You might have noticed that I haven't blogged in a little while. That is because I have been setting up a new blog! It will still have lots of great pictures for grandparents and good activity ideas for other littles, but it should be easier for me to update and keep track of. So if you would like to keep following our activity adventures, check out www.afternoonactivityfun.wordpress.com. Thanks for all your support!
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Today we worked on spelling Isaach's name again using old bottle caps saved from milk jugs. This was really easy to put together. I simply wrote his name on the front of an envelope and wrote each letter of his name on a bottle cap. I chose to use an envelope so that when we were done we could just slip the bottle caps inside and save it for later. To play, we sang a silly song about the letters in his name and then I handed him the bottle caps which he placed over the correct letters. He knew exactly what to do and wanted to do it three times before putting the caps away for safe keeping. This afternoon Sydney and I repeated her edible yogurt painting activity from last week but on a much larger scale. I started by taping down a huge sheet of paper. Then I made up two cups of colored yogurt and put drops all across the paper and just let her have at it. At first she just sat at the edge of the paper trying to eat up what yogurt she could. She wasn't too keen on crawling across the paper and getting messy. Although this was a sensory activity, my bigger purpose was for it to be a gross motor skills activity so her not crawling just wouldnt do. I decided to put fruit snacks out along the center of the paper to get her moving. That did the trick and she was off to the races! Lesson learned... she is just like her mama. We both move faster if treats are involved! Cleanup wasnt too bad either. I just put her in the shower, rolled up the paper, and mopped the floor. It also helped that I had strategically planned this activity on the day I had planned to mop the floor anyway :)
Izzy and I did a great fine motor activity together today. I rolled out some homemade Playdough for him and had him push pony beads into it. The pony beads were pretty small so simply handling those was good fine motor exercise for him. However, with the added challenge of pushing the beads into the dough, this activity could not have been better for those little fingers! He quite enjoyed the activity as well. For Sydneys activity, I taped old cereal boxes together to form a sort of cereal box road. Its a good thing this activity was free because she just wasnt feeling it at all! My idea was for her to crawl across the road pointing at things and us talking about what she was seeing. Her thought process was more along the lines of, "Is there any cereal in here? What? These boxes are empty? Well this is no good. Im out of here!" I did sort of salvage the activity by holding her on my lap and going through the boxes one by one that way, but it wasnt at all what I expected. The cool thing about this activity though is that it is double sided... once we had gone across the road once we flipped the boxes over and a whole new set of things to talk about!
Izzy's second opposites activity went a little bit better than his first... probably because it wasnt raining outside when we did it. It was still a little above his head though, but thats okay. I think a little challenge is good for him every once in a while. For this activity we talked about the concepts of hard and soft. I gathered some objects from around the house and had him sort through the objects and group them together based on wether they were hard or soft. This took a lot of help from me, but he still did pretty good and we managed to make it through this activity twice before he was on to bigger and better things. For Sydney we played with treasures in an egg carton. There is seriously something magical when it comes to babies and recycled egg cartons... both of my babies have absolutely loved playing with their egg cartons around a year old! For Sydney, I gathered a small object and put it in each opening in the egg carton. We had a variety of objects from fabric to ribbons to pompoms to hair bows. Her favorite object was a purple hair clip that she kept putting in and taking out of the carton which was exactly how I had hoped she would utilize this activity. She also had fun pretending to give me her treasures then snatching them away at the last second. Silly girl!
Yesterday Izzy and I played a fun game to work on his language skills. I gathered together 10 items from around the house and put them in a bin. Then I gave Izzy clues and had him guess which object I was talking about. Once he guessed correctly, we took the item out and he could hold it while guessing the next item. The clues were fairly simple and he did a really good job guessing. Here are a few of my clues to give you an example of what we did: "I spy something yellow that you drink out of." - a cup "I spy an animal with white spots." - a deer "I spy something round that you put on the fridge." - a magnet Before our activity we spent time reading one of Izzys favorite Usborne books at the moment called You Choose. We love reading this book to not only help with language skills but also to spark his imagination. It is a unique book that has a question at the top of the page with lots of pictures underneath for you to talk about and answer the prompt with. You can find out more about that book here. As you can see, Izzy loves reading this book! With Sydney we did a mess free sensory activity by making two discovery bottles. Discovery bottles are a great way to allow little ones to safely explore materials you might not want them playing with otherwise. We made two different bottles... one small and one large. We filled our smaller bottle halfway with water and colored it dark green then filled it the rest of the way with vegetable oil. For our larger bottle, we dyed some rice purple then added some sparkly confetti for fun. Sydney enjoyed rolling her bottles around, shaking them, and pretending to drink out of them. And of course checking out the materials inside.
Today Izzy and I did a really fun activity to talk about color mixing. We made three different batches of soap foam... one in each of the primary colors. Then we divided our soap foam among three different containers so that when mixed, they would create one of the secondary colors like this... Soap foam is a new concept to us but it was so much fun and so easy to make! All you need is 1/4 cup water, 2 tablespoons dish soap, some food coloring and a blender. You can find the exact recipe we used here. When you blend all of the ingredients together it makes a nice frothy colorful foam that is awesome to play with. And the primary colors look great when mixed to make secondary colors. Izzy particularly loved all of the bubbles in the foam made by the soap. I loved the fact that this activity practically cleans itself. I mean soap and water... what could be much cleaner?
The second name activity Izzy and I did was really simple. I just wrote down his name on a piece of paper and let him decorate it with dot stickers. My original plan was to have him trace his name with a dot marker but I couldnt find one when I went shopping so we settled for dot stickers instead. Nothing exciting but he was at least focused on his name for a few minutes and we hung it up in his room afterwards. Sydney's activity was both a sensory activity and a gross motor exercise. I gathered a bunch of different materials together and taped them on the floor to make a sort of runway for her to crawl and walk over. Our materials included fabric, textured place mats, sandpaper, aluminum foil, and bubble wrap. I had her crawl across her runway to get to me and then I helped her walk back across. Her favorite texture was a rubbery place mat but she hated the place mat made out of wood.
Even though Izzy has great fine motor skills, we are still working to strengthen his fingers to get him ready for writing. Our activity the other day focused on just that! For our activity, I got some foam blocks used for crafts from Walmart and had Izzy stick golf tees in them. The pushing motion really worked those fingers of his and he loved doing it. At first, he tried splitting the golf tees equally between the three blocks, but then he decided to just focus on just one block and see how many tees he could fit in there. He thought it was especially fun when I showed him how to put golf tees in the sides rather than just in the top. And I personally think his creations turned out looking really cool and funky. For baby girls activity we did a fun sensory activity with edible finger paint made from just 2 ingredients... yogurt and food coloring. I mixed up three different colors for her, told her what each of them were, and let her have it. She didnt mind getting messy at all and loved eating the yogurt, squishing it through her cute little fingers, and smearing it all over her high chair tray. Clean up wasnt too bad and a quick shower fixed her right up!
Another concept I want to work on with Izzy this year is opposites. I know it might still be slightly over his head but there are a few that he has already picked up on his own like hot and cold, light and dark, inside and outside, and up and down. So I figured trying to add a few more to his list of opposites knowledge wouldnt hurt. We have a great Usborne book called Lift-the-Flap Opposites that he enjoys reading so we started our activity with a review of that book. Then I got his new Daniel Tiger figurines and a clear plastic cup. We mostly worked on the concept of full and empty by filling the cup with figurines and taking them back out again. We also used the cup and figurines to work on in front of and behind, in and out, up and down, on and off, and above and below. As predicted, the activity was a little above his current skill level, but he still enjoyed playing with his figurines, that is until it started raining outside and then it was all over from there! With Sydney I wanted to spend the day working on fine motor skills so we did a milk jug drop. To do this, I saved one of the last milk jugs we finished, washed it out, and cut holes in the top and the side. Then we borrowed some of brothers smaller balls and legos and planned to spend the afternoon dropping objects in and shaking them back out again. However, every time we dropped an object in the jug, sister burst out in tears. It was so sad! So I had her sit on my lap and watch me drop things in and quickly shake them back out again. Not our best activity, but at least a good lesson on object permanence.
Yesterday was a language day for both of the kids. To help Izzy with his language skills we simply sang songs together. To make it a bit more interesting, I gathered together about a dozen items to represent different songs then placed them in a bag. I had Izzy pick one item out of the bag at a time and we sang the song that went with it. For example, we had a cow to represent Old McDonald Had a Farm and a star for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. He was so cute holding the object while we sang then carefully placing it off to the side before picking out a different object. He loved this activity so much that we had to do it again with sister before their nap times and again when they woke up. I think we will be leaving the bag out throughout the week so that we can repeat this activity lots and lots as it is so great for the both of them! For Sydneys language activity, we had a reading marathon! Most days we read 5 books at story time, but yesterday we read a whopping 27 books! Sure most of them only took 45 seconds to read, but we still feel quite accomplished. To help keep her attention I set her up with her favorite stuffed owl and a package of fruit snacks and just rolled with it. I just followed her cues and wrapped it up once she started getting squirmy. We are planning another reading marathon soon and are excited to see how many books we will be able to get through then.
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AuthorHi! My name is Cassity and I am the mom to a little 2 year old boy named Izzy and a baby girl named Sydney. I am lucky enough to get to be a stay-at-home mom to them and we have fun thinking of new activities to do together in the afternoons. We created this blog as an opportunity to share those activities with you. Archives
March 2015
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