Potty training

Potty training gives us another chance to widen our vocabulary and we can make it fun (in English) for E. to sit on it.

Potty place

For her 1st birthday E. got a potty from I. Granny. I thought it was a little early to start, but as soon as she got hold of the potty, she sat on it swaying her legs with a wide smile on her face. So this was a sign she is open to sit on it at least. I assigned an area for the potty and made it into a fun place as you can see below.




I was lucky as after a few goes she peed and after a week she also pooped into the potty. But it takes time to sit and wait for the outcome, so while she is sitting on the potty I'm next to her and entertain her both in English and Hungarian, depending on which day or which time period we are in.

These toys and books can be played with when E. is sitting on the potty, so when she goes there to play, I put her on the potty. Then comes the potty song. The tune is the same as Twinkle, twinkle little star and the lyrics:

Tinkle, tinkle little tot,
Now you sit upon the pot

Any second you will see

Sprinkle, splash as you go pee

Tinkle, tinkle little tot,
Now you sit upon the pot

(I found it on baba-angol.hu, but I couldn't link it properly for some reasons)

While E. is sitting on the potty we are looking at the books. Sometimes she points at a picture and I say the name, but nowadays if I ask: "Where's the teddy?" or "What's this?" She can point or tell me the thing I'm pointing at.

The following words she can say from the books:

 

English:                                       

apple

pear

nana (banana)

tick-tock (clock)

teddy (plus showing the sign)

ant

baby

ye (yellow)

blue

teeth

head

bread

red

ack (black)

book (plus showing the sign)

duck

neigh (horse)

mun (monkey)

bib

tree

meow (cat)

coocoo (pigeon)

baa-baa (sheep)

dod (dog)

eat (plus showing the sign)

 

Hungarian:

eper



inni

még (shows her self-created sign)

ebből (picking which bottle she wants to drink from)

dinnye

apa

anya (said first on Father's Day - ironically)

Mana (our dog)

éni (én is - me too)

i-á (for the donkey)

légy (fly- her favourite animal)

hinta (and she starts swinging)

kicsi (said only once)

pá-pá (waving goodbye when we finish with the book)
bé (béka - frog)

She can point at several other pictures if I say their names. What we often play is that she chooses two or three pictures and she points at them one after the other and I say their names (or if it's an animal I give the sound they make). She enjoys it a lot and points at the different pics faster and faster, then laughs out loud.

 

Other activities:

 

When we have finished with the books, we can look at flash cards (I change the flash cards - 5 at a time - every third or fourth day). We have a lot of animal cards, as E. is crazy about them, but I also made some fruit, vegetable and flower cards too. I'm in the process of making body parts, musical instruments and colour cards since she is starting to be more and more interested in them.

Another great activity she loves playing is counting the clothes pegs. Actually, I saw the Helen Doron teacher using pegs during the lessons and E. liked it a lot. So I put five pegs of different colours in a plastic cup and we count them or I name the colours then E. repeats them. The same goes with the plastic bottle caps - in the name of recycling. Yellow is her favourite colour. It's hard to take it away from her when we have finished. When D. is playing with E. on the potty, he shakes all the five caps in his big hands, then spread them on his palms and E. has to point at the colour D. is saying. It's also quite enjoyable.

 

Potty toys

As you can see in the picture above, we have some musical instruments and a toy mobile phone, a FisherPrice Frog  which sings English songs if you push the flashing shape on his tummy and a peek-a-boo doggy. (The mobile and the frog are from a secondhand shop for half the price of the original) Well, I won't go into details in connection with them. Use your imagination. :)

 

You can put ANYTHING next to the potty to play with. These are just a few ideas. Our only rule is that she can play with these things when she is sitting on the potty (both in English and Hungarian). But, to be perfectly honest, she sits there happily even for 10-15 minutes if she is in the mood to play with these potty toys. Sometimes I can hardly make her leave the place.

 

And a little extra: I believe in rewards. So if we find something in the potty after getting up, E. gets a sticker (you can see the plastic box in the top right corner with a lot of stickers on). In fact, she gets one sticker for pee-pee and two for poopy. Now she can (or at least tries to) stick them on by herself.

 

The box is almost full of stickers :D I need to make another one from a 5-litre plastic bottle.