The Bub in the Belly

One of the first sets of playdough we had came with a plastic fridge and all sorts of tools to shape the playdough. Ryan enjoyed that and we played with it regularly. It was a nightmare to clean though. All the little bits that were stuck in the crevices of the fridge and in the various tools drove me nuts. The perfectionist in me would be cleaning and scraping and saving every last bit of it. There would also be little bits everywhere on the floor or on the table or wherever. Let me repeat - it was a nightmare to clean up.

We only played with two small tubs because I refused to open any more than that. I also disliked mixing the colours up because that would mean that I would have to get new playdough for the next session. So we never made all those wonderful replicas of hamburgers and sandwiches and whatever with all the different colours in one creation. I prefered to keep things open-ended so our creations were usually some shapes and whatever fantastical things we imagined up on our own. I wish that I could say that they looked pretty but they were all mono-coloured and boring, heh heh.

Despite my efforts, we accumulated more and more playdough sets. Even as I thought that we were finally going to finish up a tub of playdough (yay!), I got saddled with five more tubs (!). I just couldn't keep up. It seemed as though everyone we knew gifted Ryan a set. We even ended up with a second plastic fridge which was identical to the one we had. As much as we appreciated the gesture behind the gifts, we couldn't feel excited every time the gift wrap revealed yet another plastic playdough contraption. My anti-excess mentality kicked in and I got quite turned off - how much playdough do you need right?

Then there were all those bright plastic toys that came with the playdough - the more there were, the less I wanted Ryan to play with them. We opened up the Sesame Street themed sets, like the Elmo that you see in these photos and, I think, one dinosaur themed one, but left the rest unopened (till today). I still restricted the actual playdough to two or three tubs and by that, I mean the original two or three tubs that we started out with.


When Ryan started preschool (at 3.5 years old), one of the things that greeted him on his first day was a table of playdough. I was so happy to see it because it meant that I could pack away the playdough at home!  There were tubs and tubs of playdough at home, most of them unopened, and several plastic playdough sets. I happily packed them all away.

Of course, I was in denial. Because the container wasn't going to vanish overnight and I couldn't just throw it away.

So when babydoll was old enough (ie. not mouthing everything in sight), I dragged out the container and opened it up for her. This time I had no problem opening up more tubs and mixing colours and in fact I fully encouraged it, because that's the way to use it up the darn thing, right? It's still a nightmare to clean, but I'm good with that because now I throw away the little pesky bits instead of stressing about making sure I collect all of the bits to keep for the next session. We still have a long, long way to go before we get through all our tubs of playdough, though. A long, long way.


And yes, it is still a great experience for the children. I remember Ryan taking some time to get used to it; now he handles it with no fuss at all. Babydoll also had an uneasy first session with it, but took to it much faster than her brother.

At the moment, I keep a tub of playdough out at all times, within the children's reach, so they have access to it at all times, together with a tray of shape cutters, rollers, and things like popsicle sticks, googly eyes, straws, feathers, chenille sticks, lego blocks, etc. Once in a while, I will drag out the big container with all the plastic equipment for them to have a go but I find that I'm much happier and more willing to initiate a playdough session if we don't have the plastic equipment around. I prefer having the children go back to basics, creating without boundaries, and working with other "non-playdough" equipment. I feel that I can really see the benefits of playdough this way.


So you see, sometimes it's not the children who need time to adjust and to learn. Sometimes the parent needs time too, hah!

On this occasion, she started sucking on the straws, as if testing to see if anything would happen!


I especially love that she placed a yellow bumble bee on her handiwork. Lovely! I wonder if she imagined the bee among the flowers that she'd planted - hohoho, aren't I being presumptuous here!

When she pulls on the tabs, each one yields a unique surprise!


Thank you, Alicia!

Recently, I re-started Ryan's math work. I re-looked the activities that I offered to Ryan and I tried to understand why a particular activity may or may not convey the intended lesson. Take, for example, the basic counting exercise - present some items or a picture of some items to the child and ask him to count the items. This is a typical activity and I'm sure that you see it all the time.

I had initially thought that if Ryan could count off seven items where there were seven items, that meant that he understood seven as a quantity. I was wrong. Chanting one to seven in such a situation was merely rote counting. Simply rattling off the numbers in sequence does not mean that he learns quantity. In the way that he recited one, two, three, four, to seven as he pointed to each item, he could have equally have recited do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. Or red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Or something even more random - Peter, Paul, Mary, Joseph, Ryan, Richard, Rachel. You get what I mean?

Pom-poms are good to use because you can lay a pom-pom on top of the hole and it will just sit there until your child pushes the pom-pom such that it squeezes through. Your child is naturally encouraged to use his/her fingers. The other advantage of pom-poms is that Rachel doesn't seem inclined to eat them so I don't have to watch her like a hawk when she does this activity. You can also use cotton balls if you want something similar. Having said that, I've used a variety of other items of all sorts of shapes and sizes, it really doesn't matter, actually.



I bought these pom-poms from Spotlight. I think it was S$3 a packet with a good mix of colours and sizes. I bought them in primary colours so that I will be able to re-use them again when Rachel progresses to colours. Rachel doesn't put these in her mouth but if your child is working with small items, please supervise them!

The container is a Munchkin snack container. Please don't bother to buy a container for this. I have used a food container with a small hole cut out on the lid. I have used a toilet paper cardboard roll. I have used our existing toys with holes (see further below). There are countless options. I have even used my finger and thumb to form a circle.

The only reason I used the Munchkin snack container here was so that I had some place to store the pom-poms after she was done. This way, I don't have to clean anything up! When I offer the activity to Rachel, I leave the pom-poms out and the container next to them, on the shelf or on the floor. If she is in the mood for the activity, she will go to the set up and do the activity. After she is done, she will go off.

I may not be with her when she does this activity; I may be with Ryan or she may be with Richard. In any case, as you can see, she is pretty focused and doesn't need me. She also comes up with her own versions of this activity. The shelf where I leave this out has some other toys and stuff, so sometimes I walk up to the area to find the pom-poms all posted into a different vessel!


As mentioned above, Rachel gets a good fine motor workout from picking up and handling the items.



Another version of posting/slotting. This toy comes with a hammer to hammer the pegs down. Here I removed all the pegs and Rachel is slotting the pegs back into the holes. She's pretty good at it already. I bought this toy for Ryan many years ago from a bookstore sale. I think you can get a similar one from IKEA.

This is slightly different because she is not aiming with her fingers, but more with her hand, while holding the peg in the right position firmly with her fingers. Check out her intense concentration!


Combined the pom-poms with the toy for some variety!