This week's theme is colors and we had lots of fun projects planned out for the kids. We are following Simply Learning on Instagram for our inspiration and to follow along with her curriculum each week. She has an incredible site filled with ideas for moms to do Tot School at home with their kids and it's all free - which is incredible because it's worth so much.
We used a few of the ideas we found there along with some we found on Pinterest. I will post the activities we chose each week as well as how I felt LB did with each one. Right now she is (almost) 32 months old, so almost 3. She was really into it all this morning.
We are going to be meeting two days a week with the kids from 9-10:30am. Each week we will switch up the theme for them. We used a lot of things that we found at home, and then we had to go out to buy a few things too. It wasn't so bad though because it's a lot cheaper than paying for preschool! Ashley probably spent around $20 and after I get the dot a dot markers and a bin for tomorrow we'll be around $20 as well - but a lot of the things they can use over and over again.
We started our morning off with the Rainbow Rice Sensory Bin. The girls could have easily played in there for 30 minutes. We asked them what colors they were playing with and they were really into it.
This project has such easy clean up too! Took only a few seconds to sweep it up after they were done playing. EG was so cute and got out the dishes from LB's kitchen so they were then pretending to cook with it too. Love their little imaginations! It was so interesting this morning to watch what each of them were interested in.
Next, the girls worked on sorting the Fruit Loops into Dixie cups according to color. LB has never had a Fruit Loop before, so once she discovered how good they were, she would mostly tell us what color it was and then eat it. But she was getting pretty good with the colors. She struggles with mixing up green and red sometimes and every now and then will forget yellow and instead say "like a duck" but for the most part, she got them all.
Once their colors were sorted, we had them work on stringing the Fruit Loops onto a necklace. Ashley showed LB how to do it and did a few for her and then LB started to do it all on her own. She loved it and was really good at it. I was so proud of her. We'll work more on her necklace after nap today, their attention spans were pretty short this morning - maybe 10 minutes/activity - 15 including clean up and prep for the next one. But we never stopped talking about colors.
Snack time was Oranges and Blueberries...had to stick with the theme ;) EG wasn't a fan so LB ate both of their snacks ;)
We thought the girls might like a change of pace, so we got out the paint! We found this adorable activity on Pinterest. The girls would dip the celery into the paint and the goal was to make scales on the fish. LB decided it was a lot more fun to use the celery like a paint brush and then to mix the colors on her page. It was a lesson in letting go for mommy ;)
We headed out to our patio for the girls to get some fresh air and some active play. Ashley and I drew circles on the ground in different colors and were hoping the girls would jump on specific colors when called out to them. Neither of the girls thought that was a good idea, and instead just jumped all around on them. Which was just fine too...again, mommy needed to let it go. LB loved it.
We attempted to read the girls books about colors, but they were so done by then so we let them play in LB's room. For a while LB was bringing us things that were all the same color but then we realized I was late for Stroller Barre so we had to put an end to Tot School for the day, and quickly! Oopsie!
It was such a fun morning together and I can't wait to see what we can get the girls to do tomorrow. Next week will be shapes, and I'm pretty excited about having the other two kids with them too. It will either be complete chaos, or a lot more structured...we'll see... :)
