Since we’re not visiting the beach or sea, so I’m bringing it to us. My kid surely love this sensory play. What you need: blue water beads, kinetic sands, sea creature toys, sand toys, scoop or small tong.
We have a sea creature book, so we’re matching the toys that my kid found in the sea of water beads and match it to the book.
The sand toys are also great way to make small sandcastles. It’s surely a wonderful sensory play, my daughter loves it!
This is a very easy breakfast recipe for toddler. Even Zelda, who is now 20 months old also enjoy making it. It is also taste safe because there is no eggs on the batter. I also add some peanut butter for extra protein. Here is the recipe.
Ingredients:
2 ripe bananas
2 tablespoon peanut butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1 1/2 cup (135 grams) oatmeal
1/3 cup (50 grams) chocolate chips or raisins (optional)
How to make:
– Preheat oven for 180C and line parchment paper in baking pan.
– Mashed the bananas, add peanut butter, oatmeal, cinnamon, and chocolate chips.
– Mix all the ingredients.
– Make a ball and pat a little, put them in baking pan.
– Bake in the oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown.
– Enjoy 🙂
It is still that fase when the 19 months old girl, doesn’t want to eat fruit directly. I still need to put it in the foods that she loves. Like this chocolate chip cookies. No worries, it is healthy with adding some oatmeal and bananas. Zelda sure loves it. 😁😋
Ingredients
1 large ripe banana
1 egg
2 tablespoon oil
1 cup oatmeal
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup palm sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips
How to make
1. In a large bowl, mash the banana, add egg, oil and then stir.
2. Add palm sugar, oatmeal, flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. Mix it up with your spoon or spatula.
3. Add the chocolate chips and mix.
4. Wrap with plastic cling wrap and put in the fridge for 2 hours or in the freezer for 10 minutes.
5. Before baking, heat up the oven for 10 minutes for 180°C.
6. Scoop the batter with ice cream scoop to the pan covered with parchment paper.
7. Bake for 12-15 minutes until brown or when toothpick insert is dry.
8. Let it cool for 10 minutes.
9. Enjoy 🍪❤
Playing with playdough is a good activity for fine motor skills in early childhood. They learn to mold, poke, pull and create. It is also very good for the imagination and pretend play.
Easy DIY taste safe playdough:
Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup boiling water
2 tablespoons oil
2 drops of food coloring
1 teaspoon vanilla flavor (optional)
Method
• Mix the flour and the salt.
• Add food coloring and vanilla flavor to the water.
• Stir in the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.
• Add a bit flour if its still sticky.
• Knead and then voila play with your little ones.
• Store them in a jar.
This is the first time Zelda play with jelly for her sensory play and she love it. Well, she did play with it for an hour. It took her around 15 minutes to dig and rescue her first toy animal. She also tried the jelly and scoop more and ate it.
It is a very easy sensory play to make. You just cook the jelly according to the package. I add a bit of sugar because Zelda is over 1 years old so it is fine for her to eat sugar, but not too much. For baby, please don’t add sugar. Add the toy animal in your pyrex or container. Or maybe you could use other toys or fruits too. Fill it in and wait it to set for a couple hours.
Once it is set, you may start playing with your child. Just give her/him some utensils to dig. I gave Zelda spoon and fork, but you may also use some other utensils. Get ready to be messy and have fun. 😁
Benefits of this activity:
1. Increasing fine motor skills by digging and using the utensils, the child developing her muscle in her hands and practicing using utensils which will be beneficial for eating.
2. Problem solving, how the child manage to get the toys out from the jelly. Maybe parents can model it to, on how to dig by using the utensils. Furthermore, the kids might want to do it by themselves.
3. Language skills. If your child is not speaking yet, it is a good way to point out the color of the jelly, the animal or the utensil that they are using. If your child is already speaking, you may encourage them on what’s their plan on saving the animals and naming them.
4. For picky eaters. Touching, smelling and tasting the jelly with little less expectation. Overtime, it will build trust and understanding for the texture. So, it will build positive pathways in the brain to say it is safe to engage with this food.
I hope this helps. Thank you for visiting my blog. How did it go with your children? Please let me know in the comment section. Good day and happy a nice play! ❤
It is 2020 and although we are living in a pandemic, we should also think about being sustainable. One way for me to be sustainable is that I want to reduce waste. Honestly, it is so so hard to be eco-friendly and trying to go zero waste. Especially having babies and toddlers that use lots of diapers. It is good for you if your babies use cloth diapers. But I am using the disposable diapers here, and feel so guilty about it. Although, you know that China now has made a power plant from waste. That is super good idea! I think all country should make it.
Anyhow, lets get back to where I want to reduce waste. Even one small act can be a good thing for the environment. I found this trick on reduce waste now account at instagram. Using banana peel for fertilizer. So, after eating bananas, don’t just throw the peels away. Put them in a jar and add water. Let them sit for two days and pour them for your plants. I did it and I think my plant seems a bit greener than usual. Hope this helps.
Sensory play doesn’t always have to use the fancy sensory tables. Just use big bowls that you have in the kitchen or a big tray or a big container and lay them in the floor. But I don’t have big tray and the container we still use it to keep our stuff. So, I use both our big cooking bowl that we used to mix cake or cookie batter in it.
What we need:
– 2 big bowls
– soup ladle with a hole in it
– water
– blue food coloring
– animal bath toys or any plastic or wooden toy animals
Instructions:
– Add water to one bowl and then add food coloring, mix it with the soup ladle.
– Add the toy animals.
– Model how to scoop the animal to the other bowl.
– Let your child play and have fun.
Zelda immediately started to play with it. She does manage to scoop the toy animal to the other bowl by using the soup ladle. I was so mesmerized that she was able to do it at first try. She also love splashing the water and stirring the water.
Most Indonesians likes to eat rice as the main course for three times per day. But, our family doesn’t. Sometimes, we have rice day, pasta day, noodles day, or take out day. For this rice day, my toddler Zelda likes her rice to be create in a certain way. Because if I just put rice like that, sometimes she will eat it, most of the time she will not. So, I made this easy recipe for her and she likes it. I also add some tomatoes and mayonnaise in her plate.
Here is the tuna rice fritters recipe:
Ingredients:
– 1 cup of cooked rice
– 1 can tuna
– 1 egg
– 1 teaspoon garlic powder
– a pinch of salt
Instructions:
– Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.
– Add some cooking oil to the nonstick pan.
– Heat up the pan with medium heat.
– Put a scoop of batter.
– Flip and cook until brown.
– Enjoy.
This 2 ingredients moon sand, sure keeps Zelda busy digging up letters and playing with the moon sand. It is really soft to touch, like playing with sands but softer sands.
Moon sand ingredients:
– 2 cups flour
– 1/2 cups cooking oil
Instructions:
Just mix them together until you find the right texture for you and your child.
I use muffin tin to hide the magnetic letters and then cover them with the moon sand. Zelda had so much fun discovering letters and also tasting the moon sand. LOL. It keeps her busy for around an hour.
Have you ever made moon sand with your child? Let me know in the comments below if you had experience with it.
Thank you for visiting my blog.
In this pandemic times, youtube can be such a good entertainment for your children. I would lie if I said I don’t give screen time for my toddler. It is such a mom guilt that I gave way too much screen time than my toddler should be watching. But living in a tiny apartment and tiny balcony and not enough living space, TV is one of my toddler’s bestfriend. We did have a lot of sensory play, coloring, reading books, playing bubbles, pretend play with dolls, playing puzzles, lego blocks and looking outside, but screen time sometimes will be needed.
Me and my husband try to find youtube channel where there will be more real human interaction in it, not too much cartoon.
Here is our top 5 list:
1. The Wiggles
This Australian band are so much fun to watch. There are ballet with Emma, rock and roll with Anthony, Lachy’s lullaby or singing opera with Simon. My toddler’s favorite are their concerts, such as The Fairytale of Cinderemma and Nursery Rhymes Live in Concert.
2. Super Simple Play/ Caitie’s Classroom
There are lots to choose in this channel, but Zelda, my toddler love Caitie’s Classroom. It is such a great show, like seeing a real teacher singing, dancing, playing and making crafts. Sometimes Caitie also went out on a fieldtrip, like a trip to the dancing school, ice cream shop, or butterfly conservatory. Zelda adores seeing Caitie visit places in Canada.
This duo Nigel and Giovanna really have a great singing voice. They sang and read stories for babies and toddlers. In their video, we can see other babies accompany by their parents enjoying their show. It is like a mom and baby class. Mostly their setting are also like in a classroom. My toddler probably feel like being there with them in the classroom!
Our favorite would be Elmo singing along with celebrity guests, or when the guests were giving explanation about a word or an activity. Mostly I will choose the one with people in it.
5. Pinkfong
Who doesn’t love baby shark song? My toddler really enjoy baby shark song and also dancing with the kids. I try to choose more with the people on it, not too much of the cartoon. Zelda could laugh seeing the kids dancing silly movements.
The reason that I choose the channels with more people in it, because my toddler is still 18 months, human interaction is needed. If you don’t give screen time to your toddler that is fine. Although yeah, the AAP said that children from age 2 should only watch 30 minutes per time, but sometimes I give more. And we do need the help of technology to entertain our children, especially in this pandemic time or if we were doing housework or cooking or in the shower!
So, there we have our top 5 youtube channel that we love and enjoy everyday. What is your top youtube channel that you watch with your children? Feel free to give some comments below.
Eat, Play, Go Green 