Wordless Wednesday: Number Practice Pancakes

T wanted pancakes for lunch. We made delicious banana & chocolate chip pancakes. Even practiced forming numbers with pancake batter. Yum!

Puppets, Pegs, and Bark Butter (our adventures with Flowering Baby Curriculum Continued)

Major progress last week when T started making his bed without being told. I don't care if it's not perfect. This is a milestone that makes everyone happy!


Our days are pretty busy. T loves to help me around the house. Cooking especially is a highlight of his day. I also notice much more enthusiasm over a meal when he's helped prepare it. Quiet moments are quickly filled with reading, exploration, and games with me. He loves reading so much. Today he sat quietly for about half an hour, turning page after page of a "Little Golden Books" anthology of animal stories.

Flowering Baby Curriculum continues to prove a great springboard for ideas. These are just a very few highlights since my last post. Enjoy!

We were supposed to play with forest animal puppets. T wanted to make a deer. So we grabbed scissors, glue, and other supplies and had at it. It was fun!

Still, the idea of playing with animal puppets called strongly. I could of course have run down to a toy store, spent a bundle, and collected a few puppets. Didn't though. It was a perfect excuse to return to the nature center. We played for a while with their collection of puppets.

Still another fun activity we did last week was learn about animal food. Any excuse to go outside is jumped upon by my little man. Oh, he loved hunting for animal food in the yard. When I first asked "Can you find something out here wild animals eat?" he brought the squirrel feeder to me. Soon though we were looking at bugs, nuts, and other such delicacies. We also took a trip to Wild Birds Unlimited, looking at all the different kinds of bird seed, squirrel feed, and even some food for deer. They had samples of "bark butter", so we brought a small sample of it home with us.

T showing off his bark butter.
It's supposed to attract cardinals, robins, and woodpeckers along with other birds. Applying the bark butter was so much fun. He dipped his fingers in the tub and smeared it in a line down the trunk of a tree. We can see the tree from our dining room window. I haven't noticed many birds going for the bark butter so far, but we'll see.

A "fine motor skills" activity quickly crossed over into the realm of mathematics. T had a blast building rockets, filling the board with pegs, creating patterns and shapes with the pegs.

 T seeing how high he can stack the pegs.

 Checking his pattern to make sure it is correct.

Today he had fun building a new, challenging puzzle. I was pleased to finally buy one that challenged him. The last couple puzzles I brought home he solved in no time (although he enjoyed it). I was thinking of buying one for ages 4+ when I saw this one by Lauri. It was perfect!