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What else can we do?

Mr W (14mo) just drives us nuts now with shape sorters, legos, puzzles, books, you name it. He wants to do everything over and over and then redo it all over and over and over!!

Mr W and I have been playing with pens and markers the last week and every morning we play the alphabet games on the laptop. He likes both a lot.

Last night I held the pen with him and drew some letters for him for the first time. When I drew 'A', he let out a shriek. Then I drew 'B' and he let out a shriek. I drew the rest and he went nuts each time.

We seem to be locked into things he has done before. He has all his books memorized, but is not reading yet. He knows some letters and numbers.

Are there any other CDs or toys that you think he would like? I'd like to add some things to the mix to do with him rather that just go over the same things.

He has a 15-45 minute attention span and he is also very coordinated physically.

Hi, Austin!

That drive to know can be exhausting, can't it? He sounds so much fun--and lots of work!

When Harpo was that age, we went out every day that it wasn't pouring rain. I threw some field guides in a backpack, and we went to the forest or the beach or a not-too-manicured park, and just identified things--rocks, shells, trees, birds, flowers, little critters (we had one insect field guide which I still have memorized, in order, because I had to read it so many times! and then he'd recite it back to me, over and over and over....). Other expeditions he liked were to demolition or construction sites--there was a lot of that going on here that year, as I recall.

If you have a piano or something similar, you could show him the names of the notes as you play them; all my three enjoyed that as toddlers (and Chico could always tell you the names with his back turned--I wish I could do that!)

All my kids enjoyed our homemade "comic" books--I am the world's lamest artist (but it's all about letting go of our perfectionism, said she wryly)--but I used to staple together a few pages and draw some scenes from our days--Daddy coming home from work, the postman coming, a walk to the park, etc., and write a few words on each page. These were big favourites.

We went to a building supply store and got some really big cardboard boxes (like appliance size), and built playhouses in the living room. We used old remnants to make curtains, and glued buttons on the doors, then the kids would cut up old seed catalogues and gardening magazines to plant the "garden" in the front of the house.

Alphabet scrapbooks were fun, too. Write one letter on each page, then go through your old magazines and cut out pictures for each letter. This will result in some more interesting examples than one often finds in published alphabet books! B is for Beatles, I is for icon, R is for reamer...and G always seemed to be for golf...

We also made rhythm band instruments out of the recycling (take two liquid laundry soap caps, for instance, fill them with beans, and duct tape them together--a nice shaker; or make your classic shoebox guitar with rubber bands, while an empty yoghurt tub with lid is a good drum). Tap out lots of different rhythms together. Harpo loved doing rhythm work at the table: he'd pat out a rhythm with his spoon on his plate, and then Frenchie or I would have to tap it back--that was always a good game.

Another good game, especially in the car, was generating rhymes. Sometimes the strings of rhyming words got pretty long!

I tried to involve all three kids with the cooking quite young, too (obviously not with anything hot or sharp). But they all loved (and still do) measuring and stirring and sifting, and especially smelling the herbs and spices--you could just go through your spice cupboard one day and give him a sniff of everything and tell him the names.

We also used to make our own puzzles, sometimes--I glued magazine pages on an old cereal box panel, and cut them into a few pieces--they're not as good as jigsaws, but might be a lifesaver on a day when he's tired of all the old ones.

Hope a couple of those ideas might be fun for you--

peace
minnie

oh Minnie can I come hang out with you???

Austin your post really brings me back. DS9 was absolutely INSATIABLE with the things Mr. W is exploring. I remember being in Costco when he was about 14 months and he letting out a shriek because he had spotted the letter "C" on a big bag of sugar ... he grabbed it as we were passing and wouldn't let go for a while.

I know it's repetitious to you but fascinating! to him. A BIG favorite of ours were those magnetic eraser drawing boards (I'm blanking on the name) by Fisher Price. I would draw the alphabet/numbers/shapes over and over and over and over (you know :)) and he would erase and erase and erase and erase.

he sounds absolutely delightful, Austin - I love reading all the stories about him.

oh enjoy! it does go by sooooooo fast.

If you go to the craft stores, they have blank puzzles. You draw whatever scene you want. This is also the right time of year to introduce him to gardening. You can plant "starts" in the house. Go outside and pick a stop to dig up for your garden. Most toddlers love to grow things.

The white board worked really well for us when DS was learning to write and just fascinated with letters. You can buy boards that are the size of a piece of paper. I would draw something on mine, then DS would try to copy me on his. This was between 11-15 months so I bet Mr Wiggly would enjoy it too!

My DD wasn't an early writer, but she was an early reader. And from the time she was very little she LOVED numbers and letter as you described. One of her favorite gifts was those foam letters and numbers that you can play with in the tub. We had 2 sets so we could make more words. It started with us telling her to "find the letter ..." and quickly progressed to her saying things like, "Spell a fruit!" Then she'd try to figure out what it was. Before too long she was spelling words for us.

Warning - it does make for an extra-long tub-time

Ummm - go to the library for more books?
the 'Handwriting without tears' catalouge seems to have fun 'pre-writing' tools, too.

Enjoy,
Grinity

Bath crayons are fun. Foam bath soap in a can is fun. Line one wall with a white board or chalk board, and let him have at it.

Ditto the bath crayons, ditto the cooking, ditto the fort building.

I'll add get his shoes and socks off and show him how to climb, and go outside as much as humanly possible.

We used youtube to look up anything and everything from Michael Jackson's moonwalk, to bees wings, to kittens nursing.

Alphabet soup. They also sell just the alphabet pasta by itself you can add to your own soups.

Newman's Organics and probably other brands make an Alphabet cookie that we enjoy, not too fatty either.

Leapster makes these First Leapster games which have books you attach and can flip through, if you think he can handle pointing at things on a page with the attached pen (sounds like he can), it responds to the user and has 2-3 activities for each page (eg: reading, music, shapes for one page) We found ours used on ebay.
Dd-almost-3 enjoys this, but has recently moved over to the leapster which has a little computer screen for interactive counting, shape id', letter id, etc.
Also, she has been enjoying starfall.com, which others here have pointed out. Very simple stories focusing on a particular sound, like BOB books.
And we went to Sesame Street's website recently, she enjoyed the keyboard-o-rama with elmo...the child hits a letter or number and gets letter names, sounds, words that start with the letter...special character keys tickle elmo.

Painting with water on concrete in the sun, lasts for a few minutes and then you start over - perfect for letters and counting! Doesn't rely on very very fine motor coord.

Has someone already said building blocks with letters and pictures?

Ds enjoyed being read to a ton; many trips to the library were and still are our norm. Repetition at that age is part of the picture, I think it has to do with the passion for learning.
We have an extremely well-worn Rosemary Wells Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes book, there are two available from her and they are JUST wonderful. We all have it memorized.

Have fun!

My Ds LOVED the tub foamy letter/numbers.