Making pizza/doing math

We made play-doh pizza today! A fun way to learn/review early math while encouraging fine motor skills. The ingredients we used were simple: play-doh in a variety of colors. Home-made play-doh can be a good option as well.

We first started off with making two flat "patties" for the crust and we pre-made the pepperonies, black olives, green peppers, and cheese.

Next we placed the pepperonies on each pizza. We had a total of six pre-made pepperonies so we talked about how that meant each pizza had to have three pepperonies.

Next he placed he olives on the pizzas.

 

And he placed more on one and less on the other. So we talked about more and less. "Which pizza has more?" Or "which pizza has less?" And then "how do we make each pizza have the same amount?" 

He also counted each piece as he placed them on the pizza - a great way to review or learn counting.

Once the pizza was put together we transferred it into a toy pan. 

And then we "cooked" it on his toy grill.

This is a wonderful way to introduce your child to the concept of cooking! If your child is older you can also slice the pizza into thirds or fourths and work on fractions. My son found it rather fun to then ride the pizza around in his toy trucks and place the black olives on his lip as a mustache. This is child-directed play and helps develope independence. Try this pizza activity at home and let us know how it goes! :) 

*note: play-doh pizza is NOT for consumption. 

On the banks of the river

Last weekend we got the opportunity to get out and enjoy the warm weather, fishing, as a family. I didn't realize how much fun it would be frolicking on the pebbly river banks! We weren't able to, nor did we want to, pack any of our two-year-olds curriculum, so we just played it by ear. And with a little bit of creativity we were able to muster up some fun activities that kept him entertained and engaged all day! 

As we walked alongside the river we noticed there was a pattern of different colored pebbles everywhere! So I organized a quick "game" where we sorted the pebbles by color. The pictures below show the colors orange, blue and purple, but there were many other colors. And this game alone could have kept us entertained for at least an hour. We also could have taken it further by making different color patters, counting them and by laying out several of the smaller pebbles into letter forms. 

My husband also carried our son on his back for a portion of the day and our son got to experience how his daddy catches a fish! He was very impressed with daddy's fish, and really happens to believe his daddy is his hero. :) One of my favorite things that day was watching my son touch the fish for the first time - which is also a sensory activity. 

During our hike we stumbled across this tree! It was a beautiful opportunity to tell our son about beavers and their habitats. We're also working on prepositions right now, so in our conversation I would make room for that (eg. The pine tree is behind the tree stump. Or the beaver is in the water etc.) 

And we found a frog! Of course this all was nothing new for my husband and myself. But, it was a whole new world for our son!  We spent time talking about each item that caught our sons interest: ants, flying insects, plants, bushs, logs, rocks, pine cones, mushrooms, animals etc. our biggest focus was to enlarge our sons understanding of the wild life around us. And it's an amazing thing to see him start to understand the things that we teach him. 

Lego day: educational activities to do with Legos

At our house we have a plethora of Legos. So today (while it snowed outside... :0...) we pulled them out and focused our morning around doing different educational activities with them (aside from just building with them). Try these at home! The activities go as follows:

1.) Organize them by color

2.) Count them and make piles, with the correct quantities, of the identified numbers 

3.) Do simple patterns (blue, green, blue, green)

5.) Organize them by their size

6.) Talk about more/less (an early math skill)

When doing structured activities with your child he/she may get inspired to be creative and make their own "activities." Let them do it. It's all part of their learning and development. Then after they're done with Lego-time you can do clean-up-time and teach them the importance of being tidy. 

Paint-stick puppets: how are we feeling today?

The idea to make "Paint stick puppets" first began when I took it on to teach my two-year-old about his emotions. There is so much material out there (toys, books, posters) that target emotions, but most of them are pretty pricey and not versatile. So, I decided to fabricate something that would engage my tot, last longer than a couple of days and something that was low cost! I also found them very easy and fast to construct. 

Materials include the following:

1.) Paint sticks

2.) Different colored pipe cleaners

3.) Hot glue gun

4.) Markers

5.) Black wiggle eyes

First, hot glue the eyes to each stick. Make sure to leave about an inch of space on top (this allows room for hair/eye brows).

Next draw the mouth and nose on each stick.

Draw the rest of the emotions as shown in the picture below. Reading from left to right we have: sad, surprised, scared, happy and mad emotions. 

After that, add the hair by hot gluing the pipe cleaners to the back of the paint stick.

The rest of the hair was done as shown in the picture below. 

Once you're finished, create stories that highlight emotions of the puppet stick actors and put on a puppet show!

Hopscotch letters: with an Easter egg theme

Hopscotch letters, is a game I learned from an education class. It's created to make learning/reviewing letters fun for our active toddlers. 

The set-up is simple, and all you need is chalk and a paved area. My theme today was Easter eggs, so I drew a line of different colored Easter eggs and wrote letters inside of them. I made sure that the letters inside the eggs were ones that we've already reviewed, however you may use this as an activity to learn new letters as well. Then explain the rules to your little one as follows: 

1.) Adult calls out a letter

2.) Child hops on each egg until he/she reaches the correct letter. 

I like this game because it not only targets the child's cognitive understanding of letters, but it also is a large muscle activity. Note: it is normal for a toddler to hop of both feet instead of one foot until they are about 3 or 4.

Other fun things to add to this exercise is having your child trace the letters with he chalk as well. They may need your help on this one, but it's a great early start on learning to write. 

Experimenting with colors

 Today we experimented with colors. I asked my 2-year-old, "What happens when we mix two primary colors together?" I then pulled out some (non-toxic) paint that we had in our craft drawer, white paper (three sheets) and tape. My 2-year-old loves painting and experimenting, so I figured today's sunny weather would be a good day to go outside and get messy. The set up was simple - tape the white pages to a hard and straight surface, drop two primary colors on each sheet and use your fingers to mix. 

We first started with red and yellow and, to my toddlers amazement, we got orange.

   

Next we went on to blue and yellow to get green.              

     

 

And we finished with red and blue to get purple.           

                                                          

   

I was very pleased with the outcome! My son enjoyed painting and he also walked away with some new knowledge... then we collected rocks and painted them too :)

 

Sea shells and sea creatures sensory box

Sensory bins are one of my sons favorite things to play with. There's something that he loves about digging in new textures while manipulating and discovering small objects. There are many benefits in using a sensory bin, some of which include small motor, senses and hand eye coordination development. Below I posted our "sea shells and sea creatures" sensory bin pictures, which took me only about 5 min to put together. 

Materials:

1.) Rubber/plastic sea creatures (crabs, whales, turtles, etc)

2.) Toy shovel(s) and molds

3.) Shells from the beach

4.) Paint brushes

5.) A plastic bin

6.) Sand

Directions: place all items in the bin and start playing!