How Do You Tell If a Toddler Is Color Blind?

Blame Mayim Bialik. I read her blog faithfully, and last year she posted that her six-year-old boy is color blind and that she missed the signs. Ever since I've been On Alert for color blindness. I'm not pushing colors as a general rule, but I won't lie, I was happy to find that BabyCenter topic assuring me that any given kid without a family history of color blindness is in all likelihood not color-blind, he's just not developmentally there yet.

Anyway, I swear I'm more than happy to do colors by osmosis, but Mayim's cautionary tale has been Haunting Me. Happily, the Internet is prepared for this contingency!

I found a site offering a special (free, hallelujah) color blindness test for children and toddlers. Kids need different tests than adults, because the traditional Ishihara color perception tests for color blindness (plate one is pictured above) are based on identifying a number hidden a field of colored dots. Kids who don't know their numbers yet would be confounded by this, regardless of their color perception.

The kid's color blindness test (which apparently originally appeared in Field & Stream magazine) has a bunch of cute little animals, and Jackson found the bear, the deer-cow and the bunny with no problem, so we're almost certainly in the clear. Yay!

Sensory and Discovery Bottles for Toddlers and Preschoolers - Recycling Craft Project

SAHM + Pinterest = Craftmania!

I've been "upcycling" lots of plastic bottles into sensory bottles for Jackson lately, and I must admit, it's pretty fun, not least because it involves a hot glue gun. These may or may not just be overblown rattles, but he seems to find them at least moderately interesting, and I've been having fun. Here's what I've done so far:

Dice Discovery Bottle (DRY): When Jackson was "helping" me "clean out" my office supply drawer, I found five dice (two red, two white, one green) that seemed like they would be educational but deadly. I solved the choking-hazard problem by putting them in a bottle of expired Trader Joe's Harvest Grains Blend, which is a nice textural mix of couscous, quinoa, orzo and baby garbanzo beans. The bottle is a single-serving Arrowhead bottle of the type distributed at the in-laws' house.

Button Jar (DRY): A mix of colorful buttons that sat in my sewing kit for about five years finally has a purpose. These buttons rattle nicely against the glass of the baby-food jar, and the iridescent colors are a pretty blend.

Confetti Prism (WET): This one is colorful confetti in a Nyquil bottle. The water was not supposed to be pink like that, but the confetti dye has bled into the water. The triangle shape of the Nyquil bottle is great for increasingly the "visibility" of the objects inside. (I now have my eye on a three-sided Peptobismol bottle in the medicine cabinet.) I love this confetti mix from Target ($2) because it has a lot of butterfly shapes in it and when you turn it over, it looks a bit like the butterflies are fluttering through the bottle.

Silver Rattle (DRY): Silver balls, which went unused during another recent craft project, found a new home in a sturdy Martinelli's apple juice bottle. These balls are pretty light, but I make sure to put anything that might be hard or that's going to be fiercely rattled into a bottle that can definitely hold up to it. We don't want balls bearing to shatter a glass jar, for example. This bottle is J's fave right now. He likes shaking it and announcing, "Loud! Loud! Noisy!"

Straw Shaker (DRY): These are cut-up colorful Big Lots bendy straws in a Pepsi bottle. This one is a good shaker, and it's interesting to contrast the sound from this bottle to the sound of the toothpicks bottle.

Magic Bottle (WET): This one is bouncy balls from the .99 cent store in a Voss bottle with water and lamp oil. The balls float on top of the water, but then the lamp oil floats above balls, so it allegedly looks like they are floating in the middle of the bottle. (Personally, I can see the margin, but maybe that's because I'm looking for it?) This bottle was inspired by this pin on Pinterest, and this bottle is actually my second attempt. The first version was too many balls (five) in too small and too textured a space (an old vegetable oil bottle), and the lamp oil immediately started discoloring, so that it was a light yellow, which sort of ruins the intended effect. I'm now questioning whether this needed to be lamp oil or if baby oil would provide the same effect for less money and without having to go to the hardware store to find lamp oil. Be aware, you need to find a wide-mouth bottle for this one, otherwise you can't get the bouncy balls inside!

Toothpick Shaker (DRY): Colorful toothpicks ("party picks" according to the box) in a Gatorade bottle make for another nice shaker. My version of this bottle was inspired by this pin on Pinterest, which suggested you could make a DIY rain stick with toothpicks and rice. I tried it with the rice, but it never seemed to work right (maybe I had the proportions wrong?). I eventually discovered that the toothpicks alone inside a relatively textured bottle like the Gatorade bottle provided roughly as much sound effect as did toothpicks plus rice, and I liked the look much better without the rice, so here we are. Making this bottle taught me that for certain bottle projects you do want to seek out different sizes and shapes of bottles for different projects with different goals.

Bead Bottle (WET): Pony beads and water in a mini Arrowhead bottle make for a simple, straightforward, inexpensive bottle that has a great swirling effect.

Hula Bottle (WET): I call this a hula bottle--it's a deconstructed plastic flower lei and purple glitter in a vegetable oil bottle. I'm strangely fond of this one for no particular reason.

Wave Bottle (WET): This is an all-time classic sensory bottle, and this is another one where the bottle itself seems to make a difference. I don't think this one would half as effective if it weren't in a tall, smooth bottle (this is a Smart Water bottle from my parents' recycling bin). This is just vegetable oil and water with blue food coloring (err strongly on the side of caution with food coloring--you can oversaturate very easily!), and when you rock it, can see the effect of wave in the ocean. Totally entertaining, for me at least. You could also put floaty little ocean animal toys in the bottle for added effect.


Sensory Bottle Tips

• If you have any objects are your house that are fun but dangerous (don't we all?), use the danger as inspiration. Encase the objects in a bottle and they suddenly it's safe! Beads, dice, balls, buttons, pins--basically everything you have to take away from toddlers--can be an inspiration for a bottle.
• Less is more. My least favorite bottles are the ones I overfill. My current rule of thumb is that the "featured item" should take up no more than 1/3 of the bottle.
• If you don't like the result of your first attempt to make a bottle, or if just goes wrong somehow, cut your bottle open over a colander, retrieve your treasures and try, try again. Sometimes it takes a few passes to get the mix right.
• Be careful not to put hard objects in glass, lest the bottle shatter under vigorous toddler examination.
• Go slow with the food coloring. Put it in one drop at a time, swirl it around, see what you think of that color, and then add another drop if you want a darker shade.
  

Sensory Bottle Supply List

• Collect cleaned, dried-out bottles in interesting shapes and sizes.
• Goo Gone and/or Goof Off are invaluable for getting off label-glue residue, but sometimes you can do it with just soap, hot water and elbow grease.
• Filler material, which can be anything you find around your house that seems intriguing, or something you find at a discount or craft-supply store.
• A funnel helps get tiny objects and/or gushy liquids into the bottle with less spillage; canning funnels can be used on wide-mouth bottles like the ones that contain applesauce.
• A hot-glue gun or a tube of superglue secures the caps; some people use tape, but a quick  swirl of glue inside the cap looks tidier.

Toddler Trays - Holiday - Montessori

Last week's Montessori activity trays were such a hit I decided to go again!

Montessori toddler tray: Jingle bells and tongs

I'm so proud of my little guy! When I first demonstrated this tray, he was confounded by the tongs and couldn't quite grapple with them, but this morning he used them successfully and correctly! OK, well, to be fair, so far he's just using the tongs to drop them in the bottle below rather than putting the bells into the tray (LOL, Montessori might not approve of this tray cross-contamination), but he actually did the problem-solving and the work over the past two days to figure out a new skill. He likes to put the bells in the tray with his hands as well as trying with the tongs, and the bells jingle beautifully, so there's a nice sensory element to this tray as well. He both jiggles the smaller tray full of bells and swirls them around in the larger tray. The smaller tray once contained mochi ice cream, and I just want you all to know that eating that stuff so I could have this project for him is the kind of Great Sacrifice I am willing to make for my child. :)

Montessori toddler tray: Clothespin drop

The clothespin drop is a classic children's activity, and I made it "holiday" themed by picking out a red jar and using only red and green clips. So far he chucks in big handfuls of clips at a time (much the way he eats only big handfuls of food at a time), but I hope to refine his technique over the course of the week. This is also a very wide-mouth bottle, so I might dig around the house and see if I can find anything narrower and a little more challenging.

DIY Texture Tablets - Much Cheaper Montessori!

Inspired by this post and by Montessori's fancy texture gradient tablets, I decided DIY texture boards were in order for the little one. (A set of "rough gradation tablets" goes for $47!)

Why do these? Well, I'm hoping to provide the kiddo with some touch-sense stimulation, practice matching, preliminary puzzle-solving skills and some new vocabulary words, but also because I like having as many outlets as possible for recycled goods around here. Not every Diapers.com box is going to be upcycled, but a girl has to try.

These are 10 cm x 10 cm cardboard squares, with 8 cm by 8 cm textures. The textures, so far, are a nubbly orange washcloth, smooth parchment paper, a soft cloth (formerly striped socks someone gave me), rough sandpaper, bumpy contact paper, bubble wrap, slick aluminum foil, and rough mesh (formerly a potato bag). So far he likes petting the textures, and we'll see what else comes of having these around.

I'm planning to add some other sandpaper grits and fabrics as I can find them, but any suggestions for other readily available textures that he might like to play with? Inspire me!

Montessori-Style Practical Life

I don't really understand Montessori, but I've decided that on the face of it there's a lot of (a) saying yes to your child's natural instincts and/or (b) putting them to work doing mild menial tasks in hopes of building hand strength (or something?). I'm using that template for the time being, in hopes of deciphering it as I go along.

As such, here are some sensory projects and/or practical life exercises I've done with the kiddo lately, not including his obsession with the brooms in the broom closet. He loves dragging them around and pretending he's "sweeping sweeping!"

J loves to try to take these nested mixing bowls out of the cabinet, so I finally decided to just let him play with them. We'll probably have a breakage incident at some point, but in the meantime, he has a field day arranging these bowls. He only uses the smallest four or five so far. Disregard the giant smear of drool on his shirt--his canines (incisors?) are coming in so he's a drool machine lately.

Juicing citrus fruits is a classic Montessori practical-life thing, but this was just an ill-considered exercise on my part. This grapefruit was way too meaty and heavy for him to really work on. We have some lemons coming in on our tree soon so we'll try again with those.

Drinking drinking! After giving the kiddo a fair shot with both halves of the grapefruit, I did the juicing myself and Jackson loved drinking the fruit (juices) of our labors.

I need to chit some potatoes anyway, because I'd like to try to grow potatoes in buckets in the spring, so I put Jackson to work placing grocery store potatoes in an apple box divider. If these don't sprout soon (they haven't so far), I'll go to the farmer's market and get some organic ones. (Many grocery store potatoes are sprayed to prevent the eyes from sprouting in the produce drawer.)

Scooping! Jackson found the measuring cup in the dishwasher (he loves "helping" with the dishwasher) and wanted to do "scooping scooping!" so I dug some coarse salt out of the high cupboard and let him do scooping from one dish to the other. He had fun pushing the salt around and scooping it to many far reaches of the house, hee. (The proper Montessorians don't allow such chaos, but he's still so little, who cares?) I think I've got it all cleaned up now (we'll see) and I used the excess as an ad hoc Bermuda-grass-killer for some cracks in the driveway. Next time it rains it should soak into the soil around the weed roots and hopefully both kill the roots and prevent further growth.

 Not pictured: I've also been getting out the mortar and pestle and trying to get him to grind egg shells for me. So far that seems beyond both his strength and his attention span, but he does help take the shells out of the carton and break them down a bit with his hands, which seems like a great first step!