DIY Pushpin Board

Pushpins are great for little hands to work on and develop their pincer grip. A good amount of pressure is required to push a pin down onto a board and the more the little hands practice this, the better for them. Its a fun pre-writing activity to keep minis entertained.

I wanted to try a few activities that needed a pegboard and a geoboard. We don't have both, so I DIYed a Pushpin Board, that now serves as both! I mounted it on a little box for ease of use and am very pleased with the results! 

This is definitely going down as one of my favorite and most productive DIYs. So much learning is a single toy! This is a long post with tonnes of pictures, but definitely worth scrolling through if you are a DIY fan like me who has a little one at home, who you want to keep busy creatively :)

Here are a few activity sheets for our pushpin board. These are great for developing pincer grip and fine motor skills.

• Colour Match - poke the pins on the coloured dots based on colour.

Colour Match

• Number Sequencing - wrap rubber band around the pushpins (0-1,1-2,2-3...etc) in order of numbers.

Number Sequencing

• Letter, Shape and Pattern Tracing - poke pins along the outlines.

Pattern Tracing

Letter Tracing

• Sticker Match - wrap rubber band around the pushpins of similar stickers.

Sticker Match

• Count and Match - wrap rubber band around pushpins of pictures with their corresponding number. 

Count and Match

• The Mini came up with a new activity as well... Random pattern making the pushpin and rubber bands.

Spray the ABC!

Here is yet another fun little game related to letter sounds and this one involves a spray bottle! Need I say more!? :D 

The 3 activities we did on letter sound identification were much loved by the Mini. Listing them here, in case you have missed them. 

• Letter Sounds and Object Match
• Letter Sound (of colours) Car Park 
• Object Hunt and Letter Sound Match - Sensory Play

For this activity, I first secured our wall behind, by taping a water resistant sheet on the wall over which I taped a sheet of paper. On this I had randomly written letters. Along side was a basket filled with random objects and a little spray bottle. The Mini had to pick an item, find the first letter of that item on the paper and spray it! Then move on to the next item until all are done and all letters are sprayed on!

The glee on his face says it all! :D

He had a blast with this one. Along with learning his letter sounds, he was also working his finger muscles by using that spray bottle  - double whammy! :)  I love such fun filled learning activities.

This activity took me less than 15 minutes to set up and minimal effort to clean up. I left the sheet on after he had completed one round of the activity. In just a bit, the paper dried up and was all ready for another round! I was delighted that the paper held for 3-4 rounds of play until the mini decided to attack it all over and sprayed every inch of it with water when it finally gave up and tore! :D

Clips (Paper and Clothes Clips) Activity Ideas

Last couple of days we have been doing a few simple fun activities using chart paper, paper clips and clothes clip. Primarily for improving fine motor skills while also reinforcing numbers and letters recognition and colours matching. These tiny little clips or pegs as they are also called, are great for developing a good pincer grip in little fingers.

When I first introduced the wooden clips to my little boy, a few months ago, it was for a name recognition activity. He found it really hard to work them. He was unable to open the clips. His tiny fingers were not ready for them and so I kept them aside for a few months and we used plastic clips for the activity instead. 

More recently. we again tried our hands at the wooden clips and this time he was able to work them perfectly! This time around, I first let him work on an activity that used plastic clips, then paper clips and finally we moved on to wooden clips. The difficulty level increased step by step and I am guessing that helped him get the hang of it.

Sharing here, the simple games we played and enjoyed using paper clips and clothes clips. 

Object Hunt and Letter Sound Match - Sensory Play

The little one's fondness for letter sounds is still very fresh and so am trying to make the most of it by thinking up new activities and games related to phonics. Our first two letter sound activities were much loved by the Mini. Listing them here, in case you have missed them. 

• Letter Sounds and Object Match
• Letter Sound (of colours) Car Park 

For this letter sound activity, I brought in some sensory play as well. I collected random items from around the house (Onion for O, Fork for F, Garbage Truck for G, Road Roller for R... etc). I used our rice bin as a base, in which I hid in these random objects. The little guy had to search through the rice bin and find these items one by and one and then match them with the letters written on sheets of paper, based on the starting letter of the items.

He was able to figure out the the starting letter of most items, while need a little bit of help with some. This is a very easy to set up game for toddler just starting out with letter sounds. They not only get familiar with everyday object and their names but also learn letter sounds and eventually to spell the names of these objects.

Rainbow Rice ABC Hunt | Sensory Play Ideas

A few weeks back, we made our own own Rainbow Rice at home. It is nothing but regular rice but in very pretty colours. These are coloured in food colouring and so are completely taste safe in case your little one decides to give them a little taste! If you have not made your self a bath of this pretty rice, do head over to my post on DIY Rainbow Rice and get cracking! It is super simple, you will be done in no time!

Once we had our rainbow rice ready, the first thing I did was to set up a Rainbow Rice Bin for him. I just let him explore and feel the coloured rice using different spoons, scooping tools and cups. There was no agenda, or plan. Just some fun rice play.

This time around, I gave the rainbow rice bin a more structure and combined our ABC foam puzzle to make it a fun ABC hunt game! I just took out the letter pieces from the puzzle, dunked them into the rice bin to hid them and then got the Mini to fish them out one by one and put the puzzle pieces back together!

The colourful rice and the colourful letters pieces of the puzzle went so well together that it was a riot of pretty colours! You could do this with wooden or plastic puzzle pieces too. I just found that the size of our foam ABC puzzle pieces were just the right size for this game so used them. Kept him happy and busy for a good amount of time as he wanted to do it over and over a few times!

Dump the ABC!

If you know my Mini a little, you will definitely know about his obsession for ABCs! He is truly madly deeply in love with the letters of the Alphabet that anything to do with letters, he is happy! Reading the wordings on our Tees, subtitles on TV, pages of books... well anything at all! :)

To encourage this interest of his, I set up lots of activities around letters for him. We have done letter recognition activities, letter cases matching activities and more recently have begun doing letter sound activities as well. 

This post is about a super fun little game that I made up for him, of course to do with letter and his favourite vehicle - the dump truck! The idea just popped up in my head and I couldn't wait to try it out. 

It is based around upper and lower case letters identification and matching. Mini knows his upper and lower case letters so this activity helped to reinforce that knowledge in a super fun way. 

He had to 'drive' his little dump truck, loaded with a capital letter at a time, through a maze that has lower case on either sides in random order. He had to find the matching lower case letter for the upper case letter that he is carrying in his dump truck and 'dump' the upper case letter at the correct dump spot! :D 

It was a super hit. Please go and try it if your tiny is a vehicle lover like mine! :)

Letter Sounds (of colours) Car Park

After the success of our first letter sound activity, I set up this second one for my little boy a few days back. This one too revolved around letter sounds but with a little twist. I set this game up like a fun car parking activity since my son loves parking his little cars and in fact just like watching actual vehicles being parked!

I used a long sheet of paper on which I drew a little track or a ramp. At the far end I added a few parking slots. On each parking slot, I added a sticky note and wrote a letter written on each. I placed a few of his toy cars at the other end of the ramp. 

He was to identify the colour of each car and then figure out the starting letter of the colour of the car, 'drive' it down the ramp and finally park the car in the corresponding car park marked with that sticky note letter! That is, Green car - G, Orange car - O, Brown / Blue / Black car - B etc. 

And so, he had fun with his little cars while practicing some letter sounds! :)

Guess the Letter - a Touch and Feel Game

I have been wanting to try a touch and feel activity with the Mini for a while now. An activity mainly focusing on his sense of touch. So, I had planned this particular game as a blindfold game initially, but turns out the little fellow is afraid of the dark and simply refused to wear the blindfold! 

Well...so, I had to DIY an empty cardboard box as plan B!

I cut out openings on the sides of the box and placed a bowl full of wooden letters inside. I made sure the Mini couldn't see the letters. He had to put his hands inside the box through the side cutouts and just touch each letter, feel it and try to guess without peeping! 

It took him a few attempts to understand the game and then he was on a roll! Honestly, it amazed me that he was able to do this activity way better than I had imagined. I did not think at 3 he would be able to get the concept and actually get going with the guessing. But he did! I am proud of my little guy and am glad I did try this with him.

The game was a huge hit with him, that he went on and on... Here he goes! :)

Popsicle Sticks - Upper and Lower Case Letters Match

The first activity that we did around upper and lower case identification was the one with building blocks. It was a fun little DIY that the Mini loved and I give that activity credit for actually helping him identify most of the lower case letters. 

So, ever since then I wanted to do a few more activities around the different cases and finally got around setting this one up. It is a simple DIY and can be easily made with items available around the house. I love cardboard box DIYs and this is one of the easiest of them all!

You can use simple plain coloured popsicle sticks for this, but I had fancy coloured ones and I loved the pop of colour they brought in to the set up as a good contrast to the brown of the cardboard box. So, its not a must that you use coloured popsicle sticks here, but if you like pretty things like me... try to get them! :D They should be available in most stationery supply stores.

This activity not only helps in upper and lower case letter identification and association, it also helps work on the fine motor skills of those little hands pushing the popsicle sticks through the slots on the cardboard. Mini had a lot of fun doing this over and over and after almost 6 months, he still enjoys playing with this DIY :)

Letter Sound and Object Match

Identifying the starting letters of words is one of Mini's latest favourite games. We play this orally multiple times a day, I just ask him 'what is the first letter of...' and he tries to guess the letter of the word. Of course I need to stress on the starting letter of each word, as he is just getting started on letter sounds.

So a couple of days back, I set up a game around his new interest. I used random stuff from around the house for this game. I wanted him to get familiar with letter sounds with everyday items first, before we move on to more complex words. I am very new to phonics too, in fact I am learning it along with him. I have no idea on how to teach him letter blending and so on... in fact for now, I plan to go slow on it and let his teachers at school take the lead, while just build a strong basic foundation of simple letter sound!

So, all the random stuff that I gathered, I put in a big basket and placed it along side a sheet of paper. I wanted to be able to quickly change the letters, so used sticky notes to mark letters on the sheet of paper and made little lanes. He had to pick one item at a time from the basket and place it in the corresponding letter lane based on the first letter.

Just as I expected, the little fellow wanted a variation in letters after playing it two times and I was glad I had used sticky notes, so I could easily change the letters for a new round of the same game. He did well on most items and needed my guidance on a few. Overall, he enjoyed it and I am sure we will be playing this a lot in the coming days.