I spotted the Dad Talk article Child Development and Play 18 months to 3 years. Our little boy is 17 months so I gave it a read.
I wonder what anybody else thought about it.
The first bit about safety was spot on because things still go in his mouth. Our LO was in the garden with me a week ago. I turned around from clearing overgrown weeds so see him taking his fingers out of his mouth and moving his lips. I ran across wondering what he was eating - I used my finger to pop it out . He had found the only plant with small red berries! Fortunately I got there before he had a feast.
I did a few things. I kept an eye on him to see he remained ok. I chopped off all the berries from all the bushes in the garden. I went around the internet trying to find pictures of which berries are poisonous. Our berries were not on the list.
I guess he will be increasing his words fairly quickly soon (he has a dozen at the moment). My Health visitor had said they look for an 18 month old to have between 5 and 20 words. We talk a lot and he enjoys me reading with him so it seems that will help.
We just got into stacking a couple of weeks ago and he now gets the idea and likes building large blocks. I hadn't even thought about rhyming games!! He's a bit wild with his throwing so I might do catch and throw practice outside.
I saw the bit about 2 - 3 year olds. I have been going with him to 2 toddler groups and he gets on well. I've managed to enjoy these more than others we've tried on other days. One group is too regimented for my liking. One I like has real coffee, simple activity a toddler can stick/scribble/do, and enough happens so the time is filled. He really doesn't get the 'singing' bit at the moment: he wants to drain all the juice other children have abandoned.
With play he needs some outdoor energy burn-up each day so he sleeps well at night. He now walks a bit on reigns, splashes in pudles and likes the swings, slides and climbing frames. Because he is young we have a mat that lets him 'draw' with a special pen. You top up the pen with water and when he scribbles the mat turns blue where it gets wet.
I like the bit about having a routine. My LO is best when he has his usual nap at about the same time. It is now easier to see when he is tired: in the day he gets whiney and in the evening he can just look tired and put his head on my lap or he can become very very over active.
Hello mate,good to see a your enjoying it all π D ...It is a lovely age your coming up to now isn't it!!My little boy is 25 months and we're having a few behaviour issues at the moment-just the usual toddler stuff,testing limits and all that.
My boys speaking has really come on just lately,he's putting words together and is full of please and thank you. He's also showing enough attention span where we can play a matching up game etc...
I take James up to toddler group every tuesday and he loves it,luckily are group isn't regimented it's quite laid back,there's lots of toys and some creative stuff out,he just gets on with it and I can have a gossip with the Mums π π π
Nice post mate... π
I didn't spend as much time at home with my kids as some, but one thing we did from an early age is to encourage the children to read, and at bedtime, they were allowed to read until they fell asleep (never had problems with them being awake too late though). No computer games at all (there were some objections to this) until much later on - the result is that all of my children still devour books, which I think is a healthy past time.