O is for Ostrich

Little One has been introduced to the alphabet via the Letterland program at his school this year - a super program that I like very much. I, on the other hand, haven't focused much on alphabet activities at home, but recently decided that we should. Added to that, Big One gets homework every day and Little One also wants to have homework, just like big brother. So I thought I'd prepare some things for him to do in the afternoon while Big One is busy. 

The first letter I chose to focus on was "o" - it's so easy to identify and it's a great first sound. 

Just by the way, here in South Africa we teach lower case letters first and we teach the phonetic sounds (as in "a" is for apple, not ape). 

I chose ostrich as our first "o" activity and we started with identifying the letter using our fantastic magnetic alphabet. (Available from Little People's Products)

I added some ostrich handouts from Carisa's  Tot School Printables @ 1+1+1+1. (If you don't know this site - it's amazing!) 

We did some colour recognition and colouring in.

Little one then cut out each ostrich (Each ostrich is in a square, which makes this a nice cutting activity).  He helped me staple all the little squares together to make a small book - a nice reminder of the activity.  I also added in some maths language, by asking him which picture he wanted in the book first, second, third, etc, as I put the small pages together, before we stapled it. 

I also made a copy of the "shapes" page and asked him to "show me the ostrich in the oval, triangle etc." He used his dot markers for this one. These were very kindly sent to us awhile back by Donette from The Journey. They are a favourite during homework time. These ostriches can also be cut out to make a book... or flash cards.

There are lots more ostrich pages available from 1+1+1=1. 

And a  bottle top ostrich craft...

The boys and I visited the National Geographic website to get some extra information about the ostrich and we watched a You Tube video of an ostrich running - something they do rather well. (We actually ran around like ostriches - using our "wings" to steer and make sharp turns - this got some giggles). And we learned that an ostrich can cover up to 5 metres in a single stride - that got us measuring and estimating - it's about the length of our kitchen!

Little One calls it "fun homework". This must mean I'm doing something right ;). 

Till next time - happy learning :)  

PS. Little One is 4.2 years.
PPS. Sharing this at It's Playtime.

Nature Colour Match

We were very lucky to go away for a few days during these past winter school holidays and I prepared this activity before we left. I first saw this super idea for an outdoor colour match at the wonderful Inner Child Fun. I collected paint-chips in a variety of colours and then using a square punch I created the cards. One lovely sunny morning , I sent the children on a colour hunt. I think these photos tell the story nicely.

(mmm...just checking...orange or yellow...or a bit of both?)

 

Till next time...

Bunny and Tail Colour Match

I wasn't going to post again this weekend, but I couldn't resist sharing these bunnies that we made this morning and also linking it up to a fun Easter Linky Party (see below).

I used this sweet bunny template from Punkin Patterns to cut out a number of coloured bunnies. I then set up a little bunny tail station. Little One loved sticking the matching tails (pom poms) onto the bunnies and it was a good recap of all his colours. We also spoke a bit about the missing colours. His best part was squeezing out the glue - I had to pry the tube from his little hands :).

I love how these turned out. I think that there is so much you could do with them. I am going to use them as Easter gift tags and if there's time I might make some bunting for our Easter table tomorrow.

I'm sharing these at the Hippity Hop Easter Project Hop. To see lots more fun Easter ideas, just click on the button below.

PS. Also sharing at Show and Tell @ ABC and 123.

Christmas {Bits and Bobs}

   

Oh dear me, it's the seventh and this is my first post of the month. The computer has been calling and if I could, I would create and write and share everyday. I absolutely love this (unpaid) job. But, I don't know what it's like where you are in the world, but over here it's not only the festive season...it's also the end of our school year. It's a busy busy time. I have lots to share though, so I'll get cracking!

First up, if you haven't yet visited the Portable North Pole and organized a personal message from Santa to your little ones, do hurry. You will not be disappointed, I promise. You have to share some details, like your child's name and age and answer some questions to make the video message more personal, but it's really worth it. This particular Santa is the best I've seen and his voice is wonderful! I would love to meet him :).

Since we are on the Santa subject - Do you believe in Santa?  Amanda over at NotJustCute shares a lovely post about her view and how she will share Santa's generous spirit with her boys. A nice read - do pop over.

Another nice find are these printable Christmas jokes over at Nurturestore. Big One loves telling jokes, so I printed these out and put them on the fridge. These would also be fun to add to homemade crackers, an advent calender or simply to be told at the Christmas table.

One of my favourite blogs, simple as that, shares a wonderful post of Christmas inspiration, including a Holiday photo checklist (great idea), free Christmas tags and word art (just beautiful), and a printable Christmas memory match game (mmm, I have some ideas for this one).

For lots more Christmas inspiration, pop on over to my Christmas Fun page on Pinterest. I have pinned lots of fantastic ideas...so many I want to do...how many days till Christmas?

And last, but not least, the top image is of a much-loved Santa book for little ones. Santa's Suit is all about Santa who decides that his red suit is, well, unsuitable. But after trying out many different colours, Mrs Santa suggests that his red suit is the most suitable. I'm really not surprised that it was Mrs. Santa's suggestion ;). This rhyming book has the most delightful illustrations, teaches colours and has touch-and-feel elements on every page. I can recommend it!

Have you found any amazing Christmassy articles, ideas or freebies? I'd love to know. 

Till next time...

Shape Matching Fun

Today's post is a continuation of the Doctor Doctor fun we've been up to here. I love the simplicity of the red medical cross, so today I'm sharing some shape matching fun inspired by it.

Do your children have this kind of shape sorter...or something similar? I made these discs and Little One started off by matching up the plastic shapes to the discs...easy peasy. 

We then put the plastic shapes aside and asked him to find matching discs - for example, 

find another yellow shape or find another hexagon? 

I then packed them out in rows and asked him to count each row.
He did this very nicely :).

We didn't do this, but another possibility would be to put three in a row and ask which is the odd one out or which one doesn't match the others.

After playing with the discs for awhile, I put those aside and we had some fun with the shape sorter. As we played , it struck me that this is such a versatile toy. I have always thought of it as a baby toy, perhaps because my earliest association of it is the Tupperware shape sorter ball (remember that one?). But this is really far more than a simple baby posting game, with many playful and educational possibilities. I might just do a whole post about it sometime...

 Building shape towers...and the best part...knocking them down!

Till next time, Happy playing!

PS. I was really curious about the origin and meaning of the red cross medical symbol. You can read more about it here.

Plastic Egg Birds {Craft and Game}

These little birds were inspired by these that I saw at lets go fly a kite, who in turn had seen them at Busy Bee Kids Crafts.

(What a super website by the way.
Be sure to check it out for some really nice, cute kids' crafts.)

I decided to add a bit of a game to them that would be both educational and fun. I told Little One that the mommy bird is fetching worms for her hungry chicks. Can you see how hungry they are? She comes back with some colourful worms and her little chicks gobble them up. One little chick only eats one and then his tummy is full...another little chick eats two...and so on.

For the nest, I covered a plastic bowl in some green paper and then added the strips. To get your chicks to stand up in the nest, cut a toilet roll into smaller rings and rest the eggs in the rings. It works perfectly.

Till next time...

PS. Linking this to Show and Tell @ ABC and 123

Baking School

Who would have thought that baking some biscuits could be so much fun and educational at the same time! It's a super sensory experience, uses fine-motor skills, and we added shape and colour recognition, as well as counting into the mix!

Nope, no cookie dough in my mouth Mommy...

PS. I'm linking this to: 

For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars  

Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity 

High Paw @ the best toys for toddlers

Go get 'em

 

Where are all the educational toys packed in your home? All those puzzles and games that require you to sit down with your kiddos to play. Up somewhere, out of reach (to avoid little one's mixing up puzzle pieces and ruining nice cards)? I'll admit, that's where ours have always been packed...out of reach of little hands! Many of the boxes are still in great condition and the pieces all there and intact, but I ask myself, have these really been played with? The truth is, these toys have been packed too far away. I have the best of intentions, but somehow they just stay up there, packed away nicely in the top cupboards.

So recently I decided to pack all the age appropriate educational toys at the very bottom of the cupboard...in easy reach for both me and my toddler. I'm really hoping to not go into his room and find all the boxes emptied out onto the floor!:) What I'm hoping for, is that by being more accessible, we will use these toys more often.

One such wonderful educational toy that I want to share with you, is made by a very well-known South African brand, Smile Toys. It's called Quartet and pictured here is the colour matching puzzle. The box also includes shape matching, animal homes and missing parts - all two-piece puzzles. I have been doing the colour matching puzzle with Little One since our recent focus on learning colours and also included these puzzle pieces in our buckets of colour. (In case you are new here, I recently did ten Colour Fun posts. To see all colour posts, click here.)

So if you haven't done it yet, go get those toys down, close at hand and ready to play!

Bean bag shapes

When I saw these super bean bag shapes over at Fun with Little Mouse, I loved them! I just happen to be lucky enough to be friends with Trudie, so when I mentioned how much I liked them, she very kindly made a set for Little One. How sweet is that :).

On the photograph these look deceptively small. They are all about the size of my open hand, made from felt and filled with lentils. I had to share them, because I think that these would make a super Birthday or Christmas gift.

Thanks again Trudie!

Colour Fun #10 - Teddy Dress-up

Colour Teddy Dress-up was inspired by this dress-up teddy at mama smiles blogspot.

I used a little wooden teddy puzzle as my template (a teddy cookie/play dough cutter could also work well). I then cut out tops and bottoms from a variety of colours and told Little One that we must dress teddy, because he is cold! 

This is the first felt toy that Little One has shown any genuine interest in, so I am thrilled! What I didn't realize, was how difficult it would be for him to place the t-shirt and shorts correctly onto the teddy. He tried hard, but I had to assist him with the placement, so this was good fine motor practice too.

Till next time.

PS. I'm linking this to Tot Tuesdays and Show and Tell.

Colour Fun #9 - Buckets of Colour

Do you know that your child will remember anything that is correctly associated, anything outstanding, and anything that is appropriately repeated. This wonderful information is from Tony Buzan's book, Brain Child, one of my all time favourite parenting books. Tony Buzan calls a baby's brain, "a gigantic association machine". Another great bit of information to know about, is that memory is enhanced by the more senses that are involved.

Now the idea behind buckets of colour, was to create a fun memory and association with each colour represented.  I prepared all the buckets ahead of time and included items such as balloons, play dough, finger paint, bubbles, whistles, threading toys, plastic animals, stickers, bean bags and sweeties. Originally the plan was to have only small things in each bucket, so that I could close the bucket and take it along anywhere if I wanted to. Truthfully though, I added bigger things, like a flute and real fruit, which obviously didn't fit into the buckets.

I must say that these buckets became so much more than just colour fun. There was counting (3 little green frogs); numeracy (cutting the play food in half); imaginative play (play dough snakes eating the play food); fine motor skills (using the stickers and threading); body parts (sticking the stickers on body parts); gross motor activities with balloon and bean bag fun; sensory play (painting, smelling play dough, eating ice cream); language enrichment ("lets decorate our bucket with the stickers"); and, identifying shapes. For the colour "green", for example, we took our green bucket outside and had a "green" picnic on the grass. We sat on our green picnic blanket, ate a green apple and played with our green toys!

 

For lots more colour activities, pop on over to My Delicious Ambiguity, a wonderful blog with lots of tot activities. Jenn has a whole collection of colour activities posted here.

PS. I'm linking this to Tot Tuesdays and Show and Tell.

Colour Fun #8 - I like Stars

I like Stars is the sweetest little book written by Margaret Wise Brown and even though it's not a book about colours per se, it mentions different colour stars in the first few pages...

" I like stars. Yellow stars. Green stars. Red stars..."

We (Little One and I) really like this book. I have been asked to read it over and over, all in one sitting :). It also inspired this lovely art and I thought this would be an easy project to repeat, whether you have this book or not. I found a photo of Little One, where I could cut out his whole body and glued it onto a big black page. I punched out stars in different colours and explained to him that we would stick the stars onto the page (in the night sky). He wanted to hold the glue stick (and do the gluing), which wasn't ideal, so I made little glue circles on the page and then encouraged him to stick the stars to the glue spots by punching them with the side of his fist. This worked nicely!

I wasn't crazy about the end product, so  I decided to paint a different background and we re-did the stars...I think our second project came out better. (top picture)

This art project has so many possibilities. A colourful starry night (like ours); a flower garden; a garden filled with butterflies; an ocean scene with lots of different fish; birds sitting in a tree; washing hanging on a line...these are just a few ideas. Remember to add a photograph of your little one to the picture for great effect and to make it special! Remember too, that this is about colour, so name them while you do your art. If I have inspired you, please come back and let me know what colourful photo art you got up to.

I have two more "Colour Fun" posts coming up and some more fun books to share with you. Till next time:)

PS. I am linking this to Kids Get Crafty

Colour Fun #7 - Colour Photo Book

If you know me, then you will know that I don't need an excuse to do a project involving photographs! So what could be cuter than personalised colour cards, using photos of your little one and of outings or items that they are familiar with. I searched through my pictures, chose some photos and then using Picasa (a free photo-editing program), I added the colour names. I had these printed and created a little picture book, putting the photos in an inexpensive photo album. You could also laminate the photos and turn them into flashcards. (I added the "spots' and "stripes' pictures just for fun.)

Little One really likes his colour photo book and asks me about every picture. I managed to get these cute pics of him reading his book on my bed. I could just eat him up!

I plan on doing something similar for numbers and the alphabet too, but that's for another post.

PS. I'm linking this to Tot Tuesdays and Show and Tell.

Colour Fun #6 - Bottle Top Ladybugs

 

I have always enjoyed observing my children's unique interests. What toys they choose to play with, books they favour and what games they play. Big One has always loved characters and little men, whereas Little One is already showing a strong interest in cars and other vehicles. Our children also go through phases and what may be a big hit right now, can wane over time. I think that while they are interested in a certain subject, we as parents can use that interest to make teaching more fun. Another approach is to focus on that area of interest while you have their attention. Little One is very interested in insects right now and one of his favourite books is Roger Priddy's BUG IQ. With this in mind, I really wanted to add a colour activity involving bugs of some sort.

I wish I could say that these cute little bugs were my idea. I first saw these bottle top ladybirds at Crafts by Amanda, a super blog with many amazing craft ideas. To make these, I used a permanent black marker to draw on to the bottle top and then added the plastic eyes with glue. I didn't want to paint the eyes (like Amanda's) as I really wanted to make them quickly and not fuss with paint. I was also able to get my circles nice and round by using a stencil.  I must add though, that having played with them a bit, I now know why Amanda chose to paint them. The permanent marker is not so permanent on the smooth plastic bottle top surface. I have solved this problem by having the marker nearby and touching them up every once in awhile, but it's not ideal.

To store our sweet little ladybirds, I made this ladybird jar. Another terrific idea of Amanda's. I didn't have a jar with a red lid, so settled for this one, which I purchased at my local plastic shop. All in all a really sweet craft and another fun way to focus on colours.

One interesting game that Little One has played with these, is to swipe them across the tiled kitchen floor. They glide across the floor with great speed. This grabbed both my and Big One's attention and we all ended up on our knees on the kitchen floor racing our speedy ladybirds! Not a game that I had envisioned, but great fun nevertheless.

I still have some more colour fun activities up my sleeve, so stay tuned. (And be sure to go check out Amanda's amazing blog!)

Colour Fun #5 - A Colour Car Play Mat

Little One loves playing with cars and so I thought this would be a fun and novel way to teach colours and to match-up colours. I made the play mat out of cardboard (a big cereal box) and covered it with a piece of black cardboard and then covered that with colour squares. Simple! 

I plan on leaving it out next to his cars and occasionally modelling  the cars parking in the correctly matched parking spaces. If you do make this for your little one, please come back and tell me how it was received.

PS. I am linking this to It's Playtime, Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity and ABC and 123 Show and Tell.

Colour Fun #4 - A new twist on a Posting Game

I made this simple posting game for Big One about 8 years ago...and he loved it! I kept it and introduced it to Little One before his first birthday and he enjoyed it too. It's a sure winner with any baby and so easy to make. If you don't have any baby jar lids, the flatter, wider bottle tops, like those on milk bottles, work just as well.

I am a little more creative and innovative now (thanks to all the inspiration on the internet), so saw the possibility of putting a new twist on this old game. One twist is to add punched out circles of colour to the jar lids to create a colour posting game. The other is to add photos of family members and friends, to teach your little one their names. I also added a deeper ice cream container for a longer drop, which is a little noisier - just for fun!

Some more super colour fun coming up this week. Stay tuned.

PS. I have linked this to ABC and 123 Show and Tell and Tot Tuesdays @ My Delicious Ambiguity.