Formal learning activities?

Question

What, if any, formal learning activities are y'all doing with your LOs? I'm talking about anything beyond free play. I have no experience with kids and have no clue what I should be doing or when I should be doing it!

Answer

We purchased $2.99 flash cards off amazon with simple “first words” and pictures on them. He loves them and constantly dumps them out. He has his favorites like the robot, pumpkin etc. He’s probably learned the most from me reading or narrating our day, walk etc. 
Ex: On our morning walks, he may point out a deflated balloon on someone’s mailbox. I’ll say “that’s a blue balloon! All the air that’s been blown into it has leaked out!” 
(Side note: that effing balloon has been there for weeks 🙄) “yes that blue balloon is still tied and deflated on that white mailbox”

Answer

Free play is the best time for learning! 
"Get the red block" "show me the blue one" "wheres his nose?" 
All free play can offer millions of learning opportunities so never feel like you aren't doing enough! 
We point to things in books, do animal sounds whenever we see one, do body parts with ourselves and the dolls (i have a girl who loves dolls already haha), match colours, do puzzles, etc. All is free play but so many learning opportunities in each one. Some days its just "show me ___" and others its "find me the blue ____" pending on her attention span. We love puzzles here and my girl has learned to visually recognized her numbers just from a 0-9 number puzzle 🤷🏼‍♀️

Answer

Puzzles, coloring, sensory bins, fine motor activities like putting cotton swabs in the holes of a red pepper shaker, I want to get a sticker book. We do a lot of free play though, which is one of the best “activities” for this age.

Answer

A fun twist on flash cards: once they are relatively familiar with some of them, put them in envelopes. Then I let my daughter “open the mail”, and she loves it. She gets so excited when she sees the card and yells the word out. Haha. This entertained her for at least 30 minutes! 
We love sensory bins. We have done beans, pasta, and cotton balls.
Painting was rough, I’m not sure we were ready for that. Haha. 
Magnetic letters and numbers on a metal baking sheet has been fun. 
I think today we may try “frosting play dough”. 
We read a lot of books and talk about them, work on the shape sorter, and do puzzles. 
Pinterest is super helpful! 
We try to do at least an hour of “focused learning” a day. Broken up into about 15 minute increments.

Answer

Shape sorter, puzzles, reading, matching, sorting, drawing, flash cards. Right now we are working on letters and numbers. She’s got her animals and colors down. I think they’re at an age where they learn best through play-based activities.

Formal learning activities?

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