We had Aarya’s Grandparents visit us this month, so this was the perfect reading companion for us Our set included 4 books -

Don’t let the Aliens get my Marvelous Mum! by Glillian Shields

My Dad is Awesome! by Nick Butterworth

Stories for 3 Year olds

Hello! Is that Grandma? by Ian Whybrow

Our first activity idea came from the kit itself. We made a scrapbook style collage of our family near and dear ones. We started with working on a About Me page that I downloaded from Miss Pam’s Room (which I found on Pinterest).

Yes Red is his favorite color.

I added his picture. Then let him glue the letters in his name which are actually newspaper cut-outs (he lost the Y).  Let him draw his fathers face ( the one in brown bottom-left). And I added everything else

All done!

Then I gave him a blank paper, some sketch pens and stickers -

Yes, 2 pens is the way to draw

Then he squeezed the glue to stick our pictures,

An then added the stickers -

I gave him some heart stickers, car stickers and such. He added a pink sticker for his Grandma (not in the picture) because she likes pink… too sweet!

All DONE! Here is a samplae of what we managed

One of the pages we did together This is his Grandparents, Aunt and his Dad (all in one set of pictures. The dog sticker is for Vava our dog, whose picture I forgot to print out. We also did his cousins in another. And his Uncles and Aunts.

We did all in all 3 pages and he was done. In these 3 pages I tried and let him glue all the people. The result is not beautiful by any standards but he was mighty proud of it and showed his father and also named everyone He especially loved this and his cousins page. He looks at it daily and I am sure the sketch pens have been used on the pictures also

i will be sharing more activities in the coming days.

A little about Little Readers Nook.

Devaki Bhujang Gajare (owner), an Electronics Engineer from Mumbai, worked as a Software Analyst in Pune and New York from 2004 to 2011. She’s mom to 3 year old Mihir – the inspiration behind Little Readers’ Nook!

Contact her by going here. (Don’t forget to mention me to her )

I bought “Step into Reading” book version of this book and instantly regretted doing it It is, but a sad copy of the original. But we watched this video, which was amazing!

This is such a beautiful story! I love it and Aarya really enjoyed it too  To accompany this book we did this rather fun but lovely “Snowman on the Globe” art which I saw on Pinterest.

Please excuse the “sauce” on the face look. The minute he saw the ball and white paint, he just wanted to dive right in!

All you need is -

1) Blue paper (construction paper will be good)

2) 1 ball or as many as you want, really.

3) white paint ( We also had yellow dropped in as aarya wanted it)

4) 3 circles in different sizes for the snowman body

5) A rectangle – small for the hat

6) Add the sketch pens if your kid is crazy about them (like mine is)

I will let the pictures do the talking.-

He dipped the ball in the white paint but then also wanted to use the brush.

Once he had played to his hearts contest with the ball and the colors. We left it to try. Then I stuck the snowman ( on the left) to show him how it is done. He had his own ideas about where everything would be.

Then he wanted the sketch pens to “draw” the face.

All done!

This book was part of the “S” week (snow)!

Now this site will feature -

• Books and there reviews
• Aarya and his books and there reviews
• Activities ideas of the books we review
• Some random stuff about life and Mommy-hood.

Mama and Aarya after our Holi bash!

I hope you guys find something that interests you here and as I have said before lets start connecting again. Thank you for all you people who leave wonderful comments, that encourages me a lot!

To all my friends, I hope you had a blast on Holi and Happy Easter too!

**These posts were written in Jan-Feb, but due to some real bad things happening followed by my exams, I was not able to post these. **

To follow-up on the winter activities. This is another sensory activity that we did. The idea is from Montessori Moments(link to the winter activities post) who blogged about it in the ‘Sifting Snowflakes’ post. I had a feeling that Aarya would love it.

Items we used -

*salt with small alphabets (hidden) (snow)

*sifter (from the kitchen)

*foam alphabets to match ( at this point I wish I had lower case alphabets too )

Thanks to Lori! Does it look like he Loved it?

Love Calvin and Hobbes

I started doing Alphabets with Aarya sometime back but I never did “themes” with him. This was before I was a “Pinterest addict”, now I follow a LOT of blogs religiously who have helped me design and given me the courage to do a theme with Aarya

I decided “S” was the best alphabet to do in Winter and “Snow” is a concept that Aarya just absolutely LOVES We have never had snow here, but when I was in Northern states of India I have seen it. But Aarya and his Dad have never seen snow but we see it on TV, videos and BOOKS all the time and Aarya LOVES it.

I started by introducing “S” letter and sound – Aarya could not make the sound at all. He was disappointed and left the scene (so typical of him). I persisted by making him realize all the words he knows by saying “Oh! This is Sauce… s s sauce”; then another day “This is s s spider” or”This is s s s seal”.. “look s s sea” and finally ” s s s snow!” … there I had his attention there . He tried it and it came out as “No”.. and I now here it all the time “No Mama NO! Look!” (so cute! but we still did not have the “s” sound)! After some days he magically said “ss sauce” He still goes “No” instead of Snow but that is ok! he is got the sound.

After we got the sound right I put out a small sensory bin. I put the thermocol that comes in packing (this thermocol was broken by Aarya earlier one day and I had saved the “snow” balls) He added the animals that were kept nearby to it (which reminded me we needed to do animals in winter later because Cow should not be in this bin) -

Next we did Pattern Block “S” which I downloaded from Confessions of a Homeschooling Mom. Download it here.

The same day night I filled a container with water and put a Doraemon toy in a plastic cover and asked Aarya to fill it with water, then we put it in the freezer.  (I added the eyes and nose with sketch pen which got wiped off when we took it out. I found this idea on Teach Preschool blog, who did Snowman in a bottle and Snowman in a bag activity with her preschool kids. There she used real snow, here I just froze some water. Next time I would take some ice and crush it and use it to do this activity – it will look more realistic.

Next up we made snowman from a cornflour/ flour dough. I did not have enough cornflour to make this sensory activity so I added some flour and salt and warm water to make a mouldable snow dough. This was fun too.

Snowman also needs excercise lol!

Our next activity was Snow Sifting which is a very simple activity – here i have used Salt and “hid some tiny letters. Montessori Moments added “snowflakes” in it. Anyhow this was the 2nd favorite activity after the snow-bin above.  Before, during and after the activities and all through the day we checked on our snowman which I kept outside so that it melts.

Colored Construction Paper, White paint and some lids.

Next up some ART, no activity is complete without ART and BOOKS. So we made snowflakes from some white paint and some bottle caps and knick-knacks I found in the kitchen. Aarya decided to cover himself in snow too lol!

We did more activities; and this has been he most successful theme yet.

We read A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats on We Give Books site( a great site where you can read a lot of Children Books – I am thankful to them a LOT) , because I could not get it here and it was too costly to buy online. Activities on that in the next post.

<<Aarya is 33 months old>>

Linking to -

Link&Learn – Weekly Kids Craft Linky

Aarya is not much into playdough and I think it is a beautiful and powerful medium for kids and also very good activity for his tiny fingers. So to encourage him, I bought What Should I Make? by Nandini Nayar from Tulika books. Priced only at 75Rs, this is affordable and the illustrations are beautiful as well. In the story, Neeraj’s Mom is making Rotis (Tortillas) and gives him a small piece from the dough to play with. What all can Neeraj make out of it, is the simple but cute story.

We read the story together and Aarya pointed out Rotis immediately. He likes his Rotis, so it was good to see he could comprehend and also tell me it was “Atta” (dough) and “roll roll” (roller). I was encouraged! Then we looked at what all could be done with the dough.

Next day, We again read the story and then I set out this tray for him -

I first gave him some yellow dough, roller. We tried making all the animals in the book. He played with it for a while (attacking the mouse. meowing with the cat, roaring like the lion etc. )

Aarya is checking out the dough I set out for him.

That’s the snake we made together and mouse (he is holding). They had a fight and the snake became mouse’s tail lol!

The cat is in the assembling phase.

Next I introduced form cookie cutters (bus, car, helicopter, heart shapes etc) – I think introducing the transport cutters was a mistake, because he started playing with them and not with the dough.

Then I tried to “show” him some other things that can be made – he just told me what he thought about them and went back to his “car”. I introduced some Lego pieces and a dog and cat also.

(Clockwise from top)1) A bone for the dog and fish for the cat. 2)We made impression of the tail as well. 3) I made a train for him but he told me it looked more like a dog. 4) A snowman with a big nose

Next day, I reminded him that the book ended with Neeraj making a roti and asked him if he wanted to make a roti? Aarya was more than happy to do this. He likes to play with the “real atta dough” that I make more than the “playdough”. So I showed him how to make a “Chapati” (that is roti made with butter)

Aarya presented the Chapathi he made to his father for dinner…. it looks like a heart-shape (though we did not shape it like that at all). It turned out to be bit too thick and Aarya himself ate part of it, and it was a good experience

The only thing being that now whenever I am making rotis, Aarya brings his stool and tells me he wants to make them as well, his Dad has to eat them as well

I make my atta dough by using whole-wheat flour + salt to taste+ enough water to bring it to a dough-consistency which will be  a bit thicker than the playdough. I am sure we will doing many more playdough activities and I will be sharing them as we do them.

Linking to Read. Explore. Learn

Hooray for Fish by Lucy COusins is everything a picture book should be. It is big, bright and has lovely illustrations. Little fish is taking you on a journey to meet all his friends who include, curly-whirly, 1, 2, 3, pineapple fish, grumpy fish, scary fish to name only a few. It is a beautiful book. Aarya did not want to look at when we first bought it a month back, but now after seeing a lot of fish, eating them – he showed a lot of interest in this book. His favorite in the little fish who he calls Aarya and scary fish which is the shark

To do some project on Saturday which is a holiday for us, we re-read Hooray for Fish and then watched this video, which is beautifully done. I love how the book is been read as well.

Then we prceeded to do some art work which is inspired by Hooray for Fish post which I saw on

I changed it up a little bit as Aarya is not yet good in being patient and all. So here are the things we used

1.  A3 size drawing paper
2. bubble wrap
3. sponges ( I cut out sponges and stuck them with glue on some cardboard for him to use without “staining” his hands, I also had a sponge pad which we used for this)
4. colors ( we used red, blue, yellow)
5. scissors
6. black marker or sketch pen

We first colored our bubble wrap with blue – Aarya did this enthusiastically, but did not want to touch the wrap later as it would “stai” his hands. So I laid the wrap on the paper and he happily pressed it down. Then I put a little green lines on the base and blue all over to get the sea-weed effect and he pressed it down for me. The he ran the brush right over the paper and made some smudges while I was placing the wrap away. Oh well! it was not that bad.

While the sea background was drying, I copied his favorite fish images on to 2- 3 white sheets of paper. We copied Shark ( no.1 favorite of his), little fish, moma fish, grumpy fish and curly-whirly fish (which was my wish). Then I set out sponges and colors and very little water and Aarya got down to “smashing the fish up with little paint and loads of water. He then added other colors to the same sponge! We had some weird color mixing and saw that brown, orange and a weird blue fish is what we ended with.

Dabbing paint on the sponge, to dab it on the fish images I drew on pages.

Shark is getting a blue and red dabbing

After using the sponge, Aarya wanted to paint the fishes as well.

Our fish images drying. He stayed longest with the Shark.

We left the fish to dry and I decided to see the video again but this time he did not want to see it so we went and did a sock-matching activity. After all the fish dried, I cut them out ( Aarya is still not able to cut out stuff properly) and gave him a stick to dab black and yellow dots on the fish. Then I outlined them with black sketch pen and he glued them on the blue sea background. The result was really awesome.

We have it on the wall now and his Grandparents who visited us on Sunday couldnot believe it was done by Aarya. Aarya was happy to show it to them and even was telling the dog how he “spo spo” the “me-me” ( sponged on the fish).

Our Grumpy Fish (brown one) looks like he is laughing.That is because of my bad scissor skills.

A huge thanks to Rachel @ I HEART CRAFTY THINGS for the inspiration.

Next we did a Tot Tray activity which had little matching activity using the “Hooray for Fish” Printables I downloaded and printed from All Join In blog. These are 2 parts cards  but I took 2 copies of it and made a simple matching activity. I can reuse them for variety of other activities as well.

All done.

You can download them from All Join In blog.

We had a fun day with this book and I am sure we will do this again some day. For that day I am pinning up some sites on my “Hooray for Fish” Pinterest board.

What books have you read lately and loved. Please do let me know!

Aarya is 33 months old.

Linking this post to Tot School Gathering Place hosted by Carisa @ 1+1+1=1

and linking to

This weeks Tuesday Tots is hosted by

Rainy Day Mum

Growing a Jeweled Rose

Learn with Play at Home
and
In Lieu of Preschool.

Also linking to Sugar Aunts Share it Saturday Linky Party

Other than cycling and running and ball throwing everyday (even though it is a bit cold outside), we did 2 activities and 1 of which was lot more popular than the other.

I created an obstacle course for Aarya. He had to jump from one mat to another and crawl under the chair and climb some mountains (fun!). He did a lot of times and I joined in as well. Then the next day we removed the chair and did the same thing. He had fun.

This is him crawling under the chair (dark cave – we called it)

Try as I might, I just can’t get a clear picture of him. He always goes by in a flash. Here he is at the end of the course after climbing the mountain (stool) – he is trying to sit and spin here

Then of course he decided to take his cycle through the course :-/ which of course made him laugh a lot as he “crashed into the chair and then the rest. That I am afraid was the end of the activity.

Next day I created another obstacle course but this time it was soldier training

Lot of thin plastic ropes all along the hall-way. At the start he jumped then crawled and so on. We had it on for the whole day and I did it too We had to remove it all when Dad came but I have even since done this many times already, he likes this one and is always trying to figure out how much he has to bend to not touch the rope at all. Note I kept the rope loose because I was worried this thin rope would hurt him ( or cut him).

That was our week, how was yours? Next week I hope to have more pics and more varied activities. Check out Royal Baloo’s and 3 Dinosours posts and check out there 1st week full of some wonderful ideas.

I hope you enjoy it too.

My favorite cover-love for the week is -

I saw this cover in a list featured on this post titled “19 Beautiful book cover designs for your inspiration”. It has many more covers that I found just awesome. In some random thoughts, I have decided on taking up Project 365, where I commit to take a photo a day at least I hope to post my favorite shots! This pic of Aarya is a favorite of this past week

I hope you all have a lovely week!The beautiful Suko @ Suko’s Notebook hosts Really Random Tuesday. It is a way to post odds and ends–announcements, musings, quotes, photos–any blogging and book-related things you can think of.

In a bid to have some time for intentional playful learning, I have been doing tot trays with him for sometime. I read this post that Carisa from 1+1+1=1 had written. It is comprehensive and very beneficial. Carisa has also created a Tot School Page, which has everything in one place, so you can have access to all of it. After following lot of her ideas, I read her Montessori posts and I read this one in particular titled Montessori Minute ~ Where Do I Start?, which was my introduction to Montessori and everything Montessori. I loved it totally. So I started reading other blogs and lot more stuff, all online. And that is how I  found Living Montessori Now. Her post on How to Set up a Montessori Homeschool, is by far the easiest and the most thorough and helpful post I have read. And I just follow a lot of her ideas as well.

I like to remind myself of 2 things -

1) Follow the lead of the Child ( Thanks to Carisa for reminding me that)

2) Do not do things for my Child that he can do it by himself. (Help him be independent)

So now on I will be sharing all that we do together. This is for keeping me accountable and have an idea of what I have done thus far. Here are some tot trays we did from this past week.

I bought a Creatives Pattern Match Card game a few months back but Aarya was barely interested in it. So I converted it into a more easier version. I gave him 2 cards and just enough of his wooden block pieces to get the images right. The train image is intentional as he loves trains. I was right, he jumped into this one headlong. But he needed some help as I am doing this for the first time with him.

Next I added a spooning activity. I gave him marbles, because he loves marbles. But he did not like this tray at all. There was no free-play with marbles and spooning was a very “restricted” activity. He did it 3 times before pushing the tray aside. I asked him if he wanted to take turns and do it. he bluntly told me “No!”. It was not very sweet and I am not a naturally happy-go-lucky, patient- as-a-rock Mom – and I felt very sad and angry(built over time due to several reasons).But I let it go, this year I am trying very hard to do scream-free parenting. I just chant ” follow his lead” to myself all the time.

This tray got dumped on the table before I could get a neat picture of it. We are still working on keeping everything on the tray and not “dumping” it out all at once. He could not get these done, got frustrated and left. We tried to do it again the next day, he succeeded with my assistance but was not interested in doing it at all. I think we will do this again next week and see what happens.

This tray is inspired by some activities I saw at Living Montessori Now. I am sorry I do not remember the exact post though. The cards are Counting Flashcards Garry Fleming’s World Animals 123. I found these at a local store, but they are available online to buy via Hoopos.com. He completed this activity but was sad that his “Cheetah” was not there.

This next activity was a simple activity in which I made some circles with crayons and converted them in to balloons. Aarya had to use the correct color to color the balloons and he did this one as well. He just scribbled inside the balloons with the right colors and finally filled the whole page up.

Last were the Disney Pixar Cars Movie puzzles which are his all-time favorite. I got the Eichhorn Cars 4 Styles Puzzle (12-piece car puzzles) from Flipkart.com, which were a HUGE hit. He cannot do them alone yet, but loves to do it nevertheless.

(Aarya is 2 years 8 months old.)

Linking this post at Tuesdays Tots hosted by

Rainy Day Mom

Growing a Jeweled Rose

In Lieu of Preschool

Learn with Play at Home

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