Picnic Lunch

(39 Months)

"Momma, can we have a picnic lunch PLEAASE?"  Little Miss asks as we come home from the playground.  I haven't made a muffin tin picnic lunch in almost a year (or at least, I don't think I did).  It's amazing what they remember, I can barely remember to take the laundry out of the washer and toss it into the dryer.

I quickly grab a set of muffin tins and start gathering ingredients.  These little easy-to-carry picnic lunches are not only adorable, but they are great for portion control and to remind me about eating the rainbow.  Plus, they get so excited when they eat out of a muffin tin.

From left to right, top to bottom: Cascadian Farms Fruity O's, peanut butter on wheat bread, milk, Craisins, blueberries and sliced pineapple.

When did they get so big?  I love how Wild One tells me, "See?  I'm bigger now!  I grew, because I  ate a lot of food."

Counting Fun with Unifix Cubes

(39 Months)

I saw this activity on The Imagination Tree and knew that we would be doing it as soon as I bought some Window Markers.

I choose two contrasting colors to work on ABAB patterning (blue, orange, blue, orange) for a future activity.  Then using our Window Markers (which will stay on until they are rubbed off) I numbered the cubes to twenty (if you don't have Unifix Cubes, Legos work just as well).

At 39 months old, we sometimes forget a number (usually it's 13) when counting to twenty.  Between the bath numbers (please see here for a quick and inexpensive water activity) and these blocks, I thought it would be a fun way to continue practicing number recognition and number order.  Plus, we could also reinforce the mathematical concepts of more and less, greater than and fewer, taller and shorter while learning how to measure.

When we were ready to play, I invited the kiddos over for a fun math game.  "Yay!"  Oh, how I wish they will always respond that way to math.  We first looked at the number line put together and I asked what they saw.  Here are some of their answers/questions: numbers, colors, look a pattern, what number is this, can I play?

I modeled how to line up an object and then how to remove the extra cubes to determine the length.  Then we pointed to each number as we counted how long an object is.  After we practiced on a couple of books, they each scoured the room for an object that they wanted to measure.  We played for about ten minutes measuring play food, stuffed animals, dinosaurs, blocks, Wild One's foot and baby.  They kept running to find something new, "let's measure this!"  I love how excited they get.

Tomorrow, we'll bring the cubes out again, and practice linking them in numerical order.  We'll also practice some more measuring- maybe we'll look for items of the same color or items that start with a specific letter.

Rhyming Wheels of Fun (CVC Wheel)

(39 Months)

Little Miss has been doing a lot of rhyming lately - pink, blink, sink, drink.  She also includes made-up words that will rhyme- bink, eink.   She cracks herself up, laughing wildly as she recalls or creates rhyming words.  Since she's having so much fun rhyming, I decided to make a rhyming wheel.  Since we have been pretty lax on practicing our cvc words,  I chose to continue with -at words, since we have practiced those in the past (see here for our calendar time post including -at words).  I made a rhyming wheel, with two paper plates and a brass fastener.  It took all of five minutes- including gathering materials.  Yay, this activity so far gets one star.

I invited the kidabunks over for a fun rhyming toy.  They were both easily hooked and came running over- two stars!  I modeled how to use the wheel, and sounded out the first word together.  Success - three stars!  I let the two of them "play" with the wheel, they took turns nicely- even incorporating Little Miss' baby into the mix- four stars!  Most importantly, they were having fun and learning at the same time.  Did they get each word right on the first try?  No.  Did they have fun trying to remember how to sound out each word? Yes!  When we were finished, I showed them where to put their new toy on the shelf.  A few minutes later, Wild One was playing with it again all by himself- FIVE STARS!

Classifying Dinosaurs

(38 Months)

We've been learning and playing with dinosaurs for the past couple of weeks.  It's really been fascinating watching them.  I am so impressed by how quickly they are able to process new information.   They learn the correct pronunciations of dinosaurs faster than I do (I need to keep looking at the pronunciation key until I have the dinosaur name memorized- they have it memorized the second or third time they hear it!).  They are able to distinguish one dinosaur from another: "Look here's another stegosaurus, they have a lot of large plates on their back!"  "The ankylosaurus has a heavy bony club-tail."  "T-Rex is my favorite!""Mommy, maiasaura dinosaurs were great mommies, they took good care of their babies." "Look, the triceratops moms and dads are protecting their babies from the tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs."  Seriously!  Why was I reading only fiction when they can absorb so much so quickly?  It truly is amazing.

While we are reading about dinosaurs, we pause to identify that particular dinosaur's specific features (teeth, feet, horns, plates, neck and tail shape and length, number of legs).  We use that information to help us differentiate one dinosaur from another.  When I was a teacher, I used a lot of real-life experiences to help provide a concrete description for my fifth grade students.  I still apply that same method with my little kidabunks.  Diplodocus had unsharpened pencil shaped teeth - I took out a box of unsharpened pencils and stuck them in play-doh to show my little loves what the teeth looked like.  Brachiosaurus was a little larger than a two-story house, so during one of our walks we stopped by a two-story home and marveled about how tall the brachiosaurus was.   One of tyrannosaurus rex's teeth is as long as a large banana.  The longest horn on a triceratops is about the size of a two-year old child.

I decided to try a formal assessment to see if they were able to classify dinosaurs into two categories- herbivores and carnivores.  We flattened out some play-doh, and made dinosaur tracks.  Then the kidabunks looked at the tracks and pretended they were paleontologists to identify what type of dinosaur made the tracks.  They knew!  They had so much fun making tracks, covering them up and then making them again.

Wild One then created a game, where we had to find which dinosaur made his tracks.  So brilliant!

Helping Around the House

(38 Months)

Today Wild One helped Grandpa change the legs in their table.  My babies are growing so fast, their legs were getting squished under their table, so we switched out the short table legs for longer ones.  Wild One helped Grandpa unscrew the short table legs from the table, remove the screws and short legs and then replace them with the longer legs and thread the screws.

Later that day, Little Miss and I went plant shopping.  Of course she chose the first pink flowers she saw.  We didn't even get into the store when she started pulling plants off of the shelves.  It was so precious, she kept running from pink plant to pink plant, "this one, this one."  Then they planted - oh the mess.  How I wish I had a backyard with grass- it wouldn't have been so messy.  Focus on the experience - they planted!  Then they watered.  We all admired the beautiful new plants.  Then I cleaned.

 

Play-doh Letter Fun

(38 Months)

Little Miss loves play-doh.  C'mon, who doesn't love playing with play-doh.  She loves squishing and pressing molds into the play-doh.  She loves adding Mr. Potato Head accessories into the play-doh.  She loves making pancakes and muffins for her babies out of play-doh.

Today we decided to practice rolling the play-doh into snakes or ropes, and then form the snakes into capital letters.  My plan was to practice the letters with just horizontal and vertical lines (E, F, H, I, L and T).  Little Miss had her own plan (as she frequently does), she wanted to create the letters in alphabetical order.  She's only three and she's already so determined.  Oh boy!

I used sidewalk chalk to draw the letter on her picnic table and offered her the chalk to trace the letter.  Next, we created rolled snakes out of the play-doh.  Creating evenly rolled play-doh snakes are still hard for us.  I was proud of Little Miss for practicing again and again, even though she was frustrated at times because the snakes would sometimes split apart in the middle.

  

For the first few letters, I gave her the appropriate number and lengths of snakes.  She carefully placed the rolled play-doh on top of the chalk letter, "squishing it together" at the corners to form the letter (I love how she describes what she's doing).

As we neared the letter E, she started creating her own lengths of snakes, and if they were too short, she would tear off a piece of another snake to complete the line or curve.  She continued working all the way through the letter M, and then she asked if she could stop.  I was thrilled that she kept happily practicing letter after letter.  We gladly put away the play-doh and she began building with blocks.

I'm so proud of her.  I love my little (sigh, big) girl.

Swirled Easter Egg Art with Tips

(37 Months)

I've been wanting to do this project for over a year now (there are step-by-step directions at PlayCreateExplore).  We tried working on this last year (see here), but it morphed into a shaving cream sensory bin (instead of an art project).  They liked playing with shaving cream so much, that we decided it would be fun to make shaving cream paint to use in the bathtub (see here).  So now with Easter a few days away, and no new Easter art projects on our walls and windows- it's time to get busy.

This project couldn't be simpler.  Instead of white card stock, we used pink, light blue and light green construction paper.  Other than that, we followed the directions and were incredibly impressed with the results.

Step 1- spray shaving foam into a jelly roll pan (a rolled cookie sheet).
Step 2- spread it out evenly (I used my hand)
Step 3- add your favorite drops of liquid food coloring
Step 4- swirl with a chopstick or the back of the paint brush (see Little Miss demonstrating below)

Step 5- place card stock or construction paper on top of the swirled shaving cream

Step 6- gently peel the paper off of the shaving cream and set aside

Step 7- add five or six more drops of food dye and swirl, repeat steps 5 and 6

Step 8- we waited five minutes before scraping the shaving cream off of the paper, we used a wooden craft stick

Step 9- set aside to dry (see tips below)

Step 10- Enjoy your gorgeous artwork. 

We did learn a few tricks during our exploration into swirl art:
1. Six drops of food coloring wasn't nearly enough- we used nine and that was perfect.
2. You can reuse the same tray of swirled art at least twice, just add three or four more drops of food coloring.
3.  Make sure you rinse off the craft stick and then dry it before each swipe of removing the shaving cream from the paper.

Here are our (mostly) finished products.  I just don't have the heart to cut into these to turn them into Easter eggs.

We'll definitely be doing this again and again.  Thank you again to Play Create Explore for introducing us to a wonderfully creative art project.