Construction

Theme: Construction

Honey Pot is 3 years and 2 months

Little M&M is 16 months old

Books

We borrowed two books from the library, Curious George and the Dump Truck and The Happy Man and His Dump Truck. And, after reading tremendous reviews on Amazon, I also purchased Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site for our collection. We haven't bought new books in a while due to all of our library visits, but I am so glad we got this one. Great rhymes, sweet pictures and such a treasure. Highly recommend it!

Dump Truck Painting

I found this idea at No Time For Flashcards. Originally I set both kids on the floor of the deck to do this side by side. Although the paper was taped down, and my instructions were clear, chaos ensued! Little M&M, being so new and unfamiliar with crafts, of course wanted to turn it into finger-painting. Honey Pot likes to copy her brother. They smeared it all over themselves, sat down on the painted paper, walked all over it. Anyway, that was a big mess. After letting them finger-paint for awhile, I scooped them up and gave them quick showers!

Next time, I did the craft with one child at a time, and at their picnic table! First up, while Honey Pot was at preschool, Little M&M did his truck painting with the colors he chose: dark blue and orange.

He stayed surprisingly neat! With only a little bit of finger-painting at the end. It just so happened that the colors he chose matched his outfit perfectly, so I couldn't even notice if he got some on himself. Lol.

Then I added some soap to their water table and he cleaned his truck!

He loved filling the truck up with water and dumping it out.

Later, during Little M&M's nap, Honey Pot did her painting with the colors she chose: pink, purple and yellow.

She really got into driving it across the paper! Vroooom!

And, some fresh water and soap for her truck...

Then she asked me to get Little M&M's truck (we happen to have two of these) and play. So we did!

Here are the final products. They look great!

Construction Letter Building

We seem to have a couple of themes going on at one time, and this activity overlaps them both. We're finishing up our unit on rocks as well as construction. So, one last time before our driveway is paved, we headed out there to play! It was like one extra large sensory bin!

We did some pretend play, and filled up our trucks with rocks.

Then later we drove them over to the sidewalk, where I had written a few letters with chalk. The kids dumped out their trucks. And I had Honey Pot build letters with them.

Annnnd my camera battery died. So here's just a glimpse of that activity. It turned into a chalk drawing activity after a while anyway! 

Rocks

Theme: Rocks

Honey Pot is 3 years and 2 months old

Little M&M is 16 months old

Books

We started our unit with a couple of books from the library. I couldn't find many! We read Stone Soup by Jon J Muth and Milo and the Magical Stones by Marcus Pfister. Both were very cute. We also brought home Let's Go Rock Collecting by Roma Gans, but it wasn't an actual story as we had thought. It is a great resource for learning about the various types of rocks and how they are formed; however, Honey Pot just doesn't have the attention span for such reading just yet!

Rock Painting

I've seen a few versions of this on Pinterest, and had to try it out! First I sent Honey Pot and Little M&M out to the driveway to gather some rocks.

Then we sorted through them a bit. We noted which were big, small, jagged, smooth, etc. and then I asked Honey Pot to choose four small ones for our painting.

We squirt four colors of paint onto a piece of paper inside a foil pan, and Honey Pot placed one rock onto each.

Then it was time to paint! I asked her to tilt the pan back and forth.

It started to look really cool!

Then we put it down to start cleaning up, and Little M&M picked it up and imitated his big sister. He wanted to paint too!

For extra fun during cleanup time, I put some water and soap into a bucket and asked the kids to clean the rocks. They may have had more fun doing this than the actual craft!

Here is the final product. We'll be doing this again! Next time, to avoid those big globs of paint on the paper, we'll put the paint directly onto the rocks instead of the paper. Maybe even line the slide with paper and roll the rocks down!

Rock  Hunt

I made Honey Pot a simple scavenger hunt and sent her out into the driveway. I had her search for the biggest rock she could find, the smallest, various colors, edges, etc. She had fun with this!

Little M&M helped too!

Using her magnifying glass to inspect them closely!

Why does this boy always wind up covered in dirt??

Silly girl...

All in all a successful hunt!

We were sure to make observations at the end of our activity too!

Construction Letter Building

We seem to have a couple of themes going on at one time, and this activity overlaps them both. We're finishing up our unit on rocks as well as construction. So, one last time before our driveway is paved, we headed out there to play! It was like one extra large sensory bin!

We did some pretend play, and filled up our trucks with rocks.

Then later we drove them over to the sidewalk, where I had written a few letters with chalk. The kids dumped out their trucks. And I had Honey Pot build letters with them.

Annnnd my camera battery died. So here's just a glimpse of that activity. It turned into a chalk drawing activity after a while anyway!