Post It Names

Peanut is now just over three, and is super interested in reading alphabet books. We read them over and over and over and over... When we're out and about, Peanut points out letters on signs and labels. All of these are great clues that he is ready to start learning the letters of the alphabet. A great place to start is with his name! I've been holding on to this idea for a few months now. I found it on one of my favourite inspiration Instagram accounts, @busytoddler - if you haven't taken my advice and checked it out by now, you're missing out!

Supplies: roll of butcher paper, black markers, post it notes, painter's tape

The first thing I did was roll out my paper and write Peanut's name in big letters. I use the painter's tape to keep it taped on the table and then it's easy to transfer it to the wall for the activity. I'll just show the 'A' from Peanut's name, but I think you get the idea.

Next, I wrote each letter in Peanut's name on post it notes ten times each. I did these two preparation aspects of the activity the night before. 

When Peanut came down in the morning and saw the big poster on the wall, he was instantly curious! So was his older brother, who obviously noticed that there was no poster for his name and was a little bummed. I knew this might happen now that Monkey is at school and Peanut is home without him. I just explained to him that Peanut and I will be doing activities just like I did with him when he was three. He seemed okay with it...

When we got home from our morning outing, Peanut couldn't wait a minute to get started, he was so excited! I took all the post its that I had written his letters on and stuck them up all over the wall.

Since this is the first time we've worked on his name, I spent some time doing through each other the letters in his name with Peanut. We said the letter and went and touched it on the poster. I also spelled his name over and over again, kind of with a little tune, so that it would start to stick in his head. Then he got started on finding some letters to match.

Every time he pulled a letter off the wall, I made sure to say the letter to reinforce it for him. 

Peanut ended up doing half the activity and then taking a break before coming back to finish it up. When his daddy got home he was so proud to show it off, and even remembered two of the letters in his name! I know that he's going to need lots more practice at this. I'm going to keep the poster so that we can use it again, maybe with stickers or something instead of the post it notes, just to mix things up!

Mar

Painting with Cars

Today we did another process art activity! The boys, like many other their age I'm sure, have a large bucket of toy cars that they absolutely love playing with. I know that I can always get their attention when I use their favourite things in our activities. This was certainly one of those times!! I even sneakily added in some learning, by purposefully using only the primary colours so that the boys would mix them together and we could talk about colour mixing.

Supplies: roll of butcher paper, paint, tape, toy cars (that you don't mind getting covered in paint!)

I started by laying out my trusty plastic table cloth on our table. Then we rolled out a large piece of butcher paper and taped it down. Next we added drops of paint and laid cars out, ready to go. You can see I made a different area for mixing each secondary colour.

Well Monkey and Peanut couldn't wait to get started. By the time I was ready to take some pictures they were hard at work driving the cars through the paint. They definitely thought using their beloved cars was awesome!

I always find that the easiest colours to mix are blue and yellow. Green always comes so obviously. Purple and orange take a little more work and are a little harder to see in these pictures.

The boys sat here driving their cars around on the paper until the paint was starting to dry. They loved this art project. And they really liked it when we headed up to the bath tub and I had them bring the cars to join them for a big scrub! 

Mar