As time for Will to be born drew closer, I started to worry about CJ. I felt guilty. He wasn't going to get as much attention. He was going to have to share me. Everything was going to be different, and he is a creature of habit. I knew I couldn't change any of those things for him, so I started to think about what I could do for him. He isn't ready for "formal" learning, but I decided I wanted to do something special with him every day, something that I could focus 100% of my attention on. So I decided to do two week blocks of time talking about a specific topic.
I gave myself a two week break right after Will was born, but for the last two weeks of January, I though it would be great to talk about family. Learning at CJ's age should be natural. If it doesn't have context, it doesn't have meaning. Since all the grandparents came to visit, and we took a Hetzel family picture with all the aunts, uncles and cousins on the 17th, it was a perfect way to start our fun days.
If you want to do some of the activities with your kiddo, please steal them. Here is what we did:
With each theme, I want to focus on a verse. Psalm 127:3 says, "Children are a gift from the Lord." I know CJ can't begin to comprehend this, but it was such a great verse for me to have in the front of my mind as I adjusted to life with two little gifts. What was fun, was to tell him the story of Moses and Miriam. He loves to help with laundry and has fun getting into the laundry basket, so when I was planning this, I though it would be the prefect story. I would tell him about how Miriam took care of her little brother Moses just like he helped take care of Will. I told him about how Miriam watched over her little brother, and how one time she had to put him in a basket to make sure he stayed safe. Mostly, I wanted him to remember that Miriam helped take care of her brother because he could understand that concept.
I didn't do a great job of taking pictures of the activities we did (I've done better the past weeks though, so stay tuned every few weeks for an update on our goings-on.). The first thing was to take a family picture with all the Hetzels. We haven't gotten them back yet, but we had lots of fun with aunts, uncles, cousins, and a nannie and a papa.
The next activity we did was to encourage fine motor development. We got one proof back of the whole Hetzel family, so I printed it, put it on cardboard, punched a few holes, and then tied two strings on it. (If you do this with your kids, I used two shoestrings, but know that string over 12 inches can pose a choking hazard.) Here is CJ working on it with Nannie...
This also presented a great way to talk about family vocabulary. I was concerned that CJ's language, which was just starting to really develop well, would regress when Will was born. So I have tried to be diligent about talking with him and teaching new words.
Another activity I was able to snap pictures of was our sensory tub. If you want to make your own, you can fill it with lots of different things like beans, buttons, shredded paper or even snow (for those of you who are getting a lot of it). Then you add things to it. I added his animals from Noah's ark. I wanted him to learn the word brother, so this week, we pretended the animals were brothers. When they went back to the ark though, they were back to a girl and a boy.
I though this would hold his attention for a few days, but let me tell you, we are still playing beans, or as CJ says "BEA, BEA" at least three times a day. It was the best $15 investment we have made in a toy so far. And another warning here. If you do this with your kiddos, make sure you watch them closely if they are still putting things in their mouths since they could choke. Or if you have a weirdo like my little one, make sure they don't put things in their ears... this has become a new fixation that I'm having to watch.
But here is CJ playing with "bea, bea" for the first time.
Found something...
Matching them up...
Feeling them between his fingers...
And oh what a mess they make!!!
As he played, we added cups and spoons to scoop, pour, and poke with. This was great because these are all words I want him to know for eating! It's amazing how even when you aren't trying to teach a specific concept, when you do things authentically, the learning overlaps so easily.
Some other things we did were:
-CJ has large cubes that a 4x6 picture will slide into each face. I put pictures of our family into them and we talked about who was in each picture.
-I cut out pictures of families from magazines, and let CJ glue them on a large piece of construction paper.
-When a grandparent would leave, we would pretend (are are still pretending) to call them on CJ's play phone.
-We played "Who uses this?" I would show him an object, and he would tell me it was CJ's, mama's, daddy's or Wills. For example, a burp cloth is Wills. The motorcycle is daddy's. Shoes were CJ's, and so on... This was really fun.
I had some other things planned we didn't get to, but I felt like this was a great start! Stay tuned for our Valentine activities!
