learning is fun

Learning to draw at 15mths and 3 3/4

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My word of the week this week has to be drawing, as both kiddies are making leaps and bounds with their drawing abilities at the moment.

LM has well and truly discovered drawing now and would love to be doing it all day every day at the moment. I have held back from letting her have crayons for a while (for fear of her eating them) and she has amazed me with the magna doodle things. Then lately we got a couple of crayons out and she was in her element.PhotoGrid_1454505406334

She does pop them in her mouth from time to time but is gradually learning not to I think. She loves it though and often takes herself off to the little table in the conservatory and sits swinging her legs. She has fallen a couple of times bless her but she just wants to get right back up.

She doesn’t distinguish that much between paper and table though and I have to control my feelings about this and remind myself that it doesn’t matter if she draws on this table. I am still trying to keep the crayons contained though as I really don’t want find her drawing on a wall or sofa one day! So it was lovely at the weekend when we got out in the garden with the pavement chalks as I could really leave her to do as she pleased. Again it ended up in her mouth once or twice but only very briefly and on the whole she was absolutely loving drawing on the pavement.PhotoGrid_1454505585883

Monkey was loving it too and it was lovely seeing them do it together.

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His drawing is coming on leaps and bounds lately too. There is still a lot scribbling going on but they are usually something, at least in his mind, and are often roads. I was dead impressed a few days ago though when I was doodling while they were drawing and drew a tree with some grass by a river… And Monkey copied me! He did so well and it was lovely to see him create an actual picture of something.

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He’s also coming on really well with his writing. He has been writing his name for some time now but it has definitely improved and then the other day he wanted to draw numbers so he was again copying what I did, and did such a brilliant job! I was so proud of him! (excuse the bag of clothes in the background ready to go to the chairty shop!) Of course some aren’t perfect but who cares, what a brilliant effort, such a clever Monkey :).20160202_091315So as you can see there has been a lot of drawing going on in our house. Do your kids love to draw?

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Letter learning blanket

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My Mum, aka Nanny, is a very clever crafter and loves making quilts. We have so many fabulous quilts in our house, and they are all gorgoeus and so handy for various situations. Her most recent one has to be one of my favourites though. Because this one is a fab quilt for Monkey that as well as being a gorgeous quilt, it also doubles as a fun game! A game that will also help Monkey start to learn his letters.

Nanny has made this gorgeous letter learning blanket with pictures to accompany each letter.

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She has also made a set of matching bean bags with each letter on.

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Monkey adores this blanket and loves playing the letter game. He regularly brings the blanket or a bag of bean bag letters out to me as a clear sign he wants to play the letter game.

He’s actually pretty good at it too, of course he doesn’t always get every letter right (hardly surprising at only  2 1/2) but he does really well. You could easily make a smaller paper version of this game and I actually think it is a great way to just have fun with letters and help with the recognition of shapes with the sound.

So how does it work? 

Well, we lay the blanket out on the floor and tip all of the beanbags out on the sofa.

I then give him the letter beanbags one by one, sounding out the letter and at the moment I also say the word related to the picture on the blanket. I heard somewhere that it helps if you sound letters out as with the phonetic alpabet as it helps when they go to school and are learning to read, so we do that (or as near to it as I can remember!)

For example I give him the D beanbag and say “can you find Duh for Dog” and he runs off to the blanket usually repeating “duh for dog” finds the picture and the letter and then puts the beanbag down. He is very good at putting the beanbag letter on top of the letter on the blanket (rather than just in the square) and more often than not, the right way round. So I am quite impressed with him.

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He is a lucky Monkey having such a talented Nanny and he loves this game! Plus hopefully it is helping him to learn his letters, he is such a sponge and really loves to learn so it is great for him.

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