Disclosure: Happy Family provided me with product in exchange for this review, however, as always, all thoughts and opinions are strictly my own.
It is amazing how fast children grow. It seems as if just yesterday E and R were born. Now it seems as if they are learning something new each day. In fact, at 18 months old, children can learn up to one new word every two hours and by age 2, children’s brains perceive and process stimuli the same way adults’ do.
Because their brains are developing so quickly, I feel it is so important to feed E and R products that are going to promote overall brain development. That’s why I give them Happy Tot Grow & Shine Organic Toddler Milk as well as other products by Happy Family.
The Happy Tot Grow & Shine Organic Toddler Milk is designed to support the specific dietary needs of a young child by providing an additional source of vitamins and minerals to help grow their minds and bodies. The toddler milk offers more DHA, ARA and choline than the leading toddler milk. Combine the toddler milk with Happy Tot Best Friends Toddler Cookies, and you have a perfect milk and cookie party!
Complete nutrition isn’t the only key to developing your toddler’s brain, but you also need loving interactions and opportunities to play. This is why Happy Family challenged me to not only come up with a creative puzzle, game, or brain teaser for toddlers but also to share this activity with some of their friends at a milk and cookies party!
I thought for a while about what sort of activity I could do with R and E. We try make lots of everyday activities learning activities, but I needed to do something that not only my boys, but also their friends, could enjoy. That is why I came up with with the rice table idea.
The rice table is a twist on the traditional sandbox. I used a large sweater box and filled it with a large bag of rice that I bought at Sam’s Club. Very easy and very inexpensive. I then filled it with construction vehicles, matchbox cars, sea shells, and other fun materials.
The best part is that there is no one way to play with the rice table. There are also a variety of learning activities that you can do with the rice table. I am going to highlight a few of my favorites here in this post.
Finding and Counting Sea Shells
I had quite a few sea shells left over from when we were at the beach. I cleaned these shells and hid them in the rice for the kids to find. Using sand shovels and the construction vehicles, the kids searched through the rice to find the shells. Once they had found the shells, they counted them to find out which child found the most.
This activity not only helps them with their coordination, looking for the shells, but also helps develop their counting and sorting skills.
Which Cup Has More?
This is another hand eye coordination activity. Using the scoop on the digger I had the kids count how many scoops of rice to took to fill different sized cups. Some cups would take two scoops, others more. Once the cups were filled, I asked E to look at two of the cups and tell me which had more and which had less. This helps him learn the concept of size as well as teaching him hand eye coordination for filling the cups.
Pouring Rice into a Construction Set
We had a large construction play set that I put in the rice table. I had the kids use shovels to pour the rice into the construction set. Depending on where they poured the sand it would make the set do different things. It was interesting the way they used their imaginations to operate the play set.
Overall, the kids had a blast playing different games and using their imaginations to play in the rice table. In addition, to the activities that I had planned for the kids to do, it was great just seeing them be creative.
They used all of the different cars, trucks, and construction equipment.
They loved filling the different containers with the rice, seeing how much rice fit in each container, and using different ways to fill the containers themselves.
In fact, they had so much fun that they didn’t want to stop! This has seriously become one of E’s favorite toys, and I love the fact that he can playing while learning at the same time.
To find out more about how Happy Baby and Happy Tot can help provide your baby with the right nutrition to develop their brain, connect with them via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest.
Vote for Us!
If you love the rice table idea as much as we do, visit the Happy Family Facebook page anytime between November 25 and December 2 and vote for us! Both E and R will appreciate it so much!
