This is how we learn [1]: Wooden Animal Toys 🦒🐯🐒🐘

Hello everyone!

Everytime I want to post something in the community, I open my folder where all pictures, toys and activities I did with Caleb over time are fairly organized. I call it "Home Edders Posts". There are so sooooo many, you have no idea. And I mean it. I spend minutes everytime deciding what to share with you. And I always collect dozens of other pictures of the educational activities we are currently doing. Somehow I feel like it's a bottomless bag from which I keep taking and sharing with you and it never ends.

So today I said "I really need to start sharing all these toys and games pictures I have, tell you how they helped in our learning process". Because you know...It's true that I did with my son (as I said it already, starting with the age of 1year and 3 months) a lot of learning activities but we also PLAYED. A LOT!

Imagine this: my baby boy was all over me, from morning till night. Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night and stay awake for hours. That was around 8 months till 1.5yrs. Not every night, BUT yet....very often! And I could do...shit! I consider I did my best with his routine and all but he would wake up anyways. There was nothing I could do at the moment and I sooo prayed for it not happening anymore because I was so so tired. And he wouldnt stay with mu husband. Only me. He was very very depending on me. Maybe because he was breastfeeded...Anyways, how the things are now (he can stay to my mom's for days and not missing me, not even asking what I do)....I wonder how is this possible.
I'm telling you this because those nights with him being awake we would only play. Day and night, we were playing. Caleb being so little, our learning moments were short ( I mean the ones I used to design for him like color or shape sorting, fine motor skills development etc). So basically we would PLAY 70% of our time together. And then was food, bath, walking, outside time etc.
And he was that kind of child that needed nonstop attention and nonstop playing, nonstop explanations, nonstop Asking why and what is this?

And because of this nonstop PLAY TIME, my son knows a lot of things for his age. He is a smart kid in general, but he knows so much because I invested my time playing with him, reading and teaching. And he learned all this only by playing together.

One more thing. I feel that just around the time he was 2, I could breathe and take my life gradually back. By this time, I was barely cooking or taking care of me or the house. It sounds strange, but it is. I like to say (at least for me and in my head) that I was a dedicated mom to my child and put him first). Probably I could have done it differently, but I chose to spend my time with him and I have ZERO REGRETS. Other moms would say "he's manipulating you. He could stay alone if you let him. He'll get used to it. Let it be. Let him play alone etc". Ofc I've let him play alone, this is IMPORTANT part in their development, but what I'm trying to say here is that I chose think this way:

"I know there will come a day when he wont need me as much as he does now. I chose to put my time playing with him all day long and teach him about the world. Why not having a good start?"

Plus, my son was a smart kid and I noticed it really early and I considered I need to be involved and pass him all the information his brain can take. And I did just fine, I think. It's not for nothing he got 165 score on the Binet-Simon Scale. This is a standard IQ test where child's intelligence is tested, both native and environmental or in other words, the way the child is educated and what information he got in early years).

So yeah, I hope you got yourself an idea of what I tried to say here. Buttom line is this:

WE PLAYED. A LOT.

We have dozens of games and toys, many of them being educational and toys that will arouse children's interest, develop their creativity, logical thinking, motor skills, and many other skills needed to be developed at this age. And I'm going to share them with you. It's like showing you how our day and hours were spent...Mostly on the ground, playing and learning!

So, let's get started. In my future posts I'll share with you more and more of our toys, books and games. I hope them to be an inspiration for you and if you can't buy them, maybe they'll serve you as an idea to make your own.

In this post I'll share with you our Wooden Animals. They're open ended toys, meaning they are toys that can be used in many many ways, depending on the child's abilities and creativity.

Staking Animals

I love this animal play set! In fact, I love all woonden toys. I think they're way better than plastic toys, for many reasons which I'm not gonna get into right now.
But kids love to play with anything...literally. 😁🤔

These open ended toys are great for role play, color sorting, animal sorting, story telling.
They're great to build with.

Stacking toys are great for developing gross and fine motor skills, dexterity, logical thinking. They're great for hand eye coordination as well and maybe for learning the spatial concepts like "under", "on", "left".

🐯🐒🦒🐘

I think the most interesting and important part is when they're trying to solve how to put the animals for not falling apart. They have to find different strategies to get it right. And this is called Problem solving skills, which is amazing.

BOOKS and ANIMALS

Another think we did was to take a look in the books and find some animals.
This is how he learned animals. Little by little.

We also tried to name all Animals in English.
Starting when he was little, I used to name objects, animals and whatever both in English and Romanian. My son knows hundreds of words in English. And he learned it this way. Me telling him while playing or reading.

And as you can see in the images, we associated our wooden animals to the ones in the book.

Play Time

Well, this is where the real FUN begins.
No rules, just play...
Creativity and imagination are highly worked on.

At one point, we even tried to sort the animals to farm and wild animals.

But the main attraction was the car rail that was already assembled some time before. So we used it to play with the animals.
Caleb wanted to put them all in a row (so he said).

The animals walked, jumped, run, slept , ate. All you can imagine. This is what play means..role play and fooling around.

We practiced English by naming every animal.
As we played, I talked about where animals live and how they live.

My son was around 2 years here, a bit less.

Fun fact: Caleb was never attracted to animals. Not even today. He knows all animals and their habitat and much more but if he had to choose, animal activities are at the buttom of his preferences.