The Night Sky

Theme: The Night Sky

Honey Pot is 2 years and 6 months old

Little M&M is 7 months old

Books

We borrowed a few books from the library about stars. Here’s what we got, in order of Honey Pot’s most-requested:

The Berenstain Bears and the Wishing Star by Stan and Jan Berenstain

Half a Moon and One Whole Star by Crescent Dragonwagon

Mouse, Mole and the Falling Star by A.H. Benjamin

What The Sun Sees/What The Moon Sees by Nancy Tafuri

Puddle Moon by Mari Gayatri Stein

Starry Bopper Headband

I found this cute idea from Sun Hats and Wellie Boots. I quickly put it together during Honey Pot’s nap and she wore it during our first activity of the week! She loved it!

Constellations

I took some scraps of black paper and drew three popular constellations onto them with white chalk. Then I took our star stickers and asked Honey Pot to put one onto each white dot in the constellations.

She loved doing this! When all of the stars were in place, she tried connecting the stars to form the shapes.

Then I gave her a blank piece of paper and asked her to make her own constellation. She took a few stickers and put them all near the top. Then I asked her what she wanted to call her constellation, and she said, “Love.” So that is what it was called!

Star Sensory Bottle

I wanted Little M&M to participate in this week’s theme, so I poured some star beads into a bottle and gave it to him to explore.

He loved rolling it…

Investigating it…

And shaking it around!

Even Honey Pot enjoyed shaking it up.

Star Snacks

Little M&M had a star-shaped snack…puffs! …which he has just about every day, lol.

And Honey Pot enjoyed some cheese and crackers!

Catch A Falling Star Song

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is our daily nap and bedtime song, so it seemed redundant to include that as part of this theme. Instead, I introduced Honey Pot to this popular song, and she requested it over and over again. By the end of the week she tried to sing along!

Starry Glow Bath

Finally, we partook in the phenomenon sweeping all of Pinterest…glowing baths! We placed a few on the walls and threw a few into the water for her to play with. And she loved when we turned out the lights! Sorry for the poor picture quality, but here is a glimpse!

Stars from Play Dough

We used our homemade play doughs and star cookie cutters for some hands-on play. Honey Pot enjoyed cutting the stars out, slicing them up, squishing them together, etc.

Rhymes with Star

We’ve been talking about rhymes with Honey Pot for a little while, and it seems a hit or miss as to whether or not she understands them. So I created a few sequences in Photoshop Elements, and asked her which in each strip rhymes with star. She needed a bit of help with these, but it was a great start to this new concept!

Star-Gazing

On a clear night this week, we also bundled up and took Honey Pot outside for a look at the night sky. It was so cold though, so we didn't stay out too long!


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The Five Senses - part one

Theme: The Five Senses

Honey Pot is 2 years and 2 months old

Little M&M is 4 months old

This is part one of our exploration of the five senses! We covered sound, sight and touch through a variety of activities and crafts. I had intentions of doing smell and taste as well, but Honey Pot has a cold so I thought I would wait until she could experience them properly. Read on to see what we did.

* * Update: Part two is now available over here! * *

Books

As I’ve said in the past, we have a pretty small local library. I was sorry to see that they only had two of the books in a series about the five senses. We borrowed them, but Honey Pot didn’t chose to read them too often. In addition to those, though, we took home a book called Rain by Manya Stojic. I actually really, really enjoyed this book. It explores all five senses as African animals sense the coming rain. A porcupine can smell it, zebras see it, baboons hear it, a rhino feels it and then a lion tastes it. The illustrations are beautiful and the text straightforward. We read this one again and again this week.

Sound Safari

I discovered this idea from No Time For Flashcards, one of my go-to blogs for inspiration. I created a checklist for Honey Pot’s clipboard, and we embarked on our safari. First we went over the list, identifying the sounds we might hear:

Then we began. “I hear someping!” she’d say. We live in a very quiet neighborhood, so I wasn’t too ambitious in my checklist. Turns out there was more to hear than I anticipated! So as she heard more sounds, I quickly drew in pictures for her to X out.

And even Little M&M enjoyed listening to the sounds of the outdoors.

Now don’t mock my lack of drawing skills. Okay, maybe you can. I sure laughed at them! The ones I drew in are meant to be the wind, a bee, a baby and a chipmunk. Surprisingly, the only sound she couldn’t check off was the bottom one – kids playing.

Texture Cards

I pinned this on Pinterest a long, long time ago. The idea originates from The Felt Mouse. And this became our craft for the week. I cut out small squares of chipboard, and gathered a few odds and ends of different textures from around the house. I told Honey Pot we were going to make these for Little M&M, and she was so excited to help. We used plastic straws, aluminum foil, pom poms, a gift wrap bow, buttons, handmade paper, foam, Popsicle sticks and a craft flower.

Here she is admiring her work!

Once they were dry I put Little M&M into his Bumbo seat with the tray on, and let him explore a couple at a time. He seemed pretty interested in these texture cards actually.

I had to supervise closely though, because he eventually tried to bring everything to his mouth. But he seemed to enjoy picking up each texture and then dropping them onto the floor just as much!

Sensory Bottles

In addition to the texture cards, I also made Little M&M a few bottles to play with. When he was born, the hospital gave me a lot of free samples, among them this set of three Similac bottles. So I placed bells into one, pom poms into another, and rice with star beads into the third. He seems to enjoy the latter the best!

Here he is exploring them for the first time:

I put these and his texture cards, as well as a few books that explore the senses into a basket that we’ll keep handy for playtime.

I Spy Game

To explore the sense of sight, I made Honey Pot a small I Spy book. The inspiration for this came from This Present Life. I bought a photo album at the Dollar Tree, and made a cover for it.

Then I grouped various toys and puzzle pieces together and took pictures of them.

It didn’t seem like I had enough pages, so I also grabbed these cute color-themed collections that I found at Picklebums, and included them as well.

Honey Pot really loved this game! On each page, I asked her to find various items, and she got so excited to point them out to me. “Here it is!”

Giant Squishy Sensory Bag

We concluded part one of our five senses theme with a giant sensory bag! The idea for this of course comes from Play At Home Mom. We don’t have much of a yard, and decided to do this on the back deck. Even though the water was so cold, Honey Pot loved to crawl around on it. To make it extra slippery, her Daddy squirted some bath soap/bubbles onto it. She really enjoyed crawling around, squishing and sliding.

Honey Pot had so much fun with this - we ended up rinsing it off and playing with it again the next day!

Small Squishy Sensory Bag
Yes, we decided to give Little M&M his first sensory bag as well. I just filled a Ziploc bag with water and blue food coloring, and placed a couple of bath toys inside. He really loved it!

We’ll resume the five senses another week, when Honey Pot is feeling better. But I think the first part of our theme was a huge success!


* * Update, take a peek at part two, where we covered smell and taste, right here! * *