Whew! All caught up...

So, that pretty much covers up to this point. So now, moving forward!

Christmas sensory bin

Ellie is 12 months old

This was our first real sensory bin. I threw together some things we had around the house and introduced it at the beginning of December. She loved it and asked for it every single day. Her favorite activities this month were finding all the jingle bells, playing with the snowman figurine, crunching the bows in her hands and pulling everything out of the bin and putting it all back in again.

I was thrilled with her engagement and excitement over this bin. I'm definitely planning on doing one a month from now on.

Pointing out the snowman's nose (Do you see the vacuum in the background? It's a rare find in our house!)

Finding a bell!

The bin included: Christmas bows, floral picks (from Hobby Lobby; there were crystals, white balls and silver balls), beaded balls, some soft ornaments, a sparkly plastic ornament, snowman Santa figurine, jingle bells.

Sponge bath toys

I had seen an activity in some Montessori resources about transferring water between bowls using a sponge. Ellie isn't quite ready for that, but I liked the idea and so just cut up a clean kitchen sponge and threw it in Ellie's bath. She thinks it's pretty awesome. She loves putting it on her head and squeezing it out over her face. She also loves trying to bail out her bath onto the bathroom floor, so we're working on that...

Hide and seek box

Easiest. Activity. Ever.

Step 1. Order something big from Amazon.
Step 2. Cut a few holes of different sizes and shapes (make sure heads can't get caught!).
Step 3. Sit back and watch your baby have the time of her life.

Newborn sensory bin

I made a beginning sensory bin for when Ellie was just a baby. I got a couple different kinds of fabric (satin, a see-through gauzy fabric and a fuzzy faux fur), some big fuzzy pom-poms, a big feather, a large fake flower and a string of beads.

At first, I would play with them on her bare belly, talking about each one -- whether it was smooth, fluffy, scratchy, soft, etc. When she started reaching, she loved grabbing ahold of each thing and feeling it on her own. I'd also go over different parts of her body and name them as we went -- "Do you feel the feather tickling your toes?"

She played with this until about 6 months or so, when she was too into putting stuff in her mouth and started pulling threads out of the satin!

Raisin container roller

This was another idea from our Parents as Teachers educator. I cut out a bunch of photos of babies and kids from magazines and taped them to an empty raisin container (the big round ones). Then I ran a sheet of contact paper around it to secure the whole thing. This was a great entertainment for tummy time, something to chase when she was starting to crawl, and now works well for talking about emotions and facial features.

I found it surprising how difficult it was to find kids who weren't white with blond or brown hair. I found one redhead, a couple Asian kids, one or two African-American children, and one baby with Down Syndrome. I couldn't find any with braces, glasses, wheelchairs, etc.! But at least it's a start! I also worked to find kids with obvious facial emotions -- scared, crying, happy, sleeping, etc.

Wipes container hide-and-seek

I got this idea from Shayna. It's super easy, and helps with a number of skills -- fine motor development, language, object permanence, reasoning. Cut out easily recognizable objects from magazines and laminate them. Then hide them in an old wipes container. I put in some extra photos of her too as a fun surprise.

Ellie loved digging around and finding pictures, especially of babies and food -- and herself!

As she's gotten older, we've started practicing identifying the objects and talking about similar items (like fork and spoon). I also cut out sets of lowercase and capital letters. Yeah, it's a bit early, but it can't hurt, right?

Shayna has a much better post about this activity here.