Numbers

Book: Ten Black Dots - Donald Crews
Activity: Number sorting with beads. You need 10 paper or styrofoam bowls, and large beads
Art: Imagination play with black dots. Cut out 10 black circles and let them create something with them (like a scene from the book).
Food: Domino Snack. I'm thinking a graham cracker covered with marshmallow fluff and chocolate chips for dots. You could do a healthier version with nut butter and raisins.
Music: 10 Little Numbers. I grew up singing a non-PC version of this song. 1, 2, 3, 4 by the Plain White T's. This is just a fun song to sing.

Learning about Rain

I was going to do a number theme this week since last week we learned about letters, but the wet Miami summers changed my plans. What better way to learn about rain than when its raining outside. Hopefully the weather will cooperate with me. Here is my plan for this week and we'll see what happens.

Music: Singing in the Rain. My kids are obsessed with this clip. We also sang "If all the Raindrops Were Lemon drops and Gumdrops"
Film: Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood - A Stormy Night (available on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime).
Activity: Rain science experiment. Like this one from Pinterest Requires water, shaving cream, and food coloring
Book: Rain! - Linda Ashman; Come On, Rain! - Karen Hesse
Art: Watercolors and rain. The rain didn't cooperate with us so we will have to go back and finish this. You have the kids paint with watercolors and then put the paper out in the rain to see what the rain will do.

Letters - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

My son started PreK-4 last week and they began a lesson on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Since we were hearing about it non-stop, I decided to make it our theme this week. Now everyone in our family knows the song and the kids have to read the book at least twice a day. Needless to say, I will be very excited when we move on from this one.

Book: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
Music: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom song. This will be forever stuck in your head
Art: Make a Coconut Tree. We used construction paper but feel free to use whatever supplies you have. Pinterest is full of ideas.
Activity: Uppercase and Lowercase Letter Matching. I made a simple sheet that you can print on cardstock and cut out. You can find that here.
Food: Coconut Smoothies. Cococnut Milk, Pineapple, Banana, and Honey.

Creative Learning Intro

After a long hiatus, I've been encouraged by friends to blog again. And of course the day I decide to do this, my daughter has a crazy night of crying and tantrums that has left me with about 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep (with some cat naps). So, if what I'm writing doesn't make sense, just go with it.

I was in the process of putting together a music and art class for toddlers starting this fall, but the logistics of that got complicated and I realized that I was putting a lot of thought and energy into that while neglecting my family. I decided to put that project on hold and actually use my organizational and creative skills to be intentional with my children. What has resulted is a curriculum of weekly themes using music, art, books, activities, food, and movies. I'm trying to make it easy and not too structured because, let's face it, sometimes you have terrible nights and all you need to do is lay on the couch. It might turn out to be like three days a week where you have a planned activity. Here is a list of themes we will cover and I will add links to their separate pages as we complete them.

1. Letters - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
2. Rain
3. Numbers
4. Shapes
5. Colors
6. Fall
7. Apples
8. Leaves
 9. Jazz
10. Pumpkins
11. Halloween
12. Tree
13. Harvest
14. Corn
15. Thanksgiving