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.

Easy Chicken Craft

I found my inspiration for this sweet chicken craft in an old copy of the your family magazine. The template I used was actually meant for a hen beanbag, which I would have loved to have made, but wasn't brave enough to attempt. I enjoyed making a paper version though (far easier too!)

Did you know that the frilly part on top of the chicken's head is called a "comb" and the wobbly bit below it's beak, a "wattle"? Aren't those just the perfect names for those body parts :)? For a nice labeled photograph of the parts of a chicken, peck your way over to Farming Friends and there's lots of interesting information and print-outs about chickens at Enchanted Learning.

Till next time. 

PS. Sharing at:
 Show and Tell @ ABC and 123

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.

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

Cats {Fun with Shapes}

  To add some more fun to our Cats theme, we invited some special friends over for a play date and we dressed up as cats. With some marshmallow mice and fish in our bellies, we then made some very easy cat faces from pre-cut shapes!

Do you recognize our feline friends? Arrowboy and Sweetpea (on the left) belong to Joyful Mama and Little Mouse (on the right) belongs to Trudie. We are so lucky to have these special ladies and little friends live so close by!

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 #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.

Shapes Picture: A Rainy day Art Activity

After the glorious autumn weather we had been having here in Cape Town, the rain arrived, in bucketfuls! I thought that we needed some ready-made rainy day activities, that I can  have on standby for the long winter to come. I decided to try some shape pictures with the children and also created a special shape box, so that we can do this activity whenever we are in the mood. This idea was very much inspired by a project done by Katherine Marie, which you can see here.

Art projects for under-two's are tricky, but I was hoping that Little One would be able to join in on this one. Needless to say, I was a bit too ambitious, because more glue went into his mouth than on the picture!

I think that these pictures make awesome kiddies' wall decor and I'm going to frame these for Little One's room.

PS. If you have any good ideas for under-two's art, please share these in the comment box.