Sunday, September 29, 2019

D is for Dinosaur!

We had a roarin' good time this week doing several different dinosaur activities. Check out the links below to revisit similar themes, or keep scrolling to see what we did this week:


Books
We found a lot of dinosaur books at the library this week! Sweet E's favorite was "Old MacDino Had a Farm" and we read it countless times throughout the week. Even Little M&M and Honey Pot would come running into the room when they heard me singing it. And the other favorite of the week was "Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs" which is the only book here from our own collection. I often found Sweet E sitting on the couch "reading" this one to herself. So cute!


Letter D - Dinosaur Stickers
I have tons of stickers leftover from Honey Pot and Little M&M's younger days. For this week's letter recognition activity, I offered these shiny stickers for Sweet E to place onto a big letter D that I cut out for her.


She loved these!


And it was great fine motor work.



Find the Letter D - Dinosaur Stickers
Next I brought out another sheet of dinosaur stickers that I found, and invited Sweet E to place them on top of all the letter D's she could find.


This was the first real alphabet activity we have done, combining letters, and she was eager to try!


Together, we found all of the D's!


Playdough and Dinosaurs
We pulled out our dough and cut out some dinosaur shapes!



We decorated them with beads and googly eyes.


Then we brought out our large dinosaur toy and made footprints!



One of Sweet E's favorite shows is Mother Goose Club. We opened her Mother Goose Club book and found the dinosaur song so we could sing it while we stomped through the playdough!


Lego Duplo Painting
This idea and the printables come from Stay at Home Educator. I wanted to find a way to change up our painting crafts, so this seemed like a fun way to do that. I let Sweet E choose three colors of paint, and we pressed some Lego Duplos into them.


After I showed her how to stamp them onto the paper, she happily gave it a try!


So fun!


Here they are dried and cut out!


Later, she had the idea to stick her dinosaur toy into the paint all by herself. So I gave her a coloring page with a similar dinosaur on it. She loved stomping it around on her paper!


Dinosaur Ice Excavation
I have done this activity with Honey Pot and Little M&M before, though we used to have more dinosaur toys to use than this. LOL. I provided Sweet E with the frozen dinosaurs, a couple tools, a dropper, and a bowl of warm water.


Then she started squirting the water onto the ice blocks to try to free the dinosaurs!


Once they were a little more visible she tried using the tools too.


It was a fairly cool day, so the ice wasn't melting very quickly. But she was very patient, and played like this for a while! I refilled the bowl of warm water as needed.



Later, Little M&M joined her, which sped up the process!


She loved picking up the chipped off pieces of ice!
  

 Once all the dinosaurs were free, Little M&M brought a cube of ice onto the trampoline and made up a new game called Bouncy Ice. He and Sweet E played this for a long time until dinner! We replaced the ice cube once in a while. And Honey Pot came out to play too. It's actually a new favorite trampoline game LOL.


Dinosaur Bones in Sand
I hadn't planned this activity, but we had some free time one afternoon so I threw it together for her! We only had kinetic sand on hand, so I took a few dinosaur bones from a puzzle toy and pressed the sand on top of it.


She brushed the sand away to reveal the dinosaur bones buried within it.


Then she started playing with the kinetic sand. She hadn't really done this yet, so it was a fun new sensory material for her. She molded it.


And carved a face into it!


And made handprints in it!


Dinosaur Stomp - Gross Motor Game
As our last activity of the week, I drew some shapes onto the driveway. I would ask her to "Stomp like a dinosaur to the heart" and other shapes.



But Little M&M was also outside with us, and he extended the activity into a dinosaur obstacle course! Here he wrote "Ready, Set, Go!" and the first part of the course was to "stomp" across the shapes I had made.


Then he wrote "spin" and a squiggly line, and "run" followed by another line.


"Pretend to be a dinosaur" and then "jump" came next.
  

And finally, "Shout and roar like a dinosaur" was at the end. He and Sweet E did his obstacle course several times together. Love how he contributes to our themes each week!


We are going to take a break from our letter-of-the-week themes, and do BEACH activities next week as we prepare for our upcoming vacation. Stay tuned!




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Sunday, September 22, 2019

C is for Cookie!

This was our third letter-of-the-week unit, and we had a lot of fun! Check out the links below to revisit similar themes, or keep scrolling to see what we did this week:


Books
We borrowed two books from the library this week, combined with two from our own collection. The favorites were of course the mouse books (notice we don't even have a cover for "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" because it is so well-loved). I was surprised at how many times we read "Mr. Cookie Baker" too though. It is a perfect length for the attention span of a 2.5 year old. Simple, relatable text. 


Letter C - Fine Motor
For our letter recognition activity this week, we placed miniature cookies (the cereal) onto our dot marker sheet. This she followed through until the end. And afterward, she enjoyed her new snack!





Cookie Craft
I had intended to paint for this week's craft, but realized I didn't have any brown! My paint stash from Honey Pot and Little M&M's younger days is running low so it's time to replenish. In the meantime, I cut up little strips of brown paper, and supplied Sweet E with some glue and a foam brush.


We painted the plate with glue, then stuck on some brown pieces of paper.



She had to climb onto the couch, and reach over the arm of it to complete it, of course! Almost finished!


Next we glued on some black circles to represent chocolate chips.


She pretended to eat it, and thought it was very silly!


Here is the finished product!


Playdough - Big vs. Small + Counting + Pretend Play
We pretended to make cookies with our playdough today! First we rolled it out.


Then we cut out shapes, both big and small circles, which sparked a dialogue about recognizing sizes. Which cookie cutter is the biggest? Which cookies are small? Etc. I gave her the smallest tray I could find in my kitchen, for her to place her cookies onto.


Then she added chocolate chips (beads).


We took the time to count how many were on each cookie. This was great math practice!


We pretended to put the tray in the oven, and once it was all done baking we removed each with a little turner from her play kitchen.



After putting it all away, she wanted to play again! So we made another tray of cookies!


It was a fun activity, with so much learning throughout.


Feeding Cookie Monster - Shapes
I printed out a cookie monster face, colored it (Sweet E helped, if you can see some purple there), cut it out and taped it to a small sand pail. I also found a basic shapes worksheet online, added some chocolate chip clipart to it, colored each one light brown, and cut them out. While I did all this, Sweet E practiced her scissor skills on my scraps. Now we were ready to play!


Here he is from the side:


Using my best cookie monster voice, I said things like, "Me love cookies! Can you find a heart cookie?" She would find the right shape, and put it right into his mouth!


She LOVED this game!


We honestly went through the entire batch of shape cookies three times in a row!


"Num num num!"


I kept this out for the rest of the week, and we played it often! Little M&M and Honey Pot even enjoyed playing it with her too!


Baking Cookies - Kitchen Science
We had to end our week by actually making cookies! We made the dough early in the morning, then rolled it out, just as we did with playdough.


Then we chilled it in the refrigerator for a bit. She loves to have a taste of the dough when we're done!


Later, we cut out shapes from the rolled dough. We chose the Mickey Mouse cutters, because they are big and easy to hold! And cute too!


Before baking, we scattered some sprinkles onto them, and pressed on some mini M&Ms!


Here they are! YUM!


Sweet E was so happy to taste her cookies. She had helped from start to finish! And although these were big cookies, she had the whole piece!


Next week we move onto the letter D! See you then!




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