Playing with Trash

What could be better than a swimming pool full of newspaper and colorful baggies?  Well a lot of things, my son thinks ;)

It took a while for him to really get into this... I had thought he would love it because of how much he liked to throw fall leaves but I was mistaken.  Still, we had our good moments, like when he realized that he could see through the bags and wanted to sing the peekaboo song.

I found the idea for this activity here.  Oh, and also only use the plastic bags if you are going to be supervising your child!  I just added them in because we don't get the paper so we had very little of it in the garage, but had tons of plastic bags that my inlaws always seem to give us.

I also made up a sensory box (in this case, I almost think its just another term for "junk...") I tossed tons of stuff in there, mostly game pieces--from Rummikub, Dominoes, Sequence, Mancala, Scrabble, plus shape beads, cotton and pompoms, clothesmpins and a couple shiny plastic ornaments for good measure.

I set it out with tons of containers, spoons, cups, etc. and let my son get to work.  He did a lot of stirring and scooping and in general, had a great time!  I am sure we will get it out again tomorrow.

He is currently into stars since we put up the tree, so we set about to do a star collage.  He has helped make these in the past but this time his helping equated to him continuously getting his hand stuck on the paper.

So I pretty much made the whole thing, but it was worth it later because he keeps picking it up and starting to dance, his signal that he wants me to sing twinkle twinkle little star.  so cute!

One final thing I did, in a fit of randomness, I decided to cut stars out of scrap paper and I taped them up all over the living room.  It took a while, but he eventually noticed them and has been having fun taking them down, looking at them, and then "pat, pat, pats" them back onto the wall (which is what we say when we make the collages).

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.

Brown Bear Activites

So as I mentioned previously, we checked the book Brown, Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? out of the library the other day and my son was instantly enamored with it. He loves to read books, but the amount of times he has wanted to read it each day has surpassed previous records. So in light of that, I decided to find some brown bear activites to do around the house.

By far the easiest (and most entertaining for him) was making characters for the felt board. These are actually printables from 1+1+1=1, intended to be a puzzle, but I just cut them out, reinforced each side with clear packing tape, and taped velcro from a disposable diaper on the back. Instant felt board fun! What I like about these printables is that they actually are the same pictures used in the book, which makes it easier for my son to recognize. We have done several things with them today:

--he has just played with them on his own (calling them by name, making animal sounds, carrying them around the house)
--I went through the whole Brown Bear schpiel with them, reenacting the book
--I asked him "where is the green frog?" (etc.) and had him point at the right animal
--While we were reading the book I would stop at each animal and ask him to find the cutout that matched, again, "where is the blue horse?" and he would get it for me
--I tried to do a color activity with pompoms but he wasn't interested.

He seriously loves these cutouts, I have a feeling that they will get worn out even though I reinforced them!

Another fun activity was that I downloaded these tiny cutouts from Making Learning Fun  that were intended for use in an eye spy bottle (which I made later). First, though, I put the cutouts into our rice bin but I didn't do much hiding because I wasn't sure if he would find them.

Owen had a lot of fun pulling out all the different characters, naming them, making noises, etc. I enjoy having him do this activity while I clean the kitchen because it keeps him occupied and in sight and I don't feel like I am being neglectful even though I am not really participating. An unintentional bonus of this was that he did less throwing of the rice since he was so into the cutouts.

Next I made the eye spy bottle, and I think it is really cute, but I think that if you make it, you should print out two copies of the pictures because it was hard to see the animals when they were facing the wrong way.  I don't know if I am explaining that right, but I plan on printing out another copy so that there is a picture on the front and back of each piece so it will be easier to play with.  Otherwise I thought it was a great activity and a great idea!  I have tried a bunch of times today to find the page on the Making Learning Fun where the list of printables came from but all I have is the link to the eye spy bottle, so here it is for you.  

We also got started on a mini brown bear coloring book that will end up in our tot book at the end of this week

As well as played with these number cards.  Owen doesn't really count with me (although he counts with his daddy, I think) but I often hear him "counting"... Usually it goes "three, four, five, nine.."  and thats about it.  so cute ;)  Both the number cards and the coloring book can also be found on the 1+1+1=1 website here.  If you are wondering, the #9 card is too dirty from lunch to be displayed here ;)

All in all, I think it was a successful day--Owen was so happy to have so much brown bear stuff to play with!  I really enjoyed to have an easy theme to work with...  I liked working it around the book and hope I can come up with other book-themes in the future!

And plans change...

I had dreamed up a bunch of body-themed activities to do this week but I think they will be scrapped! First of all, I have a suspicion that Owen knows all the body parts, even the ones that I thought he didn't know (I brought out a picture of a hand and he named it immediately!) which would be fine, I was going to do the activities anyway, but man, this kid is seriously obsessed with Brown Bear. Sooooo, I spent naptime coming up with some Brown Bear things for daddy to print out and today we will do some other stuff.  Here is what we did today:

Filled the sink with water and tons of bubbles! I thought it would be a hit since he loves waterplay so much, but he was kind of nervous (I think) about being up on that chair. (note: those dishes on the counter??? they are actually clean... instead of putting them away like a self-respecting mama, I just moved them to the counter.)

so we brought the water and bubbles down to the floor and it was perfect ;)

later, I brought up our plastic swimming pool and filled it with snow! I thought this would be so much fun... I would like to say that the reason I didn't get us geared up to play outside was because it was raining, but in honesty, I had no idea it was raining. I just didn't want to play outside, so I brought the play to us. I also filled up squirt bottles with water that had food coloring in it and sprayed the water to make it fun colored.

But... he didn't really like it. Perhaps because it was near naptime or he was hungry... Perhaps because I couldn't find his mittens (who taught him the word "cold?" he sure used it appropriately).. But it wasn't as fun as I had hoped. Eventually a mixing spoon *kind of* got him playing along.

While he did that, I was scooping snow with a cup. I imagine it would be so fun for an older kid to make a snow castle (instead of a sand castle).

finally, Owen showed me what he really wanted to do, which was take his books off the shelf, one by one, and read them. and we did.

Make sure to come back tomorrow to check out our Brown Bear activities!

Tot Book 2

I had a lot of fun putting this together, plus its not very much work and its a great way to reinforce our little "lessons" in a fun way that Owen loves.

The left side is a flap book, the middle just a diagram of a house, and the right side is like a big accordian. Of course, his favorite part is the yellow car. car? vroom, vroom. Car? Vroom, Vroom. Car? Vroom, Vroom. etc. etc. etc.