Hands On Learning

Dax is at probably my absolute favorite stage of development. He is really using his imagination and taking initiative to learn all he can. You can just see the connections constantly being made in every activity he does.
I try to plan something for us at least every other day. Nothing big, but just a general idea of something for us to spend some time doing. Most of the time I know that I plan on doing an activity that day, but I don't actually know what I'm going to do until about 5 minutes before it happens. I try to watch Dax and see what he's interested in and engaged in that day and then go from there with our activity.
Here's an activity that we did a couple weeks ago that he just ran with and took it in directions I didn't expect him to.

 So the day before, we went on a nature walk in our back yard.... collecting leaves, bark, nuts... whatever we could find. I also had some great books on fall that I hadn't read yet with Dax. I picked through the leaves and found ones that I thought best showed the color changing process and put them in this little basket. We read the books and looked at the leaves that we had found. I fully expected him to just touch the leaves and feel them.... but to my surprise he decided to do this 110% on his own....

 My little stinker took the leaves and matched them to their picture in his book! I didn't touch these leaves at all, or even talk to him about it, and yet they are perfectly matched to the book (under each leaf is the picture that matches it!)

 After he was finished with the book and touching and feeling the leaves I spread glue out all over paper and let him make a nature collage with them. He loved it and was very proud of his work (which is now hanging up in our living room).

Here are a few other shots of things we've done this past week...

His block building is getting so creative and intricate. Up until the past week or two his block play consisted of stacking blocks as high as he could get it and then knocking it down. But now he is building "houses" that he works really hard on for several minutes at a time. And most of the time he tops his buildings with a triangle (just like a roof... precious huh?) Kids learn SO much through block play that this makes me really, really excited. I always stressed block play in my classes so I'm very satisfied that he's a fan too :)

Today we pulled out what was left from our nature walk. He learned so many new words and names and got to feel such new, different textures. He also collected all the rocks and lined them up and counted them without my involvement at all.

We were playing with his beads today and I was talking about the shapes. He then went on to classify each block by it's shape and made piles for each (again, completely on his own).

I'll be posting more often on things we're doing during our day. I know I love great, simple, and cheap ways to learn so hopefully you do too. And if you have any fun simple ideas I would love to hear them!