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.

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.

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??