Fruit

Theme: Fruit

Honey Pot is 2 years and 2 months old

This week our local story-time group read books about fruit. Since my planned theme was already pushed off till next week due to the virtual book club (see the fun we had with that over here!) I decided to make a small theme of this.

Blindfolded Exploration

I grabbed a (clean) burp cloth from Little M&M’s closet and used it as a blindfold for Honey Pot.

Then I collected three different fruits that we had on hand, and let her identify them by touch. She didn’t want to keep the blindfold on for long, but she did well with this activity while it lasted.

Apples and Bananas – Song and Snack

We sang an old favorite together – Apples and Bananas. I am not sure of the original vocalist, but ever since Honey Pot was born, we’ve enjoyed the version by Raffi. I love how Honey Pot keeps trudging through a song even when she doesn’t know the words! After we sang through the song, we split an apple and banana for her morning snack. Yum!

Play Dough – Slicing Practice

I made some fruit out of Honey Pot’s play dough. Erm...obviously not drawn to scale. (Again, find the recipe we used here! We love it!)

Then I gave her a plastic knife, and let her practice cutting up her fruit. She really enjoyed doing this and, for her first time, she actually did quite well!

Dramatic Play – Shopping for Fruit

I had purchased a money set from the Dollar Tree months ago, intending to use the coins for our St. Patrick’s Day theme (which was a bust actually because, well, I had a baby that week instead). I’m glad it came with dollars too, as it made this game so much more fun (and educational). First I collected all of the fruits from Honey Pot’s kitchen set, and placed the dollar bills in her purse.

Honey Pot then went shopping!

I played the part of the cashier. Once I emptied out her bag, we counted how many pieces of fruit she had.

Then she counted out that number of dollar bills to pay me with. It was a great way to sneak in some counting practice!

Here she is putting the leftover money back into her purse.

And this was such fun - we did this a few times.

“Bye, I’m going shopping!” she kept saying, as she strutted around the house.

Coin Art

After doing an online search for fruit themed activities, I came across this fun one from Gummy Lump. I suppose it could be altered for any number of themes, but it happened to suit ours just fine. To make it easiest, I stuck the coins onto a piece of contact paper so they wouldn’t budge.

Then I covered it with a sheet of paper, and showed Honey Pot how to make rubbings.

For the blueberries, I asked her to help me place them onto the contact paper in random order.

Here is the final product!

And then she asked if she could put the coins in her piggy bank. Well, for putting up with all of my extra tot school shenanigans, of course you can, my dear.

Coloring Page

There is a site called Super Coloring that has a wonderful selection of coloring pages that look like famous paintings. So I chose one with fruit in it for Honey Pot to use those crayons a little more. It is called "Still Life With Jug and Drapery" by  Paul Cézanne. Here is the original painting:

And here is Honey Pot's version:

Blueberry Picking

And what fruit theme is complete without a trip to the berry farm to do some blueberry picking?

"Mmm, nummy!"

Little Penguin's Tale

Theme: Little Penguin’s Tale, by Audrey Wood

Honey Pot is 2 years and 2 months old

We are participating again in this summer’s Virtual Book Club! (See what we did last month with a book from Mo Willems!) This time we had to choose a story by Audrey Wood. I love how this is introducing us to new and wonderful authors that I might never have discovered otherwise. And our little library had a large selection of books from which to choose. We brought home Little Penguin’s Tale as well as Piggy Pie Po. It was so hard to choose just one of these for our activities. Both such cute stories! We ended up picking Little Penguin’s Tale, and read it often throughout the week.

Tin Can Music

First we did an activity related to the actual story. At one point Little Penguin happens upon some gooney birds, making music with tin cans and empty glass bottles. Well I had no glass bottles in the house, but I did have a nice supply of empty coffee cans awaiting some use! Honey Pot banged around on our little drums and made music and danced like the gooney birds!

Ice Skating Like A Penguin

I discovered this idea at Inner Child Fun! I attached some wax paper to the bottoms of Honey Pot’s feet, and let her slide around the carpet like a penguin on ice. She slid around and around her craft table so many times! It was a great way to get up and moving, and elicited lots of giggles! “I’m a penguin!”

Webbed Feet/Fishing

Here is another way we pretended to be penguins today. The idea comes from Making Learning Fun. I attached sandwich bags to Honey Pot’s hands with a rubber band, and let her run them through the water to feel what it might be like to have webbed feet.

Then we added some fish and let her go fishing like a penguin!

“Numm-y!”

And of course…what does Honey Pot ever do but put her feet in this bin? Hey, they’re supposed to be webbed feet anyway!

Cream Cheese Penguins

In my search for penguin-related activities and crafts, I stumbled upon this adorable snack from a blog called Our Big Earth. How cute are these? Mine didn’t have such nice and round, white bellies as theirs…but they were cute anyway I think.

Honey Pot got a kick out of them!

And she is a huge fan of olives and carrots. I wasn’t sure how the cream cheese would taste with them though. And truth be told, neither of us was a huge fan of the taste combination. But I only made a few of them, so we snacked on olives and carrots after the initial tasting.

Penguin Footprint Craft

I discovered this idea on Pinterest, originating from Meet the Dubiens. A huge fan of hand and footprint art, I just had to do this with Honey Pot! We painted her foot black, made a print, then waited for the print to dry. In the meantime, I let her do some free painting so that she could enjoy the craft a bit more. Later I added the details then allowed her to glue googly eyes!

Here is the final product!

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We are linking our activities up to the Summer Virtual Book Club!
Check out what some of our blogging friends did with the theme:

Colors Review

Honey Pot is 2 years and 2 months old

Little M&M is 4 months old

Note: We were a little pressed for time this week, and so I decided to postpone the theme I had in mind. Our local story time group just began themed readings, and this week’s theme was colors. So we made it our theme too! In addition to reading multiple books about colors, these are the activities we did.

Nature Color Hunt

We began with this wonderful scavenger hunt that I discovered from No Time For Flashcards. I created a chart with some colors that I knew she could find in our front yard, and stuck it onto her little clipboard.

Then I sent her out with the chart and a pencil, and she was ready to go!

She identified the first color as “geen” and began a search for it. She chose (with a wee bit of help) the grass. Instead of having her check off the box, I decided last minute to tell her to draw grass in the box beside the green. She seemed to enjoy this method.

Then she took off in search of another color. Unfortunately we don’t have any pretty and colorful flowers in our yard, so our colors were pretty limited. “Pink!” she shouts. Though I doubted it, I asked where she saw pink. Lo and behold, Honey Pot discovered the only pink weed in the yard!

So I told her to draw it at the bottom, and that I’d add it in later. We continued along in our hunt. We found: a gray rock, a blue sky and a yellow leaf.

Then it became time to search for our final color. We hadn’t yet covered brown individually, so I wasn’t sure if she knew this one. But I had faith in her that she could match it to the tree trunks or some dirt. But what does she stumble upon at the exact moment that she is in search of something brown? A DEER!

The timing was impeccable. I asked her what color the deer was, and she said, “It’s brown!” So this hunt was a tremendous success! Here is the final chart, with her pencil drawings.

Spaghetti Sensory Bin

This idea is all over Pinterest. Honey Pot has so been enjoying her sensory bins recently that I just had to give it a try. I boiled 2 pounds of spaghetti noodles in four different pots, and added food coloring to each one. You wouldn’t guess it by looking, but I did red, purple, yellow and blue. I like the way they came out anyway though. First she added some water to moisten them up a bit, as they had to sit awhile to cool.

Then she identified the colors.

And then she dug in!

She enjoyed scooping and sliding her arms into the slippery noodles.

And then she asked to put her feet in it which, as I’ve said before, indicates a super successful sensory experience in my opinion!

Then we had a short lesson on sharing, as Little M&M took his turn in the bin.

He wasn’t really fazed by it.

Then it was Honey Pot’s turn again. She. Had. A. Blast.

We pulled it out again the following afternoon for more fun!

Colors File Folder Game

I had been meaning to put some of these together for Honey Pot for a while. Then I stumbled upon File Folder Fun, a site with so many wonderful (and free!) printables. So I chose the ice cream colors. Yes, ice cream is a symbol of summer, but here’s a fun fact: July is National Ice Cream month! I didn’t bother with the laminating because I wasn’t sure how successful it would be.

I was so pleasantly surprised, when not only did she understand it and participate well, but also, she actually enjoyed it!

She matched the ice cream cones quite well, and took special care to line them up better at the end when she had finished!

It was a great colors review! We have some exciting themes in the works, so be sure to come visit us again soon! We'll be exploring the five senses, and later, pirates!