Fun blocks

Returning the school bag

It's time for us to return Ruth's school bag with the puzzle, game and books that were lent us. So I quickly took a couple of photos of this "puzzle". She has had fun seeing which shapes can be exchanged and enjoys seeing if she can make different patterns. I have loved watching Hannah enjoy this so much - I think she played with it more than Ruth did. It was a challenge for Hannah to get the pieces to fit. She stuck to the same colours and it was lovely to watch her learn how to try turning the piece as well as flipping them over if it did not fit the first time.

Build and boogie

It did not take Ruth long this morning to get back to her new games. I got some nice zip lock bags for all the different things (in front of the bag next to her) which helps keep all the pieces together of each game (and helps to show Hannah to play with one thing at a time and then pack up). Ruth asked me to time her this morning with building the parrot and I was amazed that she did it in just over 1 min (75seconds). It's fun to watch her working out different ways of building it - not sticking to the same order for the pieces.

One of the things I did not mention yesterday was the music cd we got too. Ruth has now learnt how to get the cd playing again as she listens to it over and over. She is already singing along to all the songs and dancing and doing actions where she can.
So creative with these shapes. Well done Ruth. This is her worm or snake.

Correspondence School Started

Ruth was so excited when she saw that a bag had arrived in the post today from the Correspondence School. I was so pleased to see we don't even have to pay for the return postage when we are done with the bag.
Within in no time she was busy with the puzzle. She has not had much experience with ones like these - so it took her a little while to work it out the first time. We had to direct her a little on the first one by saying things like "try put the beak in, now put the eye" ect.

As soon as I got all the little dots cut out she was placing them on the butterfly. She got a bit frustrated with the ball puzzle as the frame kept moving. I held that still for her and she quickly worked out how to get all the others in. With the colours all together too - you can see how on the left she has split the reds. We told her that was fine (her big sister had pointed it out and said it was wrong). But we explained that there was not right and wrong with this puzzle. It was for experimenting and trying different things. It's great that these games are now ours and she can often come back to them and try different things.
Hannah and Ruth checking out the books that came with the pack too.

Then the family had a game with the butterfly. Throwing the dice and then putting that coloured spot onto the butterfly. Hannah does not know the names for black or white but was also able to match them up nicely. It's not a struggle for Ruth at all, but she is more likely to make a mistake with the colour name. I think often it's because she does not look properly. Once she looks and things about it she always gets it right. :-)

It was great to see her understand the idea of just doing different things with these shapes.

While playing around she put them together like this and I told her they looked like cat's eyes.

And hour later she was playing with them again and this time decided to match up the colours.

She has already had so much fun with all the new games (and she only started at 4pm).

A day from long ago

Playing on the dinosaur slide before everyone arrived. I was getting my camera on and so asked her to wait - you can see she was already on her way down and had to use her legs to keep her up. When Rachel told Nana about today Ruth made sure to mention the dinosaur. :-)
So our morning was spent at a History Museum. They have a little town done up and the girls had a great time.
Trust Ruth to find the musical instrument in the shop.

Ruth had a turn the butter churn.

After the shop and bakery they got to see what housework was like in the old days. She enjoyed scrubbing this desk. She has a look on her face as it to say "what's the problem - you just scrub".

She also wanted to do some washing.

A lovely old water pump in the street. Ruth had a go too (I just did not get a photo).

Every evening Ruth wants to do some "Maths" before bed. When she worked on these before she got stuck on this one. So we played a game (below) where I hid some of the animal shape. She could still easily guess what it was and so when she came back to the shapes she could do it really quickly.

She brought her chair over and felt like she was having "school".

The next one she did. I love the way she uses the same colour if she can.

Geostacks

Ruth was excited when I got this game out this evening. Sorting colours was no problem.
Then sorting by shape.

Then finding a shape in a specific colour.

Then putting two bits of information together.

Then to put two shapes on top of each other. She decided to use just one colour for each set but I had to show her that there was only 1 of each, so the squares on the left had to be different colours.

Shapes, colours and counting

These shapes have been out for a while now so I decided it was time for them to be packed away. But I always like to make sure we have all of the pieces. So I asked Ruth if she could sort all the pieces into the different shapes and colours and make sure there are 4 of each. She then decided to even pack the colours on top of each other in the container. Her counting is really good although she sometimes says the colour wrong. If she gets the colour wrong I will just have to ask "what colour is it" and then she will think a bit and get it right. It was also nice to spend time talking about the different shapes.