Orange Discovery Bin
I filled a large bin with several orange things from around the house. Mostly toys, but a few other surprises as well. I wanted a variety of textures for Sweet E to explore, and opportunities for play along the way! As she plays with the items we talk not only about the color, but about what she's doing as well. It's a great way to build her vocabulary!
Putting tigers into the orange tent!
Playing with the orange music shaker.
Building with orange MagnaTiles.
Sticking orange Squigz onto the window!
Trying to put an orange clip onto paper. This one was tough!
Playdough
Fun fact: I just took the pink playdough from our Valentine's Day theme, and added yellow food coloring to it for this activity. It came out perfect! I also grabbed some orange cookie cutters, craft sticks and beads.
She is always excited to play with playdough!
One of her favorite ways to play, hiding beads inside and then trying to find them again!
She's getting really great at cutting out shapes!
And look who came to play with us later in the day: Honey Pot and Little M&M!
You are never too old for playdough!
Here are their creations, super cute!
And of course I kept the playdough tray, with its orange accessories, in her reach. She picked it up and carried it over to her activity table often throughout the week.
Rolling snakes is a new technique we've been working on!
Hammering Tee's
We borrowed Little M&M's orange hammer for this next activity. I shaped the orange playdough roughly into a rectangle, and inserted a few golf tees into it. Then I showed Sweet E how to hammer the tees deeper into the playdough.
She actually did quite well. She missed her target several times, but overall enjoyed this and stayed at it for a while!
When they were all pounded down, I flipped the rectangle of playdough over and reinserted the tees on another side so she could start again!
We kept this in her playdough kit for the week, so she returned to it later on too.
Peeling Tape + Counting
In my search for activities on Pinterest, I kept coming across one where the toddler peels tape off of the table. They would either to release a small toy, or just peel up long strands of overlapping tape. Both looked super fun, so I gave it a try with Sweet E. First I traced eight orange craft sticks onto paper, and numbered them.
Then I taped those eight sticks to the table, for Sweet E to peel up.
She eagerly got right to work!
Whenever an activity requires a great deal of concentration, she tends to move around. Here she is up on the couch, reaching over to continue this hard work!
As she peeled up each craft stick, she added it to our template. I'd count them up as she went.
On the move again, here she is on the table!
Once she had released all eight sticks, I pointed to each as I counted them again.
Daniel Tiger Craft
I like to include one craft in each of our color themes. It had felt like a while since we used paint, so I decided she could paint her favorite TV character! Right now Sweet E watches one TV show per day, if any. When given the choice, she'll always pick Daniel Tiger! So I printed off this pumpkin carving template from PBS for her to paint. I mixed in a little bit of brown paint so he wasn't too orange!
We put on her little smock and she happily painted over the whole thing!
Even when he was completely covered, she still wanted to paint some more. So I put this aside to dry, and let her paint freely on another piece of paper. She loved it!
Once it dried, I went over the black spots with marker, to make them more visible. It came out adorable!
Color Review - Pom Pom Drop
For this week's color review, I taped up some paper towel and toilet paper tubes to her wall. And I provided her with three pom poms in each of the colors we've covered so far.
I showed her how to drop the pom pom into the top, and celebrated when I saw it appear through the bottom. She loved this, and was so excited to try it out!
We'd talk about what color pom pom she chose. Sometimes I'd ask her, "Can you find a [yellow] pom pom to drop down the tubes?" and she'd gladly oblige.
It seemed a high reach for her, so I later moved the top tube down to another spot for her.
Just as fun! Here she is clapping at the miraculous reappearance of the pom pom!
Next week is purple week, the final color of the rainbow! Little M&M was so excited for us, that he already started gathering purple things in his own bucket, and helped Sweet E do a purple coloring picture as well. So sweet!
