Stacking Pegs

I was shopping for my nephew tonight at the teacher store, and I saw these stacking pegs that I knew Piper would enjoy. It's a puzzle and a peg activity in one. We have the added bonus that she now says and recognizes the word star, which was not one of the puzzle shapes she already knew.

A Different Kind of Puzzle

I had planned on getting this puzzle for Christmas, but I couldn't find it in the stores in stock. I saw it a couple days ago at Borders and went ahead and used a gift card to get it. It is a Melissa and Doug puzzle that has latches, hooks and fasteners that your child opens and peeks inside the door. Piper has enjoyed playing with it so far. It's not really a big challenge for her, but she enjoys manipulating the different items and looking inside the doors. Each one has a different number of colored animals. One of the latches is still a little tricky just because it sticks when you try to turn, but apparently that's a common complaint from what I've read in product reviews.

Sorting Toy and a Bonus

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This video was supposed to just document Piper's sorting abilities, but it turned out to be more than that. First off, she did well sorting the different shapes and placing them on the stacking toy. We have yet to even talk about sorting by size as well as shape, but I thought that one attribute was enough for now. She will probably have it figured out in the next week anyway.



The bonus to this video, is that I finally caught her making her "potty" sign, and that she did it spontaneously without me saying anything. YAY! She knows what it means, and I hope this is another step towards potty training. Then last night, you all knowing what a gracious and refined mommy that I am, she heard me fart. She looked at me and made the potty sign for me too. Too funny!

Shape Puzzle-video

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Piper really likes her puzzles, but tends to only want to do them one time, then she's done for the day. I've tried many times to videotape her in action, but I can never get her to "perform" on command. We did this one early this morning, but then of course the camera ran out of space on the memory card before she finished. She was losing interest by the end anyway.

She can only do 6 of the 9 shapes consistently: circle, oval, square, rectangle, trapezoid, and triangle. We are still working on the diamond, pentagon, and octagon. The octagon is the hardest of all due to its many edges. I posted about this almost a month ago too, and she was doing 3 shapes consistently then, so I can tell she is making progress at least.

Shape Puzzle

I got her a shape puzzle because the other ones she had were too hard with too many corners to fit in the spot. She can do the circle, square, and triangle pretty well now. Sometimes she'll do the rectangle. Everything else is still kinda hard to figure out where they go. If she takes out one piece at a time though, she always knows how to fit it back in the board. I don't think it will be too long before she can do it all. This video is really short. I had to film it on a different camera and I didn't have much memory left.