Play and Learn with Blocks

Putti loves to play with Blocks. Ever since Putti has her hands on her First Blocks, she has loved exploring them by touching, licking, banging, throwing and offcourse sorting. 

Her favorite blocks right now are Imaginarium Wooden Block. She loves the colors and different shapes.  

Here are some of the fun things she has been doing lately with her Wooden Blocks. She almost always starts with sorting them by various shapes and sizes and then comparing the piles which one is bigger?

Knocking the blocks down either by kicking them or with a fly swatter/ bat is fun too. Infact its greater fun than stacking:)

Separating each pile of block shapes by color and counting how many of each color she has got? A fun way to learn Fractions.

Counting numbers. Recently we have started simple addition and subtraction game too. We both start with our own small pile of blocks and count them. Then she gives me 1-2 blocks and we count how much I have now in total. And how much less she has.

Make Alphabets with blocks. When Putti was younger I used to write the alphabets for her and she would lay the blocks over the letters, kind of like tracing.

 See how tall the tower she bulit is by measuring it with a scale.  Also, measure some of her toys using blocks. Compare and see how many of big and small blocks do they each measure.

Imaginative play by using cars, people, animals etc along with blocks.

Other than building castles for her doll princesses to live, she loves making random things like a staircase

 

A ship

 Block person

Sun 

The top of the container has a sorter on it and that is a favorite way to put back all her 200 wooden blocks. I love it because she is working on her fine motors, her hand eye co ordination and also is re-enforcing her shape recognition!

Do your kids enjoy blocks? What is their favorite thing to do with them?
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Playdoh Alphabets

This was done tonight after dinner. 

Play Doh alphabets... 

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ABC Games!!

Some of the games we play at home to work on the ABCs Putti has just learnt.....

Game One:

Collect a pile of toys and random stuff from around the house. Then ask Putti to name them one after the other. When she calls out "Ball", I say "thats right it is a bbbbbball, can you tell the starting alphabet?".  It took her a couple of trials in the beginning but soon she got the game. 

Game Two:

Alphabet matching treasure hunt

Hold an alphabet card and go all around the house searching for things that begin with that alphabet. This game covers big things like  Television, Bed, Table etc....

Game Three:

This version is played when I am busy in the kitchen or doing laundry etc and Putti asks for the ABC game. In this game, I ask her to go get me something that begins with the letter 'B'. She goes and comes back with a ’Ball' or a ’Bunny'.

Game Four:

Putti loves "I Spy" books , I have adopted that concept to play a game. We pile her toys and then i say "I spy something that begins with the "b" sound" . Putti has to pick a ball from the pile:)

1. Here I have written the alphabets on paint chips . You could use printed cards too.
2. We sometimes use alphabet mat letters too.
3. Magnetic alphabets can be fun to use.
4. Store bought alphabet flash cards would be nice. too.

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Putti now goes to Preschool

Putti has begun going to preschool twice a week for half days. She really loves it there. And infact cries when I go to pick her up as most of her friends stay full time and she is only one coming home in the afternoons with me.

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Writing Alphabets!

Putti loves singing the ABC song, but does not recognize all of the alphabets correctly. But she has begun to write many of letters esp the A,H,D,I etc Shakti's mother suggested me I should try alphabet coloring pages with her and do one alphabet per week. I did not want to push things onto Putti and yet wanted to help her learning so while browsing the web found the site“Letter of the week”. Loved their curriculum a lot. But since I had to wait for hemanth to get the print outs, I preferred writing the alphabets in big for Putti to trace and color over it. 

We also started playing hopscotch on our Alphabet Puzzle Mat. We would take turns calling out a number and the other person had to hop and go stand on the letter called out. She really loved correcting me when I hoped onto wrong alphabets. 
After one whole week of alphabet A, she really was not so keen on doing this letter tracing and coloring daily. But surprisingly she started recognising most of the alphabets correctly on her alphabet floor mat along with their phonics sound. But she still gets confused with the lower case b, d, p and q. 
And with grandparents at home, her outings increased but she loved pointing out to alphabets where ever we went museums, parks, grocery stores. Alphabets are her best buddies now and she takes great pride in writing those she has mastered! Here is a video of her writing alphabets on her Ikea Easel.  

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