Driving Miss Sasha

We were at the Early childhood program at our school system again this week. I think we'll try to do it every week because it's so good for her. She gets lots of interaction with kids her age, and while I think that's great for her development, it fascinates me to just sit back and watch her. She's got some great interpersonal skills.
She has a special way of approaching other children. When she sees a child that she wants to play with, she slowly walks towards them. She stops short right in front of them and stands there while trying to make eye contact. Then she very very slowly steps forwards into the child's personal space. She keeps inching herself forward until she gets closer. She leans in to them and tries to get eye contact. If she gets it, she bursts out with a cheerful "HI!" and a wave. I wish I could get her process on video because it is really charming.
Somehow, her magic seems to work on even the most selfish of bullies. She brings out a protectiveness in other kids, especially in older girls. I've seen quite a few older girls (like 3-5 year olds) protectively mother-hen Sasha.
Sasha is great at sharing. If she is playing with a toy that she likes, I've seen her try to offer the great toy to other children that she likes.
I've never seen any child try to hit Sasha. Like I said, she somehow manages to charm even the bullies. I have seen a few kids snatch toys from her hand. When that happens, Sasha gets this bewildered look on her face, as if to say "Now why would you do that?". But she doesn't try to take it back. If another kid takes a toy away from her, she doesn't really care about the toy anymore. The child has her interest more than the toy and she'll watch that child for a while instead.
I love how nice Sasha is. She's just a sweet child. I hope that she stays as nice. I'm sure she'll go through her phases, but I just want to believe that this is her true personality.

During gym time, the toy cars are like the toy that all the kids want to play with at the early childhood program. Eventually Sasha did get a turn with the car (her favorite). She took my car keys and discovered that they fit perfectly in the car's "ignition". I found it amusing.
There is a little boy that Sasha gets along with very well. He is as sweet and charming as she is, and they share with each other. They took turns with a riding toy together. Sasha sat in the seat and the boy (1 month younger than Sasha) pushed her around the gym. Then after a little while, they swapped roles. I thought it was adorable and tried to get a pic, but they were too fast for my cell phone camera, hehe!

Back to school

Open Gym
School started a month ago for my older daughter, but it just started this week for Sasha!
Our local school district has a really neat early education program for children ages birth through 5 years old. They have some sort of activity every weekday. They open the gym up at one of the elementary schools so that the children can run around and play. They also have a classroom filled FULL of toys. There are so many toys that they are stacked from floor to ceiling on shelves. They also allow you to borrow any of the toys that you want, like a toy library. So it's like having nearly every possible toy available to your child.

We went to the program on Monday and Sasha had a great time! We are always the first family to show up, so Sasha played in the toy room until more children arrived. There was a set of boy twins her age, and also a set of boy triplets that were about a year older than Sasha, and another boy about a month younger than Sasha at the program. Sasha gets along very well with the younger boy. They both share toys with each other nicely and the smile and make faces at each other. The twin and triplet boys are a bit too rowdy for her.

After playing in the toy room, we went to the gym. It was great to have someplace for Sasha to actually run around. We really don't have that available to us in our small little apartment. Sasha took full advantage. She ran around and rode bikes, and she drove a toy car around. She kept yelling "Bye Bye! See ya!" at me as she drove away in her car, like she was pretending she was driving away from me.

I love this program and I'm glad that it is back in session. This program is awesome to have in the winter, when everyone is cooped up indoors.

Toys Toddlers REALLY like

On Monday and Tuesday, I took Sasha to the local toddler preschool program that we found. We're going to make it a regular thing to do now on Mondays and Tuesdays. It's so good for her! The part of the program we've participated in so far is two part. First the kids play in the heavily stocked toy room. Then after about an hour, the kids get to play with bikes and balls in the elementary school gym.

The toy collections let me know what sort of toys she actually likes. I swear they've got aisles and aisles of toys stacked from floor to ceiling. Any toy you can think of ever made, they've got it and when Sasha likes one I can borrow it! This alone should save me money because I don't have to waste money on toys she won't like anymore.

Toys she liked this week:
Wooden pegged puzzles
Sit & Spin - remember these when you were a kid?
Playhouse- Sasha was guarding a play house like it was her turf
Toy Vacuum (go figure)- popular with all the toddlers!

I found that I really like Little Tikes toys. They've got the coolest stuff, very sturdy, and kids loved them. There were lots of little kids the same age as Sasha and pretty much all the cool toys that the kids liked were made by Little Tikes. I think everything else (Fisher Price, Playschool) broke under the strain of a gazillion toddlers playing with them. Wanna know if a toy is tough? Throw it in the room with this crowd of toddlers, haha!

So anyways, I borrowed the Sit & Spin toy. The one we borrowed has a button with lights and music on the part in the center that you hold.

At the gym, Sasha was fond of this little car:

Isn't it cute? I could push her around with the pole, or she could scoot it around herself, although she mostly scooted it backwards. She had a blast with it.
Anyways, in the gym today, Sasha met her first bully. Oh no! There was a three year old rich kid, very cute, with his imported au pair. In the gym portion of toddler preschool, he took a liking to Sasha. I don't know how to describe it but it was like he was herding sheep, if you've ever seen a sheep dog do that. Wherever Sasha would step, he would jump in front of her to prevent her from moving and would yell "You stay right here baby!". She was basically stuck standing in one spot as he wouldn't let her go anywhere. She didn't get upset. She just glared at him and didn't give up. She kept trying to move anyways. Eventually she sat down on the floor, to which he yelled "Yeah baby, you just sit there and don't move." Whenever she tried to stand up, he would hold her down so she couldn't get up.

I mostly watched for a few reasons. I've never seen Sasha encounter a social situation like this before and wanted to see how she reacted. She did pretty well I think! She just kept doing what she was trying to do and didn't give up trying. I also wanted to see what the kid was like, since Sasha will be playing in this program with this child on a weekly basis. I wanted to see if his nanny would step in and stop him. Nope. She just yelled at him and said "no don't do that" but that's not effective on a 3 year old. So she seemed mostly ineffective. Sasha didn't seem to be in any harm, and I think she learned from this social encounter that 3 year olds are annoying.

Eventually I did extricate Sasha from the situation and had her play across the gym from the boy. Sasha stole his car...the neat one pictured above. Yeah he was pretty upset at that but oh well. The kids had to pick a bike or car to bring to the gym and the car was actually what he originally chose, thus it was "his" car. So Sasha got her retaliation :)