We Play

It is so obvious that Selena loves her doll houses and now loves her Barbie sized Disney Princess dolls. I think it is easy to say her horses are right up there too. We catch her playing with her doll houses a lot, or packing her horses around the house, or playing imaginary games with her dolls. I do have to say though that on this particular day Selena cracked me up when she took over my dining room table with all of these things.

She played for the longest time making up stories and conversations between her dolls. I always take so much pleasure in listening to her play like this. I always wanted a little girl who loves to play with dolls and doll houses. Selena’s mom never did like to play with any of these things, so I am thrilled to get to play this out through Selena. There was only one problem that I could see with this picture, can you guess what it is?

Her doll is taller then the house. We talked about maybe Selena would like a larger doll house that would fit her new dolls. Selena informed me that she has a big house. This conversation kept going on for a while until finally Selena realized what I was talking about and agreed that she indeed does need a big doll house.

I am linking this at Childhood 101.

Update on my friend’s little one with the Batten Disease. She is going into the final days. The family though it is hard continues to lean upon their faith and they know that soon she will go home where she can be that little girl that she should be. Thank you for your continuous prayers.

We Play and Tiny Talk

 

 

I love the weekends, when Papa is able to enjoy Selena time. I love to just sit back and watch the two of them bond, and interact with each other. Selena is truly one lucky girl to have a Papa who takes so much time with her.

This weekend was lets build a tower using Selena’s mega blocks. they built several different ones that all came crashing down, ending with endless laughs. Papa finally said lets see if we can build a tower using every single block you have.

Selena had so much fun watching their tower getting taller and taller. Papa would tell her what block he wanted next and she would be quick to fulfill his request.

She was getting so amazed that their tower wasn’t even looking like it was going to fall. As they got down to the last blocks, Papa just let Selena pick the ones she thought should go next.

Their finished tower. Selena did not want to take it down, so they left it up for a good 15 minutes or so. We then decided we better take it down before Selena knocked it over. She wasn’t real happy but Papa promised to build another one with her at another time.

As many of you know who follow my blog Selena has been fighting a bad cold. Tonight as we heard the weather forecast, they said we could get snow over the next few days. As we were getting Selena ready for bed, she reminded me that it might snow. I said, “Yes, but it is too bad you are sick.” She promised me that if it snows she will no longer be sick. I asked her, “Well what if it doesn’t snow will you still not be sick?” She said, “We will just have to wait and see, but if it snows I won’t be sick anymore, the snow will make me all better.”

Selena’s birth story in her words, “The stork flew me clear up to the moon. Then he dropped me and I broke. Grandpa fixed me with tape. So now I am Selena. The End.”

I am linking this up at Childhood 101 and Not Before 7.

We Play Scrabble

I’ve wanted to pull this game out for sometime now. Finally on Friday evening all three of us sat down for a game of Scrabble. We used three letter words, until we began to get to the end then we had to make a few four letter words to keep going. Selena loved this game, she took turns real well, and made sure she had enough letters in her hand at all times. It was her responsibility after the words were made to pronounce them and read them to us. She read every word made by all of us.

She studied her letters real hard and made several words all by herself. While I had to help her with most of them she still worked very hard to try to identify letters that would go together to make a word.

We had a good game of Scrabble, though I do have to admit it is harder then you think to continue to build nothing but three letter words. As Selena becomes more confident with this we will then start adding longer words. This is a definite game we will be playing a lot more for phonics, reading, and spelling skills.

I am linking this up at Childhood 101.

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.

Introduction to Yahtzee

We were feeling a wee bit bored with the cloudy weather, so I pulled the Yahtzee game out today. Using the basic principles of Yahtzee, I had Selena role the dice and try to build a Straight from 1 to 5 or from 2 to 6. I was very proud of her for recognizing the numbers on the dice by using the dots. Then we added a little competition to this game, by giving each of us 5 chances or rolls to build our Straight. Well, Selena won me 4 out of 5 tries, and we tied on two.


Selena found it a bit difficult to role the dice with her hand but quickly learned to use both hands. We didn’t use the cup as she had the dice going all over but in the box I was using to contain the dice in.
I might have someone to play Yahtzee with in no time! I plan on using this as an extension to our math, and think I will add more of the Yahtzee concepts as we go along. I would love to have someone to play Yahtzee with again!