At Home with Daddy

Now that I am back at work, Mat is taking paternity leave and staying at home with Evie. They have been having a great time. I asked Mat to share with everyone two of their recent activities.

Shredda! To introduce Evie to a unique experience, and to do some much needed shredding of papers, I filled Evie’s splash pool full of shredded paper with her in it. I placed Evie on her stomach, and placed handfuls of shredded paper in front of her. At first, she looked at it, then reached out to investigate the material before her. Before long she was scrunching it in her hands and trying to put it in her mouth but didn’t do that much after the first time. To further stimulate her senses, I "rained" the shredded paper on her head. Upon doing this, Evie would screw her face up in a pose that she was going to sneeze and then shake her head from side to side. It seemed like it was tickling her, but she didn’t mind it too much. This experience introduced her to a different material she had not investigated before. It enabled her to touch, taste and see further developing her sensory skills, creating awareness of sense of self, concreting a foundation for hand eye coordination and having fun doing it all at the same time.

Cold Spaghetti! Cold Spaghetti! We introduced Evie to a unique sensory experience. We placed Evie in her splash pool dressed down to the nappy, then filled her splash pool with spaghetti. This experience felt really weird to her and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Most of the activity was spent in quiet contemplation, watching all of us (mum, dad and friends Steve and Christie) watch her. We placed the spaghetti on her body and let her feel it on her hands and head. It weighed heavy on her head, that worked her neck and back muscles to keep her head up. It didn’t take long for the spaghetti to get cold so when we placed it on her back she became a little upset with that. When she was placed on her back, Evie’s attention was focused when I would compress the spaghetti on my hand, hold my hand above her and the spaghetti would slowly wiggle off. This playful activity stimulated Evie’s sensory discovery, sense of self, gross, fine motor and language development with the cold, squishy, wiggly and slimy spaghetti.