The Cutest At-Home Toddler Activity + Free Advertising Opportunity

Happy Friday! I hope you had a fab week! We’re lounging around here this morning after 4,000 back-to-back obligations yesterday, and I think my girls are enjoying the relaxed time just as much as I am. Tonight I’m picking up my best friend Ashley from the airport for a long-weekend visit, and I’m about to burst at the seams with excitement!

Today I have a really neat toddler activity to briefly share with you, but first I want to touch on a free advertising opportunity! Free – whhaaaat!

If you’re a regular reader around here, you may know that I’m very involved in and extremely thankful for my local MOPS (Mothers of Preschooler) chapter. Like most (likely all) MOPS groups, we have various expenses and are gearing up for our annual biggest fundraiser – our mid-November raffle.

In a few weeks we’ll sell tickets at our meeting and raffle off all of the donated items that we were able to collect. I thought it would be fun to reach out to you all and see if there are any of you that have businesses you’d like spotlighted not only at our meeting but also right here on my blog! Here’s what I’d need.

1. Have an item or a credit (minimum of $20 please) that you’d like to donate? I’d need it by November 1st, and it can be absolutely ANYTHING – big or small! Just email me at whimsicalseptember@yahoo.com ASAP and I can shoot you my shipping info!
2. We’ll spotlight your item to our members and raffle it off, with all collected money going toward our annual expenses (thank you!)
3. In return for your generosity, mid-November (likely the week before Thanksgiving) I’ll dedicate one entire blog post to the businesses who donated an item (with the most financially generous at the top and then in descending order). I’ll include pictures, links, and any other advertising information you’d like me to share that would help you boost your business (right before the holidays too! Woohoo!)

Have questions? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch and we can chat further! Thanks so much in advance!

Okay. So toddler activity. This is cute! Hadley’s PAT teacher shared this with us this week, and we all really enjoyed it.

Hadley’s teacher brought over a collection of a dozen plastic animals and then two signs – one labeled “zoo” and the other labeled “farm. She was also ready with an app called “Free Animal Sounds”.

We laid out all the animals on the floor and then her teacher played an animal sound from her iPad. Hadley had to identify which animal made the sound, pick up the animal, and then place it either at the zoo or at the farm.

The first thing that I loved about this activity was that she got to listen to real animal sounds. Of course she knows a cow goes “moo” and a chicken goes “cluck cluck”, but in reality, cows and chickens make noises that are much different than how people make them sound. I was curious to see if she could identify their “real life” sounds, and she did GREAT (she only missed one).

I was very surprised though to see her semi-struggle with deciding where each animal belonged (she only got about half right on the first try). She’s been to both a zoo and a farm about a million times each, but she still was pretty confused. Definitely gave me something to continue casually having conversations with her about. I always appreciate activities that show me areas that I can teach Hadley a little bit more about.

Like all of the PAT program activities, this is an activity that can be easily recreated with things already around the home. Of course the app is free, and I can print pictures of a zoo and a farm. Hadley has a bunch of animal figurines laying around, but I figure we can always just talk about the animals too (which sound belongs with which and where each animal can be seen – the farm or the zoo).

Simple, educational, and just plain cute!

Have a good weekend!