Having Fun With Toddler

Little caterpillar is growing up so fast, learning a lot from daycare, which makes me happy and sad at the same time. I am happy she is enjoying all the activities, like finger painting, crafting, and singing and dancing. At the mean time, I am sad that I am not the one that teaching her those. Don't get me wrong. Even with all my education, I don't think I am qualified to teach toddler, since I don't know a thing when it comes to early education, and I am a very impatient person when it comes to teaching. And I am supposed to be bedresting, so cannot enjoy any exciting activities with her. But I promised myself I will at least try and apply all my crafty skills.

Yesterday, I took out some paper and paint, and did some fun finger painting with little caterpillar. It was lots of fun, I don't believe I ever did finger painting as a child. Kids growing up in China, at least during our time, you are told to follow strict rules, you cannot make a mess, you have to color inside the lines, and you are supposed to use painting brush not your fingers. So, you guessed, I enjoyed it too. We painted a nice xmas tree together, with lots of ornaments. It's drying on the wall, I will show it to you as soon as it's totally dry. But of course, I was not prepared enough, so got a huge mess to clean up. Even when I cleaned up immediately, some paint dried up on our dining table, so hard to get off! After some reading online, I learned that I supposed to put down some newspaper on the table first! We used so much paint, it was going to break the bank, I thought. So, I mixed some homemade fingerpaint following online recipes (3 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 cup corn starch, 2 cups water, food coloring). I didn't have food coloring, and little caterpillar never tried eating paints, so I just used the paints I have on hand. They look pretty good, I will let you know how their performance is.

Then while I was making some fun pillows, I all of a sudden thought of a puppet theater! Little caterpillar has 10 finger puppets (animal set from Ikea), and two hand puppets, and she loves playing them with me. Think how much fun it will be to playing them in a real 'theater'. This way, I can also encourage her story telling and pretend playing. The puppet theaters are so easy for me to make, I have so many fabric, ribbons and sewing machine. But I have no idea to make more hand puppets. Got to do more research on that. Here is just one tutorial I found. Will show you my creation later.