Jigsaw Puzzles

S is now 2 years 6 months and his favourite activity at the moment, besides playing with his toy cars and truck, is doing jigsaw puzzles. I bought a set of 6 jigsaw puzzles with different number of pieces, i.e. 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 21 pieces. Thinking that it was still too difficult for him, I got him some wooden knobbed puzzles. He was interested in them only for 2 weeks. The wooden knobbed puzzles were too easy for him. After that I handed out the puzzles to him, one per day. Initially he asked me to fix it for him. Then, he would dismantle the jigsaw puzzle and start doing it again. He did that again and again for more than 20 times that night. The next day, he could do it by himself. And he continued with more and more difficult jigsaw puzzles.

I was surprised when he could do the 21 piece jigsaw puzzle by himself. He just loves doing them and has been working on the puzzles immediately when he wakes up and just before he goes to sleep. He has to complete the whole set of 6 puzzles, before he goes to sleep. And he sleeps with the puzzle near him and sometimes on his stomach. He can really concentrate when doing the puzzles. He does get frustrated sometimes when he couldn't find the correct location, but with encouragement, he quickly overcomes it and completes the puzzle. After 2 weeks, he is adept at completing the puzzles quickly. Whenever I need some time alone to do my work, I ask him to complete the puzzles. 

Sand pool

At last, I managed to get a bag of sand for S' "sand pool". I had been looking around to get sand for the past 1 year, and some friends told me to get from the beach. However, the beach was a 2 hour drive from my place. Anyway, I just found out from our handyman that the hardware shop at my residential area sold sand at RM5 per bag of around 30 kg. I got a bag of fine sand and poured it into the plastic kiddie pool. He played for awhile but preferred to use a spade. He was afraid of soiling his hands. I hope he'll outgrow it though.

Homemade Sandpaper Letters

I've just competed making the sandpaper letters. It took me 3 days and around 2 hours each day. I spent a lot of time researching as to the type of font and font size. I settled on Century Gothic, bold. However, it's not as difficult as I thought it would be.


Items required:
Sandpaper (fine)
Cardboard / Mounting board (also used by frame shops)
UHU glue / Art Gum (rubber cement)
Penknife
Scissors
Fonts


I printed the letters and cut the shapes out with a penknife and scissors. I then traced the letters onto the back of the sandpaper. The I cut the sandpaper letters and glued them onto a mounting board which I bought from Tesco for RM5.90. I used pink background for the consonants and blue for the vowels. I didn't ruin my scissors although I read that some people did. The end result was of comparable quality as that of sandpaper letters sold by Montessori suppliers in Malaysia.