Christmas Themed Learning Activities for Toddlers

This month, we’re going slow (just like everyone else) so I integrated his 25 months activities with Christmas. 
1.  Transferring trees (soft candies) using a tong.
2.  Practicing the use of pegs.  I got him these small pegs to work on as he’s finding it difficult to use the bigger ones yet.  You can get these nowadays in any store,  they’re soft and easy to manipulate by little hands.  A good practice in preparation for the bigger pegs.

3.  Sorting coloured ribbons.  He sort different colours now, but still confused with naming the colours.
4.  Counting ornaments with tree foam crafts.  He loves this!

5. Rubber stamping in cards.  Mavi is writing cards for his friends, and Vito is joining as well. I bought him a box of cards to practice on, like opening the cards and stamping letters on it.  He enjoys doing it with his brother! The rubber stamps are from Melissa and Doug.

6.  Playdough and Christmas shapes cookie cutter plus ornaments! Lots of hand muscle practice


7.  Christmas tree puzzles.  Vito has been working with 2-pieces puzzles lately so I created these Christmas tree puzzles to go along with the season.
8.  Painting Christmas tree ornaments.  Again, I got these from a local store.
9. Tweezing pompoms and putting in a ring; a twist from the typical tweezing activity and perfect for hand-eye coordination!  Another version of this is to match the pompoms to the colour of the ring.  The rings are from ring counter toy.

We will be doing these activities for the entire month, usually after we read books which we do on a daily basis.  May you find this post helpful! 
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Practical Life Activities for Toddlers (24 Months) and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Vito turned 2 years old last month.  Aside from the letter t sound and tree themed activities, here are the practical life activities Vito worked on:

History Timeline Cards: Ancient Times

Up in the Shop is our World History: Ancient Times Timeline Cards and Booklet.  The file includes the following:

• 40 timeline cards of the ancient times (occurred between the period of 5000BC to 500BC). The timeline cards has
• 40 definition cards for each timeline card
• 3 pages of timeline sheets can be connected to form as a guide. The pages are in A4 paper size.

Check out how we used it here (History of Ancient Europe Study) and here (Study of the Timeline of European History).

Hope you like it, enjoy!

Get this here:

Object Baskets for Letters A to H

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I’ve been working hard for the past days organizing our object baskets for Vito’s phonics practice.  Vito knows his alphabet and numbers, he names half of the alphabet with their phonics sound.  Like he calls letter B as “bah”, and H as “huh”.  I guess this is the result of me teaching Vito the sound first, before the name of the letter itself. Something like “this is mmmmmmm, M” or “this is ssssssss, S”. 

What is an Object Basket

These are baskets that contain a letter along with 3 dimensional objects to match to the letter by beginning sound.  The concept behind this is similar to the object boxes of Montessori (for reading)  , but we are not going there yet.  The object baskets are simply for exploration, vocabulary and learning phonic sounds.

Assembling the Object Basket

Each of my basket has an uppercase and lowercase letter.  We are using the letters from Hape Uppercase and Lowercase puzzles and the Munchkin foam bath letters.  I wanted to add the magnetic letters from Melissa & Doug but I was thinking that there’s too much letters in basket already, so I’ll just reserve those for my future object boxes (reading). 

I wanted to add sandpaper letters but mine is a DIY years ago and its incomplete. I plant to get a set this Christmas as gift to self LOL but still waiting for the discounted price (hoping!).

Gathering objects is the most exciting part.  I would search in the kitchen, bedroom and my kids’ toys for appropriate objects to add in the basket.  Since Vito is only 2 years old, I limit the number of objects in the basket, maybe 3 – 5 only.  They don’t have that stamina and attention span for 10 objects so better keep it simple and avoid overwhelming the little ones. 

Object Baskets from Letters A to H

So I just completed these baskets, took photos and print the set so that it’s easier for me to assemble once we start with the activity (we’ll do this after the holidays).  Will display this on top of our shelf and worked on it after we do our daily routine of reading books.

A Basket:  alligator, ambulance, A foam letter, apple, A picture booklet

B Basket:  book, banana, block, B foam letter  and B picture booklet

C Basket: cow, carrots, C foam letter,  car and C picture booklet

D Basket:  dinosaur, diaper, Duplo, DIY sandpaper letter, letter D

E Basket: eye (McDonalds), elephant, egg (McDonalds), DIY sandpaper letter

F Basket: feather, four, letter F, upper and lowercase F, fork, flower, fish, fence, DIY sandpaper letter

G Basket: grapes, giraffe, goggle, upper and lowercase F, F foam letter,  DIY sandpaper letter

H Basket:  upper and lowercase F, DIY sandpaper letter, horse, heart, hanger, hippo, hammer, H foam letter

Ideally, we will work for on one letter a week, but this doesn’t always happen.  So I usually schedule the next change of basket after 2 weeks.  I am still gathering up objects for my second batch.  Hopefully I can finish it soon so I can share it with you.  And that’s it for the first set of my object baskets! Stay tuned for second set from I to P

Hope you find this inspirational!

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