Journey Through Colorado History {Booking Across the USA}

I am very excited to be part of the Booking Across the USA project hosted by Growing Book by Book.  Today I am joining over 50 other bloggers in sharing a children's book and activity for my state.  The Rocky Mountains always come to mind when people think of Colorado, but I wanted to cover a different aspect of the state.  I was happy to find a new picture book called Dreaming of Colorado: A Children's Bedtime Story, written by Grant Collier and illustrated by Stephanie Lowman.  The book takes its characters through a magical canoe ride backwards in time through Colorado's history.  So the girls hopped into their own magic canoe (laundry basket) and we set off on our own historical adventure...

Pumpkin Delivery Math Game {Learning Place Value}

There is no game my girls (3 years old) like more than feeding their 'babies'.  Every math manipulative we've ever played with has become food for stuffed animals.  My kids were delighted when they woke up one morning last week and discovered that all their favorite stuffed animals (as well as Mom and Dad) had placed breakfast orders for miniature pumpkins.  This Pumpkin Delivery math game that I made up was such a big hit at our house at we ended up playing it every day for the entire week.  My kids had so much fun that they didn't realize they were practicing fine motor skills, counting, one-to-one correspondence, number recognition, reading, and even discovering the meaning of place value!  Here's how to play...

L's Magic Word Box

L (38 months) is getting better at sounding out CVC words, but she goes through periods where she resists reading so I have to be creative with reading activities and cater them to her interests.  In the girls' many creative dramatic play sessions, L often likes to pretend that she is "Magic L-" as she waves her wand and casts magic spells.  This gave me an idea for a very simple reading/writing game we've been doing -  L's Magic Word Box....

School Supplies Activity Tray

I'm like a 'kid in a candy store' when it comes to discount school supplies.  A year ago, around this time I found a ton of clearance pencils, erasers, and pencil cases in a craft store, and made a little activity tray for the girls (who were 2 at the time).  For this activity tray, I showed the girls how to place the pencils in the pencil boxes, and how to put the erasers on the pencils.  This year, I reintroduced the tray to the kids and we made up even more games with it...

Collaborative Storytelling with Wikki Stix

Wikki Stix are pieces of colored yarn dipped in wax.  They are pliable and sticky - great for making all sorts of creative things.  L and E (3) were very excited to discover Wikki Stix in one of their Preschool Activity Boxes yesterday, and set to work right away making all sorts of creations.  We ended up playing with them all morning, working together to make up stories and scenes that go along with them..

Grocery Store Dramatic Play

I introduced L and E (3 years old) to money recently.  They already knew the concept of money (taking it to the bank, buying stuff, etc..), but were not familiar with the coins and their values.  I promised them that they could use their plastic play money to play 'Grocery Store', so that is the first thing they asked for the next morning, even before breakfast.  It was really simple to set up, and they've been requesting the 'Grocery Store Game' all week...

Caps for Sale Activity: Dramatic Play with Hats

Dramatic play with hats is an activity we've done many times before (nothing's easier than taking a bunch of hats out of the closet and letting the kids have fun with them), but I haven't blogged about it yet, so I thought I'd share.. Today we read Caps for Sale by Ephyr Slobodkina.  We have an audio version that has sound effects and songs in it, and L and E (almost 3) love to sing along.  After the story, we did a number of activities.  I contemplated printing out some of the free printables for this book, but playing with hats sounded like a lot more fun than doing worksheets!  So here's what we did...

Going on Safari

Today I put the girls' stuffed animals all around the house and invited them to take pictures of 'wild animals' with their kid-friendly digital cameras...

Big Green Pocketbook - Dramatic Play Activity

One of my kids' favorite books is The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Random and Felicia Bond, which I found when researching Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) literature-based curriculum.  It's a story about a girl who goes out to run errands with her mother and fills up her purse with little tokens from each place they visit.  Around Christmas, I found tiny green mini-purses, and we've been acting out the story since then...

Five Minute Teddy Bear Cape

Today we read Corduroy, the classic story of a bear who goes in search of his missing button.  In less than 5 minutes, I put together some capes for their stuffed animals, so they can practice their buttoning skills...

Jesse Bear Dramatic Play Activity

One of my kids' favorite books is Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? by Nancy White Carlstrom.  I stumbled on this book when researching the Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) literature-based curriculum.  The twins (32 months) ask for "Jesse Bear" repeatedly, and Baby H (6 months) smiles and kicks his legs when I read it out loud.  One of the go-along activities we do for Jesse Bear is to act out the book using dollhouse furniture and Calico Critters Bear Family.  The book goes through a typical day for Jesse Bear in which he does everyday kid things like putting on clothes, playing outside, eating lunch, taking a bath, and going to bed.  The girls love stories where they can relate to the characters.  Check out these pictures of some of the scenes from the book we recreate:

(Pizza) Pi Day

Since I'm a math-geek, I had to take some time away from my work today to celebrate Pi Day (3/14) with the kids.  First the twins used dot-paints to put toppings on their paper-plate pizzas:

We turned it into a dramatic play activity with a pizza box that was lying around (excuse the grease spots!).  E and I put together a 'house', and then we would call up the pizza parlor (L on the couch) to order a pizza (the girls loved pretending to talk to each other on the phone).  L would then drive the pizza over to our house for delivery, where we shared the pizza - yum!

The girls played 'pizza delivery' over and over and over. L noticed that it was hard to share the pizza, so I got her some scissors and she cut it in half to share with her sister:

For the 'pi' part of the lesson, I showed the girls how to take yarn and measure the diameter and circumference of our pizza and then compare them (yep - the circumference was approximately three times the diameter):

I had other math-related activities planned, but the kids were fascinated by the yarn, so we ended up doing some free exploration with the yarn instead.

Happy Pi Day!

Mathstart Monster Musical Chairs Activity

Monster Musical Chairs is a book in Stuart Murphy's MathStart collection which teaches basic subtraction.  It has a great rhyming rhythm and is a lot of fun  - the girls love shouting "Bye Bye, Monster!" as each monster gets eliminated from the game.  I decided to add to the entertainment by making little pom-pom monsters so we can add a little dramatic play when we read the book.

The monsters were really easy to make using pom-poms, googly-eyes, and craft foam.  I tried to match the monsters to the ones in the book, and they came out really cute.  I also made chairs for them out of little paper cups, a paper towel roll, and more craft foam.

The girls eyes lit up when they woke up from their naps and discovered these little monsters.  As we read the story, we talked about how many monsters and chairs were left.  Then we played a bit of musical chairs as well so they'd understand the concept of the game.

After reading the story a couple times, E asked for her dollhouse furniture and everyone sat down for dinner:

The girls are starting to treat their toys a bit more delicately and I'm proud to say that all six monsters remained intact after a full evening of play.

Military Play

Who says girls can't play with toy soldiers?  I found a cheap plastic military figure set at Target for $1.50 (from the toys they couldn't sell at Christmas).  There are lots of opportunities for sorting and grouping the soldiers and vehicles by color, size, type, etc....  We use the fences to make different shapes.  The wheels come off all the trucks and planes, so it's a good fine motor activity to take them off and put them back on again.  It's pretty obvious that they're girls, though - they're very delicate with the soldiers and like to take the tops off the trucks to make beds and baths for them.