Brown Bear Activites II

Last week's activities were such a hit!  Well, maybe it wasn't even the activities, but that he loves the Brown Bear book and he seriously played with all the little shapes and cards all week long.  They were constantly all over the house and some of them are still MIA.  So I thought I would come up with some more activities and make a Tot Book for him.

Pretty much all of the ideas shown are printables from 1+1+1=1 (except for the small red piece on the left--that just says My Name on the outside and Owen on the inside).  I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I guess I imagined I would take it out and we would sit down and look at the different parts of it together.  You know, in a civilized, adult manner.  Well, this is what happened immediately

Followed by this

And I have to admit, I was totally overwhelmed.  So I would imagine Owen was too.  Suddenly there was too much stuff.  It was everywhere.  I could hardly sort my thoughts (although I must admit that "stuff" easily overwhelms me).  So at first I gave up (haha.  typical).  I just let him do his thing.  Then I slowly rounded up the different elements and took them out of the mix and we looked at some of the different parts by themselves.

Surprisingly, he really likes the ABC sheet.  Its a fun accordian piece.  He has been carrying it all over the house.  Sometimes he wants to talk about the animals on it and sometimes he wants me to sing the song, which he tries to sing along to. I tried to take a pic of him running around with it but he moves too fast ;)

He also loves the Looking At Me mini-book and the Heads and Tails cards, although he doesn't really get that the cards are supposed to be put together, he just likes to look at the pieces and name them.

I had pulled out this shadow game knowing it would be too complicated.  Owen liked looking at the shadows and playing with the pieces, although not together ;) 

He actually came up with his own game when he saw this sorting sheet where the animals were in color, and made his own matching game.  He didn't get every one right, but he would lay down some of the cards on to the right pictures.  It was a much better game than the ones I came  up with.

So now I think I will keep most of this stuff out of sight and bring out one at a time to play with.  Mostly he just does free play with the different shapes which is fine by me, I interrupt every once in a while.  And if you didn't know (cause I didn't) there are several other related books, Panda Bear, Panda Bear what do you See? Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear? and Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you See?  some of them seem a bit more advanced to me, but Owen loves them just the same and we have been reading them constantly.