Saturday, February 13, 2010

Playing inside

It's been cold and rainy here for weeks now, and it's pushed me to get better at finding things for us to do inside. There are lots of places we can go around town when we get tired of hanging around the house. I know the location of all the fast food restaurants with toddler-friendly indoor playgrounds, and I know which malls are good places to go play. I know which inflatable jumping places to go to, and which local stores have play areas Carter can hang out in. But still, Carter would prefer to go to the park and play, and I can't say I blame him! I'm looking forward to being able to get back outside myself. There are so many great parks in this area, all of which are now cold and muddy. :-/

Here are some pictures from the last couple of days. I'm looking forward to a day when Carter and I can do craft projects. Right now he doesn't have the patience or fine motor skills for that, so we focus on drawing. I tape down a big sheet of paper on the island in the kitchen, and he can stand in his tower and draw.



He almost always draws swirls and spirals, but on this particular morning, he surprised me by drawing lines:



I asked he what he was drawing, and he said they were roads. He then wanted me to draw cars on the roads. It's interesting to see how he's thinking as he gets more and more verbal! He's getting better at working with crayons, too. There was a long period of time where he would just eat crayons, and though he'll still take a bite occasionally, he's mostly interested in drawing. And he prefers to draw on paper, rather than on everything else, yay.

This morning we got out the macaroni tub to play with textures and pouring. I had an empty paper towel tube on hand, and Carter became interested in filling it up with macaroni.



It was really interesting to watch him think his way through this. I stuck a paper cup in the bottom of the tube to close off one end and provide a base for it. He started by putting handfuls of macaroni in, with varying degrees of success. A lot of it fell on the floor instead. He then hit on the idea of scooping up the macaroni in cups:



And then pouring it from the cups to the tube:



This was very messy at first. it took him a while to get good at pouring the macaroni. He would tilt the cup too soon, and the macaroni would spill everywhere, or he'd tilt it too fast and lose a lot of the macaroni that way. But every now and then he'd get it exactly right and get most of the macaroni in the tube, and that seemed to satisfy him a lot. When the tube was full he'd pour it out and grin at the way it spread out all over the floor, and then start all over again.

A messy activity, to be sure, but a fun one. The macaroni makes great sounds as it hits the tile, and it goes everywhere. Cleanup is easier when we do this on carpet, but it's good for him to explore the physics involved, and for that the different surfaces are important.

He's starting to recognize that letters have different forms. He calls them "big" and "small" letters, but sometimes he'll say, "Grandpa T and Baby t", which I think he probably got from Michelle. He likes to match pairs of upper and lower case letters and put them on his magnetic board together. I tried to get a video of this the other day, but of course once the camera came out he was done. I did get him saying some words that start with "C", though.



I always give him a choice of a couple of different shirts to wear, and on the occasions when he doesn't refuse to wear a shirt at all he seems to enjoy picking one. The other day he picked out a shirt with a little pirate skull and crossbones on it, and said, "Pirate shirt, arrrrrrr!" It totally cracked me up! I tried to get him saying it on video, and this was the best I could do:



Doug and I have been super careful with our language, but both of us slipped in the last couple of days and said, "Oh, crap!" on a couple of occasions. Carter immediately repeated it after we said it, and we hoped it wouldn't stick. but this morning he would drop things and say, "Oh, crap!" So I think he's picked that one up. It could have bee a lot worse, though. Right? :-P

1 comment:

Debby said...

Love the videos!! Oh crap is a lot better that the other version...Love you and Happy Valentine Day!! Love you, Mom/Nana B