Adventure walk

When you're two, and adventure walk can be anywhere! We just walked around the block with the dog, and brought along a zip-lock bag to collect treasures. Walks can be an oppertunity to talk about all sorts of things - the neighborhood, the weather, different things you can hear (wind, birds, leaves, people), etc. We also say 'hi' to the neighbors and somtimes get to stop and play with friends!

The five senses: Touch

First.... a shot of my messy boy!

Various slimes/goops/dough is great for experencing the sense of touch.

Gluten Free Playdough:

1/2 cup rice flour (you can use regular flour instead)

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup salt

2tsp cream of tarter

1 TBS oil

1 cup of water

Cook in a saucepan on medium until it forms a ball, let cool and kneed

Another dough:

1 cup cornstarch

2 cups baking soda

1.5 cups water

cook until it looks like mashed potatoes, let cool, kneed. This can also be rolled thin and baked in a cool oven for an hour or so to make things like ornaments. Has a different texture than most playdough.

Gak (pictured)

8oz of elmers glue

1/2 cup water

1tsp of borax

Mix water and borax, add glue and stir/kneed well. pour off extra liquid.

Oobleck

cornstarch

water

start with a bunch of cornstarch, slowly add water stirring as you go (it will end up about 1/2 water, 1/2 cornstarch), when you stirr slow it will feel like liquid, but if you move fast, its like a solid!

Here is Landis and Levi fingerpainting! Great for both touch and sight (and a mess)

Finger paint:

3 cups water

1 cup cornstarch

Put in a saucepan on medium heat, bring to a simmer and cook until thickened (it will thicken more as it cools, add water as nessisary and stir often while it cools), color as disired (food coloring, kool-aid packet, add a little bit of kid friendly paint...)

Sensory box ideas:

- shredded paper (Levi likes this one!)

- sand

- moon sand

- lentils

- beans

- coffee grounds

- dirt/mud

- ice

- water

- packing peanuts (use the cornstarch ones only, not the styrafoam)

- buttons

- leaves

- rice (you can color it if you want)

- pasta

- shaving cream

- straws cut into small lengths

- bird seed

- polymer crystals and water (from the garden store)

More for the letter B

B is for boat!
Levi decorated the letter b, the waves and the sail, and then helped to cut them out. Then we glued them onto the background paper. Another idea would be to make an little boat and float it in the bath/pool (talk about sink vs. float too!).
If you are lucky enough to live by the water like we are, go look at some real boats!


Buttons:
We put buttons in the sensory box, fun to look at, touch, count, sort, name colors, thread onto string....

The Letter B

A simple bear project, just cut the shapes out of paper and have the child glue them together! Older kids can cut the shapes out themselves. We used sticky dots for the eyes too, and read a book about a bear.

Here is Levi rolling out some dough to make bugs. This is model magic (crayola), which is very light weight, and easy to clean up! He stuck pipe-cleaners in for the legs.

Our new bread machine! We got this at the thrift store for $10, it looked new! Found the manual for it online and tried it out! Make sure to use actual bread flour, otherwise you end up with brick-like bread. This was our first attempt, we have sense made other types of bread and some yummy cinnomon rolls.

Levi loves to help bake, and this one is easy because you just dump everything in and push the button. Great for math skills as well (count the scoops!)

Here is the pipe-cleaner part. I wish I could figure out the pics better on blogger.... I am not that skilled.

The bird project - Draw a simple bird shape on paper and glue feathers on!

Please use cruelty free feathers: http://www.crueltyfreevegan.com/ OR just cut some feather shapes out of paper instead!

We also went outside to listen for bird sounds, there are a lot of different birds you can hear when you are paying attention!

B is for:

-bear
-balloon

-ball

-bus

-button

-beads

-bread

-bug

- bird

- boat

The Letter 'V'

V is for:

-volcano

-vacuum

- van

-vest

-vase

- valentine!

We made valentine cards (and sent them to all of the grandparents of course)

I made Levi a Valentines Vest as well!

Thats about it for the letter V.

Another idea would be to make a 'volcano' with baking soda/vinegar for the lava... this is a really fun experiment! We didnt do it b/c Levi is allergic to vinegar and food coloring...and knowing him he would have his hands right in the middle of everything, and then in his mouth.

The Letter 'L'

The past week we have been working on the letter 'L' - L for 'Levi'!

We are not doing the letter of the week in any order, just going with what Levi is interested in. Next up is the letter 'v' which we started today and will probably finish tomorow (Valentines day is why we chose this one), its not a common letter and there arent a whole lot of words that start with 'v'!

L is for:
Levi
leaf
ladybug
lizzard
lion
lamb
lacing
lemon/lemonaid




This isnt an 'l' activity, but it has been done many many times over the past few days!



Hole punching - Levi loves this activity. We have two hole punches, this one takes some effort to push down, and the other is easier to push, but harder to get the paper into. This activity works on fine and gross motor skills. The holes that come out of the hole punch are great for collages, like the one at the bottom of this post (sorry I still dont know how to get pictures right on blogger!)

Leaf rubbings:

We went on a nature walk (in the cold!), and collected leaves. We talked about size (small, big, medium, tiny!), and color (yellow, brown, green, red), and then brought them inside!

I showed Levi the veins on the leaves and explained that water and 'leaf food' goes into the veins to make the leaf grow. Then I had him arrange them (vein side up) on his desk. Taped a peice of paper down and let him rub with chunky recycled crayons I had made. This made the veins show up better on the paper!

Here is Levi lacing his letter 'L', which he punched holes in. Because the holes are in random places, I let him lace through whichever hole he chose. For valentines day he got a little gift from his Great grandparents, and he used it to buy a lacing card set, so we are working on lacing in a neater way.... more on that in a later post.

We made lemonaid! Yum!

Levi squeezed (he says 'queesed') all of the lemons on his own (this electric juicer really helps).

Recipie:

1 part lemon juice to 1 part water and 1 part ice. Squeese lemons, strain if desired (we didnt), make sure their are no seads in it! Add an equal amount of water, and then ice. Sweeten until it tastes good! (we used Agave nector, but you could use honey, or simple syrup)

Simple Syrup-

1 cup water + 1 cup sugar, mix in saucepan over medium heat until sugar is fully disolved. Cook for 5 more min and let cool before adding to lemonaid.

Lamb collage:

We used the holes from the hole punch to make this little lamb!

1. trace child's hand and have them color it black OR use black paint to make a handprint

2. cut out, you can cut the thumb part off, glue to another peice of paper.

3. cut a 'wool' shaped peice, and have child glue 'holes' all over it (you could also use cotton balls)

4. glue onto sheep legs

5. cut head and ear shapes from black/white paper. Glue onto body. Add face. (we used google eyes)

More activites for the Letter L that we did

Sensory tray filled with lentils (great for pouring activites)

lion books, practice roaring like a lion

play leap frog

read lizzard book, 'walk' plastic and beanie baby lizards on the letter L (tape on floor)

practice writing the letter 'l' (lower case one is easy!)

used an ink pad w/one finger to make 'lady bugs', add details w/pen

looked at photos of Levi!

made a collage with Levi photos (on top of a letter L shape)

more lacing cards

Clothes pegs

Here is another fine motor activity, this one is great for young toddlers as well.

Put the clothes-pegs around the outside of a box/basket, and let the child pinch them to put them into the basket. Then have them try and put them back on the edge!