Tot School-Shapes

This week we are focusing on shapes and I am excited to see Mara's reaction to some of the activities I have planned.  We also have a lot of other things going on this week with Mara's birthday party on Saturday as well as three separate OB appointments.  I know it's going to be a tad stressful with everything but whatever we can get in we get in!

Monday morning we started off the week with a little bible lesson.  I really like incorporating a bible verse or story into our weekly routine.  This week I set up a contact paper heart activity with Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the Lord and He will SHAPE the desires of your heart.  The night before I cut out hearts, triangles and squares out of different color papers.  We read the verse and then I let Mara stick them to the page.

She really loves this kind of activity and took to it immediately.  She also noticed the three different shaped papers too.  We talked about how the red ones were squares, the yellow ones were triangles and the white hearts.  I love that we can still talk colors too!  I left the craft up on the door and she has gone back to it multiple times already.

Afterwards I had planned on a simple coloring sheet but she wanted to do chalk drawings, just another instance of rolling with your toddler's whims! I got out a black piece of construction paper, water and the chalk.  We took turns drawing shapes and filling them in.

Later that day I had planned on a water sensory bin with lots of circles in it.  Last week she was really into the water but this week not as much.  She did still climb in and play for awhile but the overall activity didn't last more than ten minutes.  I loved how she used her feet to fish for the links and seemed to realize that all the toys in the water were circles.

On Tuesday we started the morning by reading one of our favorite books, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Afterwards we created our own starry night by gluing stars onto some construction paper.  I had pre-punched the stars out of yellow construction paper so they were easy for her to pick up.  We started by her telling me where to put the glue then her setting the stars.  Eventually she was doing the whole craft.

During her nap I prepped for some post-nap shape sort.  I taped some large shapes on the carpet in our living room and laid out some different shaped toys on the coffee table.  Mara always wakes up hard from her naps so after some cuddles she saw the shapes on the carpet and said, "oh wow!"  Unfortunately that's about as interested as she got.  We tried to sort the toys but the activity quickly turned into her running from shape to shape and me calling out their names.

The biggest hit of the day (and I say that with a grain of salt) was a sensory bin I threw together.  It was meant to be a shape find with shape toys covered in cotton balls.  She dumped out all the cotton balls and just started playing with the toys.

Wednesday we had a lot going on again but still tried to incorporate shapes into our day.  We started off with a breakfast of french toast squares and then moved on to our first activity, feeding shape monsters.  I cut shapes out of brown paper bags and made them look like monsters.  Mara loved putting the different shaped toys into the bags while I made eating sounds.  She thought it was so funny!

In the afternoon we colored a shape flower and then moved onto a shape caterpillar.  The caterpillar wasn't as much of a hit so I changed the activity to have her put green pom poms in the circles of the caterpillar body.  She did so great with this!

Again the activity built from there.  She loves the pom poms so we dumped them in a bin along with some more circles.  The rest of the evening was spent scooping pom poms out into another tupperware and using tongs to pick up others.  I love the pom poms because they present the opportunity to talk about colors and shapes.  I know they will keep coming in handy as we go along in this curriculum.

Thursday we got a slow start and didn't do any activities until after nap time.  (minus our circle shaped pancake breakfast...stretching it I know.) We started with an ice cube tray shape sort.  Mara hasn't been much of a sorter but she took to this right away.  I cut some simple shapes out of construction paper and put one of each going up one side of the tray.  I put the matching ones in a bowl next to it.  She knew just what to do!  Before long she had all the shapes matched up and the tray full.

We then moved on to our all time favorite activity of the last two weeks...the pom pom sensory bin!  I've left this one out for her ever since we first did it last week.  We've added more to it and taken some things away.  For instance this week, I swapped the letters out for those baby links and we talked about how both the links and the pom poms were circles.

To add on to this activity I found three different sized circle cookie cutters from my stash.  I laid them out and explained how one was small, one was medium and the other large.  I then showed her three pom poms that were small, medium and large.  She spent the next ten minutes or so scooping up the pom poms and putting them in the appropriate cookie cutter!

Friday was a wash as we spent the entire day prepping for her birthday party on Saturday.  I felt a little guilty but at the same time that's the beauty of this.  We can do things at our own rate.  Doing one activity a week is more than what we were doing and that's great.

Next week we're moving onto textures!  We got a lot of stuff in from amazon yesterday for this theme and I'm excited to use them in our planning.  I even got some actual paint and we may just do our first painting (eeek mama's scared)