A Few Moments for Nesting Bowls

In my mind, Ladybug and I have been working on stacking nested bowls. That is our weekly activity from Slow and Steady: Get Me Ready. What that really means is when she is trying to slide her entire body through the back of a kitchen chair or turn drawers into stairs, I realize I should come up with an activity. "What is our Slow and Steady thing? Oh yeah, the nested bowls," I think to myself. That will buy me five minutes!

I grab the measuring cups and line them up smallest to largest, left to right, as the book instructed me. Then I begin nesting smaller cups in larger cups. I think Ladybug stacked (not nested) a couple of them before realizing that the metal cups make an awesome sound when banged together or on the tile floor. And she was off making music!

This is often how our activities go, and I think it's cool that I can't predict where she will take them. The sixty or so seconds when she is on the task I presented add up when repeated over the week, and I see her engage with the game for longer stretches once she is familiar with it.

So many different strands of learning work into these brief moments of directed activity. One of Ladybug's newest books is The Three Bears by Byron Barton. So we also talked about big, medium, and small nesting bowls, just like Papa, Mama, and Baby Bear have.

This afternoon she climbed eagerly onto the bed and quickly nested the three bowls, then turned her attention elsewhere. Did I mention that this activity was scheduled for an 8 month old? Good thing I've only spent a few moments on it!