Happy Valentine's Day Activity

This activity can be used with both my kids with some adaptions, so just make changes based upon your child's age.  For Cole, who is two, we talk about the colors of the conversation hearts and the colors of the bowls, the shapes, and work on counting out the little numbers (for example 1-3).  He enjoys doing the game with Lillian who is 4 even though they aren't doing the same activity.  Lillian plays the game multiple ways depending on her mood (game always sounds like more fun I think!).  Some days she just chooses a card (one of my previous post tells how to make them) and puts that many conversation hearts in the bowl.  Other days she'll put the number cards in ascending order by their value.  Today she was going to "guess" how many hearts were in the bowl.  Of course I jumped at the chance to remind her that she could also use the word "estimate", which she did then.  Another day you may want to play the game and change it a little; don't even use the bowls or cards, but count the hearts by two's to see how many you have in your hand.  Watch your child for cues and see how THEY want to play today.  They'll have more fun and will likely play longer than if we tell them how they are going to do it!

Sensory "table"

Lillian and Nicole love it when we get out the sensory tub.  At school I had a $300 dollar sensory table, but of course here at home we don't have such luxuries so I created my own tubs!  I use two different kinds depending on what we are going to put in it.  During the Fall I used a long, heavy duty card board box that my sons train table came in.  For this activity we got out our clear plastic tub.  You need one shallow enough that the kids can reach in easily, but with high enough sides the items don't come out as they sift through the treasure.  Today we put "rocks" in the table.  I don't just have rocks in it though, there are also marbles, flower deco's they put in vases, etc.  Some are round (good opportunity to teach the word sphere!), and others are round on one side but flat on the bottom.  It goes with out saying that they are all different sizes and, of course, the colors vary.  You can pick all of these, even the rocks, up at dollar stores so they can be obtained pretty cheaply.  When we get done with a sensory item I store it in a clear container; plastic shoe boxes work well.  Of course if you have young children who put items in their mouths you'll want to use larger items in your sensory tub until they out grow that stage.  There are an endless number of possibilities for your tub: bows, ribbon, dry pasta, dried beans, and buttons are just a few ideas you might want to try.  Don't hesitate to put an item in; what seems simple to adults children may spend hours exploring!  Lastly, you might notice in the picture that I have provided the kids with measuring spoons, measuring cups, a bowl, a spoon, etc to use in the tub too.  This helps them learn about volume and size and can help them develop large motor skills (filling the cups and dumping them into other containers).

Fall

We did this fun activity in the fall, but due to the busy holiday season I failed to get it posted!  However, you can either keep it mind for next year or use it during another season using different "props."  We began the activity by having "an adventure" as my children call it - going off to explore is another way they refer to it.  No matter, we grabbed a couple buckets and trecked out into the fields and woods surrounding our house and our families and gathered Fall items; field corn, fall flowers, branches, leaves, nuts and I even bought a couple yams from the store!  Next, I put all our "treasures" into a box or tub and just let the kids explore it on their own.  The only rule was they couldn't take it away, it had to stay with the box.  Then a few days later I layed down our painting mat (plastic table cloth), and got out paper, paint, and brushes.  I demonstrated to the kids how each item made its own unique pattern and then they spent time painting with the items we had found.  Later, they painted the items themselves.  This is a wonderful activity to teach about patterns, shapes, soft/hard and to explore with.

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake

This is a simple activity, but can be as indepth as you want depending upon the amount of time you have available.  To prepare I went online and printed out pictures of cupcakes.  I always print things for lessons on cardstock because it holds up better and then I get it laminated.  It cost a little more, but it will hold up much better.  There were tons of options online (all I did was type in "pictures of cupcakes"), but I only printed pictures that contained a specific number of cupcakes (one cupcake, two cupcakes, etc).  Then in either Word or Excel type up number cards to match. Even though toddlers can't read yet I still include the number word beneath the digit so they are exposed to the print.  After reading the book "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" by Laura Joffe Numeroff, I gave the children the pictures and number cards and explained the process to them.  I only had to demonstrate with the first one for them to catch on.  You can see in the above picture how the numeral one card was matched to the picture of one cupcake.  I was pleased when, on her own, Lillian picked up the number cards and said "we can put these in order" and started putting them in numeric order (as you see below).  It's important to give kids the freedom to explore activities like this on their own so they can come up with new twist like this too.   As I mentioned earlier, this activitiy has many extensions you could do; do some activities with the letter C, color a cat or cupcake picture, sorting (these cupcakes have blue in them these do not or these have animals, etc), add two groups of cupcakes together and, the most obvious, make cupcakes! 

Brown Bear Brown Bear

Eric Carl has a wonderful book titled "Brown Bear Brown Bear" that we read recently.  We've been talking about animals that hibernate in the winter and this gave us another opportunity to about what different animals do in the winter time.  Over the coarse of a few days we made our own Brown Bear Brown Bear book.  I printed pictures of different animals off the computer and wrote the words on each page to go along with the story (What do you see?  I see a...  looking at me).  Then I gave the kids one page at a time and a different supply to decorate it with (tissue paper, water colors, sparkles, finger paints, etc).  Then, after all the pages were dry, I stapled them together to make our own book.  The kids enjoy re-reading the books they made! 

Sink or Float?

This activity involves water so it’s always a hit with children!  There are multiple ways to do the activity and, even though you’re doing the same thing again, to kids it is a new activity.  This morning Lillian wanted to know if some metal balls would sink or float.  So we took them into the bathroom sink to find out.  We have carried toys into the bath tub to test the theory, put kitchen utensils in the kitchen sink and, this summer, outdoor toys (including bikes!) in the swimming pool!  We talk about if the items are lighter than the water, have air in them, and so forth.  We’ve even found if we put enough water in the pool or tub and lay real still our bodies will float! 

Trains

Both of the kids loved this activity and I have to admit I did too.  It's always fun to take the learning outside!  We started our activity by reading Donald Crews book Freight Train.  It is a short story so we read through it a couple times.  During the second reading I had the children help identify the colors of the train cars.  Afterwards we headed to our small near by city, parked the van, and walked the rails!  The children had a ball and, of course, were full of questions.  I loved that their brains were so engaged; we were just walking on a railroad track (does the train that goes close to our house come through here? What keeps the train on the track?).  Who knew!  We even got lucky and found a metal pin that is used on the tracks.  It was great to have an item to bring home and show dad from our "field trip."  Later, when we have more time, we're going to go up to Indianapolis so we can tour the train station and watch the trains come and go.  The kids have always been fascinated with trains, as most kids are.  Our house isn't to far from a railroad track and sometimes when we're outside we hear the distant sound of their horn blowing.  If time permits we run to the van, load up, drive to the track and watch the train go by.  We keep ear plugs in the car for the kids as it can be pretty loud.  We've always had wonderful luck with the conductors too.  They are always very friendly; waving and giving us some extra toots on the horn!  When we got home we read a couple more books with a train subject that I had picked up from the library.  Needless to say the kids had a lot to tell Dad when he got home in the evening!  This is definitly an activity that we'll repeat again next summer.