Story Stones for Little Red Hen

This week's fairy tale is The Little Red Hen.  In prepping for the week I was surfing blogs and was referred to this one Red Bird Crafts because of her Story Stones.  What a great idea.
So I visited Sparklebox.com and found pictures for our story.  Went to the beach, found rocks and started Modge Podging.

Then set them up for play.

Two things I would do differently for the next story.

 1. Use smaller stones so little hands can play with them easier.

2. Try to find stones that will stand up by themselves.

Bathing Baby

Our water sensory table this week turned into a bathtub for bathing babies.
Time to switch roles for the little ones from being bathed by mom or dad to bathing someone smaller than themselves.

Each child took gentle care of their baby.  They scrubbed and washed all body parts while chatting away. Some children carried their baby around all morning and had to be encouraged to leave it behind at school.

This activity came with a lot of conversation between the grown up and the child about their own bath routines, body parts, washing, drying, and how the baby feels."Is the baby cold?" 

And of course the 'potty' was always around and well used.  The question arose several times of where to empty the potty after the baby used it.

 Bath time is finished, now to dress the baby so she's ready to play.

Fine Motor Ideas

We have a lot of activities available to help the children build their fine motor skills.  These activities are very popular.

First is the bouncy balls and the ice cube trays.  I found these round ice cube trays that the ball fit into perfectly.  I've included a melon baller for them to scoop.  The tricky part is to get the ball out of the ice cube tray.  They need a good grip with their thumb and index finger to lift them.

Next activity is with marbles, strawberry haulers and the suction cup shapes for your tub.  When you turn the shapes upside down the suction cups are the right size to hold a marble.  Plus they come in many different shapes; frog, fish, whale, octopus are a few that we have.

Then there is the dyed popcorn kernels that we used yesterday at the art table.  With what was left I put in an empty lettuce container and added these cute little egg cups and spoons. The only downfall is that the kernels do end up all over the place.

A fourth activity is sand printing.  You could also use flour or sugar or cornstarch.  This boy won't write his name using a pencil and his mom was concerned so I asked him to try writing it in the sand.  No problem.  He picked out the magnet letters and then wrote each letter.  I suggested to mom that she encourage him to try other activities that use the pincher grasp to build his confidence.

Lastly we have spinning tops.  It's a tough activity for the little ones but they love watching them and slowly figure out how to give them a little twist to make them go.

All of the materials for these activities are inexpensive and usually found at the thrift store or the dollar store.  Making it affordable for families to repeat at home.

Wondering Is Wonderful

Today at the art table I placed dyed popcorn kernels, glue and paper plates with instructions to allow the child to squeeze the glue, to spread the glue and to place the kernels which will help build fine motor muscles.

It was a wonderfully colourful craft.

At one point during this morning there were a couple of families together at the art table.  They were busy chatting and doing when I was called over and became involved.
The parents told me that the children were wondering if we popped the kernels would the popcorn be coloured too?  Good question.
I suggested we try it and see.  So I got down the hot air popcorn machine and with a few coloured kernels we set up our experiment.  The majority thought it would be white.

But before starting we went around the room and polled the children for their guesses.  Will the popcorn be coloured or white?

We watched as it swirled around and the machine became hot.  Then we heard the first 'pop'.

The results??  The popcorn is white but we could still see a bit of the colour on the husk of the kernel.
The children wanted to eat it but since I had use rubbing alcohol to help dye the kernels I thought it best not too so we put it on the craft table to add to our collages.

Sign of the Week - Bread

This week we are focusing on the fairy tale of Little Red Hen.  We'll be making bread with our buddies so this week's sign is 'bread'

The song we will sing is a modified version of Patty Cake

Patty cake, patty cake bakers man
Bake me some bread as fast as you can
Roll it and pat it and mark it with a 'B'
Put it in the oven for baby and me.

Seuss Week Final Day

Apples Up On Top, a great book for rhyme and math.

When each child arrived this morning I took their picture and quickly uploaded it to the computer.  Cropped, printed and it was ready for the art table.  The children were encouraged to use bingo daubers to add apples on top of their picture head.

Some children dabbed in a straight line on top of their head.

Some scattered their apples all over, as if the apple cart him them.

Others experimented with the dauber and watched it slide and glide across the paper.   I thought it made the apples look juicy.

Some children made patterns with their apples, red-blue-green or red-red-green-green.

Some enjoyed listening to the story.

The grownups wrote a sentence on each picture after asking their child how many apples were up on top.  Not all children said a number, some said 'too many' or 'lots', some just guessed.  Shows where they are in their development of math.

At story time I read the book but before starting gave each child 10 little blocks.

As we read through the book we built a tower.  I enjoyed watching how involved the children were with their towers and waiting and watching to see when to add the next.

 We also had apple shaped bean bags to try to stack on our heads.

Grownups tried too - no  hands!

At the snack table I brought out my apple peeler, corer, slicing machine and let the children prep some apples to share.  It's always fun to use this machine, very simple and efficient.

And always lets us do math with the peeling.  How long is it?  Is it as tall as I am?  Or as tall as my mom?

It's been a really fun week full of Seuss books and activities.