Welcoming Fall

Happy 1st day of fall, everyone! Here in our household we have been pre-gaming the arrival of fall by learning different things about fall. I love fall in early childhood because you can really engage all five senses, which is very fun.

As usual, we started out by hitting the library to borrow some books!

We learned about the Mid-Autumn Festival a few weeks back from Grace Lin's book, and even had a little celebration the day of with some of our good friends, but sadly because of Silly Bean's allergies, he can't have mooncake. I decided to start a family tradition instead of making homemade dumplings and noodles that I think will be part of our family for years to come, even though it's not really traditional. Oh well, Silly Bean likes it! ;P

Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin was a good read for Silly Bean as well, especially because he knows how to spell the word "no" and "pumpkin," which comes up multiple times in the book and Silly Bean enjoys pointing to the words he knows. Duck and Goose in the end went to a pumpkin patch to get their pumpkin, and the other day we went to a local farm and got to see a pumpkin patch and relate that back to what we read in the book!

Silly Bean absolutely loves Mouse's First Fall and has pretty much memorized all of the words by this point. He learned about the different shapes and colors of leaves in the fall. The other day we were walking outside around our neighborhood, and Silly Bean noticed a leaf that was green on the verge of turning red. He also found a yellow leaf which he was also excited about because he saw it in the "Mouse and Minka" book. We brought them home and I "preserved" them with packing tape, so they should last for a while and we can keep looking at them and talk about leaves changing colors.

And lastly, I was very excited to find pumpkin pie spice at our local Trader Joe's for only $1.99. Guys, for someone who loves deals, this is the best! And also perfect for the pumpkin spice waffles I wanted to make this weekend (I just substitute flaxseed meal for the eggs)!

It was also fun because Silly Bean got to use his senses of smell to smell the spice before we put it in, taste the canned pumpkin and the actual waffle, which was a huge hit. We are definitely going to make more in the coming weeks! (Though, we definitely need a bigger waffle iron and not just the mini Dash one we have!)

Excited to collect more leaves for our sensory box as the weeks go buy, make some pumpkin spice play-doh, go apple picking, and pumpkin picking! Fun times to be in early childhood, indeed :)

Easy Peasy Sensory Fun: Flour!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! It's a cooler day today--is fall on it's way, or is it just that strange transitional period in between summer and fall? We took a brisk walk this morning, but I wanted to share a fun activity we did this morning at home!

I had read about a fun and easy sensory activity from this article I found online when I searched "sensory activities for two year olds" -- flour in a container, and let the toddler go at it! Love how the materials are so accessible--flour we had in the cupboard, a spoon and cup from our kitchen, and baking pan that we often use for cooking. No need to buy extra materials for this activity :)

  

It was a BIG hit! Silly Bean was engaged with it for at least 45 minutes, scooping, mixing, touching, pouring. We tried to use our senses to describe it (tried to do it in both English and Chinese). I think he was very interested in the texture.

After touching it with his fingers for a while, Silly Bean realized he could blow on the flour and "clouds" of flour would get everywhere, which apparently was the best thing ever. Silly Bean laughed and laughed and of course--not pictured--is how the flour got absolutely EVERYWHERE--table, floor, wall, Silly Bean's hair and face, and even Silly Bean's shirt that was covered by his long-sleeve apron (???). Oh well @___@

Love the versatility of this activity though--I can see it as a way to practice more letters / letter sounds, "writing" or drawing in the flour, or adding water to add another interesting texture! We can probably keep doing this for another week!

What sensory activity do you like to do with your toddler, or that you remember enjoying as a kid?

The Beginnings of Imaginative Play

Hello, fellow Silly Bean adventurers! I had been trying and trying to write this one post about emotional health for the past 2 months already and I guess I just wasn't feeling it... so I decided to try another topic that I have more to say about right now. In those 2 months, Silly Bean turned 2 and had a fun little birthday party with family and friends in the park.

I just love imaginative play so much, where children get the space to make believe and create their own stories, worlds, and ideas. A lot of times people say that play is "just playing" and "not really doing anything," but according to all the research and all of my observation, play is the place of a child's work. It is in play that they are making sense of the world around them, working out problems, and showing what they know.

In the past few weeks, Silly Bean has really started to do some imaginative play. Even just today before naptime, we were playing with his train set that he got for his birthday, and he said in Chinese that the trains are going to the park, and then to Target (now you know what our daily/weekly life is like :P), and the baby is going in his house (somehow, everything has become Silly Bean's house, Silly Bean's car, etc).

It's all very simple at this stage (the play will get more complex as he gets older/has more vocabulary/has more life experience/can have more direct social interactions) but it is just so fun to see how he interprets what we do and what he thinks our lives are about day to day! We should really stop going to Target 4x a week, or he'll think this is what we are supposed to do every day...

In addition to playing with his train set, Silly Bean loves "cooking" and serving everything he's ever eaten: from things he enjoys, like 粥 (Chinese rice porridge, which he ate a lot of when he was sick last week) to things he doesn't really enjoy, like oatmeal. We often have to remind ourselves to "pretend" and not really chomp on the spatulas and utensils because there isn't real food on it.

Silly Bean also has a bunny that we call "Special Bunny" because originally it was "mama's special bunny that you can play with" and immediately became "Silly Bean's Special Bunny"--funny how that always happens. Silly Bean brings it everywhere, and often Silly Bean will pretend to feed him, give him medicine, or say that he is crying because he is sad that he fell down (a common Silly Bean occurrence in our household).  The other day, Silly Bean sat Special Bunny down on the chair at the little table, unprompted, so they could both eat an afternoon snack together. He even walked over with a carrot to share with Special Bunny.

He kisses him when he goes to sleep, says hello to him when he wakes up, and hugs him anytime he finds him (on the couch, on the floor, etc.). We wonder if the way Silly Bean takes care of his bunny is Silly Bean working out how we as his parents care for him (we seem to do all the same things, hmmm), which is so sweet!