Learning with COLORS!

With the theme of St. Patrick's Day, we focused on colors. Shaye knows all of his colors, but I wanted to do more work with Brock. We had Aunt Makenzie with us so she was able to join in some of the activities!

First we started with a Skittle Color Sort. I know we will be doing a lot of "sorts" this week, but I know that's a great skill for younger kids. Plus, they loved eating the skittles when we were done!!

 

Next we did a Toy Color Sort

 

 



Their sensory tub this week was made from "Rainbow Rice"! 

 



 

The weather was absolutely beautiful this week. On one of our walks we went for a color hunt!

Here is a picture of our "homeade" color drop with pom pon balls. We also had some small games/sensory toys that we practiced colors with as well.

Snow Day Fun!

With all these snow days lately, it's hard to find activities to keep your kids busy! If your kids are like mine, they are in need of new things to do until it's warm enough to go outside. Here is a list of our top 5 games/activities. Hopefully some of these are new ideas that you will find helpful!

#1:   Living Sand
This by far is the coolest sand I've ever seen. It's easy to play with but not messy at all!
Thanks to my good friend Amy for the recommendation. They gave it to Shaye for a birthday present!
You can buy it here on amazon!

#2: Roll & Play Dice
Kids roll the big, cloth dice and do an activity that matches the color they rolled. Practice color recognition,body movement and teamwork!
You can buy it here on amazon!

 

 

#3:  Chasing Cheeky

Kids chase the monkey around as they try to toss rings on his tail. You can either have the monkey stand still or by putting the banana in his mouth he moves around. As a parent, I love the fact that as it bumps into things, it will automatically adjust and move itself so it never stops. I can walk away and the kids can play this all on their own!

You can buy it here on amazon!

 

 



 

 

#4:   Learning books

Our Parents As Teacher rep used these books when she came to work with the boys. We have four of them from amazon, but I'm sure they'd love more! We have Counting, ABC, On the Farm & Let's Build!

 

 

Below is an example of what a page looks like in our Counting book. This is page 4. They have to find the magnet #4 and place it correctly on the page. Then they have to correctly place the missing animals on the page to make it match the number.

 

 

This is a page from the Farm book. The book gives directions on what they need to do. For example it says, "A horse looks out from the stable." Kids then must find the horse head magnet and place it like I did by the barn door. 

 



 

#5:   Animal Hospital



Just by taking a simple kids doctor kit (I'm sure anyone with small kids has one!) and stuffed animals, you can also create your own "Animal Hospital".  I also added in a few other small items that I had around the house (an Ace bandage wrap, tongs, dr. mask, old medicine cups, etc). We used toilet paper rolls for casts!

 

 

  



The boys had fun "fixing" all their hurt patients!

 

Letter M

This week we worked on the letter M!
 
When they woke up the first morning I had this table set up for them. I collected things around the house that started with M

 

 

Letter M Topic Ideas:

Mickey

Monkeys

Moose

Music

Monsters

Mater

 

Letter M Activities:

-Draw straight/diagonal lines to help write the letter M

-Use playdough to make an M

-Alphabet puzzles





Halloween

Halloween Sensory Tub

The boys LOVE playing with sensory tubs. And I must admit, I love putting them together! I especially love this time of year!  As soon as the first cooler day approached us, I figured it was time to put together a Fall/Halloween tub for the boys to play with.

I did my shopping at Dollar Tree, Michael’s & Joanne’s. I’ll show you the entire tub I put together, and then I’ll break it down so you can see where I got each individual piece.

The entire tub was less than $20!!

I usually use beans, pasta noodles, etc. for them to dump/play with in the tubs. This time I thought I’d change it up and get something more Halloween related. I found spider & pumpkin buttons, Halloween erasers, colored spikey balls, rubber eyeballs & skeleton people.

                               

    

    

For the actual tubs, again, I wanted to something more festive. I found a orange candy bucket and filled it with items they could dump all their above “treasures” into. Below I will list out all the items & where I got them at.

 

Shopping List:

Joanne’s—spider/pumpkin buttons $2

Michael’s—spikey balls $2, erasers $2

Dollar Tree (everything is $1)—Candy bucket, ice cube tray, pumpkin cups-2, goblet, haunted house box, funnels, ice cream scoop, mini tubs, measure spoons, rubber eyeballs/spiders, skeleton people

Everything totals $18!!

 

 

Shew Fly Don't Bother Me!

Learning about bugs is always a fun thing for little kids...especially little boys. What's better then dirt, tools and eewy, wiggly bugs!

After searching Pinterest and my favorite blogs, I found the best activities, recipes and games that are perfect for kids ages 3 and under.

Let's begin with the book list. Some of the top books include: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!, Bugs Are Insects, A Firefly in a Fir Tree, Leo the Lightning Bug, Ten Little Caterpillars

 

 

 

Sensory Tub

The sensory tub included the following: plastic bugs, magnify glass, safari hats, rocks, sticks, bug nets & leaves.

 

 

 

 

Activities

 

1) Play with mud dough (mix baking soda, water & food coloring)  We also buried bugs in the mud dough. They dug them out with their hands or we got a squirt gun and sprayed water on the bugs to clean them off.

 

 

 



 

2) Go on a Bug Hunt! Use your binoculars, bug hats and nets to catch bugs in the yard

 

3) Play mosquito tag. Give each kid a few stickers to hold in their hands. On go, kids chase each other.  When you tag another person you have to stick the sticker on them. The sticker represents a mosquito bite. When we played it, I had the kids yell, "Mosquito!!" 

 

4) Glow in the Dark bug hunt. Go to Dollar Tree and get a bag of glow-in-the-dark bugs for $1. At night, I hid the bugs in our bedroom and bathroom. Shaye went "looking" for all the bugs in the dark. He thought it was so cool to hunt for bugs inside!

 

5) Read the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Then use the cut outs to have them sequence the food while you read the book.

 

 



 

6) Bug Movement Cards. Do movements according to the cards. For example, Dance like a Bee, Spin like a Spider, Roll like a Roly Poly, etc.

 

 

 

7) Animal Sort Activities. You can sort by size, color or attributes. One we did was sorting by bugs that had wings vs. no wings.

 

 



 



Gardening 101

This week we have focused our time on Gardening! Each day we read a different book and either did a craft or made a special snack that goes along with gardening! At first I wasn't sure about this theme, but the more research I did I kept finding cute things to do! I also got lots of my ideas from the Virtual Book Club for Kids that we are participating in online.
 
Below is what we have done throughout the week!

To begin, I created a sensory tub for the boys to play with all week. I got two $1 bags of shredded brown paper to use as dirt, a set of fake flowers and kid gardening supplies.

 

 

 



Day 1:
Introduce the Gardening theme by doing nothing other then...GARDENING! We went down to my brothers and planted vegetables in the garden. Of course we put these boys to work!! We talked about garden tools (tractors, shovels, cages, etc.), what plants we planted, of course we just played in the dirt!

 

 

 

Day 2:

We read the books A is for Salad by Mike Lester & Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert. Since it's so beautiful outside today I didn't want to do very much inside. We made a Rainbow Salad out of fruit and took it outside to eat! Red=Strawberries, Orange=mandarin oranges, Yellow=Banana, Green=grapes, Blue=blueberries, Violet=grapes

 

 

 

Day 3:

We read the book How Groundhog's Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry.  I had the boys draw pictures of a garden. I also created a color page that listed vegetables/fruits and their color!

 

 

 Day 4:

We read the book Biscuit in the Garden by Alyssa Capucilli

Then we played with our sensory tub!

 

 



 

Day 5:

We read the book Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert

As a special treat we had pudding (as dirt) and gummy worms.

 



 

 

Other Great Gardening Books:

Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown