Jashley's little corner

Because of the recent holiday vacation I was finally able to set up a dedicated space for Jashley's activities at home. I have been meaning to do this ever since I have learned about Montessori style of teaching.

When Jashley was still a baby we set up a play area in her room upstair, but when I started working again and my parent in laws were the one who's taking care of her during daytime, they opted to just bring some of Jashley's toys downstairs and let her play at the living area, in that case they can also do other household chores while Jashley is playing. She was also started crawling that

time so we think that letting her play downstairs is much safer. We just kept on changing the toys that we were bringing downstairs according to what we think she likes to play. When she gets a little older and was able to move on her own and able to demand what toy she wants to play, we decided to give her an easy access of her toys in our living instead of frequently asking us to get a toy for her. We just stuff it in a box every after play. Until one box became insufficient for all her toys which led us to provide her, her own space at the living area. Having read some articles about Montessori Education is also another factor that led me to push through with this plan.

According to Dr. Maria Montessori, MD, the founder of the Montessoi Method of education, "To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely".

This is what Jashley's little corner looks like now. We already got rid the old wooden sofa that was here before to give way to this play area of my Li'l lady bug.

I wanted Jashley to have a freedom in choosing what toys she wants to play or what activity she wants to do.In that way she will become more independent.It is more than a month already since we create this area for her and I already notice a little improvement on her independence. Unlike before when her toys was all stuffed in a box, she's still need a minimal assistance from us in opening it and finding where are the toys she wants. Her playing time alone is now longer compare before because she have now an easy access on her stuffs. Currently we were teaching her to put away one toy/material after she finished using it, and before getting another.

Some Montessorian suggest to have a different area designated for different activities,  but of course it won't work if you have a limited space like ours. I just need to find a way how will I organized it to make it more clean and beautiful because I notice that sometimes she gets overwhelmed with too many toys/materials around her and ended up doing another activity without completing the first one. We also put up an activity table for her so she will not end up doing her activity anywhere, as we used to do most of our activity before on floor.

See how my Li'l Lady bug loves her own place so much, as she was always there most of the time.

making "kalat"

reading

solving puzzles

practicing her scissor skill

busy with coloring books

building a tower

loves to stay inside her castle

snacking 

taking her nap at the castle

watching television 

another favorite spot when watching

Till next time. Bye-bye!

DIY: Pasta Beads

I have been planning this beading project for weeks now, I have already accumulated all the materials needed but can't find time to do it because we're pretty busy at work now plus all the stuffs and preparations we need to do for our Christmas party. Finally I was able to do it last week since I was on my 1 week Christmas leave.

These pasta beads are actually easy to make, but will need several hours to let them fully dry.

Materials:
-macaroni pasta
-food coloring
-plastics/ziplocks

Steps:
Put about a half cup of macaroni pasta (uncooked) inside a plastic, one for each color you want to make. Add 10-15 drops of food coloring, or you may mix alcohol with the food coloring first before pouring into the macaroni, I guess it will be easier to dye the pasta this way.

Seal your plastic and shake until all pasta is fully dyed. Yo may ass more dye if you want a brighter color.

Open the plastic and allow them to sit for  awhile.

Then lay them out on a tray lined with plastic to let them dry fully.

Beading activity is a great fine motor skill activity. I have been engaging Jashley with this kind of activities lately to help her refine her movement. I love that even her concentration skill is developing with this activity.

We use colorful fuzzy pipe cleaners with these DIY beads for our beading activity, you may use strings or ribbons tied on one end for older kids.

We have used this also on one of our sorting and counting activity, that will help her building her math skills.

That's it for now. We're looking forward for more activities using these colorful pasta beads.

DIY: Movable Flat Marble Alphabets

Most of the Montessori Teaching tools I am checking online were a little expensive. And If you know me so well, this frugal Mamma won't spend much on those expensive items, I will always find a much cheaper alternative or rather make my own.

I am wanting to buy the Melissa and Doug movable letters since I saw them on the bookstore last month but the price of it was way way out of my budget. We have a set of these magnetic ones that I bought from the toy store for around 100php but the set only consist of 1 piece per letter, meaning I have to buy a few more set because some activities that I have in mind would require around 2-3 pieces of some of the letters. For example; a spelling activity of Lady Bug's name, her 2 names will be needing 3 letter L, If I'm going to buy 2 or 3 more set of these letters that would cost me 300php.

So I have been searching for a cheap alternative and that would only mean DIY. I am so happy when I found a site that has a step by step instruction for a DIY Movable Flat Marble Alphabets. I'm sure that those flat marbles were so cheap and can be bought on the local flower shops.

You wouldn't believe how much I spent on this project. The print-out for the disk letters which I layout on Photoshop and the flat marbles are the only items I paid for that is intended for this project, and it only cost me 60php for the 2 packs of flat marbles that contains around 60pcs each pack and 5php for the print out. Glue and paint brush were items from previous projects. I was able to make 4 pcs (1 capital and 3 small letters) of each of the letters of the alphabet for less than 100php.

So following the instruction from this site, we now have our own DIY Movable Flat Marble Alphabets that we can use on our next activities.

Here's my Little Lady Bug having her name spelling activity using our movable letters.

That's it for now, if you want to have a copy of my movable disk letters you may download from this link, and fit it on an A4 size paper. Thanks for stopping by!

DIY: Halloween Clown Costume

Sharing you my DIY Halloween Costume that Jashley wore on our company Halloween Party last Month.

Materials:
tulle (I used around 2.5 yards of tulle or 0.5 yard per color)
elastic/garter
ribbons
pompoms/buttons
bow-tie
plain sando/shirt
scissor
glue gun & glue sticks
sewing stuffs
colorful stripped tights

Procedure:
For the tutu skirt.
1. Measure waist. Make your elastic into loop and sew the overlap ends (subtract 2-3 inches smaller as the elastic will stretch)
2. Cut your tulle into strip. The length should be twice of your desired skirt length. The number of pieces of these strips will depend how full you want your skirt.

3. Put the elastic onto something that can hold it nicely for you.

4. Fold the tulle strips in half, put the folded end of the strip under the elastic, open the folded end, then slip up the other end through it to make a slipknot. Repeat the process until the entire elastic band is covered with tulle. Make sure that the knots were tight by pulling them, so it won't look lumpy on waist.

For the top.
1. Get a plain shirt/sando. In my case since I don't want to spend much money on this project, I just used whatever plain top available on my daughter's closet.

2. Sew a row of brightly colored buttons or pompoms. Better if you have large ones but since I only have small pompoms, what I did was make a tulle flower first then used the pompoms as a center ornament for the flower to make it look bigger.
3. Sew a length of ribbon on each front side of the top. These ribbons represents the suspenders of  the clown pants.
4. Sew a bow-tie under the chin area of the top. In my case since I don't have a bow-tie, I made it using the scrap tulle from the tutu skirt, you can use other fabric if you have one.

For the bottom I just bought a colorful stripped tights that she wore under her tutu skirt. For the shoes, clown shoes are usually big and over-sized but since I don't want to spend much for this costume we just settled on whatever shoes she have that will look fine on her outfit.

So there you go that was my DIY clown costume for my little cutie clown here. This is so easy that I managed to make this a night before the event.

By the way I DIY'ed also her colorful hair clips. You just need to cut a few strip of ribbon of the same length, fold them in half and glue their ends, take 1 folded strip of ribbon put a small blob of glue on the ends, layer your next folded strip slightly over the initial strip. Continue the entire way around your flower. For the embelishment I used an old ribbon from one of her broken hair clips and glued it at the center of the flower. Then attached a clip under the flower. Easy peasy.

Till next DIY. =)

Playful Parenting Is My Solution

Eversince I found out that I am having a baby girl, I already envisioned "us" doing and enjoying a lot of things together, and one of those is this. When I started working again, one of my worry wss that Jashley will become more attached to her lolo and lola than to me because they are the one who is taking care of her while we're on our job. So thus playful parenting became my solution.

I always make sure that during weekends or holidays we have a precious time together doing fun & enjoyable things that allow her to learn and us to bond. And because I love crafts it meant fun for me too and also become an outlet for my DIY fantasies.

Here are some of the activities we had during the recent APEC holidays. 

I let her stick stickers on the door and some on my arms & legs. 

Next is these colorful Popsicle sticks. I just trace a Popsicle stick on a plain paper to make some shape patterns and color them in different colors that will be a guide on what Popsicle color she have to use. After completing the shape, I explain to her the attributes of that particular shape. All you need are some popsicle sticks, a paper and a crayons or a markers. 

Then she discover another activity she can do with these colorful sticks. I left her for awhile and came back to this busy little bug. 

I asked her what she's doing, her reply was "I'm building a castle". Afterwards she tries to fit herself in but found out that only her favorite bear can fit in, 

so she decided to rebuild it and made sure that she will fit in this time. 

The next day I made this container out of an empty milk carton, I put a colorful construction paper on top and a slot on each color that will correspond into what Popsicle stick she have to insert. 

This will not only make her master her color recognition but it is also a great fine motor ability exercise using her pincer grasp to pick up the sticks and push them through the slot. 

This was a hit for her since she kept on asking for this the entire day. 

If the previous activity was a hit, this next one is a little miss for her, after inserting the shoelace for about 2-3 holes in each shape, she already gave up and don't want to touch the activity again or maybe she's just not yet ready for that kind of activity. 

I'll keep this for now and wait until she become ready.

But among all those activities we did, I bet that her favorite was this. This is actually not part of the activities planned for that holiday, the original plan was to bring her in the play area at the mall since she was recently bugging us that she wanted to swim on balls. But unfortunately we wasn't able to bring her to the mall for some reasons. I am just lucky that I was able to squeeze-in those playtime in between. Anyway, in order to fulfill the promise that we made to her, Hubby brought out her inflatable pool and bought those toys at the nearby market, but since the price of the ball were too expensive for 10 pesos each compare to the one that I saw at the toy store which sold in bulk, Hubby decided to just buy a few pieces and will just fill it up next time. 

My little girl was so happy and keep on hugging and kissing and saying thank you to her Daddy.

This style of parenting maybe time consuming in terms of preparation but I like it that way, its my way of making her feel that I love her and I enjoy playing with her.