Mrs Wishy Washy

We borrowed Mrs Wishy Washy from the library this week. I had ordered it and had to wait for it to come in from another library. When we went to collect it, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a "big book". We had loads of fun reading it, and the size of it was a bit of a novelty for R. The book inspired some of our activities this week.

I put out some dark brown playdough (for mud) and the animals from the book; a pig, a duck and a cow. R loved putting them into the playdough. We talked about the animals 'getting dirty' like in the story.

After playing with the animals in the playdough, I suggested to R that we give them a bath. He was all for this, because he absolutely loves water play. I set out a tub of water with bubbles in it. I also gave him a nail brush and a pig, cow and duck.

He scrubbed the animals clean with the nail brush.

We also did a craft for each of the animals in the book. R collaged splotches onto the cow.

He fingerpainted pink paint onto a pig.

Finally, he collaged feathers onto a duck after decorating it with a yellow Do-A-Dot marker.

We really had a lot of learning opportunities this week from one simple book. 

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

We have recently discovered this book, and we love it!! I was looking for a few activities when I came across these from Totally Tots. We have read the book several times a day for over a week now, and I wanted to find some ways to extend R's interest in the book.

Firstly, I gave R a laminated tree on a cookie tray with our magnetic letters. He added the letters. He explored the letters, placing random letters on the tree. Then I held the book open on different pages for R to find the letters that are on the page. We only have uppercase magnetic letters (the lower case letters are on the birthday wish list!).

The next day, I got out the play dough and cookie cutters to go with this activity. R made the letters, after rolling out the play dough and added the letters to his tree. R really enjoyed this activity and even M joined in, poking holes in the play dough letters (at least he wasn't eating it this time!!). R is a bit over play dough, so when I put it out; I have to include some props that will entice him.

R is beginning to recognise letters. He can now identify A, B, C, D, M, Q, R (of course), S and T.  He sings the alphabet song that goes with the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics set. He amazes me each and every day!!

Tactile Science

I found this great idea at Mrs Bainbridge’s Oasis and immediately printed it off for R. I set it up at his table and let him explore the materials.

We talked about the feeling of each item:

• Cotton wool ball – soft
• Sticky tape – sticky (before) and smooth (after)
• Sandpaper – rough
• Pasta – hard
• Dried beans – bumpy

Once R had explored each item, I said the name on each finger and he stuck the item on the right finger. Simple, educational and hands-on. Love it!!

Writing Implements Caddy

I have just finished a Language and Literacy for 0-5 year olds as part of my studies. It was a fantastic unit and I learnt a lot from it. My sons have benefited from the knowledge that I gained during the course of the unit. One thing that I implemented for R was a writing implement caddy.

This contains all his ‘school’ stuff, including pencils, crayons, glue, scissors, stamps, do-a-dot markers, pens, markers, whiteboard markers, and stickers.

The ideas of the caddy is that R will have access to these materials whenever he chooses. he can independently select the materials he wants to use when he wants to. When we do our activities during the day, R is free to select whatever writing implements he wants to.

In conjunction to this, R also has his own writing journal. This is an A4 notebook that is kept with the caddy to encourage exploration of the materials in the caddy. It has been a big hit. R is motivated by being able to make choices and independently prepare for his activities.

Cats Week

R is 33 months old.

Well, I had nothing planned for ‘school’ this week, so I asked R what he wanted to learn about. His random answer was ‘cats’. All I had to do was print the Cats Preschool Pack from 1+1+1=1 and I was done!

This was the activity of the week. I wasn’t expecting R to enjoy this, but he did. Over the week, R completed it several times. He particularly enjoyed rolling the dice and quickly got the hang of the graphing side of it. This was the first time we have done this type of activity, and will definitely be including graphing in the future.
This was another favourite. R has struggled with pegs in the past, but after a bit of practice, he was clipping easily.
                  

Tracing with whiteboard markers is always popular in our house. R needs reminding to slow down when doing this type of work.

Patterning work is something that we are just beginning to explore, so R needs a bit of support with this.

Books are much-loved in our house, so any activity involving them is magic. I made the little book and laminated the colour cards, so we can reuse this in the future.

R loves sorting activities and this was no exception. I think next time we do this type of activity I will use this as a cut and paste activity. I laminated it and R quickly completed it and moved on.
R amazed me with the puzzle. He has really been into puzzles recently, so he was able to complete this much more easily than I expected.

We also did a cat craft. This idea came from First School. R painted with a sponge and I then cut out the pieces with my scrapbooking tools before R glued them back together.
All in all, it was a pretty low-key week.
Thanks for reading.

Mini Sensory Tub with Dried Beans

R most favourite manipulative medium is pom poms, but is very closely followed by dried beans. I made a mini-sensory tub for him with a couple of aims. Firstly, I gave R a choice of items to hide in the beans...he chose the rockets that we used in our outer space unit. Secondly, I wanted to give R a small container for him to practice keeping the beans in the container. Thridly, he loves playing with the dried beans!

R did such a great job of keeping the beans in the container, despite it being so small!

He stayed with this activity for just under 1/2 an hour. He found all the rockets several times, then he started pushing the beans into the holes in the bottom of the rockets (they are meant to be used as pencil toppers). I didn't mind because I thought it was a great fine motor development activity, that was until I went to pack them away and spend nearly 1/2 an hour getting the beans out of the rockets! :)