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:
- Take turns in a simple game.
- Understand the meaning of mine, his, hers.
- Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).
- String beads or other objects.
- Count to 3 and understand what the numbers mean.
- With how interested Carter is in mommies and babies, especially in books we read and with animals, I wanted to do a sorting game where we would match babies to their mothers. I planned to make my own cards, but ended up finding some really awesome ones here. There were quite a few so I pulled out 5-6 at a time, putting all the moms in a column and all the babies in a separate column. Then Carter would match them up. He absolutely loved it and I was surprised he did all of the cards. I figured we'd only make it through about half the animals.
- We played Simon Says but called it Mommy Says. Carter really enjoys being told actions and following along.
- I pulled up "Born to Love You" sung by Ben Harper and his mother, Ellen Harper. Carter and I danced together. It was so cute because when I asked him to dance with me and picked him up he instantly stretched his arm out for me to hold his hand. We also danced part of the song with him in the floor holding my hands and I spun him a few times. He was done dancing about half way through the song so I finished it out dancing with Elise.
- We looked at pictures of mothers and babies from around the world and talked about how they were like us and how they were different. I also had Carter point out what he noticed in the picture.
- Carter was going to make me a necklace using the heart beads we got at Valentine's Day, but I didn't remember I packed them away in the valentine tote which is now in the attic.
- We made special Mother's Day cards for grandmas and great grandmas. We used one of Carter's handprints as a flower and one of Elise's handprints as a flower and then drew stems and a bow to make them into a Mother's Day bouquet.
- Carter and Elise also put their handprints on pot holders for their grandmas and an oven mitt for me. Then I wrote with fabric markers Gma's, Oma's, or Mommy's (depending on who the present was for) Helping Hands.
- For his grandmas Carter decorated a plain white tea towel with fabric markers. He picked lighter colors to use so unless you get really close to the towel you can't really see it which is a bummer!
- Carter also decorated black mats with white crayon. Then I added a picture of him and Elise into the frame and put magnets on the back so the frames could hang on their refrigerators.
- To top it all off, Carter finger painted brown bags to wrap his grandmas' presents in.
- I took Carter on a special mommy/son date to buy our zoo membership at a special discounted price and then we stopped at Krispy Kreme to use a coupon for buy one, get one free doughnuts. It is so much fun to let Carter pick his doughnut and then sit together while he eats it. This time he even grabbed one of the hats and wore it.
- After reading through "How Do Animal Babies Live?" we went through one page at a time and pretended to be the animals. We put fake eggs on our feet like penguins, fed the open mouth of our baby birds, and pretended to carry our babies in our mouths like crocodiles. Carter's favorite was carrying our babies in our mouths like a cheetah.
Pretending to care for his cheetah baby. 
- We sang "You are My Sunshine" and "Over in the Meadow".
- We listened to "Born to Love You".
- We went to a special Mother's Day party at a library story time. They read books about babies and moms and then we shared and are treats.
- Ty's Aunt Brenda sent us pictures of mother ducks with their ducklings at a pond by her house. Carter loved looking at the pictures. We made plans to go visit to see them the following week. We went to a pond by the Children's Museum to see if there were any ducklings or goslings, but there weren't any.
- Grandmother and I by Helen E. Buckley
- Me and My Mom by Alison Ritchie
- Over in the Meadow by Michael Evans
- Animals and Their Young by Pamela M. Hickman
- Mother's Day by Anne F. Rockwell
- Biscuit Loves Mother's Day by Alyssa Satin Capucilli
- I Love My Mommy by Giles Andeae
- I Love My Mommy by Sebastian Braun
- Mommy's Best Kisses by Margaret Anastas
- T. Rex and the Mother's Day Hug by Lois G. Grambling
- Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
- Welsome, Little Baby by Aliki
- Across the Stream by Mirra Ginsburg
- Have You Seen My Duckling? by Nancy Tafuri
- I Love You As Much by Laura Krauss Melmed
- Does Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle
- Just Me and My Mom by Mercer Mayer
- Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman
- Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin
- Mommy Hugs by Anne Gutman
- Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joosse
- Let Me Hold You Longer by Karen Kingsbury
- Animal Babies by Bobbie Hamsa
- Animal Babies Around the House by Vicky Weber
- How Do Animal Babies Live? by Faith Hickman Brynie
- Animal Babies in Ponds and Rivers by Jennifer Schofield
- Animal Babies in Seas by Jennifer Schofield
- Animal Babies in Polar Lands by Jennifer Schofield
- My First Book of Baby Animals
- You and Me Together: Moms, Dads, and Kids Around the World by Barbara Kerley
- I Am Small by Emma Dodd
- That's What Grandmas Do! by Alarie Tennille (read and recorded by Gma!)
- You Are My Heart by Marianne Richmond
- Moo Moo, Brown Cow by Jakki Wood
I'll bet his favorite was carrying his "baby" in his mouth. Looks like it's fun.
ReplyDeleteYes, he loved that!
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