What's in the Tub Tuesday?

 I brought a sensory table to use at the twins' house.

 Today I filled it with pom poms.  Big, medium and small as well as foam snowflakes and little snowmen. 

 The older little one had a chance to play with it while the twins were napping.

 When the twins woke up the play changed.

 

While the older one was busy picking one at a time and transferring it to a container

the little ones was focused on emptying the tub.

And putting them in their mouths.

 I realized I had to change it up to make it safer.

That afternoon we read the book by Lois Ehlert called Snowballs

and the tub now held only big and medium pom poms. 

The little ones still pulled each pom pom out of the tub and often tasting them but I didn't have to worry about choking.

I was amazed to watch her lift the tub out of the table and then dump the pom poms onto her own head.

She eventually figured out how to stand up inside of the table and push it around like a homemade walker.

Buddy Letters

Last week during our visit with our big buddies they shared a story with us.

They read The Jolly Postman and Other People's Letters.

They we wrote Valentine letters to each other.

We soon learned that many of our big buddies did not know their full address.

A casualty of technology possibly.

As they were busy making their cards I took pictures of the buddies.

With their card, the photo and Valentine card their envelopes were stuffed.

Will they arrive at their homes by Valentines Day?

National Child Day

Last Sunday was National Child Day.

Our local ECE group, in conjunction with our Early Years Collaborative,

put together a kit for schools and Early Year Centres in our Valley.

It included posters, games, activity suggestions for the day

and this book.

I love the book and the illustrations,

the parents loved the book,

but it was too long for a big group of mixed aged children.

But I think it would be wonderful to read it with one to three children.

Talking about what they see happening in the illustrations

and sharing their rights with them.

I photocopied some of the pages and added them to our display

in the main foyer of our school.

One activity suggestion was to have the staff submit photos

of themselves when they were a baby or toddler.

Not all the staff were able to find pictures, for various reasons,

but the ones that did are posted and waiting for students and their parents

to guess who is who?

I challenged my families to try to guess which one is me.

Good-night, Owl

                
Good-night, Owl! by Pat Hutchins is a great book of animal sounds.

                
I turned it into an oral story by finding pictures of each of the birds, insect and animal that was in the story.
Hope you enjoyed it.

What’s Under the Log?

Our weekly walk in the forest was inspired by a book I found at the library.
           
After reading the book together we picked up our nature bags and headed
       into the forest to find a log that we could turn.

The first log we rolled didn’t have any bugs that we could see (the log
                looked like it had been moved recently).
         
      We did see a little mushroom and documented it.

       
      On to the next log we spotted fungus and a bug. 
 
              A wood bug just like we saw in the book.
    
          
  Using our magnifying glasses gave us a chance to get a better look. 
       The wood bug has a lot of legs but didn’t move very fast.

We turned a few rocks…

       
and found spiders.  A big spider and medium spider and little spider.