Thursday, March 28, 2013

Virtual Book Club : Julia Donaldson

As part of the virtual book club we picked up two books by Julia Donaldson from the library. The Gruffalo (the most popular book by this author i guess) and  One Ted Falls Out Of Bed(Its a rythemic counting book about a sleeping child's teddy bear who falls off the bed and cant climb back so he plays around with cars and balloons and all the other toys in the room but he misses his bed and soon the boy wakes up and pulls him back in bed)

My daughter couldn't get enough of her Ted book. We had the book for 3 weeks and every single day we were reading TED. So i decided to do a lil reenactment of the story. I printed out some characters from the Internet, put out some of her cars and blocks and we spent a great time playing around with them.



The other book was Gruffallo. I made some finger puppets using the character printouts and some matching game cards.


 My daughter didn't play much with the puppets but loved the matching game. It was her first time playing the game and she enjoyed it every bit.





 
We played it a couple of times and she got exited every time she found a match:)
 
 


Saturday, March 16, 2013

St Patrick's Day Sensory Bin

St Patrick's Day is soon approaching so i thought it was a good opportunity to teach my daughter about the color Green. She cant recognize her colors yet..i am working on it. Whenever you ask her about a color she says its blue.I try not to compare her with other kids who all know the the colors of the rainbow:)
Anyway..teaching about the color Green with a St Patrick's Day Sensory Bin.
I started by showing her a green crayon and cucumber and asked her to help me find things around the house that match their color..she wasn't interested much. She just walked with me and watched while i gathered all the green stuff.
We collected it all in a pan (i have to get a suitable plastic box for these activities..its on my list) and we were all set for the activity.


I used some green split lentils, green glass beads, plastic cookie cutters, green cup, spoons, soft pretend vegetables and a green painted bottle which was part of her birthday craft.

She started by using a spoon to put lentils in the glass.


Then she used the spoon to put lentils in the bottle.


 She then wanted to fill the glass by putting lentils in the bottle cap and then putting them in the glass.





After this she wanted to explore with her hands and you can see that she removed everything from the pan one by one..the beads the alphabets. She just wanted to play with the lentils.




After playing with them for a long time..she discovered another game..rolling of the beads.



We spent a good half an hour with this activity which was great. We will be doing some more sensory bins soon..till then..bye!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Indoor Snowman

As much as we are awaiting spring and summer its never easy to resist playing in the snow when there is so much of it around you. We had a snow storm last week so we got involved in our favourite winter activity..making snowmen!
My daughter said 'its too cold outside' but she still wanted to make a snowman so we got the snow inside and made little snowmen just like i saw them here.
I got some snow from outside in a baking pan,set it down on a kitchen towel on the floor and we were ready to make our snowmen.



We used cloves for eyes, cereal and dried cranberries for nose and socks as hats.
 



Don't they look adorable?!!?!!

We later went outside to make a big snowman but my daughter preferred to stay inside and watch mama papa because she thought it was too cold outside. You can see her standing in our patio door in the pic below.

 
Hope its our last snowman of this winter..we are now eagerly awaiting spring.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Apple Painting

After celebrating Dr Seuss birthday at the book store the other day we did some activities at home.
Now my DD hasn't read 'Ten Apples up on Top' yet(we are still on the nose and foot book) but i thought a simple activity with apples would be fun.
So we first used apples as our blocks and tried making a tower which was really hard.

 
 
Later i asked her if she wanted to do some painting using apples instead of brushes and she was up for it so we did some apple painting:)
 

She couldn't resist putting her hands in the paint..she loves to make a hand print whenever we are painting.
 

Very quickly she covered 2-3 sheets with her apple prints.
 
 
After she was done painting it was snack time and we ate APPLES! Art made the apple good enough to eat:)
 

Messy fun is always a hit with toddlers.
I will be back with some St Patricks Day activities soon..till then..Bye!
 
 

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Happy Birthday Dr Suess

So it was Dr Suess' birthday yesterday and to celebrate the occassion we took our DD to a special storytime at Barnes and Nobles.They read two of his very famous books 'The Cat in the Hat' and 'Green Eggs and Ham' which all the kids enjoyed.

 

They had various activities after the storytime including making Dr Suess hats..coloring green eggs and sticking them on a plate with the ham..making wocket in a pocket and there were many coloring pages.



 
 
Below you can see my daughter trying to make her wocket in the pocket.
 
 


 
She had fun during this special birthday celebration. We later did some Dr Suess themed activities after coming back home..will post about them soon:)
 
 
 

Friday, March 1, 2013

Making Snowman:)

Kids love making snowman with the real snow as much as they do with a glue stick..yes..a glue stick!
I made this discovery the other day when i gave my DD some cut outs to make a paper snowman and a glue stick in her hands for the first time and she had a gala time.


 
She couldn't put the glue properly, i helped her with it but she enjoyed the whole process of gluing and sticking. I am sure next time she would want to use the scissors and make the cut outs herself.
Proudly posing with her snowman below..both real and paper:)
 
 
 
 
 

Monday, February 25, 2013

Sticker Activities

So its still February..the month of love:)
We didn't do any special activities for valentines day which was all my fault(had planned a lot of activities but didn't get around doing any of those) which was bad..so i thought i should not leave the love theme all together and gave this little activity to my DD who loves stickers like any other toddler. So i gave her a piece of paper with hearts drawn all over it, gave her some heart shaped stickers and told her to put stickers and cover the hearts on paper.





































A small but fun activity..something that can keep your toddler busy when you just need those 5 minutes to finish something you started...:)

Imagine Nation Museum

Connecticut has so many great museums for kids and Imagine Nation Museum in Bristol,CT is one of them. Last weekend we decided to try it out with our daughter.
It was a nice bright space with loads of things to do. There was a kitchen play space and a market place with shopping carts and groceries. Usually my DD always wants to spend a lot of time in these places but that day was different..she just wasn't interested in it. She ran across to play on the Rubber band Wall..something she hadn't seen before:)

 
 We then went over to the little corner with puzzles and books. There was a little mail box in that room and all she wanted to do was take out mail from behind and put it back in the mail box.
 


 
After this we went into the Construction Room which had big building blocks and nuts and screws and DD spent a good amount of time playing with those.
 



 
 
There were two levels in the museum so after playing with nuts and screws we went upstairs to check out the next level.
 
 

Now this level had a Water Room where you could make giant bubbles or catch fish or paint with water.





Couldn't get pictures for the other stuff:(
Anyways, the next room had some live creatures for the kids to see like a turtle, a snake and they also had a new addition..a cute white bunny named Thumper but he was kept separately.


Outside the room there was a Magnet Go Round with different activities on each side. Kids could exercise their sequencing skills or complete a giant puzzle or build their own invention on the magnetic wall and see if they can get balls to roll all the way through. This thing was a bit advanced for my DD but she loved sticking the magnetic pieces on the wall:)



What she liked was a picture book which was printed on the wall and she could walk with me and read it:)

 
 
There was a craft room where kids could color and play with play dough and make crafts. The day we went they were making snakes out of paper chains for the Chinese new year.
 
There were many more things to explore but our little explorer wasn't up for it that day(we later found out that she had a low grade fever) so we went downstairs and made our last stop inside the museum..The Harmonograph. Now this was something cool.
 



I  actually don't know much about the science behind it (something about pendulum and symmetry) but it made a great souvenir for our visit.

 
 
DD realized that she had missed an important play spot near the harmonograph which was the Colored Sand Station.
 
She played there for a while and then we had a little scoop of ice cream from their special 1940's old fashioned Soda Fountain and we headed back home.