Top Holiday Gifts for Baby to Age 12

Baby
~Soft, cuddly animals or dolls, preferably made with a natural material.
~Stackable blocks or rings.
~Short tunnel for crawling practice.
~Soft baby rattle, preferably in an organic material (they are going to be chewing on it).
~Wooden cars or animals with wheels (great concept to learn at this stage).
~Nesting blocks, eggs, dolls, or bowls.
~Balls.
~Knit, crocheted, sewed, felted, or quilted item made especially for the baby in your life.

Toddler
~Wooden Blocks.
~Sandbox.
~Dolls.
~Tricycle.
~ABC Blocks.
~Step Stool.
~Wooden puzzles.
~Hand and finger puppets.
~Dress-up clothing and accessories.
~Variety of shapes of larger wooden building blocks.
~Wooden cars and animals with wheels.
~Books with short sentences. These should be about how things really are in everyday life. It is better to introduce fantasy after age 3, according to Montessori.
~Play toys that simulate real life: Kitchen sets, strollers, tool sets, etc...
~Knit, crocheted, sewed, felted, or quilted item made especially for your little one.


Age 3-6
~Child sized broom and dustpan and mop.
~Child sized kitchenware.
~Child sized gardening tools.
~Books that are a little more intesive. These books can be more imaginative now.
~Simple painting and building kits.
~Molding clay.
~Stencils and other drawing supplies.
~Connectable building sets.
~Art easel and other supplies.
~Wooden lacing dolls and animals.
~Practical life frames, such as lace tying, buttoning, zipping, etc...
~Age level games like checkers.
~Wooden train or car/street set.
~Marbles, jacks, jump rope.
~Again, knit, crocheted, sewed, felted, or quilted item made especially for your preschooler. This can be inspirational to their own interest in crafting.
~Materials for beginning knitting or sewing.
~Musical instruments.
~Dollhouse or treehouse.
~Bicycle.
~Fairly large letters for manipulation.



Age 6-9
~Knitting, sewing, quilting, looming kits and/or materials.
~Art activities.
~Basic pottery-making set.
~Musical instruments.
~Building construction sets.
~More coplex puzzles, like science or map selections
~Wooden puzzles that deal with fractions.
~Age appropriate science sets.
~Gardening/botany kits or supplies.
~Globe.
~More complex building sets.
~Sports equipment.
~More complex games, like chess.
~Archery set.


Age 9-12
~Stilts, unicycle, or a pogo stick.
~Trampoline.
~Sports equipment, like a snow board or stuff for volleyball or soccer.
~Chapter books, literature, poetry books.
~Sewing Machine.
~More compex crafts, like candle making.
~Craft supplies. For instance, yarn and accessories for the young knitter or lots of fabric for the experimental quilter.
~Wood working supplies (tools, materials, , accessories, books) for an aspiring woodworker.
~Musical instruments and a variety of music...or lessons.
~Architecture sets.
~Challenging, developmental games.
~Science and Nature sets.
~Journal or notbook for writing.

Halloween and Autumn Creations With the Kids

This last holiday weekend brought lots of fun and business for the kids. Halloween and Autumn are always a fun focus to initiate the colder season to come.

Lynx particularly enjoyed the sewing projects he did, which is wonderful because it helps to center him. He designed and sewed a felt monster and sewed the face on a felt skeleton. This was his first experience with sewing ever. Lynx also is in the middle of putting together another monster with precut pieces.

Jaguar was busy making pipe cleaner finger puppets, matching ghosts and their different facial expressions, counting pumpkin seeds, sorting colored spiders, free painting with fall colors, making leaf pattern decorations, and more.

The boys also painted fall tree silhouettes on a sunset background with watered down paint and straws for the trees. I did one, too, because it looked fun.

Lynx helped me make homemade pumpkin pie…it is the best! Once you have pumpkin pie from an actual pumpkin, you never want to go back to the can (although that can be pretty good too). We also made cranberry sauce and apple cinnamon peanut butter "sushi". They were simple, but very tasty.

Bobcat played with his treasure tray full of autumn themed sensory stuff and walked through a pile of fall leaves.

Before we went trick-or-treating, I sewed some bags for all the boys to decorate with fabric paint and potato stamps cut in the shapes of pumpkins.

Of course, I had the boys carve a pumpkin. We had one pumpkin and I went back to the store Halloween morning only to find all the rest of the pumpkins were completely wiped out. So, Jaguar carved one side, and Lynx designed and carved the other side.

First Day of Home School for my Preschooler

Yesterday, I managed to successfully begin home-schooling my preschooler without even a morsel of the tv! He had a lot of fun, even though he was asking me about movies periodically. I had to keep reminding him about our new rule of no movies during the week. He was pretty accepting of this, though he doesn't really know the concept of no tv for 5 days straight. Eh, he'll get used to it, as long as he is being stimulated properly, actually doing things, rather than passively watching the simulation of others doing things, and then getting up afterwards with all this pent up energy and nothing in his brain other than the crap he just watched. So, today will be our second day of tv detox.

So, anyway, we have decided to do a 6-week unit on weather because it is summer. Yesterday morning, Bobcat and Jaguar and I all took a long walk in the morning and discussed all the things we saw and the traits of the current weather. We then ate some apple slices and drank water (Man, it's hot out, especially carrying a rollie-pollie 25-Lb baby in a sling!). Bobcat is being a little kling-on lately, so it is hard getting anything done without having to hold him. So, when we got home he still wanted me to hold him and threw a huge fit. Then, I struggled to prepare my etsy orders for shipping, and scooped up the boys for trip to the post office and the store for food coloring.

After we returned back home to the more shady tall pines, I put the baby to sleep. Jaguar and I went into the kitchen and filled an ice tray with water and he created mixtures of colors within. We stuck it in the freezer and ta da!, we had colorful ice cubes. Outside, there were some patches of sun that we used to lay down papers and ice cubes on top. We left it for the sun to do it's watercolor magic. The colors traveled and melted and created a beautiful masterpiece. He also spent much of his time drawing pictures of people, animals, rainbows, summer landscapes... He loves drawing.

It was so warm yesterday, we had a light lunch of avacado on toast and fruit. Jaguar played thoughout the day in his transforming bedroom and outside in the dirt and on the swing. He was building roads and buildings with scrap chunks of wood from Daddy's bunk bed-making. He would dance to the lingering music on the radio periodically. He helped sort the dirty clothes and swept the garage of it's saw dust and goodies tracked in from outside. He fed the kitty, watered the garden, took out the compost.... All the while, Bobcat tags along, often wanting me to hold him, and explores the things in his little sensory world. Right now, he is exploring clapping, running, dancing and climbing...

We also started on our felt "paper doll", whereas I drew and cut it out for him after he attempted both, and he drew the eyes, mouth, and nostrils (he had to have a nose on his doll). Then he picked out the colors of embroidery floss and began carefully and meticulously stitching the eyes and nostrils. By that time, he had had enough. So we will continue today.

We made a curry lentil dish for dinner, and then the boys went outside even longer, this time with Daddy because he was home. After my dinner cleanup, I decided to take a bike ride all the way up to the corner store and over to this other house we were going to buy a year ago. It was a major fixer and I wanted to see the progress made by the people who had ended up moving in there. It is like night and day from what it was. But now I had to pump up this huge hill just to get out of there....I made it, without getting off the bike once.

I then gave the boys a bath, read Jaguar "The Earth and I", which we have actually continuously read for about 5 days (he dives in further and further each time) and "Summer" by Gerda Muller. Then he went night night. Bobcat actually had an odd sleep schedule last night, taking a "nap" late and waking at around 10:00 pm...Yeah...(sarcasm). So, he stayed wide awake with us till 12:30.

And we are up again at 7:20 this morning......