Category Archives: Teach at Home

These are activities done at home with my children that you can try to do at home as well!

Learning to swim

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Joshua just loves the water! We have a small inflatable pool given to him as a gift and he swims in it pretty frequently. He has always enjoyed the fun in the water.      Joshua is a beach lover too!  He loves the sand and the sea… He also enjoys rivers! My 2 year old is a pure waterboy!       However, despite his exposure to water, he is not yet able to confidently go underwater or swim unassisted.  Because of that, we want Joshua to take swimming lessons. While on vacation in Manila, we are glad that we were able to find him a swim teacher who specializes on children. He is known as teacher Alvin.    Teacher Alvin is like a pre-school teacher but does it in the pool. He sings “wheels on the bus”, “humpty dumpty” and many other nursery rhymes to make the swimming experience fun and kid-friendly. For 2 year olds like Josh, sessions are one on one. It must be done according to the child’s readiness and pace. Plus, it has to be within a child’s attention span.  Alvin lets Joshua wear a back floater and he used about 4 foams at the start. After 5 sessions Joshua got more confident and now has graduated from 2 floaters to just 1! He is now able to carry himself and keep himself afloat with 1 foam on his back!  Just like anything practice is key to getting it right… In due time our little guy can be a confident swimmer without the floaters. And who knows, he may be a swim athlete like I was in my younger years. 🙏🙏🙏 Here is a short video of his single foam swim and how far he has improved!

Finger Paint Time

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Though I am lacking sleep and tired, I am exerting extra effort to do something fun and educational for my toddler, Joshua. I have seen myself concentrate more on my infant, Anna, and I do feel bad that I am not spending enough quality time with my son.

I went online to research how to make home made paint. I found a wonderful recipe from http://www.familyeducation.com. It’s a flour based home made paint that Joshua and I can use for a finger painting project.

Preparing the paint must be done one day before. It requires a bit of cooking, and color mixing and refrigeration.

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The next day after Joshua’s breakfast, we got the floor ready and the cartolina paper for our finger paint project. He was pretty excited to start experimenting on mommy’s home made paint!

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We used different colors and swirled the paint on the cartolina with our fingers and with our hands. Joshua made circles and we stamped our hands on the paper. It was not long and our painting project was taking shape as an abstract piece of art!

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We capped our activity by washing off the paint off our hands in the inflatable swimming pool and went swimming. The paint was easy to remove from our hands. It was a great bonding and educational activity. And I am mighty proud of Joshua’s first finger painting.

Creative Play

Posted in Insights, Teach at Home by

The daily routine of my 16 month old boy includes alot of play.  We use toys, we do role play, we have books and story telling, lots of hugs, affirmation and laughter. We have toys that are battery operated and makes alphabet sounds and music when certain buttons are pressed.  It has helped Joshua understand cause and effect. It also helps him with the mastery of his fingers and hand motor skills. Music also communicates an idea more creatively. Its good to have music and sounds as part of the play.

What amuses me the most, are the “accidental toys”.  These are household items or stuff I intended to throw, but in a surprise has become a valuable toy in the eye of my little boy.
One of the most enjoyed items Joshua has been playing are bottles. Shampoo bottles, lotions bottles, water bottles, and other toiletries are actually fun to arrange and rearrange. Joshua can actually play a while with these items as his imagination takes over.  He stacks them, rearranges them, packs them in boxes and likes to discover the object’s shape and function.

Another one he enjoys is making the monoblock plastic chair his ship.  We make him stand on it and we just push it around the dining area as if he was the captain sailing away.

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Recently, my husband received a gift that has become one of our objects of creative play. Its a wooden set of coffee confectionary. Joshua has made it his imaginary kitchen and role plays that he is cooking up a great dish. We have fun pretending to be chefs and making up recipes. I really enjoy watching him pretend to stir the food and take a taste with the spoon as he says “uhhhmm!”

Another toy that has become cool is just a box. His nanny saw that he would fit inside that box. She puts a ribbon at one end and made Joshua sit inside. With the ribbon we dragged him around the house making the box his make shift car/jeep. Its been a lot of fun!

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Playing does not need expensive toys all the time. We can just look at our closet or pantry and find lots of interesting stuff for our toddlers to play with. What we parents need are just a bit more imagination and creativity…

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