Toddler Thursday: Beach

 Welcome back! If last week was a flop, this week was an incredible success. Panda LOVED this whole week. Our beach sensory bin is made up of crushed graham crackers for sand, whipped coconut cream and food dye for waves, a Lego shark (lovingly on loan this week from my nephew), a Tiki cup, ping pong beach ball, towel, and tiny bucket. For the last two weeks Panda has tried to eat real sand. I thought he would love the edible sand, but when I went to show him it was cookie he told me to spit it out , "icky!". At least it sunk in. He did love dipping the shark in the "water" and painting the table with it. Hooray for a new texture!

 Here are our books for the week. Starlight Sailor has such beautiful illustrations. I found that at Half Price Book Store! An awesome find. Summer also has incredible illustrations. I love Gerda Muller books. There is a book for each season.They are beautiful seasonal picture books with seasonally appropriate out door shots and activities. Panda enjoys flipping through on his own.

Panda loves looking at pictures. I made 10 beach themed flashcards with pictures I found on various free clip art sites. When we work on flashcards I say "Ssss, Ssss, Sun.. Sun! Buh, buh, bucket.. Bucket!" and so forth. This worked REAL well for Panda. To our amazement he actually tried each and every word. This is a huge success for our boy who often says no more than a word a day. Our cards are; Ball, Bird (seagull), Bucket, Fish, Sand, Shovel, Sun, Towel, Umbrella, Water. 

We made a Hawaiian Lei using flowers I punched out of craft foam and cut pieces of straw. Panda loves to bead things and he was only to excited to try this new beading kit out. Beading focuses him while working on hand eye coordination.

This is a simple color wheel I made for Panda out of cardboard. We talked about colors and worked on matching the clothes pins to the right colors. In hindsight I should have used clothes pegs instead but he loves working with the pins so much. It takes all his concentration and strength to open them and then clip them on, but it's still a good exercise.

 

Our last activity is counting shells. We are working on 1-5 right now. While exploring these shells we talked about textures for his word association. Bumpy, smooth, prickly. etc..  Panda surprised me with how long he wanted to explore these new textures. I could not get him to put the starfish down. The moment he saw it he grabbed it up and proudly announced, "Star!!". We had to compromise to get this picture. I told him he could touch the star while I took the picture. It was the only way to get him to put it down (smiles). We will wrap this week up with a trip to the beach (or if the weather is bad, a trip to the community pool). Shhh.. It's a secret. I hope you enjoyed this week's post. We sure did. Till next time

Shine on!