All in 2-3 years
Reading books about topics I find interesting was put on a back burner for quite sometime before the whole world went into pandemic. When the pandemic forced businesses to take a break; workers to work from home and people to stay indoors, I found having more time in my pocket that I could possibly ask for. I rediscovered my love for reading and incorporated it back again in my daily life.
One of the things I am still slowly working on as of this moment is placing child-sized furniture and tools around the home for Kimi. I wanted my son to develop a sense of independence at an early age, and one of the easiest ways that I can encourage this in our home is by providing furniture that are child-appropriate and are of the same height as him.
We recently added a set of peg dolls, some wooden balls and building boards to complement our existing open-ended toys in the home.
I added the semi circles to widen the possibilities and iterations that he can do with his building.
As mentioned in my previous blog post, I recently joined an online membership community called Hands-on Kids Activities (HOKA) Club in which parents/educators are given access to thematic resources every month. No more endless researching and going down the rabbit hole (aka the internet) for me in search of activities or printables that would supplement Kimi’s learning.
When I started changing our home environment to adapt to Kimi’s need for exploration and learning, I began looking for activities that I can offer him.
The main reason why I wanted to setup a kitchen for Kimi is I wanted him to learn to wash his hands by himself. That was it! There was a lot of process involved before he can wash his hands.
Kimi started with his deep interest with country flags when he was just a little over 2 years old. It started when he stumbled upon a 14-minute video of the country flags in Youtube.
Whenever this particular video would come up he would then get up and dance in front of the television. Mind you, it was not even a danceable background music. Nonetheless, he would still dance as if it was a party music.
A little over two months ago Kimi did not have any art materials. I initially thought that it would be hard to maintain a home that has paints, crayons and markers.
I have only known about the term ‘open-ended play’ lately. What lured me in to jump in the bandwagon is the promise that if I only acquire toys for Kimi that would encourage open-ended play then I would not have to buy as much toys as I initially think I would as these toys are usually applicable for a wide-range of age group and does unleash a child’s creativity and imagination.
This is the first setup I did of Kimi’s shelves. I did this roughly 2 months ago when I started reading about the different teaching methods (eg. Montessori, Waldorf) It is not much but the effect that organising his shelves had on me was tremendous. I felt very happy and pleased with this!
