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!

Tot Book!

I read about Tot Books earlier this week on Carissa's blog 1+1+1=1 and I thought it was such a great idea so I decided to give it a try!  Tot Books are like a smaller, less complicated version of a lap book, which is basically a tool for older kids to review and reinforce learning in a fun and interesting way (they usually help make the books as well.)  You can read about it more here and here. 

So I decided I wanted to make a little book focusing on the things we were talking about this week.  Here is what I came up with:

Ok. So first of all, yes, I know I need to learn to take better pictures.  Lets add that to my to-do list, shall we?  So I cut a file folder in half and then made two folds so that it would have two sides that folded inwards.  This is what the book looks like open.  It is good to make the different elements fun and interesting to look at.  I got some ideas here

The section on the right is a circle folded into fourths.  I drew objects that are circles in each segment, which totals 6 segments as you are opening it.  I also covered all of the elements of this tot book in packing tape, because Owen loves to destroy things.  That makes it difficult for this circle to stay shut, which I find frustrating.

 The middle section is a book of things that are red.  Each of the blue and green pages has a different red item on it.  This is Owen's favorite part of the book.  He loves to turn the pages.

 Finally, I made triangle number flashcards.  This is the most uninteresting part but I am sure he will grow into it ;)  Daddy has taught him to count but I don't think he really knows what the numbers mean

And there you have it, a tot book!  Owen loves it, which was the goal but I still need to figure out how to make it completely toddler proof.  Is that even possible??

redredredredred

In general, Owen and I are repeating the activities we do during the week so I try not to post about those.  I wrote about some red activites we have done here.  These are a few other red activities we are doing.

Red Collage!  It takes less than 15 minutes to flip through your old magazines, tear out red pictures or pages and cut (or tear) them into shapes.  I found some contact paper (we bought it for the purpose of being a drawer liner) and cut a big rectangle out of it.  I helped Owen put the red items onto the sticky part of the contact paper to create a red collage.

We hung it up in his toy closet, where we will hang other color creations in the future. ok, I should have been more thoughtul... The placement of this picture made Owen very angry since he couldn't reach it.  I moved it to a lower position that he can see at eye level and he is loving looking at it now.

I also spent about five minutes drawing pictures of red items and made a small book.  I added a wagon, t-shirt, apple, car, elmo and a truck.  I did not write any words, mostly because I am lazy...  I read it to him in the style of the book "Brown Bear" (Red wagon, red wagon, what do you see?  I see a red shirt looking at me, etc.)  I was surprised that he really enjoyed the book because it seemed boring to me. 

We also did some cooking (Owen stirring up ingredients + food coloring), played with red (and not red) cars, read some red books, and.. thats about it.  Sometime this weekend I might freeze some red ice cubes and let him play with them in the tub or in the kitchen with bowls of water.  He did some water play yesterday for almost an hour, which is pretty incredible amount of time to keep a toddler interested.  Yes, everything got wet, but the cleanup was remarkably easier than anything else we do.

Intro to Red Overkill

I thought it would be fun to do a lot of red things today. Not just bringing out red stuff and talking about it but also just seeing a lot of red during the day.

First we made some red playdough. Owen was very interested in the food coloring.


After it was all mixed up, he was mad that we were done cooking so we went back to the old standby, oats, flour and water. Yum!


I then set him up in the den to play with the red playdough and commenced with washing dishes. I went in a few minutes later to check on him and he was playing with dog vomit. seriously. If I ever find out what makes dog vomit more interesting than playdough I will let you know.

He was then making vrooming noises all over the house so we played cars for a bit (lots of red firetrucks!) and then we worked on putting red chips from the game Sequence into his piggy bank. I've tried this activity with homemade jars but he finds the piggy bank more interesting. He does struggle sometimes to get the chips in though.


We read one of his favorites, Elmo's First Book of Colors, and a couple of times through I picked up objects near us to compare the colors, for example, this truck is red like Elmo, or this block is yellow like big bird.

A few days ago I put together a bunch of red items and then covered this box in red paper. I am just going to leave it out for him to find and explore this afternoon. Don't make fun of my duct tape job, I am super embarrassed about it, why don't we ever have tape like normal people??


The final piece to our red puzzle today is red lunch ;) Owen will have spaghettio's (not that he will eat them, I'm sure, but I'm going to let him practice with his spoon as well). Red cottage cheese, grapes, and jello! The jello is homemade; I didn't have any "normal" jello on hand, and recipes I found called for juice to flavor it but we don't have juice. I was thinking of using sugar and extracts but I just didn't feel good about making him sweets since he doesn't eat them very often at all, maybe a tidbit from mom and dad's dessert like once in a blue moon, so I reverted back to the babyfood days and blended up some apples and bananas, stirred in gelatin, cold water and food coloring and voila! Jello! Lunch looks a little gross, to be honest! Sure he won't mind, though.



oh! we are also going to fingerpaint with red this afternoon!

in which we make noise, eat finger paint, stack and explore color (or not)

at the library, Owen really seemed to enjoy playing with shakers while dancing around to music so I decided to implement this at home. We've danced, and we've shaked, but never at the same time. I rounded up some noisemakers-- a set of keys, bells, a homemade shaker bottle (beads, rice and found items in a waterbottle), round bead containers, a package of beads and a vitamin container with magnets inside.


I was searching for the Ting Tings, which I think is the essential toddler dance music (and should be marketed as such) but settled for Mates of State instead. It was a blast, well for about four songs, and then he suddenly found coloring more appealing, but that is exactly why I set up the color table so I was cool with that.


Fingerpainting with pudding was another activity of the day. I had mixed up and colored instant pudding last week so we used the leftovers. If I were making it fresh today I would have had Owen help stir in the food coloring. I laid out tinfoil (interesting to play with and easy cleanup) and set out some utensils and objects and let him do his thing with the pudding. He had lots of fun smearing and eventually eating, the pudding. And spoon practice!


I thought this stacking rings-type activity was going to be a hit, but it wasn't. As soon as Owen saw the paper towel holder, he started making car noises and was driving it around the room. lol. Well I had cut up some toilet paper rolls, and gathered up other round objects with holes in them like stacking rings, bracelets, duct tape, etc for him to place on and take off of the paper towel holder. I will definitely try this again because I still think its a great activity.


the final thing we did was introduce the color green, which I don't think he's really ready to embrace but we will keep looking at colors. Today I put a bunch of green things in a green bag and had him play with them and take them out while I named the items...Usually this sort of discovery is really fun but the bag must have been full of lame stuff because he was so over it in a few seconds... Maybe if I had said "these are my cherished treasures please do not touch them" he would have spent a lot of time on it, who knows. Anyway, I have some piles of red and blue objects put together in the closet, I am sure we will try this again soon.