Books we love at 14 months old

We now have a Kidcraft Sling Bookshelf like the one below in our living room.

The girls select and bring to me the books they would me to read. Here are some of their favourite books at the moment.

The Learning Tower

 

 

 

The learning tower arrived! Life has been slightly easier than it was prior to the arrival of the tower. In a previous post I wrote about the Funpod, which has been great, but only fits one child. The Learning tower definitely fits two children, however I am glad that I made the decision to purchase the learning tower in addition to the Funpod.

 

 

 

So you may be wondering about how much room the Funpod and the Tower take up in our kitchen. Our kitchen is U shape and I currently have the Funpod at the end of the kitchen bench and the tower on the other side. This works very well for us, as I am close to both girls and we can interact with each other very well. We have used both the Funpod at the Learning Tower every day and several times a day since it arrived. Prior to the arrival of the Learning Tower we used the Funpod several times a day, but the girls had to take turns. Now they both can stand at the big bench at the same time.

 

I haven't taken the opportunity to take pictures of the girls in their respective towers, but I will make a conscious effort over the next few days and I will post some pictures.

 

 

 

We purchased our Learning Tower from Montessori Child and our preloved Funpod via Ebay.

 

 

 

 



Care of Ebay - The Little Helper Fun Pod

We are proud owners of a Fun Pod.

 

We were lucky enough to be the winning bidder for a Fun Pod listed on Ebay. These do not appear very often, so when I saw the listing I just had to have it.  For any parents of multiples I will say that the fun pod only fits one child. I did know this prior to purchasing and I did think long and hard about the value of buying a large item that will only fit one of the twins. After much pondering I decided that it would be worth it and it has been a fantastic purchase. 

 

There must be something liberating for a young child to see what happens at the BIG bench. The girls take turns in the fun pod and both love been in it. Their favourite game to play is peekaboo. The twin not in the fun pod thinks this game is hilarious. G sometimes likes to just sit inside and chat to herself.  We often play apple, orange and lemon.... a game where they pick up the item and I name it. The apple has yet to survive a session .

 

 

 

What I like about the fun pod is that it is fully enclosed, so no chance they will accidentally step back and slip out. The downside is that the child needs to be lifted in and out. However the smiles, laughter and delight on the girls faces when they are in the pod out weighs any negatives.

 

I have also purchased a Learning Tower which we are expecting any day now. Here is a fantastic link to a post about the learning tower used by twins. We are lucky enough to have the space for both in the house we currently rent and eventually in the house we are going to build. I opted to have a learning tower and a fun pod to give our family the option to have them both in the tower or split them up to work/play different activities at the kitchen bench. As most parents know siblings do not always play nice together. Sometimes they like to have their own space and the dedicated one on one time with a parent.

 

As a side note, if you are tossing up between a fun pod and the learning tower, one aspect you might want to consider between the two is the age of your little person and if you intend them to use the fun pod for water play. The fun pod is splash resistant it is not water resistant. It will stand up to some hard knocks and repeated use, ours is secondhand and looks brand new. However, it will not survive a drenching by enthusiastic little people helping with dishes and/or adventurous water play at the kitchen sink.

 

All in all I am super impressed with our Fun Pod, unfortunately brand new Fun Pods are no longer available for sale in Australia, so the only way to obtain one is secondhand.