Tot School: Blue Horse

It was blue horse week in the Brown Bear, Brown Bear thematic unit we are doing.  It was a fun week.  It was a very busy week for us outside of tot school, so we didn't get to all I had hoped.  But we surely got to enough and had a great time!

Again, to keep it all in, I have to limit our activities.  The six areas I tried to cover are:

1. Color

2. Verse/Bible story

3. Hands on craft

4. Sensory activity

5. Food experience

6. Fun memory

1. Color: BLUE!

As we have the past few weeks, we started the week off with coloring a page with markers, colored pencils, and crayons to introduce the color.  We also looked through the "blue box" and did an eye spy game for blue things around the house.

 

2. Bible Story/Verse: Exodus 14:16-23 (Moses parts the Red Sea) 

"The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen." vs 23

When I thought about horses I thought of chariots. It would have been fun to make a model of the water and take little people and walk them across then have the horses covered by the water afterward.  But I didn't feel that ambitious:) I just read the story from the Jesus Story Bible and it was great because it had a picture of a chariot on the page! 

The kids also colored a picture of a chariot and expanded their vocabulary with that new word. 

3. Hands-On Craft:

No paper plate craft this week.  I had a few crafts planned, but this was the only one we got to.  The kids always love painting their hands!

4. Sensory Activity:

I had hopes of making this cool fizzing ocean sensory bin (because water is blue!) but it just didn't happen.  I was totally ok with that because this week we were able to attend a "messy play" activity with a local resource center.  It was SO neat with digging through jello for bugs and colored spaghetti and slime.  It was quite the sensory day!

5. Food Experience:

Blue Berries, Pasta died blue, and pop corn died blue.   

Also thought blue moon ice cream would've been fun, but didn't do that.

6. Memorable Experience:

Pool Noodle Horse: So bummed my plan didn't work out! I wanted to make this pool noodle horse for them, but I couldn't find any pool noodles! I am still planning to make them one day for them because they would love it!

We did go to the zoo this week and saw horses there.  

I also had a Thomas the Train puzzle I had been hiding away for the kids, so I gave that to them.

And I came up with this very last minute idea because I remembered that I had blue yarn and wanted to do something with it.

 

Other activities this week:

I read the story and as I read the kids put the animals in order. (link to these is on my original Brown Bear post)

Rotating stations:

1. heads and tails matching

2. memory game (matching)

3. letter matching (Raelynn did lower to upper, Declan upper only, and Elliana just stuck letter magnets on)

Add caption

 

I try to have several tot trays out during the week.  One is usually always the unifix cubes and counting bears. It's nice for when kids are waiting at the table for a meal time or when I need them quiet and busy.

This week we used Q-tips to paint the circles on the dot sheets.

It's always nice when I have things around the house we can use for learning colors.  We took blue play dough, uncooked spaghetti noodles, and blue beads and the kids stacked the beads on the noodle.  They also love to eat the raw noodles so that is their prize at the end, ha!

 

BFIAR: Blueberries for Sal (and tot school: blue and circles)

Book: Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

Ages: 19 months, 23 months, 40 months

 

 

This was one of my favorites! Not because the book is all that great (in my opinion) but because the kids loved it so much and there were a lot of fun things to do--all involving blueberries of course:)

 

This was the second week I tried to focus on a color and shape as well as other concepts and involve all three kiddos in the activities.  It went very well!

 

Each morning we would read the book during or after breakfast.  They asked for it every day, which always makes me happy (it was probably because I usually gave them blueberries during or after!)

 

A few days we did different activites and rotated around the table.  I definitely feel like I have a little tot school happening here!

 

I honestly didn't even look in the BFIAR manual this week.  I forgot to because I didn't need any extra ideas.  We didn't get through all the ideas that I had, but it was still a very fun week.

Learning stations that we rotated:

 

1. Putting "blueberries" in a container (blue puff balls)

2. Placing blue poker chips in a container

 

3. Feeding Little Bear

We did a lot of cooking and baking with blueberries!!!

Pancakes:

Muffins:


Blueberry Jam:


  

We also made blue rice! It was my first time dying rice and turned out to be VERY easy!
In a plastic dish, we mixed about 2.5 cups of rice and 2 T vinegar with the food coloring.  Shake it around and laid it on cookie sheet to dry.  It was ready by the time they were up from nap. 

 

 

 

My kids have been doing rice sensory bins for a long long time.  It's amazing how colored rice captures their attention so much more! 

Declan had learned the color blue by the time he was done playing.  He LOVED it!

I love when they have something they can all do together:) They played with this every single day this week.



Printables:

 

 

For snack one day I quickly drew this "blueberry bush" and they had fun putting their blueberries in their "bucket" like Sal.

Another learning station rotation day:

1. Gluing blue circles on the bush

2. Stamping blue thumbprints on the bush

3. Using the dot marker (Raelynn actually is gluing here, but you can see her dots!) as blueberries on the bush.

Another idea that is currently in the freezer is having the kids break the bears and blueberries out of ice! I put them in a plastic dish and filled with water.  I plan to give them some "tools" and they have to break free the bear.  I figure if they don't have much interest in breaking free the plastic bear, they will definitly want the blueberries! :)