Learning about Circles!

This week Sweet E and I began learning about shapes. She is already familiar with basic shapes, thanks to some of her toys and books, but we had a lot of fun reviewing! We took most of our inspiration from Little M&M's circle week in tot school. Have a look!

Circle Prints

We love painting activities! I squirted some paint into small paper plates, and showed Sweet E how to use the cups to make circle prints on the paper. She seemed so curious about it!

She made lots of circle prints!

  

Then after we filled the paper, she looked at me as she slooowly reached her hand toward the plate. 😂 Finger-painting? Sure, I'll allow it!

She looooved this.

And was so fascinated by her hands, each time she dipped them into the paint!

Stacking Cheerios

Cheerios are a favorite snack around here. I stuck a broken spaghetti noodle into a clump of playdoh, and showed Sweet E how to stack the Cheerios onto it. She did a couple.

Then ate a couple. She was quite pleased with herself!

Here she is asking for one more.

Then as she munched, she stacked some more. Great fine motor activity!

Then she decided to pull them off.

And do it again!

Circle Stickers

Next I grabbed our circle stickers, and drew a circle onto paper. I added several dots around it for her to place the stickers onto.

She continued until each dot was covered!

  

Quick, easy activity!

Playdough + Circle Manipulatives

Next I pulled out some playdoh along with circle cookie cutters, beads, googly eyes and buttons.

She was excited to play! First we rolled out some dough.

And then we cut out circles in three sizes.

We talked about sizes, and I asked her which circle was the smallest, then the biggest.

Then we used our accessories to decorate them! I made the yellow face, then offered for her to create faces on the others.

I love the dimension in her faces' mouths. Such character!

Color Hop

The next day we went out to the driveway for a color hop! I drew large circles onto the driveway, and asked Sweet E to "Hop to the purple circle!" She was eager to hop!

We continued with the other colors!

And she had a blast!

"Where's the purple circle?"

I also asked her if she could draw a circle. She did great!

Of course, it kept going round and round, but the idea is there. 😂

And even when we moved on to riding bikes, exploring in the yard, etc. she still kept coming back to hop on the circles. What a great gross motor game!

Watercolors and Circles

And finally, I pulled out our new watercolors. We first used these for last week's spaghetti sensory bin, the grand finale of our color themes! I filled our old baby food containers (which get a lot more use during activities than it ever got for baby food!) with liquid watercolors and water. And I used this laminated circle sheet that I created for our creative table a couple years ago.

Sweet E used a dropper to fill the circles with watercolors.

This is a highly supervised activity, so it didn't leave much time for pictures lol. But she had fun with this for a few minutes. Then to extend the activity, I pulled out a piece of watercolor paper, and drew circles on it with a white crayon. She used a paintbrush to paint over it and reveal the circles!

She really enjoyed this!

Here it is once it dried: 

She still wanted to continue painting, so I pulled out some paper towels next. They looked so pretty all covered in colors!

Circles

Little M&M is 2 years and 1 month old.

Stacking Cheerios

We started off our circle unit with something Honey Pot did when she was learning about circles. It was so much fun! First I cut out a circle shape from playdoh, and stuck two pieces of uncooked spaghetti into it. Then I asked Little M&M to stack them up. He loved doing this!

Circle Playdoh Fun

While the playdoh was out, I noticed Little M&M sticking his extra Cheerios into it. So we cut out more circles of various sizes, and used some of our other circular playdoh accessories (buttons, googly eyes, etc.) too.

Sticker Shapes

I found this idea on Pinterest, from a blog called Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds. I traced a large circle onto paper, and asked Little M&M to put these stickers onto the dots to make a circle. He and Honey Pot both always love sticker activities!

Size Sorting

I kept the playdoh cookie cutters out for our next activity, as well as some pom poms of three sizes. Then Little M&M had to sort them by size.

He always enjoys sorting activities, and asks to do them over and over. So the next time we arranged the circles into a Mickey Mouse and he loved that!

Circle Glue Craft

I found this idea from JDaniel4'sMom. I printed out a bus template from the Internet. Then I used a circle punch to cut out lots of yellow and black circles for Little M&M to glue onto the bus. We started with the wheels.

And then he added glue for the yellow circles.

That were a lot of circles for his little attention span, so I helped him toward the end. But he was pleased with the end result!

Coloring Page

He kept asking for "other a'tivity" but I had nothing else prepared. So I quickly printed out a coloring page from Mia's Craft Ideas. He actually colors in the lines fairly well sometimes! I colored the page with him.

I even caught him holding his crayon properly a couple of times!

Circle Hopscotch

We were eager to get outside one afternoon during circle week, so we brought the chalk out and played for a while. I drew multiple circles in a row, each a different color. Then I asked Little M&M to hop to a particular circle. For example, I'd ask, "Can you hop to the blue circle?" And he loved doing this! He's been perfect with color recognition, even colors we never focused on individually like brown, pink, silver and gold. But this was a fun review!

Of course Honey Pot wanted to play too!

Circle Paint Craft

Honey Pot also joined us for our next activity. In the past we had used sponge shapes for prints. But those are a little too squishy, and I wanted a clearer result. So we used plastic cups! I poured four different paint colors onto small plates, then the kids made circle prints on brown paper.

They came out really great, and the kids had fun!

Circle Hunt

We finished our unit by going on a hunt around the house for circles! We gathered all the circles into Little M&M's Easter basket. First, the shape puzzle, because we were sure to find one there!

I was surprised at how many circles we had lying around actually. Many in their toy kitchen and on their music shelf.

When we were finished, we dumped out the basket and explored all of the circles we had found!

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