Part/Whole Matching Cards

I introduced these part/whole matching cards to O this morning. She wasn't very interested in the activity, but she enjoyed it once she got started. I bought these cards at the dollar store months and months ago, and I just found them (along with lots of other goodies) this weekend when I was cleaning out a bin of matching cards. Understanding the concept of part/whole is an important pre-reading skill, so I'm glad I found the cards when I did!

Arranging Flowers

O and M LOVE to pick and arrange flowers at Guh-guh and Grandpa's house! This will keep them occupied for hours :)

Miniature Clothes & Clothes Line

After seeing the miniature clothes lines and clothes here and here, I knew I HAD to make one for O! O was very excited about this activity. The mini clothes pins were a little heavy, so the clothes flipped when we clipped them to the line. O thought it was hilarious!






   

Squeeze & Match

 
 






This is one of O's all time favorite activities! Probably because she had to wait so long to do it...I started putting this activity together in early January before I started getting so sick. It then sat on my kitchen counter waiting for me to finish it for 2 months. O asked about it frequently during those two months :) To make this activity, I filled 4 pairs of balloons (one red and one blue for each pair) with the same substance (rice, lentils, popcorn kernals, corn starch). To do the activity, O squeezes a red balloon and then squeezes the blue balloons one at a time until she finds a match. She doesn't look at the balloons while she squeezes. After she makes her matches, she checks them by looking at the balloons (you can tell if they match by looking at the textures of the balloons).

Easter Themed Activities

I LOVE Easter, and I was very excited to incorporate a couple of Easter themed activities into our daily work.
For this activity, O picks up an egg with the tongs and transfers it to the egg carton. Sadly, she doesn't really enjoy this activity. I'm hoping she'll grow to like it :)
















Since O has not been interested in the sound cylinders in months, I thought I'd spice things up a little by making sound eggs :) To do this activity, she picked up a blue egg, shook it, and then picked up a purple egg and shook it. She continued to pick up purple eggs until she found a match for the blue egg. She LOVED this activity, and she did a great job the 1st time she did it. She immediately wanted to do it again and proceeded to miss all but one. Lately, she thinks it's funny to get things wrong on purpose. She says she's "just teasing." I'm not sure what to do about this...

Sound or No Sound

The idea for this activity came from The Wonder Years. It's a simple and fun activity which was easy to put together. I took 10 bells and removed the balls from the centers of 5 of them. Then I put them in a bowl together. O picks up one bell at a time, shakes it, and determines if it should go on the sound side or no sound side.

 







 

Water Transfer & Color Mixing

I planned on doing a green water transfer for St. Patrick's Day, but then Shannon suggested mixing colors as well, and I realized what a great idea that was! Thanks, Shannon! I love that I am a mommy during this time of great blogs and email :) All of the ideas and support on my online mommy friends makes our lives so much easier and more fun!

First, O squeezed a few drops of food coloring into 3 different glasses. Then she poured water into the glasses. It was fun to watch the water change color as she poured it in, and she said "Ohhh. Beautiful!"

 
Then I showed her how to use the dropper to transfer a little bit of water to each bowl. I was surprised by how well she did with this because we have not done water transferring in a few months.

 
She then added blue water to the yellow water to make green! She was VERY impressed!

 
She kept adding colors until the water turned brown. Then we tried red and blue to make purple.

 
After she was finished experimenting with color mixing, we went outside and picked flowers to try our science experiment again. We put a white flower in each color, and we're hoping they'll change colors :)


     

Living/Non-living

The object of this activity is to sort the objects into living and non-living categories. I was unsure if O would "get" this concept, and I was relieved when she caught on immediately. She seemed to really enjoy this activity!