Our very hungry caterpillar

Keya is fascinated by the Very Hungry Caterpillar story by Eric Carle. I find it equally lovely too. We don't have the book yet, but we have a caterpillar puzzle that has been gifted to us by a friend. And we watch the story online at least once a day at this site: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/online-storytime-books-toys/379003588/ (third story in this list).

This morning we decided to make a caterpillar out of bottle lids. I've been collecting them for ages now and have quite a large collection of various colours and sizes. I got the idea from another blog and here is the product, based on whatever raw material we had at home.

We first tried sticking the lids together but it would not work due to the grooves on the lids. Also realised that sticking would not make the caterpillar flexible enough to crawl around. Then I found these small plastic coated wires that come twirled around electric appliances. I made holes in the lids on opposite sides and used little pieces of the wires to hold the lids together. That way they stay together and the caterpillar can really move and crawl around. Avoided the temptation of adding too many lids. Used a piece of a pipe cleaner for the antennae. Have stuck some clay for the eyes until I can buy googly ones or think of something else around the house for eyes.

Now we are having fun taking our caterpillar around the house and making it eat through a lot of food... hthe poor little thing's bound to have a stomach ache by tonight! :)

Necessity forces mothers to innovate!

I find myself continuously scouting the net for different ideas to entertain the toddler. No mother will deny that it is a very hard task! Plus the idea is never to just pass the time, right? You need to inculcate a variety of learning, encourage skill development, not to mention throw in values, etc etc. Especially since we have moved to Germany and the day care avenue for new games and activities is pretty much gone from her life, the kiddo displays perpetual boredom. Whatever new toys only get so much attention before they get branded as 'old' like the tons others lying around the house.

Anyway. A friend suggested looking up flea markets for great bargains and so we went to this KinderFlohMarkt on Sunday. It was a great experience [a Pune equivalent both in terms of spread and scale would be a "Bhavya Pradarshan"! Can't explain that even if I tried, so non-Puneites kindly ignore]. Some of the items were used but they were in good condition. We decided to use our judgement on what passed and what didn't and went ahead and shopped.

We bought a few toys for the tod, but the most exciting one was this collection of alphabet and number mats for almost nothing. An unbelievable bargain! It is now day 3 and I think I have brought home a treasure:
We played with the mats the traditional way, i.e. pieced the mats together in the order of alphabets and letters. We tried various variations, making long trails or making simple words from letters she knew.

Today we tried something totally different. We made a huge game out of the mats. It took a lot of prepping: First we separated the base and alphabet/numbers, then spread the base mats in a line starting from the bedroom into the living room with about a foot between every two mats. Then we made little chits and wrote down some simple actions on them - bark like a dog, moo like a cow, touch your toes, jump up high, etc.

The game went like this: Roll a dice, jump the number of mats equal to the number on the dice, find and fit the alphabet/number on that mat, then pick up a chit and act out what was written on it. Change player and continue. Kiddo not only enjoyed the game, enjoyed its numerous rules, often reminding me when I 'accidentally' skipped a step - like Aai, you forgot the chit! Of course, she could neither read the dice, nor count steps nor read the chits without help from me, but we had fun nonetheless.

She won both the games we played, needless to say. But the ultimate winner was her mother, considering we spent a whole hour playing with the mats! :-)

Update: We've since discovered even more ways to play with the mats - hubby made blocks/cubes out of 6, then 16 and then all 36 mats. We are also sorting by colour, learning alphabets and numbers and even made a hopskotch!