Crafty Lil Devil

Boy, see what happens when I don't blog for a week? I end up w/3-4 posts in one day. Just wanted to share some very cool news with you. Well, I think it's cool anyway. At work, we started working with the babies and teaching them baby signs. Most of them are WAY too little to understand what we're doing, much less actually use the signs themselves but it makes me feel good to try. Well, persistance paid off this week. One of the older girls (almost a year old) used the sign for "more" while she was eating. YAY! I've been watching her to see if she just did the sign randomly or if she was using it intentionally to get "more" of whatever. I haven't really been able to tell but I do make sure I give her more of whatever she's asking for and I do the sign and say "Oh, you want more?" I think if we continue this she will gradually (if she doesn't already) understand that using that sign = more. And the parents are VERY excited about the fact that we're using baby signs with their babies.

Note to anyone who works with babies:
Babies need sensory activities too and they are NOT too young to do art projects! Just because they can't hold a crayon or a paintbrush does not mean they are not capable of producing art. Let them fingerpaint with pudding or Cool Whip, take their handprints and footprints for their parents, anything!

One mom told me about a daycare where her daughter went. The little girl was too young to sit up so they laid her on the floor, taped a piece of paper to the wall and put paint on the baby's feet so that she could kick against the paper and paint. How cool is that?! See, totally do-able. Messy and requires a little (or a lot of) extra work, but SO worth it! That's the kind of thing I want to see in the infant room on a daily basis. Too bad I'm leaving! But you can bet my little munchkin will be taking lots of baths because his mama will have him kick-painting as soon as he's old enough. Kids are supposed to get messy! That's the fun part about being a kid!