Stamp it!!

My now 3 year old had developed a fascination for stamping a while ago. Every visit to any store or restaurant, she would look for the seal stamp and ink pad. Guess it is the wonderment of seeing a block of print or the action of dip, wham and voila - an image appears...

Today my search ended with Stamp It!!! Surely, it is not one of the finest or the most 'curiosity-killer' kind of an option. But, it serves the purpose and recreates the same joy. However I realised, Stamp It actually is multi-purposeful. That is, if you can see it.

The set we got is one with fruits and veggies. It has about 14 stamps, one ink pad, a set of colour pencils and a book. We not only stamped and coloured. We learnt to colour by coordinating it with the colours on the toy box cover. After we were done, we invented a way of putting the set back as well.

We picked up each stamp, called out the name of the fruit or vegetable. We identified a row each for veggies and for fruits. We put the stamps in the dedicated row. We learnt to separate fruits from veggies. We learnt to match the row to the fruit or veggie. We learnt to count. One toy, so many learnings.

One of my "recent" friends (I refer to her as recent since we became friends only because of our respective mommy-hoods) earlier today had stressed her point of view on, how while in parenting it is necessary to give a child and expose from the very beginning to more than one perspective to any situation, as much as you can. According to her, it makes the child sensitive in all ways. I respect her views. In a way, she voiced my style of parenting. In a way, she stamped a print of joy in me, which comes from being reassured that you are doing "alright" with being a parent, while parenting.