Toddler Tuesdays: Butterflies

Hello, welcome, and thank you for bearing with us. Toddler Tuesdays are a bit sporadic lately and I'm sorry. Hopefully this will be the last week of upheaval in our home. We are switching to a new OT for Panda and things should calm down once we have therapy times in place. 

This week we are working with butterflies. I wanted to do this for Mother's Day, but.. you know.. Upheaval.. Our sensory bin has fresh cut grass, the four stages of a butterfly's life, flowers, rocks, a butterfly sipping pool, a net, magnifying glass, and tweezers. This bin went over real well. 

These are the books I've chosen for this week. I know we've done 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' before, but he really likes this book.

 As Panda enters his 'squashing bug' phase of toddlerdom I thought this would be a good poem for us this week. It is in the 'Treasury of Poetry'.

I made a caterpillar out of a clothes pin and then printed out several pictures from 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' book. Panda had a lot of fun "feeding" the caterpillar by tossing it through the holes in the fruit while making loud lip smacking noises. It was adorable and an exercise in imaginative play and fine motor skills..

 

I put a paper butterfly in a baggy with paint, and then taped it to the table for Panda to squish. He did not like touching the squishy bag one bit. Oh well, we will try again today. It's a new sensation. When the butterfly dried I slipped the clothes pin caterpillar on the wings and Panda was in love. He played with both the caterpillar and the butterfly for a long time. The painted butterflies for the rest of the week will be saved for cards.

 I cut butterflies out of felt for this activity. Then we matched like color butterflies with like colored blocks. It was a simple activity for color matching. Not all activities need to be spectacular. 

This is an idea I got off of Pinterest. I didn't have the energy to make cute beaded felt butterfly wings so instead I opted for printing out pictures of real butterflies.

 

This last activity was the favorite one of the day. I bought a tube of butterflies at the craft store and cleaned out an old spice jar. The butterflies only fit in sideways, so Panda had to concentrate to get them in right. He LOVED this activity so much that he emptied out the jar and stuffed them back in 5 times!

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you like this weeks activities. I've wanted to do Butterflies for a while now. Hopefully things will be quieting down soon. Till then, thank you for your understanding. Shine on!

Toddler Tuesday: Part 8

We're back! This week we are learning about clouds. Well, our learning is cloud themed. Perhaps that is a better way of saying it. I don't expect Panda to be learning about evaporation, condensation and so forth; but by keeping a theme it helps us stay on track and keeps things interesting. Our "lessons" are mainly about moving, trying new things, and using those fine motor skills in fun new ways. Our sensory bin is pretty simple. It's full of cotton balls, a helicopter, an airplane, tongs, an ice cream scoop, a ladle for picking up the cotton balls, and a wooden bowl to sort them into.

 

I finally got around to changing our clear contact paper tree into a felt board tree. This will stick around as a weather board when Panda starts school. Our felt finger puppets also stick to it for even more fun. Oh! and I even have plans to have a "build your own snowman" felt set up for Panda when he is older. The tree stands about two feet wide and three feet tall.

 

The felt pieces are on the floor in front of the board in wooden bowls. I left them out like this as an invitation to play. Yesterday Panda spent a long time examining these things and returned to the board several times throughout the day. In the fall we stuck leaves onto the contact board and next fall I will make some felt leaves. We switched to felt because it is reusable this way and contact paper is pretty bad for the environment. 

We made Toddler safe Cloud Dough using vegetable oil and left over formula. I also added a bit of cinnamon and clove for a smelltastic sensory experience. It made our dough a bit speckled, but who cares, it smells good!  I didn't measure the ingredients. Just add oil and mix until the mixture clumps together and is the consistency you want.

We made this picture during our Stars and Moons lessons (forgot to mention it). I gave Panda some stickers and watched him focus his entire being on pealing and sticking them onto the paper. A wonderful thing to do for cabin fever tots... I saved the picture so we could make clouds on it using finger paint, and a cotton ball on a clothes pin. Don't you just love projects that you can keep adding to, and use over and over again?

 For an extra fun sensory experience I opened a bag of fiberfill toy stuffing and dumped it on the carpet. Anyone who has a toddler with cabin fever NEEDS to try this. Oh my! Panda has been having a blast playing in his very own "Cloud"!

 A Lot of Fun!

 So much that I couldn't choose a picture..

 No really.. It was just that much fun. You've got to try this! ; )

Thank you for visiting us and have a blessed week. What are you doing at your house this week? Please leave a message in the comments below and Shine on!

Toddler Tuesdays: Part 2

Welcome Back to Toddler Tuesdays. My son's Pre-pre-school. These are the books we are looking at right now. See the one in the middle? We used that for inspiration for our first activity. 

I'm not overly fond of plastic toys, but I make an exception for legos (when Panda is older) and  Papo and Schleich figures. We pulled out all our winter animals and the light box. I scooped some flour onto the Light Box we made and showed Panda how to make animal tracks in the "snow" just like in the book. He loves this activity. Things got a bit messy. Next time I will put a sheet down and NOT do this over the heat vent.. Ooops. 

Of course we go for nature walks; this week gathering fallen pine branches as we go (with gloves on).

When we got home yesterday I put tape around the pine branch "paint brush " to make a handle (I can't touch the sap for allergy reasons, but Panda seemed to do ok)...

And made some art!

Every day this week we will be doing a different type of painting exercise. They will be used as Christmas Cards. Here are some other neat ideas I found on Pinterest:

From Surviving a Teachers Salary: Snowflake stamping with a soda bottle 

From Living with Four Hobbits and a Giant: Painting snowflakes with pine needles. 

Beneath the Rowan Tree.: Fingerprint Christmas Lights 

Once we cleaned up we started working those fine motor skills dropping our clothes peg people into a jug 

And pinning matching felt mittens together on a "Clothes line". Working the tiny clothes pins is a new and challenging experience for Panda. We work on colors and matching with this activity as well. He LOVES this one! When we are done I plan on making a fun garland with the mittens. 

And in the evening we calm down with sensory activities. I opted for a tray this week instead of a full table. It is filled with rice, blocks covered in tinfoil, tiny pine-cones, a spoon that looks like a shovel (buried), and felt penguins. I posted the pattern for the penguins yesterday if you are interested in making some for yourself. Thank you for joining us again. Please let us know what you are doing in your home and leave a link in the comment section so we can visit you.  We will be back next Tuesday with more fun. 

Shine on!