Yep, there ain’t no party like Ezri’s tea party!
The attention span on Ezri is growing. Half hour tea parties, forty-five minute play dough sessions and fort building adventures. . .
Ezri will also sit through much longer books these days.
The possibility of actual plot increases.
Clifford’s Puppy Days by Bridwell is a current favorite. Ezri likes when Emily Elizabeth bathes Clifford in a soup bowl and when he gets covered in whip cream after in an incident in the local bakery.
Hairy Maclary Scattercat by Lynley Dodd
Another requested title. In this one a dog named Hairy Maclary is out chasing cats until he runs into Scarface Claw, the meanest tom in town, who proves too much and chases Hairy Maclary all the way home. Ezri delights in the appearance of Scarface Claw and the turnabout of the chaser being chased. Come to think of it she likes Scarface Claw in the original Hairy Maclary too.
Tuck Me In! by Dean Hacochen
This book is a clever one that makes me think I really should’ve thought of that. Each page features a baby animal in bed who needs to be tucked in. The next page is a half page that is the animal’s blanket that the reader folds over the animal by turning the page. Now the animal’s head is still visible but the rest of the animal is tucked in under the blanket. The text simply asks who needs to be tucked in and then says goodnight to the tucked in animal. Ezri enjoys tucking in the baby animals. I enjoy the detail that the front endpaper has the animals awake and the final endpaper shows them asleep. Ezri likes to flip between the endpaper pages saying, “asleep, awake, asleep, awake.”
“Let me be your salty dough
Or I won’t be your toy at all
Honey let me be your salty dough”
Today Eric made play dough in four colors in the kitchen.
Ezri spent 45 minutes playing with the dough.
I sang her my new Salty Dough song and she was suitably impressed.
Here are some photos with Ezri quotes.
“Ezri cut. Ezri cut.”
“Ezri squish.”
“Ezri poke.”
“Ezri have headband.”
We also used cookie cutters to make play dough animals who frolicked together playing catch with play dough balls.
The play dough hippo liked to “kick, ball, kick.”
While the play dough rabbit preferred to hop up and “throw ball.”
Good thing that hippo was there to catch it and kick it back.
She also made a play dough tower and wore a play dough mustache (photo snapped too late- drat!).
Ezri even remembered the important no mouth rule of play dough for the entire play time. Good job, kiddo.
N is for nonfiction.
This week I bring you the joys of nonfiction.
If you parent a preschooler and have been hanging in the picture books and not over in the nonfiction section, it’s time to make your move because there are some great reads over in that true stuff. Many written at a very basic level.
Feet by Nicola Whittaker
“Different creatures have different feet. Some have flippers. Some have paws. Some have toes. Some have claws.” Each brightly colored page has an animal or at least the feet of the animal with a statement about what sort of feet it has. “Some feet are small. Some feet are big. Some feet can hop. Some feet can dig.” The book has an appendix with a few quick facts on each of the creatures featured and despite its simplicity there is even an index. Ezri enjoys the simple rhymes and looking at the feet of a koala, frog, mole, mouse, elephant and so on.
This is a series so Whitaker has also done Creature Features on Noses, Tails and Hair. Why Are Animals Blue?by Melissa Stewart
Each two page spread features a blue animal and talks about why it might be blue. The Blue Shark’s color helps it hide in the ocean. The Blue-Tongued Skink sticks its bright blue tongue out to surprise predators. Ezri may not understand all the information in this one, but with prompting she points out what’s blue on each page. The text is sparse enough that it fits with her attention span and the color theme is perfect. This is from the Rainbow of Animals series and there books about other colors to be read.
Spot the Difference: Eyes by Daniel Nunn
This is Ezri’s pick for the best of these three books. She has memorized sections of it and learned what a stalk is from this book which explains that crabs have eyes on stalks. The text is very simple. “This is an owl. It has big eyes. This is a mole. It has small eyes. This is a frog. It has bulging eyes.” The photos are big and vivid. There seem to be others in the Spot the Difference series from Acorn a division of Heinemann publishing on fruits, roots, leaves, flowers, and animals. When we start gardening this spring, I’ll bring home some of the ones on flora for Ezri.
Ezri is also enjoying reading Wild Animal Babymagazine from the National Wildlife Federation. It has simple I Spy game pages where you find each particular animal in a scene. Also, throughout the magazine Sammy the Skunk hides five times on various pages and Ezri loves finding Sammy.
Here’s Ezri helping bake chocolate chip cookies for the first time. She enjoyed helping eat them too.
Ezri and I are very happy that this week library storytimes and park district classes resume. We had lots of fun playing around the house with things like my hat, but we are both ready to be back in class at the library and gym with other toddlers.
We went out to eat at Major Restaurant where we used to be regulars before Ezri.
I got onion rings and after I’d taken a bite Ezri pointed and said “looks like C.”
An onion ring with one bite out of it does look like a “C”
The next day having a cereal bar Ezri said, “C is for cereal bar.” This is more impressive than when she sings, “Cookie, cookie, cookie starts with L.”
She rotates through different letters and knows she’s wrong, but thinks it is hilarious.
When I told her she could wear anything she wanted that was in her closet I had forgotten we had a monkey suit in there.
Ezri just said, “Want monkey. Wear monkey.”
So she did.
At age almost 2, is it possible to already have a long history of dressing up as apes and simians?
