pictures was a breeze, but we haven't worked on a lot of number recognition for 6-10. Still it wasn't too difficult, but more of a challenge than numbers 1-5.

After we cleaned up our games, we went outside and Arin picked some oranges for lunch. It is so nice to have citrus in our backyard, but unfortunately our orange tree didn't produce this year like it has in the past.

Then Arin did her chores (feeding the cats).

All Wrapped Up!

Sisters

Arin is such a great big sister. She loves to help me with the baby and she loves to hold her.