Weekly Learning Theme: Houses

The week of Carter's birthday party I knew I needed a learning theme that would be simple as I would be doing a lot of cleaning and last minute preparations for the party.  When I flipped through my plan book I thought the house theme would be perfect as many of the activities involved him watching me do household chores and then getting to help.  We started the theme and read lots of books, but as the week finished up I was way too busy with party prep to get in all the activities I had planned.  So I decided to continue the theme after Christmas and the new year.  

Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks.  I have updated our objectives from the original ones we focused on because Carter mastered those skills.  I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives.  Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually.  The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:

1. Takes turns in a simple game.
2. Understands the meaning of mine, his, hers.
3. Groups objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).  Since Carter was doing so well sorting by shape and color I already started having him sort by other features.
4. Strings beads or other objects.
5. Counts to 3 and understand what the numbers mean.  Carter can count to 3, but we're still working on understanding what each number means.

Activities/Movement:

• Carter watched me as I dusted the house.  Then he wanted a turn so I let him borrow my tools.  He enjoyed dusting so much that I ended up getting him out his own cloth to dust with.  His favorite thing to dust was Harper which was hilarious, but he also dusted the windowsill, his train table, and the entertainment center.

Dusting Harper

Dusting the train table.

• Carter always helps me pull laundry out of the dryer when he's around while I'm doing it.  He did that and then watched me fold and put it away.  After he'd watched for a while he helped me fold and put away the rest of the laundry.  I'm using "fold and put away" loosely here.  It was his version of folding, but he was proud.

Helping fold his laundry.

• For a while now when I sweep Carter wants to help.  I'll let him use the small broom that goes with our dust pan to help sweep the floor.  This week I helped him by holding the dust pan so he could sweep our pile into the dust pan.  The dust and debris went more or less everywhere except in the dust pan, but he was excited to try! I also let Carter help me vacuum the house.  He loved pushing the vacuum forward, but when we had to pull it back to ourselves he would lose interest and run off.  He also helped me mop the floor and even went and got the Bona while I was washing dishes so he could finish the floor.

Busy with the Bona!

• Another chore Carter likes to help with is getting clean dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them away.  I stand by the silverware drawer and he hands me silverware one at a time.  I'll tell him what he handed me: spoon, knife, or fork.  Sometimes I ask him to had me a specific piece of silverware.  Sometimes he does it and other times he just hands me whatever is closest to his hand.

 

• Carter and I built houses out of Lincoln Logs and then counted the houses together.  We started with one house and then built up to 3 houses.
• I wanted to let Carter help wash dishes, but I wanted to model for him and then let him do it on his own for the most part.  I hated to have him wash dishes and then rewash them later myself, especially if he saw me doing it and didn't feel successful.  I thought about what to do for a while and realized all his outdoor kitchen toys and supplies were in need of a clean.  They were just dirty from being outside all the time so they didn't need to be cleaned well enough to eat off of.  I filled the sink with soapy water, gave Carter a wash rag, showed him what to do, and let him take off with it.  It was so adorable to watch him do each step of washing just like I had done: scrubbing, rinsing, then putting it out to dry on the drying pad.  Carter enjoyed it so much he kept asking to do it again.  I'm going to let him wash all his bath toys the same way.

Scrubbing away at his dishes.

Rinsing after scrubbing.

Putting it over on the drying mat to dry.

• In our house we practiced the words my, his, and her by talking about rooms in the house and items within rooms.  When we were in Carter's room I would tell him it was his room and have him say, "My room" rather than his usual "Caca's room".  When we were in the nursery we talked about how it will be Elise's room and it is her room.  In Ty and my room we talked about how it was our room.  I showed Carter where daddy kept his things and where I kept my things.
• I planned to print a picture of a house and cut it apart into a puzzle, but when I searched for a house picture I found a house puzzle here.  I also found an example of how to make a house out of tangrams with a printable to place the tangrams on top of here.  For younger kids you would use the picture with lines to show what shape goes where and for older kids you would use the picture without lines to add difficulty because they'd have to figure out how to place the shapes.  
  
• While we were in different rooms I would tell Carter what room we were in.  Then I would ask him what were some things in the room.  He would point them out and tell them to me.  For example in the living room he pointed out TV and chair.  In the kitchen he pointed out toothbrush and potty chair.
• We played with Carter's Live, Laugh, and Learn Playhouse.  I'd ask him to point out parts of the house.  For example, I'd say "Carter show me where the mailbox is."  He'd point to it and then start playing with it.  We talked about the door, roof, mailbox, light switch, light, window, and door knob. 

• Carter always helps clean up his room and pick up his toys when we're done playing.  This week I got a bit more specific with it.  When he wanted to play with a new puzzle, we had to put the last puzzle away before we could get out a new one.  The same went with toys.  If he wanted to play with something new, he had to put what he was playing with last away.  It kept things from getting quite as messy before we straightened up.  We won't always do that, but it was good practice! 
• I printed pictures of 3 different houses: a brick house, a house made of wood, and a log house.  I showed each of the pictures to Carter and talked about what they were made of.  Then I had him sort the pictures into piles based on what they were made out of.  Once he was finished sorting we counted how many houses were in each pile.  After we counted them I asked him how many were in the pile and he responded back with the last number we had said while counting.  For an older child you could print pictures of different items that are found in specific rooms and have them sort the items into the rooms where they belong. 

Craft:

• I cut out shapes to make a shape house and then we talked about the shapes as Carter glued them together to make the house.  When we were finished he colored grass on his picture which meant he scribbled green all over the page!

Adding a triangle roof to his house.

He was fussing at me because he didn't want me to take his picture.

• I wanted to find coloring pages for different rooms in the house, have Carter color them, and then make the pages into a book with the names of each room written at the top of the page.  I found coloring pages here and printed them off.  Carter and I sat together to color the pages.  We worked on them a little bit at a time and then I stapled them together to make a book.  My thought for older children is that you could give them a blank room page and have them draw items you would see in that room on the page and then put them together into a book.  You could even go room to room and sit in the room to get ideas about items to add.  I found a printable coloring sheet here where you can even type out the name of the room to show at the top of the page.  It's been a theme lately that Carter doesn't want me to take pictures of him while he's coloring or crafting.  I respected his wishes and just took a picture of the cover of our book while he was coloring on a different page.

Special Snack:

• I broke a graham cracker to make a square and then cut a triangle out of cheese to make a house with a roof.  Then I cut a rectangle for the door and 2 squares for windows out of the cheese.  Carter looked at it and yelled, "House!" when he saw it.

Checking out his house snack. 

Make Believe:

• We went to the Children's Museum.  In one area they have large blocks for building and we built a house with the help of an older girl there who was very sweet with Carter.  We pretended some of the blocks were doors and opened them.  We pretended the holes were windows and played peek-a-boo through them.  Carter also enjoyed decorating the roof with scarves and cones.

Songs:

• I found an adorable finger play here.  It goes like this:

Here are the windows.

Here is the door.

Come on in, I'll show you more!

Here is the kitchen and living room too.

A bathroom, a bedroom, a room for you!

An attic and chimney and a roof above.

My house is a home and it's filled with love!

   
Field Trip/Interactive Experience:

• We went for a playdate at Landon's house and talked about the different rooms in the house.  Landon's brother even showed us his room and told us who the other rooms belonged to.

Books:

• The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson
• A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle 
• If I Built a House by Chris Van Dusen
• The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton
• A House Is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman
• If All the Animals Came Inside by Eric Pinder
• Building Our House by Jonathan Bean
• Harry's Home by Caterine Anholt
• Hey, Mama Goose by Jan Breskin Zalben
• The House Across the Street by Jules Feiffer
• The House Book by Keith DuQuette
• I Know A Place by Karen Ackerman
• In A People House by Theo LeSieg
• Let's Go Home: The Wonderful Things About A House by Cynthia Rylant
• The Mitten by Jan Brett
• This Is My House by Richard Scarry
• A Very Special House by Ruth Krauss
• Whose House? by Barbara Seuling
• Wonderful Houses Around the World by Yoshio Komatsu- I loved this book and want to remember it for when I'm back in the classroom.  It would bring up so many wonders and teaching points!
• Building a House by Byron Barton
• Wake Up House!  Rooms Full of Poems by Dee Lillegard- I also really liked this one and would like to pick out a few of the more relevant poems to read over and over with Carter.
• My Very First Book of Animal Homes by Eric Carle