'tis the season for...SNOW!

We've only had a frost or two here in Chicago, but that hasn't stopped me from gearing up for my winter theme art projects and therapy activities. 

 

I just made these really cute snowmen with my daughter (thanks, pinterest) and think that I have a few kiddos that are closer to three I may try this with.  It was beyond simple- small powdered doughnuts, leftover candy corn and a little black decorative icing.  Clean up was really easy, too!  The original recipe called for mini chocolate chips for the eyes and mouths but I had a tube of black decorative icing in my pantry we used instead. 

 

Another favorite winter project for me is cotton ball snowmen.  I've been making these with my therapy kiddos for years.  I typically use just have the kids make circles with the glue and squeeze lots of glue in the middle to fill the circles in, stick on the cotton balls, add a little pipe cleaner nose and draw the arms.  I've also had the kids draw circles to form a snowman on contact paper, cut the circles out and then stuck the cotton balls onto the sticky side of the contact paper.  It's less messy than glue and you don't have to wait for it to dry to hang it up.  The contact paper method usually requires more hand over hand assistance (for the cutting, mostly) and can take a little longer.  This activity is excellent for fine motor practice, of course, by I also love it for sensory play, color identification and even building frustration tolerance (hey, cutting is hard work for most of my early intervention friends). 

 

One of my favorite winter  books to use in therapy sessions is Karen Katz's Toes, Ears & Nose.  It has children that are dressed for the cold weather.  Each cold weather article of clothing is a flap that lifts up to show the body part the clothing protects.  The text will say "Inside my mittens, I've got..." and then you lift the mitten flap to expose the fingers and it finishes the sentence with "fingers."  I love that it does this because it allows for what my friend and colleague Claire calls the "hesitate and hold," which is is verbally setting the child up to answer a familiar question.  It encourages expressive language that is built into a familiar routine. *  I also love that this book teaches the functions of clothing like mittens, hats, coats.  Object function/associative skills can be a difficult  to master and I like to reinforce them any way I can.  In a child who isn't ready for these kinds of skills, you can target vocabulary building.  In my neck of the woods, winter clothing is very functional vocabulary! 




*Hesitate and Hold is a  great trick that you can use in seemingly limitless ways.  I also like to use it  while knocking down towers, too.  You say "KA-BOOM" and knock over a tower a few times.  Then you knock over the tower, say "KA!" and freeze, allowing the child to say "BOOM!"

My Go To Baby Shower Gift

 

As someone with a huge family who works with kids, I've been invited to many, many, baby showers.  I pride myself on being an Ivy League gift giver and am always racking my brain for the perfect shower gift. A few years ago I started giving what has now become my go to gift- a basket of developmentally appropriate baby toys.  Since I specialize in play, giving toys is a must have for me! 

Each basket varies a little depending on my budget and who the basket is for.  This particular basket was for a mom who wanted more environmentally friendly baby gear (less plastic, a few hand me downs, more wooden toys).  It contained:

• Fabric Skip Hop Mirror.  Baby mirrors are a must have.  Babies love to look at faces and smiling at one's own reflection is an important social and communication milestone.  Mirrors are a great way to entertain babies during tummy time play.  Also, a mirror in front of her car seat was one of the only ways we kept my daughter from screaming at the top of her lungs every single time we took a ride in the car.
• Lamaze My First Fish Bowl I always give some sort of container play toy.  This is one of my favorites, although there are many, many variations.  Babies begin to reach into containers and take things out between 9-11 months and putting objects in follows soon after after.  
• Hand me down baby and a little wooden truck.  Both of these toys facilitate functional play, the beginning of pretending and the understanding of symbols (important for language development as well as cognition).  Some time between 9-12 months, babies start using objects like babies, trucks, cups, etc by function (rolling a car, kissing a doll, drinking from an empty cup).  The doll is a hand me down but came from Target.  It's the circo brand and you can only buy it in stores. It's my all time favorite baby (and I've tried and tested dozens in therapy).  It's just the right size (about 5 inches) for babies and toddlers and it's been a hit with all but one of my little therapy friends.
• Manhattan Toy Skwish I actually prefer the plastic, infantino version of this toy but I substituted the wooden version to honor the wishes of this mama.  These kinds of toys facilitate bilateral coordination (babies have to use both hands to hold it), and oral/tactile exploration of toys.  I also use it to help encourage visually tracking and object permanence.  Most babies find it very interesting and thus are motivated to track it with their eyes as you move it away from them or look for it once you've covered it with a blanket.  Also, the infantino version makes a rattle sound when shake it that you can use to give the baby a clue that it's under the blanket. 
• Rattles.  Okay, so the one I included in this gift is plastic (shh, maybe if we don't tell the recipient, she will be too tired to notice).  This rattle is cheap ($2!), easy to grasp, visually interesting and I have not met a single baby in 5 years that didn't like it.  It's one of my go to therapy toys.  I use it for everything- reaching and grasping, transferring objects from hand to hand, encouraging babies to take it out of a container, encouraging oral exploration.  My other go to rattle is this cage bell rattle.  I also included this Educo wooden rattle, too just to make the mama happy.   
• Please, Baby, Please This is my all time favorite book for toddlers.  The baby gets into all kinds trouble throughout the day that yields the perfect opportunity to yell "no!" while reading.  It also has a ton of illustrations of action words (crying, eating, sleeping, kissing). 

If I didn't have budget constraints, I would have included these toys, too:

• nesting/stacking cups- These help teach an understanding of size. Babies should be able to nest at least 3 by 18 months.
• fabric blocks- Stacking blocks is an important visual motor skill and knocking them over is just fun (not to mention a great time for exclamatory language like "Oh, no!" or "ka- BOOM!"
• shape sorter- This can be used for container play until the baby is old enough to start putting the shapes into the correct holes. 
• O ball- I love this ball. It may even make it into my top ten favorite therapy toys.  When kids are little, it's great for all the same reasons as the skwish toy.  When the baby is a little older (about 13 months) you can use to play roll the ball games and then even later, it's great for older toddlers learning to catch!
• Quack, Quack This is one of my all time favorite books.  The pictures are simple with a high contrast and it teaches animal sounds. 

Ditching the dolls- "boying" up pretend play

A vast majority of the infants and toddlers that I see for developmental therapy are boys.  Usually, at least 10 of the 14 kids I see each week are boys.  There have even been times when I would see 30 kids a week and they were all boys!  I think that it's safe to say, at this point, that I've gotten pretty good at playing with boys.   One of the biggest challenges for my little guys is learning to and independently pretending during play.  Teaching pretend play can be tricky- you don't want it to be boring but you also have to make sure that the play is at the right developmental level for the child you are playing with.  Lately, I've been working with several boys that absolutely no interest in pretending until I "boyed" it up it a bit.  Then, seemingly all of a sudden, the boys were eager not only to play pretend with me but sometimes on their own, too!  One little boy's mom told me, "He really hates pretending.  He just won't do it. His sisters have all these great pretend toys and he won't go near them!" We strayed as far from his sisters' kitchen set and baby dolls as we could and viola! he is starting to pretend a little on his own!  Here is what I do to make pretend play more appealing to the boys that I work in early intervention. 

1. Ditch the dolls.  Well, the baby dolls, anyway.  I've found that not all kids (and especially not all boys) like dolls.  Instead, I use an alligator puppet with a wide mouth that has lots of teeth or a stuffed character from the child's favorite show or movie (Mickey Mouse, Blue, Nemo, Sully, it really doesn't matter as long it has eyes and a mouth).  I've also used action figures. After all, transformers need baths, too.  Using these toys instead of dolls makes the play more fun and helps draw the child's attention.

2. Ditch the dollhouse. I've had much, much more success using a barn or swing/slide playset than a traditional dollhouse.  Both of these toys allow for a wide variety of play and much more active play.   You can put the action figures down the slide and say. "whee,"  push them on the swing and (kids love this) make them fall off of something and yell "OUCH!" You can prolong the play scenario by kissing the "boo-boo," going to the kitchen to get an ice pack and put it on the action figure and then affixing a band aid.  With the barn, the animals can run, jump, eat and the farmer can ride the horse.  When the child is ready for more complex play, the barn sets are great for making the animals hide.  I love the little figures from the Disney store for this kind of play.   Sometimes you can find them at Dollar Tree, too.  I've also used monkey finger puppets. 

3. Start with something other than feeding and putting to the toy to sleep.  Many parents start pretending with their kids by introducing feeding a doll/feeding each other/cooking kinds of play.  I like to start with a toothbrush and pretend to brush the alligator's teeth. I even sing the Raffi song "Brush Your Teeth" while we play.  The kids love the "ch-ch-ch" sound effect in the song.  I've also had really good luck with putting a hat on the alligator's head and pretending that the alligator sneezes so violently the hat falls off.  I pair this with "AH, AH, AH, CHOO!"  I've had a lot more success with children imitating these activities than feeding a baby. 

4. Add a fun sensory activity to the play.  I love to pretend to give toys baths using actual water.   You just need a tiny bit of water- an inch or two can be really fun!  I also like to use soap that has lots of bubbles and a washcloth.  Once the child is ready to move on to more complex play (and if you are up for a bit of a mess) you can also fill the bathroom sink, a shallow baking dish or even the bottom of your shape sorter with water and use it as a pool!  Bonus points if you incorporate your slide toy as a water slide.  You could also move the pretend play into a sensory box.  For example, you could fill a clear shoe box or Tupperware container with black beans and pretend it's the dirt under the slide.

Encouraging Tummy Time

So many of little buddies come into early intervention with motor delays.  Often these are babies that may have had delays in their development anyway but the delays have likely been exacerbated by a lack of time to practice on their tummies. We all know tummy time is important.  The benefits (strengthening their little muscles so that they can roll, sit up and crawl) are all over the brochures at the pediatrician's office and we hear about it just about any where new moms are discussing their babies- the park, the Internet, the line at the grocery store.  But so many babies don't like it and may even cry to protest it.  It's no wonder that new parents don't always comply with tummy time recommendations- after all, as parents we are programmed to prevent our babies from crying.   Here are a couple of my developmental therapy tricks to help your baby enjoy tummy time. 

 

 

 

Start early and do it often. As soon as your baby is born you can start to introduce them to tummy time by laying the baby on your chest while you are laying down.  You can also lay the baby on your legs while you are in a sitting position.  Start with for short tummy spurts (2-5 minutes) several times throughout the day.  As your baby gets a little bigger, add a a minute or two each day.  This way, tummy time isn't a novel and scary activity later on.  If your baby is a little older and already hates tummy time, you can use these strategies to help her get used to tummy time, too. 

Use your baby's favorite toys as motivation. Maybe your baby really likes a certain rattle or stuffed toy.  Lay the baby on a blanket on the floor and shake the rattle directly in front of their little face.  Once the baby is able to lift his/her head up off the floor for a second or two (look for this by 2 months) you can begin to very slowly lift the toy higher to encourage the baby to push up on his or arms.  You can also move to the side to encourage the baby to track the toy with his/her.  This also helps the baby to learn to visually track objects, too (an important fine motor foundation). 

Present new (to the baby) and exciting toys.  Babies look longer at objects that are novel to the them or surprising.  You can use to this to your advantage by waiting to present a toy that they haven't seen until tummy time.  My favorite tummy time toys are: A cage bell rattle, the infantino bendy bug rattle, bright starts barbell rattle, a cube that lights up and plays music, the infantino activity triangle (3 different sides of fun things to look at and attempt to reach out a touch!), the infantino activity ball, and a mirror.  One of the things that I love about all these toys is that they are interesting enough that the babies will want to reach out and touch or grab them. 

Use yourself.  Most babies love nothing more than looking at human faces- especially the ones of people they know!  You can lay on the floor with your baby and sing a silly little song or even just narrate what you are doing in a sing song voice ("Look at you playing on your tummy!  That's mommy's girl!").

Remember, a little frustration can be motivating. I can't tell you how many times I've put a baby on his tummy only for him to start fussing immediately.  This is usually when I have to stop caregivers from giving the baby the toy or picking the baby up.  As long as the baby isn't red faced screaming or very clearly distressed, the frustration he's feeling motivates him to try and tell his body to move his body.   I usually let the little guy fuss for no more than minute  or two.  If the baby is able to push himself up on his arms, I  then move the rattle or toy as close as it needs to be for him to grab it himself (sometimes this means sliding it right to the baby's hand).  This way, the baby has to work through the frustration in order to get what he wants. If the little one is still learning to push up on his arms, I will usually pick him up or even pick him up and lay him across my lover legs so that his chest and head are supported and he's able to get a better view of the toy.

Cooking with Kids: Jack o Latern Whoopie Pies

I've always loved to cook with kids.  While working as a nanny in college, the kids and I used to decorate cakes to look like underwater scenes and Dr. Seuss hats.  Now that I have my own child, I enjoy it even more and it's something that we've done together since she was old enough to stand at the counter with me (about 18 months).  This week, our family carved a pumpkin so I was inspired by these little cute little Jack o Lantern treats.  When I clicked onto the actual recipe page, I discovered that the recipe had too many ingredients for me to want to even attempt to tackle it (Did I say cooking with kids?  What I really meant was combining a few ingredients and tossing something into the oven. If it needs more than one type of pan or requires more than one cooking method, I'm out).  Luckily, I had made this super easy whoopie pie recipe before (it has 3 ingredients! my kind of recipe) and substituted the homemade filling with store bought frosting.  I surveyed my kitchen cabinets and came up one box of yellow cake mix and some store bought chocolate frosting so I altered the recipe to:

1 package of yellow cake mix
A liberal squirt of orange food coloring
2 eggs
3/4 c of crisco. 
 1/2 can of store bought frosting (I used Chocolate because it's what I had and it's delicious)
tube of black sparkle decorative icing

I had my almost 3 year old put the ingredients into the mixer and turn it on to mix.
Then, I helped her line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, dropped the dough onto the sheet in tablespoon-ish sized balls and baked at 375 for 9 minutes.  

After you take them out of the oven, let them cool completely (I try to time this part for nap time.  The wait for them to cool seems endless for small children) before before spreading a liberal amount of frosting onto one cookie and topping it with another.  After all the pies had been assembled, I let me daughter make eyes, noses and mouths on the cookies.  She really was only interested in doing a few so I was glad that I halved the original recipe! 

 

A few suggestions about this cooking with kids project:
Keep a wet cloth or diaper wipes handy to wipe off sticky, frosting covered fingers and spills on the counter (which are inevitable). Also, I like to have my daughter break the eggs into a mug and then pour them into the batter.  This way if they obliterate the eggs you can pick out the shell before it gets into the batter. 

Making jack o lanterns our of whoopie pies is a pretty abstract idea to little kids who likely don't remember last Halloween.  It would be helpful to first carve your own family pumpkin and to read a few jack o lantern books with a great illustrations before making these.  That way your child will have a better frame of reference and the project will be more fun.  If your child is younger than 30 months, you can help them complete the tasks with some hand over hand assistance. 

You could also alter this idea and use it for early intervention by premaking some round, orange sugar cookies and just having the little one's decorate the face.  You can use the activity to work on single or multiple step direction following, to reinforce labeling parts of the face, to teach the color orange and/or to work on fine motor skills. 

 Squeezing the dough is fun sensory play and rolling it into a ball is great way to encourage bilateral coordination and fine motor practice. 

Creative Ways to Play With a Shape Sorter

Just about every child that I've ever seen for developmental therapy has some kind of shape sorter.  I use them all the time but not always in the way in which they were intended.  Here are some things I've done with a shape sorter in recent weeks:

• container play- believe it or not, learning to take objects out and put objects in is an important cognitive and fine motor milestone.  I use the bottom part of the shape sorter as the bucket and place large, enticing toys in it to help encourage babies to reach in and take the object out.  You can use the shapes that came with the sorter, too, but I find that putting a baby's favorite toy or snack cracker is better motivation (taking out 9-11 months, putting in 12-13 months)
• shopping basket- Once toddlers are closer to 3 years they start to act out familair scenarios during pretend play.  I love to use the square shape sorter container that has a handle as a grocery basket.
• hat- One of my favorite games to play with children that need to work on being interested in playing with an adult (something we call joint attention) is to put a hat or other object on my head and then very dramatically "sneeze" it off.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but toddlers think it's hilarious and many of my kids will make more eye contact playing this game than just about anything else. It's also a great way to get kids to begin imitating actions and gestures.
• matching and sorting shapes- toddlers should be able to match and sort identical shapes sometime between 30-36 months.  You can add some fine motor practice if you stack the shapes into towers.
• baby bath/pool- the shape container is the perfect size to bathe a small doll  or have action figures jump into a pool.  Bonus points if you use blocks to build a diving board!

Tips and Tricks for Travel with a Toddler

I'm not fond of car travel and my two year old is even less fond of car travel.  Unfortunately, we spend a fair amount of time in the car because many of the people we love live an hour away or more.  A few weekends ago I was looking down the barrel of a four hour car trip solo with my kiddo.  I'm not going to lie, the thought of being in the car with an active child for 4 straight hours made me a little anxious.  So I tried to think about what I would tell one of my early intervention families if they were planning such a trip.  BINGO- as soon as I framed it this way, I had a zillion ideas for what to put in a busy box to keep her occupied.  I made her this Busy Box:

 



Here is what I brought:

• books- mostly paperback because they fit in the box better and are lighter.  I brought books that were brand new (from the library) or that I pulled out of my stash in toy closet (yes, I have an entire toy closet.  More on that another day).
• small doll and box of band aids. As long as your child has the fine motor skills to play with stickers and s/he knows what a band aid is, this activity will keep a kid busy for at least 20 minutes.  I recommend hitting the dollar store for these.  This works with stuffed toys and large action figures, too, if your child isn't so into dolls. You could also bring a toothbrush for the doll.  Most of the kiddos I see for early intervention LOVE brushing other people/toy's teeth.
• train beads.  Another find from my toy closet, but you can also use penne pasta or cheerios and a string.  Just make sure that whatever you bring for beading isn't a choking hazard. 
• Max and Ruby paper dolls.  I printed these from the nick jr. website, covered them with clear contact paper and added a few strips of velcro so the clothes would stay on if she held them up.  I wouldn't print print too many of the outfits.  Too many choices leads to all the choices in a pile on the floor.
• Action figures/toy cars.  Again, I raided my toy closet but you can get little disney characters or rescue vehicle cars from the dollar store.
• Reusable coloring pages.  These are just printed coloring sheets of a few characters my daughter likes put inside of clear binder sheet protectors.  If you color them using dry erase markers, the ink wipes right off with a wash cloth.  I also included a blank page and page with my daughter's name written on it. 

I had a an unused photo box that was collecting dust so I used that to hold everything.  You could just as easily use a large plastic food container or cloth shopping bag or tote bag.  If you are planning to take this on airplane, a bag would likely fit under the seat better than a box. I kept the box on the front seat and handed her one thing at time to play with.  Of course, I also packed lots of her favorite snacks and water bottles.  I also made sure that she had lots of time to run around before we got into the car.  Overall, the trip went pretty well.  The busy box entertained her for about 2 hours and then she napped the rest of the way.  I did have lots of band aid wrappers to pick off of the floor when got home, though!