Caught on Video: Maia Draws A Story

I recorded the first part of this drawing session in my phone and the hubby wasn't very happy at how it turned out to be (super low resolution) so I had to take out the camera and asked her to describe again what her drawing was about. You could really tell that her attention span is already expanding because in the past she would most probably disregard our question and drop the entire activity and move on to a new one. She was restless like that. And most days, she really hates the attention and would cry for me to stop taking her videos. But these days (well for the last week at least), she's been very cooperative and seemed to understood why Mommy is fuzzing over her a lot.

Amazing really how she can now come up with a story without our prodding. Mind you, she just asked for a piece of paper here and shouted - "drawing ako, drawing ako". So I took out some scratch papers and handed her some. She initially wanted to write her name. I showed her how an 'M' is done but she ended up making a rectangle. She laughed at her version. Then she started doodling (zigzags mostly, she likes making those these days) and.so I asked her to draw me a flower because I could sense her restlessness. Voila! This is what she ended up with. Do we really have a story teller in the making here?

Maia making good use of her markers.

Weekend Favorites: Indoor Activities

Weekends are always marked with smileys in our household calendar. At 33 months, Maia is now fully aware when it's a weekend and she knows that she owns Mommy and Daddy during this time.

This past few days bore us witness to non-stop raining which looks to be stretching through the entire weekend with still another tropical depression coming in after we bid good-bye to typhoon Juaning. Well, we do not really feel bad being confined indoors since we rarely spend our weekends out. Weekends not only give us the perfect excuse to be lazy, it also never fails to tickle our creative side. 

Let me share with you some of our favorite weekend indoor activities:

1. Macaronis and Magnets

We have accumulated a lot of letter and number magnets throughout these toddler phase. I initially thought of using these tools to introduce Maia to - well - numbers and alphabets but she never showed interest in learning thru this medium so they ended up being used for a different purpose instead. We mix them up with macaronis and sort thru them. It's a great exercise to improve hand coordination for the little kid. And she enjoyed it a lot when she was around 18-20 months. She liked picking thru the pile and filling them up unto her nesting cups. I always keep a watchful eye though during play to avoid accidents (like macaronis magically appearing inside her nostrils for instance)

2. Building Blocks

Maia likes building bridges, houses and whatnots out of her square blocks and Ecobloks.

Mom  and Dad helped build the robot of course! :)

3. Arts and Crafts

I get ideas from the internet. We especially love creating toys from trash. Maia especially likes to do the cutting and sticking on each of our projects.

she was chasing and scaring us with this snake project

4. Modelling Clay Figures

This is a recent favorite. I'm not really artistic but I like how this activity encourages me to be even more creative with my hands. Whatever we create/build using the modelling clay would end up as characters to the make-believe play that would usually follow this activity. 

A plateful of fruits to feed the little kid's dolls

I am also looking forward to doing some baking and cooking activities with this little girl. We'd probably make Daddy chop some ingredients so he can still get involved. First thing though, we need to really save up for that oven. :))

So anyway, I hope you're enjoying this wet and sleep-inducing weather we're having this weekend. I can hear the little girl shrieking with laughter from our bedroom already. She's probably enjoying another pillow fight with her dad. I'm off to join them now! :))