Practical life activities - washing the windows

Today's activity - Washing the windows

This one is really simple. While I am cleaning the windows using window cleaner, he is using a damp cloth on the lower parts. It's great to see how he copies my movements and really goes to town!

All you need here is a clean cloth and to be careful they don't get too close to any cleaning products (sometimes easier said than done)! I usually encourage him to clean the patio doors so he isn't standing on a chair.

For older children a spray bottle with water and a squeegee can make the process more elaborate. Remember to give them a cloth to mop up the excess water!!!!

Practical Life Activities - cooking

Today's activity looks at cooking with your toddler.

When I say cooking I really mean combining the ingredients and (if your toddler is anything like mine) having a good taste!!!

Making Scones

Firstly, this activity takes quite a bit of preparation on your part. It's best to have ingredients measured out and in easy to pour containers. You also have to leave the recipe to one side and hope for the best!!!

So, we use flour (about a cup full), butter (a small chunk), milk (to combine the mixture), baking powder (a tablespoon), a grated apple and a handful of raisins. Then allow them to mix until they are happy! Bear in mind you will probably have flour overboard and loose a few raisins to your toddlers tummy!!! If they can manage, help them to blob the mixture on to a baking tray. If not you can do this later (that's what I do for now).

With all these activities it's important to allow the child to have freedom to carry out the activity without interfering too much. When they have finished and gone off to play you can mix it better. Try not to get into the activity too much unless they ask for help or it's getting out of hand. If need be, take the bowl away and ask them to help you clean up either wiping the surface of washing a spoon!

Other things we have tried when we need to get on and make dinner is: washing vegetables (yes, you will have to wash them again after), helping to put chopped veg into a pan, pulling leaves off the spinach and grating cheese (although he's a little bit small for this but it did keep him occupied until he'd eaten all the cheese)!

Got an idea for us to try out? Leave us a comment below.

When Babies become Toddlers - practical life activities

What happens when your baby isn't a baby anymore? They start to waddle after you and copy what you do. They want to be involved in everything you are and don't leave you alone for a second....sound familiar? Well, here is a short guide to helping your child to become independent whilst you work together. 

This is the stage that Montessori introduces a lot of practical life activities. What is this? Well, basically all the day to day chores and things you do around the house. Washing up, watering the plants, cleaning the house, folding and sorting the washing - the list is endless. So how can you involve your toddler in these activities? Over the next week we'll be posting several simple activities that you can do with your child that may help to make your life a little easier, while helping your little person gain some valuable life skills.

All these tasks can be adapted as your child grows and is capable of more complex tasks. Always try to plan ahead and only offer your child the things you are prepared to deal with. For example, many activities involve water. If your child is young you may need to limit the amount of water to avoid huge floods in your kitchen. As our little guy is still young, we give him very little water for these activities (something around 100ml) and we always have a floor cloth handy to mob up the inevitable spills. But remember it's all part of learning and important for your child to learn act and consequence.

Watering the basil

Today we show you watering the plants. A few weeks ago we planted some basil and now it is shooting up nicely. Our boy just loves watering it every morning and is almost able to do so alone. As watering cans often spurt water all over the place and are great outdoors but rather awkward for small indoor plants, we adapted our own waterer. We used a small plastic bottle and got some screw on rose available from most garden centres or from Amazon. 

Our waterer

We put the plant pots on a small tray and place them on his table with the waterer and he does the rest. Very simple and he gets to care for a living thing. For older children it is fun to plant the seeds with them and maybe keep a diary of the progress. Just make sure you pick something that sprouts within a day or two otherwise they may get bored waiting!

COMPETITION - World Book Day

It's competition time again here at Baby Steps to Independence.

This year World Book Day is on 7th March and as we are soooo fond of books we wanted to share a few with our readers.

Our little guy loves books so much that we are often sick of reading them by the end of the day. He enjoys hearing the same book several times in a row as he learns to predict and memorise the stories. We are giving away three farmyard tales: The Hungry Donkey, The Naughty Sheep and The Grumpy Goat.

For your chance to win simply let us know your little peoples favorite book by leaving a comment on this post. As always if you're our fan on Facebook you will automatically get a second entry.

The Winner will be announced on World Book Day so be sure to check back to see who won. Good Luck and happy reading.

Summer/winter time changes

So maybe many people breeze through the time changes and their children adapt well to an hour longer in bed (if only) but for those of you who struggle with an hour more or an hour less I thought i'd write a few notes on how we have reduced the strain of waking at 4.30am when our boy thinks its almost morning!

An hour in the life of our little guy is an eternity. We were commenting just yesterday how much we do in a day now we have him. No wonder we're in bed by 9pm!!!! So an hour change in time can be quite disruptive to a small body. How did we help him to adjust?

Like any change in routine we did it gradually. Two days before the clocks changed I started to move his routine by 15 minutes. He had dinner a little later and all the evening routines went on this pattern so he went to bed 15 minutes later than normal. The first night it made no difference to his wake up time the next morning but the following day I went another 15 minutes later (now 30 minutes later than his normal routine) and he stayed in bed about 15 minutes later the next morning. The third night was the same - routine 15 minutes later (now 45 minutes later than normal) - this is the night the clocks went back. This morning he woke at 4.15 (which would have been 5.15am on his old routine). I gave him some water and put him back to bed. I expected him to complain as it was near his normal wake up time of 6am, but as we had made a slow adjustment his body must have told him he needed a little bit more rest and he went back to sleep until 5.45am (which would have been 6.45am on his old routine). All in all not a bad start to Sunday morning!

Today we are keeping him on his normal times (which will be an hour earlier than his old routine). He doesn't seem to have noticed the few days of change and we feel well rested too so heres hoping our method has worked and he wakes at 6am tomorrow ready for the week.

Have you had any problems with the time change, or any solutions which might work better than ours? Please let us know.

Product review - Eating equipment

As our son grows we find we must purchase new products to accompany his growing skills. As we have found it hard to choose the right ones we thought it would be fun to share our review of products we have tried and tested. This post looks at the products we have used concerning mealtimes - from bottle to bowl.

MAM teets

When our son was born we made the decision to breastfeed him. We had also discussed me going back to week one morning a week starting when he was around 10 weeks. This meant we had to decide on a feeding method for those hours I wouldn't be around to feed him. I had always liked Avent feeding systems so we went ahead and got a breast pump and bottles. Firstly, expressing the milk was quite uncomfortable as I had to lean forward and at an angle and after a while it got very tiring. secondly, our guy was having non of it when it came to taking milk from the Avent bottle. Avent have now made a new system which allows mum to sit back while she is expressing and bottles that help to blend breast and bottle feeding. However, I had my pump and was not about to go and buy another so I made do. For our baby boy we searched the shelves to find something that resembled his normal milk packaging and came across MAM. The teets are softer and shaped in a more maternal way. They were a huge hit and we had no further problems. 

When it came time to start solids I investigated spoons and bowls. All the spoons seemed so big for such a little mouth and it is very uncomfortable opening your mouth really wide for each bite. We decided to opt for a small coffee/tea spoon. It was metal and had a short handle - the perfect size for our sons little hands. He was able to grip it comfortably and we made sure we chose one that was well rounded so there was no chance of hurting his mouth when we fed him.

MAM bowl

The bowl was a little more tricky. To start with we just used a lid of his bottle which we could sterilise but as he got bigger we needed to get him an appropriate bowl. We tried some plastic dishes but they were so deep he had trouble getting near the food. In the end we chose a MAM bowl which had a sucker to keep it on the tray of the highchair or table. Although the sucker is quite rubbish and so far our boy has managed to unsuck it every meal, the bowl is shallow and has one edge slightly deeper which helps him to get food onto his spoon. 

Doidy Cup

To accompany the bowl and spoon we needed a cup. We had tried a small shot glass when he was small and he had been confident using it but the fear of him breaking the glass and cutting himself was too much so we decided to look for something else. A friend of mine actually provided us with our cup as a lovely gift for our boy and it is perfect. It is called a Doidy cup and has a slanted shape making it easy for the child to drink alone with fewer spills. It is a winner in our house.

Travel high chair

As for the highchair, we decided that mealtime is family time and we wanted our boy to join us for meals at the table. This led us to purchase a travel high chair which fits securely onto one of our dining room chairs allowing our son to sit at the table with us. It has been great and also perfect for visiting people or eating out. 

If you have any best products you'd like to share we are always on the lookout for recommendations and would love to hear from you. Just leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

Bilingualism update

Our little man is one now and has begun to make sounds that sound like words. 

After the normal dada's and mama's we've had a series of English words such as more, door, and water. He also makes a couple of English animal sounds (horse, dog, sheep).

We spent a few weeks in England over Christmas and I noticed a new understanding of the English language from him. He began to understand a few simple commands or words in a sentence and often repeated a sound that resembled the word we were using. When we returned to Brazil I noticed he was understanding well in English but not in Portuguese. He seemed aware that there were two languages being used but he responded only to English. Now we have been back several weeks I see he is beginning to understand some Portuguese too. When we  are out people always talk to him and he seems to understand when they say bye.

As we only speak English with him at home we expected him to speak English first. So far he is meeting our expectations and his language development doesn't seem less than monolingual children of the same age.

We are prepared for his language development to be slower than his peers but maybe we will see it only in Portuguese. I'm also sure we will see a big difference when he begins nursery later this year where he will be surrounded by Portuguese and will learn quickly that he must use that language to be understood.