This is a “Make your own Play Cupcake Kit” I am giving to two little girls as gifts.
I can’t wait to see the girls “baking!”
By the way, this gift is inspired by a post on A Little Learning for two . Go see what their final products looked like! :-)
Meet Emily!
So… Our friend, who has chickens has been letting us come over to visit them. (Stay tuned, I have been hoping to get the back posts up about the visits). She recently got a batch of chicks and we saw them regularly and watched them grow up. Belle LOVED THEM (And so did Isaac, actually!)
Well, she decided to get another batch of chicks and asked Belle to name one! This little girl was ECSTATIC!! Belle and I brainstormed and created a list of ideas. They were every interesting.
the first name was the name of thr friend who owns the chicks.
the next was chick
we had additions like Cat
puppy
flapping wings…
we read a book to look for ideas, but every descriptor hit the list. It was very interesting. I tried SO HARD not to assign MY judgement to the names, I tried suggesting simple things like less words… and added a few ideas of my own to the list. Emily was the name of the author of the random book that we read.
Belle brought our lst with us when we went to visit the chicks, and decided there. ANd she CLEARLY choose it herself! She had me read our friend the names, and while we talked about it, she must have been thinking. I wondered to her, “what do your think the name should be?” And I suggested what I THOUGHT her top two choices would be…. NOPE. She just said, “Her name ins going to be Emily.”
She was so cute. nd so grown up. I was so proud! :-)
Annablle has had a hard time grasping the concept of how germs can spread and why wiping off her finger isn’t as good as washing it. So one day, after an incident where She just DIDN”T understand WHY I was sending her to the bathroom NOW! (BELIEVE ME» IT WAS A NASTY ONE LITTLE FINGER IN THAT MOMENT!), I had a revelation about how to help her understand!
We used chalk to show how germs spread.
1. Draw a big chalk spot
2. Wipe your finger in it (dirty finger right?)
3. Wipe your finger on a clean spot of the cardboard. (Dirty cardboard right?)
4. Is your finger clean?
5. Wipe again.
6. How about now?
7. Wash hands in sink
8. Are your hands clean NOW?
TADA! Concept visualized!
Annabelle LOVED IT! She repeated it again by herself! And actually… I havn’t had trouble with the hand washing since…. we’ll see… :-)
So…. While helping Annabelle and I wash the dishes, Isaac became quite interested in the pasta grabber. He carried it around for quite a while. By the time I was eating lunch, he decided he would try to scoop out my food with it. (He sure has had an interest in practicing with utensils lately.)
WELL.. it dawned on he that he is trying to learn something and cold use some practice (that doesn’t involve me picking up bits of rice from all over the place!) SO, I found a better alternative!
He LOVED IT! And Annabelle saw his having so much fun, she ran and got herself a ladle and joined right in!
She even upped the stakes and grabbed some tongs! She tried those a little and then had me play too. (But that reminds me of what SHE would enjoy practicing :-) )
Today’s rainy morning inside fun!
This little frog world was inspired by many little worlds of creativity I have seen made by this talented creator and some other bloggers (whom I cannot remember!.. sorry!) who have made little scenes in their preschool’s nature centers or sensory corners.
Not sure what to do with leftover watermelon? Make a watermelon ICEE!!
1. WE made smoothie cubes with watermelon, spinach and juice
2. Isaac just ate his like a popsicle in his mesh food holder, He LOVED it!
3. We set out some cube for a few minutes to soften
4. We crushed them in TWO sucessful ways
- The Blender
- With a meat tenderizer. (Belle LOVED this!)
ENJOY!!
(now all I have to do is figure out how to scoop it into a nice ball shape in a nice paper cone… )
Yesterday, Annabelle predicted the weather. She saw the clouds come in and announced that it was going to rain! As we ran for the car, adn felt to cool breeze and cold rain, she learned about a cold front.
SOO today’s Gazebo time was the PERFECT time to start our new unit on Weather!
We read a great book (though only got to the first few pages. It sparked so much conversation about yesterday’s cold front. Then we moved RIGHT on to doing our own weather forecasts (Since Belle was SOO successful at forecasting yesturday!)
One more GRAND story to read! UnBrella. It sparked great conversations about weather and opposites. PLUS, since it’s a wordless book, it provided the playground for some Literacy as we made up our OWN words!
ALSO… this book provided the PERFECT connection between our SEED unit and the new weather unit!
Found another AWSOME library book. Wink, the Ninja who wanted to nap.
My friend, Norie, came over to visit. She pointed out to my daughter that the illustrations were done with cut paper. Soon, they were making their OWN!
1. They choose characters (including a “bad guy”)
2. They designed the characters
3. The make “scribble pages” (You could use colored paper instead)
4. They cut out the pieces (Belle cut out free form clouds and trees, and Norie cut out the people to match the designed characters).
5. They glued them on the paper
Belle was only able to sit long enough to make one of their 5 pages at a time, but they just sorted the extra pieces into envelopes for us to Finnish more later!
Norie Sighted inspiration from THIS BLOG
We got a package with a bunch of packing paper in it, and I though OOOHHH…
so We PUT IT TO USE! Isaac was even thrilled to participate!!
suggestion: put paper under the paint tray to prevent paint on the sidewalk. But, the good news is, washable MEANS washable!! We used water and a scrub brush (and a tiny bit of soap) to get of our mess! :-)
