This morning it was rainy and a surprising 64 degress, yesterday it got up to 97! With the rain and added darkness Carter slept in until 7:20! Talk about the perfect way to start our Saturday. My parents are visiting to do some more work on Thomas' house. It looks like he'll be ready to move in soon. He plans to stay at our house while we are in Florida next week with Ty's family (we can't wait!!!) so he can take care of Harper and Skippy. Then he should be ready to move into his house when we return. We had some over-ripe bananas I had meant to make banana bread with the day before and hadn't. My mom decided to whip some up with Carter. He mashed the bananas with a potato masher, added all the ingredients together in a bowl with some help, and mixed everything up. He looked so cute concentrating so hard as he worked and got a little bit messy at first so we pulled out an apron Gigi made me for Christmas one year. It is adjustable and an added bonus is that it fits Carter! Other than pulling out a chunk of banana, taking a bite, and then throwing it back in, he was all business. He also wanted to touch the raw egg, but did really well when we told him it was yucky and would make him sick because it had to be baked. After that all I had to say was "yucky, yuck" if he went to touch it and he'd stop. He was so proud of his banana bread and kept wanting to go look at it while it was in the oven. He would come over to me and say "I, I, I" and then lead me over to the oven to show me the banana bread. I think he said "I, I, I" because he had made it.
Smashing bananas before it got too messy.
Adding an egg grampy cracked into a measuring cup for him.
Mommy, look, I'm mixing!
Extreme concentration.
The view from behind was so cute!
Grammy helping to add vanilla.
He wanted to use the teaspoon to drop the flour in a little at a time...
Since the weather was so perfect I headed out for my long run shortly after the bread went into the oven. My parents said Carter kept wanting to get the bread out of the oven and they would tell him, "It's not ready yet". So he went and got an oven mitt and stood by the oven saying, "Ready!?" I'm not sure how they finally distracted him as the bread had to cook for an hour! When the bread was ready he was extremely excited and enjoyed a few pieces before I got home. It was so nice to come home to the smell of fresh banana bread that even after my 10 mile run was still warm. I swear it tasted even better knowing that Carter had made it. It was so cute to see how proud he was and how excited he was to eat the banana bread. It's amazing how children react when they have ownership of a project. I was amazed time and time again at school how proud children were over even the smallest tasks, simply because they were trusted to do it themselves. Carter and I have cooked together before, but I must say it was a lot more fun with 3 adults to 1 toddler!
He is such a great helper. It blows my mind how much he wants to help and how he thinks of ways to help on his own. When we got home from our trip to my parents' house for labor day weekend Skippy had thrown up on the floor. I didn't notice it until the next day and was busy when I saw it so I didn't stop to clean it right away. Later in the day Carter walked over and pointed to it, asking "what's that?" I told him Skippy had thrown up and I forgot to clean it up and I needed to do it. As I was going over to get something to clean it Carter climbed up on a chair so I stopped to make sure he didn't fall. He grabbed a napkin off the table and walked over to the mess, wiping it with the napkin in an attempt to clean it up. It was the sweetest gesture. Not only did he understand what I was saying, but he was trying to help fix it!
I've been trying to get him to sleep with a blanket for a while now and he was just never interested. This month he has finally started sleeping with a blanket, but it has to be just right. One night I laid him down in his crib and put the blanket over him. He laid quietly for a bit while I sat in the rocker. Then he stood up and said "uh oh" so I went over to check. He was holding his blanket and handed it to me while he laid back down. I covered him with the blanket and sat back down. A little bit later he did the same thing and I put the blanket on him, tucking it under his sides. He went right to sleep after that. It was the cutest!
He follows directions so well and can even follow multiple step directions. I was telling Jeremy how cute it is to read Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley with Carter because at the end he'll say "Go away!" and then turn the page. I told Carter to go get his green monster book to read to Jeremy and that it was in mommy and daddy's room. He took off down the hall and disappeared into our bedroom. When he came back he had the book and handed it to Jeremy. It was adorable! I've tried getting a video of him reading the book, but I haven't gotten a very good one. Normally he says "go away" much clearer than he does in this video.
During our color themed learning week I would point to things and ask Carter what color they were. He would just look at me and smile. If I told him the color he would occasionally repeat it after me and would sometimes still just stare at me. I felt like things just weren't sticking, but I knew that was okay because at his age it's all about exposure and he'll get it later on. We kept going with the color week, having fun with all the activities and I kept trying out pointing at things and asking the color to no avail. Then yesterday I was putting some things away while he "read" in his book nook. I heard him say orange so I looked over and he was pointing at something orange on the page and saying it's color. I was so excited. It turned out he was learning, he just didn't feel like performing for me!
This week's learning theme ended up lasting 2 weeks. We were really busy the first week with playdates, meetups, and my mom in town, so we didn't get all of our learning activities in. Rather than try to squeeze the rest in during the weekend, I decided to lengthen the theme out another week. I'm going to share the
activities we did throughout the week, highlighting what area they fit
into: field trip/interactive experience, crafts, songs, make believe,
movement, and special snack. I will also share our book list for
themed-related reading throughout the week. Carter loved all the activities we did. There was an activity I decided to skip because I felt it wasn't age appropriate. This is a week we will definitely revisit when he is older. He enjoyed learning about colors and the books were a huge hit, but he's not quite ready for naming colors on his own. I feel this would be a great week to do again when he's a bit more ready to name colors.
Listed below are the objectives I am
focusing on for the themed weeks. The highlighted objectives are ones
Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:
Know the names of and be able to point out body parts.
Know names of objects and be able to point to them when asked.
Sort objects based on size or color/Match like objects together, for example match a circle with a circle.
Play make believe.
Speak in short phrases and 2-4 word sentences. (He's done some 2 word sentences already!)
Follow simple instructions.
Activities/Movement:
The simplest way we practiced colors was through me constantly pointing to objects and telling Carter what color they were. If we ran by a car and he yelled out "car", I would say, "Yes, that's a red (or whatever color it was) car!" I did that with all kinds of stuff and we were constantly talking about colors. When he's older I will point at objects and ask him to tell me what color it is.
I found some Dr. Seuss flash cards in the dollar spot at Target a while back. One of the flash card sets focuses on colors and shapes. We played with the flash cards focusing on color. I would help Carter sort the cards based on the color of the shape shown. I would also hand him a card and tell him the color. Sometimes he would repeat the color word after me, other times he'd just look at the card.
Another great Target dollar spot find was a caterpillar color puzzle. Carter had fun doing the puzzle with me. I would hand him a puzzle piece and tell him what color it was. Again he would sometimes repeat the color word and other times just look at the color. His favorite color words to say are blue, yellow, and green.
We played outside with sidewalk chalk and we talked about what color each piece of chalk that he used was. We did the same inside with the chalkboard in his room.
I saw an idea on pinterest to make rainbow rain with shaving foam. You fill a clear glass about 3/4 of the way full with water and then add a very thin layer of shaving foam at the top. Then you drop food coloring onto the shaving foam (we did about 2 drops at a time) and watch it "rain" down through the shaving foam. We did one color at a time starting with red, then blue, then yellow, and lastly green. I rinsed the water out each time and then re-did the water and shaving foam for the next color. We talked a lot about the color of the food coloring while we watched it and Carter had a blast! He loved squeezing the dye and watching it float down into the water. By the end his hand was totally green. After we'd done each color by itself, we did all the colors at once and talked about how they mixed together and made new colors. When we were finished Carter fussed to do it again. He absolutely loved this project!
Another favorite of Carter's was a color sort we did. I planned to use a paper towel roll, but forgot it at home and planned to do the activity at my parents' house over the weekend. So I improvised and colored computer paper, rolled it up, taped it, and hung it to the wall. To keep things simple I stuck with the primary colors. Then I went around the house and found 5 things representing each color. I put all the items in a box and set it by the rolls. Carter ran in, saw it, and immediately started playing. He grabbed a blue ball and dropped it into the blue roll. He didn't need me to model what to do or anything. He had a blast sorting a few of the items and then just wanted to drop stuff down into the rolls, so I let him. This was an activity we will definitely do again!
We played with Carter's xylophone. I would tap a chime and tell Carter what color it was. When he was playing with the xylophone I would tell him what color chime he'd just tapped. Doing this theme again, I'd ask him to tap a certain color.
Something we skipped because I didn't feel Carter was quite ready for, but I plan to do next time we cover this theme is a color run. The idea was to tie different colored ribbon to spoons. Then put all of the spoons in a container. Put the container at one end of the hall and have your child stationed at the other. Tell your child to run and get you a certain color. Carter will definitely enjoy this as he already loves me telling him, "Get ready, set, go" and having him run down the hall. He just needs to understand colors well enough to get the right one.
Craft:
We made homemade finger paint sticking with the primary colors using a really simple recipe: 1/2 cup cornstarch, 2 cups water, boil until thick, divvy into bowls when cooled, and mix food coloring in. We were at grammy and grampy's when we did this one. We were originally going to paint outside, but it rained, so we did it inside. Carter was going to finger paint on paper, but his grammy decided it would be more fun for him to paint on her table cloth that goes under the decorative ones to protect the table. We talked about the colors and I said the color Carter was using. Then we mixed colors and talked about what we had made. We ended up with a lot of gray at the end. Then Carter got a bit wild and wanted to give everyone high fives with his messy fingers. It was hilarious!
Special Snack:
When Carter and I read the book Strawberries are Red by Petr Horacek after one of our library visits I immediately knew I wanted to read the book to him again when he was learning about colors and divide the pages of the books into afternoon snacks. We'd read the whole book and then each day of the week we'd read one page at snack time and he'd eat that fruit as his snack. So that's what we did this week. Carter loved the book and one day after snack time he even laid down on the futon and read the book. It was so cute hearing him point to the fruits and say their names. My favorite being "ne ne" for banana.
Laying on the futon reading the book after snack time.
Make Believe:
We didn't do anything that fit into the make believe category with this theme. I could really stretch it and say our rainbow rain project was make believe because we were pretending to make rain, but that's really stretching it!
Songs:
Balloon Song:
The Apple is Red:
Field Trip/Interactive Experience:
We went on color walks. I loaded Carter up in the wagon and took either Harper or Quinn with us. We did a red color walk, a blue color walk, a yellow color walk, and a green color walk. I gave Carter a piece of construction paper that was the color we were searching for. I handed him the piece of paper and told him the color. Then I told him we were searching for that color on our walk. When I found something that color I would stop, take a picture of it, and point it out to Carter, explaining what it was and what color it was. After we were finished with all of our walks which we spread over multiple days, I created color books with our pictures. The first book was titled "Colors" and had one picture of something representing each color on a different page. Then I made a book for each different color with a picture on each page and a very simple sentence to go with it, for example: The sky is blue. That way when Carter is a bit older and just beginning to read he will have some very simple books he can read on his own. Making the books was simple. I copy and pasted the pictures into word so I could make them the size I wanted, getting as close to a 4 inch x 4 inch picture as possible. Then I printed the pictures and cut them to fit within a Ziploc bag. I wrote the sentence at the bottom of the page and then flipped the page over and glued a different picture to the other side. Then I sealed the Ziploc bag and taped the bags together to create pages. Carter loves his family book I made with Ziploc bags so I knew he would enjoy the color books created the same way. Next time around I will have Carter search out the items and show me so I can take a picture. We will do different colors so we can make different color books and add pages to our book of colors.
Ready for our blue color walk.
Ready for our green color walk.
Reading his red book.
Reading his yellow book.
He loved the picture of the fire truck sign!
Books:
Carter really enjoyed the color books. I felt he learned the most from reading and re-reading all of the books we found!
