Mathematics - Wednesday

Today's activity takes a little more prep, so I'll just be posting one math game today. However, it is one that I think is a really good learning tool, and I encourage you to use it not just on Wednesdays, but throughout the week whenever you have a kid with some down time who needs directed to a good activity before they find a crayon and color on your walls...not that that has ever happened around here...

My hats are tipped on this idea to my mother and my little sister, the concept for this game emerged out of conversation with them.

Numbers

PBS Skill Targeted: "On average, an older two-year-old understands the words "one" and "two" (e.g., distinguishes "one" or "two" from many; can identify pairs of items as "two"; identifies three or more items as "many" rather than as "one" or "two"; asks for "one" or "two" of something; knows age; responds appropriately to the request, "Take just one," or "Give me two."). A few two-year-olds may also begin to understand the word "three," and a very few may grasp the concept of "four."

Activity:
The Counting Buckets

Description:
  There's a lot going on with numbers. We have symbols for our numbers (1,2,3,4,etc). They represent quantity. There are specific words associated with them. In this sense, numbers are a lot bigger than most of the things that kids have to learn that have one association or one meaning, (ie - the letter A is just the letter A).

And to build a strong foundation for success in mathematical critical thinking it is important that children make he connection about all the different representations and ways numbers are used as soon as possible. 

Enter the counting buckets.

This game assigns a given number to a bucket. Then your child will go around the house finding X amount of items to add to their bucket.

The trick is that it isn't just enough to have your given number represented numerically, like in the picture below.

Rather, you number bucket should show the literate for of the number and a quantity representation of the number.

So  your bucket will actually have all of these symbols on it:

One  1   *                Two   2    * *            Three   3   * * *

To access a Google Doc with these symbols made for you for the numbers one through ten, CLICK HERE

Remember, the specific numbers young children will be able to understand varies by their age. Visit the PBS Child Development Tracker to learn more about the average mathematical concepts children understand at various ages!

Enjoy your counting day!

Language - Tuesday

Remember, kids develop language at their own pace - but there are things, fun things, that we can do to help encourage that development! 

Conversational Skills

Age - 2-3

PBS Skill Targeted: "Takes turn in conversations when slot is left open by an adult's question. Child answers more readily now, but adult still must answer some of the questions asked."

Activity:
Who's In There?

Directions: 
  Materials:
• File folders
• Pictures
• Scissors
• Glue

What to do:
1. Glue a large picture of a familiar character inside a file folder.
2. Cut little doors in strategic places on the cover.
3. Let the child open the doors one at a time to reveal parts of the picture
underneath. Have him guess who it is.
4. Provide some language: “Who could this be? Let’s see. Yellow feathers! Who has
yellow feathers? What is behind this door? Orange feet! Who do you think it is?”

***MillionWaysMama note: There are a million ways to step this up or down for various ages. Maybe your older child is into dinosaurs or bugs right now, print off pictures of specific types of dinosaurs and do this same activity with the goal of learning the specific names of species. Maybe you smaller baby lights up when they see familiar faces, use photos in your folders of immediate and extended family members and model more langauge: 'Who is this? They have love hair. They have a smile. Look! It's Uncle Clark.'

Hats Tipped To: Best Beginnings Alaska

Receptive Vocabulary

Age - 2 and up

PBS Skill Targeted:  "The average child has the capacity to acquire one or two words per day, given access to new words in his or her daily experiences."

Activity:
All about the Mail! (or any other dramatic play that makes sense in your day)

 Directions:
For this activity you should choose to build vocabulary in a daily activity that you must do today. For instance, Little Miss I has been very interested in mail and email this week and I have Father's Day presents to mail out to friends and family, so it is a natural fit for us to do some dramatic play around mail, visit the post office  and write letters...talking about what we are doing all the while.  Our target vocabulary words will include:

Mail man/lady
Post Office

Envelope

Stamp   **Envelope and Stamp are the two I'm hoping she can acquire

The rest is easy  - first, at some point this morning we might play mail man, where I deliver her some mail and vice versa. Then we will write letters to people we love. We will put out letters in envelopes and paste stamps to them. Then comes the visit to the post office, with all of sights and sounds and vocabulary building opportunities.

Creative Arts - Monday

Music and Movement

PBS Skill Targeted: " Responds with body movements to changes in music's tempo, loudness, and style (e.g., starts flapping arms and stomping feet as music increases in loudness and pace)."

Activity:
Dance Baby Dance

Directions:
We do a lot of dancing around here, but until today I'd never thought of adding another, interpretive element to our dancing.

Hats Tipped to PBS Parenting for the great idea to incorporate a scarf or ribbons into our dance fest today:

Materials:

• Music on CD, tape or radio (musical suggestions: Saint-Seans' "Carnival of the Animals," Fantasia Soundtrack, Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite," Vivaldi's "Four Seasons")
• Streamer, scarf, or towel

Play music on a CD, tape or radio and ask your child to listen and think about what kind of animal or feeling the music sounds like. Ask your child to move or dance the way he or she thinks the music sounds. Your child might want to pretend about these ideas with the streamer or scarf:

• an elephant with a long trunk
• the blowing wind
• a butterfly
• a tightrope walker

Play music with a different tempo and feeling and invite your child to dance in a way that matches the new music. Music can sound like romping animals or a soft breeze.

Art

 
PBS Skill Targeted: "Uses a variety of art tools to draw, paint, sculpt and make collages, concentrating on the process rather than the product (e.g., scribble paints on butcher paper)."

Activity:
Paint in a Bag

Directions:
  I can't remember where I first saw this activity, but it has become one of our favorites around here. Ivie loves it because it involves paint and colors. I love it because it involves paint and colors with NO mess!

Too lazy to type it out myself, I lifted the following instructions from OT Activity Ideas and the pictures come from one of our past painting days.

Purpose

This activity promotes the child visual motor skills and improves finger isolation. In addition, the child also works on processing of tactile input as he moves his fingers along the paint.

Materials

Food Coloring, Shaving Cream , Tempera Paint, Ziplock Bag

Skills

Finger Isolation, Pre writing, Sensory Processing, and Visual Motor

Description

For this activity, use a gallon size Ziplock bag.

Place approximately 1/2 cup of tempera paint in the ziplock bag, remove air and seal. Work the paint around until it fill the bag. Have child make lines, shapes or letters by moving his finger along outside of bag.

As an alternative, you can use shaving cream mixed with food coloring instead of the tempera paint.


***MillionWaysMama notes: I prefer to tape the bag to the table so it doesn't slide all around. I also like to slip a white piece of paper in behind the bag, so it can feel more like Little I is painting on an actual piece of paper. 

Dramatic Play

PBS Skill Targeted: " Extends doll play with props representative of daily life (e.g., puts doll in high chair and feeds her with a spoon)."

Activity:
Your Inner Actor

Directions:
  For this activity you simply choose a book your child or children love and help them to act out the story or a scene.

I find that the books that usually work the very best for this have few characters and lots of repetition. Favorites around here include: King Bidgood's in the Bathtub, Caps for Sale and Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Simply assign parts and prompt your child to mimc the story through acting.

For example, in acting out Caps for Sale Little Miss I and I start by stacking a bunch of Daddy's baseball caps on our head and wandering through the house calling "Caps for Sale!" We pretend to fall asleep - and while she "sleeps" I steal all the caps off her head (like the monkeys in the story) we then make our way through the song and dance about "You Monkeys you, you give me back my caps!" She is little, so we don't act out the ENTIRE sequence in the story, but we do play the exchange about 3 times before she gets the caps back and then we do it all again, switching roles.

You really have to prompt a toddler through this, don't be afraid to feed them the words. It also helps to keep the book open beside you. And they may even be a little lost if this is the first time you act out a book. However, I hope you will keep trying. I believe this is an extremely important (and FUN) activity once kids get the idea. It not only supports reading, but helps them make connections outside of an immediate reading expereince, something that is crucial to their ability to enjoy reading later.

Physical Health - Saturday

Physical Health is all about body movement. What better day for this then Saturday when the whole family can get out and move. Really, there are an endless amount of activities you ca do here, and you should definitely do what works best for your family.

Today - we are building tunnels and forts at our house, then heading to the local park and swimming pool!

Body Movement

PBS Skill Targeted: "Rolls, crawls, creeps, walks, jumps, runs, and climbs. Can crawl through tunnels, go over and under low obstacles, and move swiftly up and down ramps. Climbs low steps, pushes boxes and pulls toys."

Activity:
Tunneling

Directions:  

Just like the forts we all built from blankets and furniture when we were kids, this tunnel is constructed from anything and everything right in your living or play room. The goal is the make the tunnel as long as possible, and include some obstacles in in (IE - a stack of pillows at mid point, a towel hanging down in the way at another.

After the tunnel is constructed you can see how many different ways you can crawl through it. This is all about developing fine motor skills. Can you crawl backwards? Can you slither like a snake? Can you hop like a frog?

To extend play time and tap into that toddler imagination, you can also turn this into dramatic play, maybe you are animals that live in the tunnel, maybe your toddler is a tunnel monster that emerges only to try and steal cookies.

Have fun and happy tunneling!

Literacy - Friday

In many ways our world is made up of words, so it is crucial we provide a strong foundation for our little ones when it comes to reading and writing.

To be honest, the very best way to do this with your kid (in my opinion) is to read and read and read and read some more. I try my best to read with Little Miss I for 30 minutes each day - usually broken into two 15 minute chunks at naptime and bedtime.

Because providing access to quality books is so important, I decided that each Thursday I'd start with a quick book recommendation in the list of our literacy activities. 

book knowledge and appreciation

PBS Skill(s) Targeted:

• "By the end of this year, many children label pictures when asked, "What's that?" Some children may comment when asked, "What happened?" or "What is _______ doing?"
• "Interest and enjoyment of books is highly variable, depending on availability of books and whether adults spend time sharing these with children in positive ways."
  
  Book Reccomendation:
  
  Llama Llama Books - by Anne Dewdney
  
  
  
  
  We love the llama, llama books. With darling rhymes, a focus on family relationships and lots of discussion about emotional and social growth, these books are perfect for toddlers and must-have for your library.
  
  PLUS - Anney Dewdney has an awesome site with interactive activities to go along with each of her books.
  
  

   Alphabet Knowledge

  PBS Skill: " Has no specific knowledge of alphabet letters as a distinct group of graphic patterns. How quickly a child acquires this knowledge is influenced greatly by how much experience the child has with looking at and examining graphic patterns in the world around him or her. This experience lays the foundation for learning later that some of these patterns have symbolic functions that communicate meaning."
  
  Activity:
   Find the Letters
   
  Directions: 
  For this activity you'll need some sort of alphabet letters - fridge magnets, foam pop-outs, printed paper letters, etc. all work for this game. You can also often find pop-out paper letters (like those used for bulletin boards) at the dollar store or teacher education materials stores.
  
  Pick a room in the house and "hide" the letters around the room.
  
  Bring your little ones in and let them "find" the letters. Young toddlers can't be expected yet to identify many (or any) letters, but this sort of activity helps build their awareness. As they discover each letter be sure and name the letter: "You found a B!"
  
  

  writing

  PBS Skill: "Has an emerging understanding of the uses and formats of writing. By the end of the year some children make marks, present these to an adult and say "A letter for you" or "My name.""
  
  Activity:
  Dramatic Play
  
  Description:
  Kids love dramatic play activities, and they are an excellent opportunity to foster imagination and storytelling skills. Today's dramatic play suggestion also seeks to interweave writing into pretending.
  
  Hats Tipped To Livestrong.Org (yes, Lance Armstrong's website) for these great suggestions, copy and pasted below.
  
  
  Dramatic play allows a child to pretend she is someone else. Writing fits in well with many dramatic play situations. You might set up a pretend restaurant and provide your child with a small notepad so she can write down the order. The small notepad also works for a police officer scenario so your child can write tickets for traffic offenders. A chalkboard works well as a dramatic play prop for a school situation.
  
  

Science - Thursday

Alright - it may be my inner-nerd, but I am SO EXCITED for all this science stuff! I remember as a kid (ok, and often as a right-brained adult) thinking science was magical.

And really the science behind what I perceived to be magic is incredible. One of the skills I truly hope I can instill in Little Miss I is a sense of both wonder and inquiry. Science-based games and activities are the perfect way to start doing so.

Inquiry Skills

PBS Skill Targeted: "Uses all five senses (touching, tasting, hearing, seeing, and smelling) to collect information about the world."

Activity:
Spring Sensory Tub(s) This Hat is Tipped to my sweet childhood friend Shalee Brown. When we went out to dinner a few weeks ago she mentioned how her son loved sensory experiments at his preschool, and that potting soil made a great sensory tub base!

Directions:
 Fill a container with potting soil. Bury different objects from around the house in the potting soil and then gather up your kids and dig away! Your little one will marvel at the feel of the potting soil in their hands and love finding the surprises buried within. This is a great OUTSIDE activity, with a nice follow up posted below.

Materials:
A container you don't mind getting dirty
A bag of potting soil
small toys and objects

Parenting Pointers:
Other great sensory fillers include birdseed, dried beans and sand.

Knowledge of Life Sciences:

PBS Skill Targeted: "Learns to identify some plants and animals. Can name some parts of animal bodies and some parts of plants."

Activity:
Planting Seeds

Directions:
It only makes sense to plant something in all that potting soil we have left over from our first science activity of the day - and potted flowers or flower seeds will be perfect.

Plant the seed, water it and leave it in a nice sunny spot.

The best part of this activity is that it can continue over the next several weeks as you and your little ones check on the potted plant each day to see how it grows. You can measure the first sprouts and watch it grow bigger and bigger.

Materials:
A small pot
Seeds
Soil
Water

Knowledge of Physical Science

PBS Skill Targeted: "Identifies various properties (EG hard v. soft) of objects and materials while exploring the immediate environment."

Activity:
Frozen in Ice

Hats Tipped To Creekside Learning for this activity.

Directions:
This takes a little bit of preparation that can be done with or without your little ones.

Fill a pie pan with water, and drop objects into the water that your child is interested in or working on. Little Miss I has some plastic letters we often string on shoelaces, she loves them dearly, so I used them in setting this activity up tonight. After putting together my letter pie pan, I decided to make a second one using some plastic shapes from a Candy Land Game, since we have also been working on shapes around here as of late.

After your pie pan is loaded with water and objects, set it in the freezer and let it harden over night.

When you pull the pan out the next day your kids will be so excited to see their objects inside the ice. The challenge then becomes getting them out of the ice, and this is where the science comes in.

With your kid(s) experiment with different ways to remove the objects from the ice - chipping, salt, warm water etc.

Mathematics - Wednesday

Perhaps it is my own lack of passion when it comes to math that makes me so desperately want my daughter to have a different relationship with all those numbers, patterns and formulas. So much of our world is made up of pattern recognition, spatial concepts and deductive reasoning that you don't have to look far to see that math--in its most basic elements--is something we use everyday (despite the many times that I whined "I'll never use this!" in nearly every math class I ever took). 

Lucky for me, PBS PARENTS has TONS of ideas for Mathematics at all ages. Fun ideas...so fun I don't even realize we are doing or thinking about mathematical concepts at times. 

All of our information and activities come from their site today. A very big Hat Tipped To them :)

Patterns, Reasoning & Algebra

PBS Skill Targeted: "Between 30-36 months, some children can classify, label and sort familiar objects by a known group (e.g., hard v. soft, large v. small, heavy v. light). The average child logically sorts and classifies during the second half of this year."

Activity:
Match 'Em Up

Directions: 
 

Figuring out which items go together helps your toddler develop early reasoning skills.

Note: To access these materials in PDF format, you can visit the original site here. 

Materials:

several household items that have a match or a corresponding part such as:

• a cooking pot and lid
• a pair of socks or slippers
• a fork and a spoon
• a comb and a hairbrush

Directions:

1. Separate the matching items into two groups. To play the game, choose an item from one of the groups and invite your toddler to find its match in the other group.
2. When you see that your child has grasped the concept, switch roles and you find the match to the item your child picks.
3. Continue in this way until all the items are matched.

Parent Pointers:

• You can play a similar matching game when you are folding the laundry (invite your toddler to help you match up all the socks, for example).
• When you go grocery shopping, your child can match one kind of food with another, such as cookies with milk or fruit with cereal, and explain the match.

Measurement

PBS Skill Targeted: "Throughout this year, a few two-year-olds will recognize, informally discuss, and develop language to describe attributes such as "big" or "small" (height/area/volume), "long" and "tall" or "short" (length/height), "heavy" or "light" (weight), and "fast" or "slow" (speed)."

Activity:
Bath Time! Math Time!

Directions: 

The next time you fill up the tub, make bath time math time as you explore "empty" and "full" and compare volumes.

Materials:

household containers such as:

• small pots
• plastic bowls
• measuring cups
• deli containers

1. Allow your child to play with containers during bath time. Join in, or set the example, by using your own container. Fill your container with water and explain what you're doing ("Look! My cup is full! No more water can fit in my cup."). Pour out the water to show empty ("I'm pouring out all the water. Now the cup is empty!") Invite your child to copy what you do. Encourage your child to use the words "full" and "empty" to describe what is happening.
2. Choose two containers, one smaller than the other, and give the smaller to your child. Wonder aloud whether the containers hold the same amount of water. Does yours hold more than, the same amount as, or less than your child's? Pour the water from your container into your child's and talk about what happens. ("Oops! There's not going to be enough room. My container isn't empty yet and yours is already full!").
3. You can do this several times and then give your child a container larger than yours for you to pour into. Discuss what happens. ("Hmm. My water is all gone but your container isn't full."). Take turns pouring and holding the different-size containers.
4. Another bath time, invite your child to be the leader, choose a container, and then tell you to find either a smaller or bigger one to pour into. Repeat the activity as long as your child enjoys it. Talk about what's happening each time ("Look, I'm filling your container. Uh-ohhh ... your container isn't full yet and mine is already empty!").

Parent Pointers:

• This activity helps with volume measurement.
• Adaptation for infants: Allow your child to play with containers as described in step 1. Add additional steps as soon as your child can participate.
• Extension for older children: Include different-shaped containers that present more of a challenge in anticipating volume. With increasing experience, introduce the standard measuring tools such as a cup, a half cup, and a tablespoon for further experimentation.

Geometry & Spatial Sense

PBS Skill Targeted: "Help youngsters explore their place in their environment. The ability to locate and change positions in space is an important first step in understanding geometry."

Activity:
Walk The Line

Directions: 

These balancing and movement activities are a great way to help youngsters explore their place in their environment. The ability to locate and change positions in space is an important first step in understanding geometry.

Materials:

• 3" x 5" cards
• black marker
• length of rope about 8 feet long   (OR Sidewalk Chalk - Little Miss I and I will do this outside today!)
• an open space for movement
• bean bag (older kids can hold this on their head throughout the game)

1. Invite your child to help you make a list of different ways to move your body, using the rope as your guide. Write the movements on 3" x 5" cards, one movement per card. Here are some suggestions to get you started:
   • walk slowly (or fast) on the rope
   • walk on tippy-toes
   • balance on left foot (or right foot) for 5 seconds
   • walk with one foot on the rope, the other on the floor
   • walk with a beanbag on your head
2. Lay the rope on the floor in a straight line. Place the pile of cards face down and invite your child to join you. Explain that you will take turns turning over the cards one at a time and doing whatever the top card says.
3. Have your child turn over the first card, and read it together. Then, YOU DO what the card says. Next, turn over a card, and YOUR CHILD DOES what it says. Take turns in this way until all the cards have been tried at least once

Parent Pointers:

• Playing background music adds to the fun.
• For older children, expand the movements to include running and jumping, and walking backward on the rope. You can also use the above movements in a game of Simon Says.