Devotionals with toddlers

One of my most important goals with my little guy is to teach him about Jesus and our faith!  I want him to know the Lord, that He loves us, died for our sins, wants a personal relationship with us.  The big question now is HOW do you go about teaching a 15 month old these things?  Well, besides us teaching him to pray with our daily prayers and our mealtime prayers, I wanted to try doing some kind of devotional with Jesse.  After looking online for some kind of devotional book geared for little, little guys, I drew a blank!  I found nothing that I really liked or felt led to use.

Now enter in awesome book purchased from Target...

The DH and I were at Target and came across this very precious bedtime prayer board book

This sweet book is essentially a devotional and just what I was looking for.  Each devotion has a corresponding bible verse and a little prayer.  The devotions are simple and rhyming and there are some adorable illustrations on each page.  

Ok, now the question became "how to I implement the devotions with my son - besides just reading it like a regular book?"

Here is how we're making it work so far...

• We are focusing on a devotional for at least a week
• I turned the rhyming devotion into a song
• I'm teaching my son American Sign Language (ASL), so I learned several signs from each line and sign and sing the devotion
• I wrote the devotional with dry erase marker on an 8x10 empty picture frame (mainly for myself so I could memorize the devotion without referring to the book) and hung it in a high traffic area (our dining room).  

This is what my picture frame devotional looks like so far.  I want to either put some neutral decorative paper in the frame or even print up the devotional with some of my scrapbook software.  I've even considered scanning the devotional from the book and printing it out so that it has the cute illustrations in my frame.  But for now, this works and allows me to reference the devotional frequently with my son.  I put the short prayer from the book in a different color so that I can easily see it and so it breaks up the devotional and the song.  I put a song that I wanted to teach Jesse on there at the bottom and we usually sing that after we sing the devotional.  

So, "how is the devotional working so far?" you may ask...

Well, using the signs (ASL) really helped me memorize the devotional and I loved that the devotional I chose to start with had a few signs we already were practicing.  I've noticed that when I sing the devotional, Jesse tries to sign along with me and hums along.  I've also been singing it when Jesse is crying or upset (because the devotional is about how God will comfort you when you're sad) and it's worked as a nice distraction and an applicable lesson!  In all, I'd say it's working wonderfully and I plan on continuing my Toddler Devotionals!!  

Ice Cube Sensory Tub

(15 Months)
(Sensory Motor Skills- Children use their senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, to guide and integrate their interactions)

I recently had an opportunity to try out another sensory tub (June 15, 2012).  I've been waiting for a nice sunny day to do some water sensory with the little guy but it's just been cloudy and rainy and just plain cold!  I decided that I didn't want to wait any longer and planned for some fun in the bathtub!

So what was in the sensory tub??  I got the ice cube tray ready poured water into it and put some frozen fruit in a few spots and then filled a few with some food coloring.  Inside the bin (in my case a large plastic drawer) I put some water, large spoons, and measuring cups.

To prep the bathroom, I had to put a floor heater on the counter to make sure the room was warm enough considering that the little guy was playing with ice.  I think I should have used colder water in the bin though because the ice melted pretty quickly.  (quick question...why did I all of a sudden start interchanging "tub" and "bin"?? Who knows).  As you can see he had a blast and of course had to eat ALL of the fruit.  I didn't put many colored ice cubes in the water and only used blue and yellow ice cubes, hence the slightly green tinged water in the tub.

Toddler Time - Cornmeal Sensory Bin

(14.5 Months)
(Sensory Motor Skills- Children use their senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, to guide and integrate their interactions)

I tried my hand at a sensory bin awhile ago.  It wasn't the huge success that I had thought it'd be but my little guy did enjoy it.

We are on a budget, so I knew I couldn't go out and buy a bunch of stuff.  I had to be resourceful and use things that were actually around the house.  We have some Tupperware drawers that weren't really being used so I decided that would be what I placed the sensory stuff in.  We also had 2 boxes of cornmeal and I just could not see us using them both up any time soon!

Jesse hasn't played in sand yet and he also puts everything in his mouth still so I really wanted to create something that if swallowed wouldn't be a big deal.  The cornmeal was perfect for this and I also decided to put some raisins and uncooked rice in the batch as well.  To make it more interesting I threw in a few toys and some measuring spoons.

I knew I didn't have enough cornmeal to fill the bottom of that Tupperware drawer so I had to put the mixture in a smaller container and just used the drawer to try to contain the mess.  

I blocked off the kitchen and let him go at it.  At first he didn't quite know what to do and wasn't really interested.  I ended up giving him the measuring cups and spoons after a few minutes at which point began the real fun!  Soon corn meal was all over him and all over me, but what mattered was he was having fun and getting some practice scooping things up with the spoons!  

I only let him use this a couple times afterwards.  He was pretty much over the activity, as was I!  Next time I think I would leave out the raisins and the rice.  Surprisingly, he never tried to eat any of bin contents!!  

Toddler Time - Mega Blocks

(14.5 Months)

So I know that my son is only 14.5 months, but he is very eager to learn new things and has been catching on to things so quickly!!  I've been doing some research online and found a lot of parents "schooling" their little ones during what has been coined "toddler time".  Toddler Time is simply special time set aside each day to focus on the toddler.  During this focused time, the toddler is exposed to early learning skills through fun play.

I know I try to make every situation a learning situation but today I decided to intentionally set aside some "toddler time" and try to document it and take some notes on the activity.

I started out with something simple: Fine Motor Skills (playing with mega blocks)

I decided to put down a small blanket to define the play space rather than him having legos scattered all throughout the house.  And unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of him during the actual play time.  

I sorted the legos by color and allowed him to play.  My intent was for him to build, stack, or line up the legos.  He wasn't very interested in this however!  He did end up picking up different colored blocks and mixing up the piles.  I've been teaching him the American Sign Language (ASL) signs for the different colors and shapes so I made sure to say the color and perform the sign for the color of the block that he grabbed.  About halfway through our playtime I noticed that he was starting to "sign" the colors as well (I consider it to be kind of like baby talk.  He's not actually doing a sign for a color yet, he's simply moving his hands in the attempt to sign).  He also had fun placing blocks inside the bag.  I took that opportunity say things like, "that's right, the yellow block is INSIDE the bag" or "there are now 2 blocks inside the bag and the rest of the blocks are OUTSIDE of the bag".  

He did pretty well staying on the blanket and I did have to remind him that the mega blocks needed to stay on the blanket.  I did this by redirecting him towards the blanket if he took a lego somewhere else in the living room.  We ended the activity once I noticed him becoming more interested in his books.