Book review - GRUG!!!

Hi everyone.

You may not be aware but our Little Miss (20 months soon!!!) is (and has been since forever) obsessed with books. She would probably bring us upwards of 20 books a day to read to her and often we get the same ones over and over again. I love books and love reading and I hope in some way I have passed this love on to her but for some reason I don't think I can take much credit. She just seems to have an in-built love of reading.

Anyway....(prattling!!!).... for my baby shower I had everyone bring their favourite childhood book for our little princess instead of presents. And I'm so glad we did it! I got an absolutely beautiful collection of books for Little Miss before she was even born.

One of my most treasured friends (you know who you are!!!) gave Little Miss two Grug books:

and

Now I have to admit that Grug plays soccer is her absolute favourite and the whole Grug excitement has heightened since we saw Grug live at QPAC a few weeks ago.

Why Little Miss loves Grug

I think she loves Grug because he is an identifiable character and he is quite lovable in his own little way. The words are simple and it doesn't take long to read through the book. She has memorised a portion already!

Why Mummy loves Grug

Most importantly Mummy loves Grug because he is Australian. Unfortunately for us the other characters that Little Miss seems attached to at the moment are Dora (and Boots and Swiper). The books are simple and clearly illustrated and provide lots of memorable sentences just perfect for language learning. Our latest Grug word is "Goal!!" (he kicks a lot of them when he plays soccer!!

Do your kids love Grug? What else are you reading at the moment?

CSM xxx

Play dough cakes (cooks)

On Wednesday afternoons we have swimming at 3 and because Little Miss is not 2 yet I have to get into the water with her. It is way too hard to try and get us both dried and dressed in the swimming change rooms (Little Miss either shivers while I get dressed or I shiver while I get her dressed not to mention the whole wet floor thing!!!) so I have gotten into the habit of bundling us into the car after swimming and racing home to jump in a hot shower. As a result, we are in our pyjamas by 4pm on a wednesday afternoon so this means "quiet" play inside.

Last weekend I made some play dough finding the recipe at the Imagination Tree (www.theimaginationtree.com). If you haven't visited there yet make sure you do. They have zillions of amazing play ideas for babies. toddlers and preschoolers. Anyway, getting off the topic!! Little Miss has been loving her new play dough (and Mummy is more relaxed in case Little Miss takes a lick!!!) and one of her new words lately is "cook" - which means cake! So our obvious "quiet" play activity last Wednesday was making PLAYDOUGH CAKES.

I started Little Miss off by moulding the play dough into 3 flat balls and placing them on plates. Little Miss then had a lovely time adding beads as candles...

Luckily she wasn't so busy thay she couldn't give Mummy a big "cheese"!

After a while, we ran out of "bead candles" and Little Miss was saying "more, more, more" so Mummy was brave and got out the real birthday candles...

And one more happy "cheese" for a fun afternoon of "cooks"!!!

This activity is good for:

•  Fine motor skills (pushing candles into the play dough)
• Language development (talking about the cakes and the candles and eating. We even sang Happy Birthday a few times!!)
• Pretend play
• Independent play (once I set her up Little Miss was happy for a long time by herself - ocassionally bringing me one to taste!)

Have a great week. Would love to hear about other play dough ideas for toddlers....

Common Sense Mummy xxx