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!
