Learning about Muscles, Bones, etc.

Elliott bought this human anatomy flip chart book years and years ago for our future children, and I'm so glad that he did! I found it this weekend buried on a shelf in the top of O's closet, and we looked at the pictures while working on her beleduc body puzzle. We matched the puzzle pieces to the pictures and discussed the names of different muscles and bones. O was especially interested in talking about biceps, and she showed me how strong she was by flexing her muscles :)




    O was THRILLED when she turned the page on the flip chart and discovered the pictures of the baby in the belly! While looking at the tiniest picture, I reminded her that we always tell her that she started off smaller than a lentil (when we tell her birth story, which is something we do almost nightly), and that there was a picture of a baby who was smaller than a lentil. She ran to get a lentil to compare it to the picture, and sure enough, the baby was smaller!




After discusing the pictures and completing the puzzle, O laid down on 2 sheets of paper (taped together) and I traced her. She then had fun coloring her picure. This activity is in almost every toddler activity book that I have seen, and I was so glad to finally do it with O. It was surprisingly difficult to find a big, blank paper book (most of the big books I found were coloring books).

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!

Tell Me A Story Blocks

The idea for these blocks came from The Toby Show. The idea behind the blocks is to use them as story starters. You roll the dice and start your story based on the picture on the block. Then the next person rolls the dice and continues the story. I've been eyeing these tell me a story cards, so I already loved the idea of story prompts. This was even better since I could easily make it myself, and I already had all the materials that I needed.

To make my blocks, I cut tiny pictures out of old (torn, beat up, scribbled in books from the thrift store that I buy for various craft projects) children's books and decopaged them onto the blocks. This was super simple, fast, and fun! I've made 3 blocks so far (the blocks are 1 inch squares), and I plan to make a few more using pictures of us since O especially loves stories in which she is the star!

Making Pudding

Now that I am feeling a little better (and able to go in the kitchen again after 7 weeks of not entering that room), I am trying to cook more with O. Making instant pudding was a quick and easy way to get back into the kitchen with my girl. By the way, O is wearing a bathing suit and bathing suit cover up :) She rarely wears play clothes since bathing suits, leotards, and costumes are so much more fun!

A Perk of School at Home

O wore her bathing suit all morning, and then instantly transformed into a cat when she got a little chilly :)

Making a Sink/Float Bottle

O and I had a great time make a sink/float bottle this week. I gathered various objects for the bottle while she was napping, and she was ready to do our project when she woke up!
I filled the bottle about 2/3 full with water, and here are the objects that we put into the bottle. I also had a rubberband, but O insisted that it belonged on the doorknob, not in the bottle. Before she put each object in the bottle, we predicted whether the object would sink or float.




After we put all of the objects in the bottle, we talked about which objects surprised us :) We were surprised by the beads since 1 of them sank, 2 floated, and 1 sank and then rose back to the surface to float. I was also surprised that the bear floated. She loves to roll the bottle across the floor and watch the objects sink or float to the surface.









O went a little overboard with the glitter, and she was excited to use her vacuum to clean up!

1 to 1 Correspondence Activity Kit

I recently checked out this 1 to 1 correspondence activity kit from the library, and we have really enjoyed it. 1 to 1 correspondence is something that we still need to work on. O starts counting well, but then she speeds up and she loses the 1 to 1 correspondence.
The first activity that we did was sorting bears. We did this together since O insisted that we sort all of the bears, and there are more than a hundred.


 
Our favorite part of the kit is the number puzzle. O counts the objects in each set and matches the correct numbers to the set of objects. O got a little off track while counting, but she did fine when I helped her point to the objects.


 

We LOVE Shel Silverstein!

We have been reading and reading and reading Shel Silverstein books for the last month or so, and Runny Babbit is our FAVORITE! O laughs and laughs more than I have ever seen her laugh while reading a book. It is truly a classic that I'm sure we'll be reading and enjoying for years. We also really love The Missing Piece, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, and Where The Sidewalk Ends. If you haven't read these books, you should rush to your library to check them out!

Texture Collage

O has had a great time working on her texture collage for the last 3 days! The idea for this activity came from Montessori Mama (I think).

I collected lots of different objects of different textures, including foam shapes, cotton balls, bits of sandpaper, beads, toothpicks, rubber bands, aluminum foil, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, etc., and put them in this container for O.

 
Then I taped a piece of contact paper sticky side out on the glass door. O has had a great time sticking different objects on the contact paper. She especially loves the foam shapes and cotton balls. She thought it was "cool" that she put the cotton balls on the paper, and some of it stayed when she pulled the cotton ball off the paper. She also stuck a couple of balloons on the collage. I intended for her to put use deflated balloons, but she insisted that I blow them up. I was surprised that they stuck to the collage, but she didn't leave them up for long :)

 
O has enjoyed working on this texture collage so much that I've left it up on the door. I think I may switch it out for new contact paper once a week, so it can be her ongoing art project :) Next time I think I'll give her a selection of construction paper cut into various shapes or tissue paper to tear into bits (we have tons since I save it from all birthday parties. Yes, most people think I'm crazy, but I don't mind.)