We Play and Explore

Many times on Sundays I try to pull toys and games out that will engage Papa into Selena’s play. This is not to say he doesn’t love to play with Selena, but sometimes he needs ideas.

Papa doesn’t like it too well, when I pull anything out that resembles a puzzle. He couldn’t put a puzzle together if his life depended on it, and I am not exaggerating one bit. It is hilarious sometimes to watch him working with Selena with her jigsaw puzzles. These though are easier for him to do, but still Selena loves to think she is teaching him how to put the puzzle together.  I just love to watch the two of them interact with each other and it gives me a break since I am usually the one that plays with her.

On this particular day we were all suffering with colds. Selena was getting pretty bored, and had been playing off and on with various things I gave her. Finally I grabbed a plastic water bottle and just asked her to figure out all the things she could do with it. Due to the sticky glue from where I took the label off, the first thing she discovered was that it stuck to her shirt. She then discovered it would roll and that she could try to balance it on her head.

I then asked her if she could balance it on it’s cap? She was impressed that I could get it to balance and so she tried and tried. Finally she decided she needed books or a flatter surface to try to balance it on. She almost had it several times. One thing for sure she had a lot of fun playing with this plastic jug and it kept her busy for quite a long time.

Just when I thought we were done with this play, Selena surprised me and we ended up with a quick science lesson. I turned around to find that Selena grabbed the smaller plastic bottle that we made her pig out of, and had it balancing on it’s cap.

I couldn’t resist but make Selena sit down and examine the difference between these two bottles. Of course you know I had to ask, “Why do you think the smaller bottle balances on it’s cap easier then the larger bottle?”

She compared the sizes and shapes of the two bottles.

She examined the sizes and textures of the caps.

Her conclusion was that the smaller bottle had a larger cap to balance on. I do believe we will try to explore this a little more, since at this point she was done with our brief lesson. She decided to just have some fun.

   She sure had a lot of fun with these bottles for along time the rest of the afternoon.

I am linking this up at Childhood 101.