Toys that teach - nesting blocks

I rarely write about toys, because they don't take a lot of space in our daughter's life. Of course, space in our house is another matter. She strongly prefers books and outside activities at this point, and we prefer it this way. When we pick toys for her, we try to avoid toys with batteries, where pressing the button leads to a predictable (and eventually boring) result. She has a lot of basic Duplo blocks and other building toys. For the past week or so her favorite toy was this set of nesting blocks that we got about a year ago from my parents. My mom has this interesting tendency to pick good toys, but give them to her beloved granddaughter about a year too early. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the link on the web for this particular set, which I find the best from what I've seen. I like it, because it's so versatile. It's a nesting toy (Anna still can't concentrate long enough to nest the blocks back together), a stacking toy, and also a puzzle which requires to turn the blocks in a certain way to arrive to a proper picture on each side. Each side represents seasons of the year - another "teaching through play" moment. Anna gets better and better at assembling this tower by herself. Here is our exchange while she was at it:

Anna: This is a spring boy, mama. Why is it raining?

Me: It rains often in the spring.

Anna: It's spring now. And it's not raining.

Me: Well, our spring comes earlier. Remember, it rained a lot a few weeks back? And it rains a lot now in the other parts of our country.

Anna: Yes, when we went to U&R (our neighbors) and brought them cake, it was raining. Then it was spring!

Playing with numbers - how children learn about quantity.

I was planning to read this book for a while. It was highly recommended to me by my friend Autumn and a few other people. I thought that the book will be somewhat theoretical, but I am really enjoying reading it. It describes a lot of research on child development in the terms that are simple to understand. The main premise of the book is that children learn best through an unstructured play and not through any kind of formal instruction with educational props. It really speaks to my own approaches and also contains a lot of practical advice on what to do to encourage certain areas of development at certain ages. One of the first chapters talked about how children learn about numbers and quantity and I was amazed to discover how "on the spot" the authors were describing the steps and mistakes on the path to mathematical awareness. Every chapter ends with Bringing the Lessons Home section summarizing the advice in it. Here is one for helping children learn about numbers and mathematical concepts:

• Think blocks, not videos. The very best way to learn about numbers is to manipulate objects, line them up, compare sets, and so on. There is simply no substitution for playing with objects, and these actions speak louder than words. Plus, this type of play is something children love to do without being told!


• Find the numbers everywhere. Just as you can find rectangles in buildings and hexagons in stop signs, numbers appear wherever you turn. When we deal the same number of cards to each player and when we count up how many party favors we need for our guests, we are doing mathematics. When we add more ice cream for the additional person, we are adding quality. When we then eat ice cream, we are doing subtraction.


• Playing = learning. Playing the card game of War is math at its best. Money offers wonderful opportunities not only for counting, but for creating sets. Can your child create the set you have created? If you put out three pennies, can he? If you take away one penny, can he? Which is worth more - three pennies or one nickel?


• Encourage your child to learn in context. We all learn better when we learn something meaningful. Children will learn much more at a supermarket looking for big and small apples that they will from computer games. At around 3 or 4, children love to play board games. Candy Land is one that has been forever popular among the young set. When you and your child, roll the dice and move your pieces, you are using one-to-one correspondence, and the outcome really matters to your child! Our job as teachers and parents, then, is to seize the opportunities that live around us and to allow children to learn in context.

Things Kids Say - Boogies Need to Breathe

Anna (in the car): My nose has two holes. Why it has holes, mama?

Me: Why do you think it is?

Anna: It's for boogies to come out, because they need to breathe.

Me: Really?

Anna (indignantly): Mama, stop asking me "why"! I want you to explain it to me!

Teaching toddlers about time

Don't get me wrong - I am not going to write how to teach toddlers to tell time. I think this skill is not needed for young children. We adults live too much in the past and in the future. It's refreshing to see my girl reveling in the present, fully engrossed in the activity of the moment. However, I do believe that young children need to be aware of the sequence of events happening during the day and have some idea of their duration. We were saying jokingly that Anna is certainly training to be a project manager, when she was an emergent talker. She didn't say I want to do XYZ. She would say instead, It's time to do XYZ. I suppose that I used this phrase often enough with her, and I still do. I try to give her some heads up on what's coming next and I do transitioning from one activity to another by giving 10, 5 and 3-minute warnings. Anna's favorite phrase before going to bed is, What am I going to do after this nap? I think she asks because she wants to reflect and prepare for what's coming. Is it good that she thinks of the future already? I think it is beneficial as long as she is enjoying the present fully and not worrying about what's coming next.

Lessons for New Parents - Secrets of the Baby Whisperer

I participate in paperswapbook.com, and this is one book that was requested from me yesterday. I feel a little sad parting with it. I truly believe that this one book had the most impact on my parenting choices in the first year, and, believe me, I read a fair share of books on the topic. Some people find advice given in this book controversial, but it didn't seem that way to me. Quite the opposite, mostly it was just plain common sense. Why give your child a pacifier, when it's something that she can independently control? Why drive around with your infant in the car in attempts to get her to sleep, when you don't really want to do it for the next 12 months of your life? Why co-sleep, if you still want to have an intimate and kids-free time with your husband? It made perfect sense to me to follow suggestions in this book on how to teach my child to self-soothe. I also liked the idea of really listening to what my baby was trying to tell me with her crying, her cooing and her body language and respecting her choices. And I am all for structure for young children. I see how Anna thrives on routines even now when she is a 2 year old. One of the best things we did in her first year is to establish a reliable night time routine that we still follow two years later (except because of all the book reading it extended to 60 min from initial 30 min). I highly recommend every new or expecting parent to look up this book and read it. Whether you use these ideas or not, it's entirely up to you, but it all worked like a charm for us.

Happy Birthday, The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

It came to my attention that last week The Very Hungry Caterpillar turned 40. We have this book in two versions - English and German. Interestingly, in an English version, this caterpillar is male, and in a German version it's a she. I can see why this book is such a hit with young toddlers. It's simple, has a clear beginning and end, and introduces both unfamiliar things (caterpillar, cocoon) through familiarity of food that the very hungry caterpillar is eating. The drawings are cute, especially those holes where little toddlers can stick their own fingers. And it teaches a lot of concepts through simple repetition - counting to five, days of the week, a natural miracle of transformation from one creature to a very different creature. We read this book probably a thousand times in Anna's second year of life. Now she lost interest in it, but I am keeping this book hoping that one day she will want to read it by herself.

Things Kids Say - When I am Older...

About a month ago. Anna is sitting in the bath and inspecting herself:

Anna: I have a vagina. When I am older, I am going to get a penis.

Me: It's nice, but what's wrong with having a vagina?

Anna (cheerfully): I like penises best. When I am older, I am going to get many-many penises!

An unplugged infant

A friend of mine who is expecting her firstborn has asked me lately what were Anna's favorite toys in her first year of life. That brought back memories of her first year and made me go and look at my extensive archive of pictures. I came to realize that we managed quite successfully to keep her mostly "unplugged" for the first year of her life. We didn't want to buy any toys with batteries, because in my opinion infant toys with batteries are truly obnoxious. They reward any random activity with blinking lights and loud noises. We limited her toy selection to basics - bright balls of various textures, rattles, a couple of soft animals, a couple of cars. But we could never have enough books - we would spend hours every day looking at books, talking about objects in the books, exploring textures in "touch" books. We allocated one cupboard in our kitchen as "Anna's cabinet" and she could play with its contents - plastic containers, measuring spoons, cups. We also let her crawl on our backyard, get deliciously dirty and touch leaves, rocks, flowers. We didn't go all the way to "only natural and ultra-green" toys, because in my mind it's also sort of a marketing ploy. We just tried to keep a sensible middle ground of keeping her anchored in the world around her, and not losing her so early to the electronic allure of modern life.

Raising Problem-Solvers

Adapted from Ages & Stages:

Children face problems all day long that give them lots of opportunities to practice problem-solving skills. Problem-solving doesn't involve memorizing the alphabet or the names of colors and shapes. Rather, it's a skill that enables children to think both logically and creatively about their world and about the way things work. Ask questions that encourage different kinds of thinking that lead to better problem-solving skills:

Means-End Thinking:

• What could you do to reach the light switch?


• If you want to get dry after the bath, what do we need?


• Where could we look for an answer to your question?

Consequential thinking:

• If you keep whining, what will happen next? (Hint: Timeout!)


• If we are out of milk, what should we do?

Divergent thinking (in my opinion, this one is the hardest to do naturally)

• Can you think of another way to make me smile?


• What else can we build out of those blocks?


• What other shapes can you make out of playdoh?