Green Week

This was one of my favourite ones. I don't know why, but I seemed to come up with a few new ideas for this one.

I drew a big dinosaur and then painted H's feet with green paint. You can guess what happened next...
...a green dinosaur! She really enjoyed this activity. Little E did some foot prints too but I didn't get a pic of him because by that point I was also covered in paint

Before our Dinosaur became green

After...A green dinosaur



Making Green Bow ties for everyone

We made some green bow ties for all the family. They were made of green card and we used some ribbon to tie them in. As you can see, H went crazy with the felt pens, the glitter, the glue, the stickers, the pom-poms...

Green outfits

Pink Week

I have to say that she had no problem with the colour pink as this is her favourite one.

Pink clothes and pink food...we struggled with the food a bit because she wouldn't eat anything I put down!! FussyToddlers!!!

We collected stones from the garden, washed them and then painted them pink!

The 3 Little Pigs. I thought this story was vaguely pink...it has 3 pink pigs in it!!

So to continue our pink theme I printed out some images of the characters and the houses. I set H free with the paints, crepe paper and other bits and bobs I got H to paint them. We did a bit of a mixed media style with this one - although the picture doesn't show them all. We used spaghetti as straw on one of the houses, painted one pig pink, coloured one pink and glued pink tissue to the 3rd one.

After they were all dry, I cut them out and laminated them and stuck some lolly sticks to the back ~ voila: pink themed story puppets!

We did a wee puppet show behind some chairs - Ian and I told the story using our best acting skills...we weren't that good but I don't think the kids noticed thankfully.

Yellow week

I didn't do as many activities for yellow week because H was back at nursery. There was also a bit of a break between Red week and Yellow week  - this meant I could use some of the same activities from Red week. We did mostly 'craft-daft' stuff!

Colouring
I found a great website called www. abcteach.com. They have some great printables and other bits and bobs to download. I dowlloaded the little Yellow bookfor H to colour in. Unfortunately this activity didn't last long and she was quickly asking for more things to colour.

Glueing & StickingI punched out some circles and flowers from yellow paper and got H to glue and stick them onto a flower stem (that I drew on the paper) . H loves sticking and so got a bit carried away - you can barely see the stem!

Paper Suns
Paper plates are one of my favourite items to make things with. I have a huge pile of them in one of our many craft crates. In prepearation for our colour weeks I started to buy lots of multi coloured things...paper, card, tissue paper, pompoms etc. I got H to tear up the yellow tissue and scrunch them up a little bit - I have to admit she had more fun blowing the hundreds of little tissue paper all over the floor and laughing hysterically when I tried to catch them before they went everywhere...After lots of laughing and picking up tissue, H eventually stated sticking the tiddue to the paper plates. We hung them from our Play Room washing line at the window. They looked very pretty!


Icing cakes
One of my loves is baking and icing cakes and biscuits - I think it's safe to say that it has passed on to H. So one afternoon, H and her wee friend  B popped on their pinnys for some 'culinary-creativity'. With a new baby and a toddler in the house, there is NO time to bake (much to my disappointment) so, for this activity, I was forced to buy some ready-to-ice cupcakes.  I made up 2 bowls of yellow glace icing and put out lots of sprinkles then we left them to it. They both really enjoyed decorating their cakes and had loads of fun with the runny icing and the coloured sprinkles. However after they had decorated 2 cakes each their focus changed slightly; H started eating all the icing and her friend B was working his way through handfulls of sprinkles...it is safe to say they had loads of fun!


Hand Painting
H isn't keen on being dirty!! I think she might have OCD. In an attempt to get her used to being dirty/ different substances on her hands, I got her to do some hand painting in yellow paint. She was happy enough painting her hand and then did a couple of prints but then quickly started shouting "clean, clean!". I managed to get little E's hands painted (not an easy task when he is only 4 months old and a bit wriggly) so I got his wee hand prints done too. They look so tiny! We proudly displayed our crafts and yellow stuff on the wall of the playroom.

Paper Sunflowers
I cut little flower shapes out of card and got H and her cousin to make little sunflowers. They covered them in yellow tissue and then attached a lollipop stick to the back of them. The girls were so pleased with their wee flowers!

Red week

I taught H the colour Red just before Christmas - it was a stroke of genius because there was lots of red things everywhere, especially pictures of Santa Clause!

I did a bit of research to get some colourideas. I found some great ideas on one of my favourite blogs - Toddler Boredom Busters. I came up with a little list of things to do.

Fun in the house - Treasure Hunt
I laminated a bunch of little red clipart pictures and put a blob of bluetac on the back of each. I hid them around the downstairs of the house whilst H hid in the playroom. I then sent her off to find all the red pictures. I really didn't expect her to have so much fun! We must have played it about 10 times in a row. It has also been a great game to play when we've not got any plans.

Walk - Treasure Hunt - outside
I took H and E out for a walk in the pram and we looked for red things - cars, traffic lights, front doors, vans, post boxes, signs etc.

Story - Little Red Riding Hood, Library for red themed stories/ picture books
We went to the library and looked for red themed stories. We obviuosly had to get Little Red Riding Hood! H loves books and the library so she had lots of fun picking up the books and shouting "Mummy read it, read it". I'm not syre the other Library users enjoyed it as much...

Craft - Red tissue flower
I have a tonne of craft bits and bobs that I've acquired over the years (it's all part of the stationary obsession) and so gathered together: red tissue paper, red card,  glue and a lolly-pop stick. .I cut out a flower shape and ripped up the tissue paper then let H spread the glue all over the flower. I then showed her how to scrunch up the paper and and push it into the glue. H absolutely loves craft stuff, so this was right up her street. Once it was dry, we then taped a big lolly-pop stick to the back. She was very proud of her flower. She enjoyed it so much she made one for Granny too.

Santa Picture
We did a tissue paper Santa. I used the same technique as above.

Hand Painting & stamping
I mad some stamps out of potato and let H get messy with red paint. She's not that keen on getting messy so this was a challenge for her!!

Game/ Role Play - Post Box
I took an old Aptamil box and painted it red - I tried painting the lid too...after about 4 coats it finally was covered, only to peel off when H started playing with it. I then cut a slit in the front - just the right size for mini letters - the lid lifts up so you can get the letters back out. H and I made letters and envelopes together. H loved it. She played herself (she usually wnats me to play everything too) for over an hour.
Red Clothes
We wore red things!

Red Food
I pinched some ideas from Toddler Boredom Busters http://toddlerboredombusters.blogspot.com/2009/11/red-lunch.html.
I also looked at Muffin Tin Mum http://michellesjournalcorner.blogspot.com/

Colours of the rainbow

Unfortunately when your Mum is a Teacher, everyday is a school day!

 I have been teaching H colours over the last 3 months (she is also learning at nursery too). I started with blue and green - only because on most journeys to nursery, I told her that the trees are green and the sky is blue. I soon relaised that if this was my main teaching staretgy we would soon run into trouble quite quickly as we don't pass many pink, orange or purple things! So, I thought it might be a better idea to teach her the colours of the rainbow.

I am a lover of mindmaps (I am a complete saddo; I actually bought and read the Tony Buzan Mindmapping book) and used this to come up with little ideas to help me teach colours. It involved books, songs, rhymes, pictures, clothes, food and crafts all relating to the colours of the rainbow. I think I was a bit adventurous though, so will come back to some of the ideas when she is bigger. I decided to have colour weeks.

My first task was to paint a rainbow to hang in the playroom. I then found loads of little clipart pictures in all the rainbow colours.The next day I then taught her the 'rainbow song'. I began teaching her the colours in the order that they come in the rainbow. We started with Red Week.

The wee fun things we did are in the next posts