"Little Blue and Little Yellow"

This week, I had planned to focus on a different Leo Lionni book each day, but it turned out my child care children LOVED the book "Little Blue and Little Yellow."  So we just stuck with that book for the week. We were pretty much stuck inside all week, and with our basement flooded, we have had pretty tight quarters and just a smidgen of cabin fever, so I wanted to come up with as many activities for the little ladies as possible.

First, let me say a thing or two about the actual book. This is the book that launched Leo Lionni's children's book career. It is the story of  best friends, little blue and little yellow, who one day can not find one another. When they finally do, they give each other such a huge hug that they turn green. The illustrations in the book are simple, yet engaging.



Art

What a week for art. Everything we did, just used the colors yellow and blue.

I am going to work backwards and go from Friday to Tuesday. Today we placed torn yellow and blue tissue paper on contact paper. Leia decided to put her tissue paper on by the handful, while one of the girls I watch placed her tissue paper on one piece at a time.

 

Here you can see the pile of tissue paper Leia put on her paper

We put the finished product on the window. Leia observed that in some spot she could see "little green."

On Thursday, I made yellow and blue sidewalk chalk paint. To make this, you use 1 part corn starch, 1 part water, and food coloring. This is something one would typically do outside on the sidewalk, but since it was storming out, we did it inside :)

Letting the paint drizzle on the paper

Getting ready to put yellow on top of the blue

On, Wednesday, the girls used pipe cleaners to create yellow and blue "fireworks." I found the idea for this project at http://www.jugglingwithkids.com/2012/07/firework-painting.html

On Tuesday, the girls did ball painting. This is like marble painting, where you just place a small ball or two in a box and move the balls allowing them to glide through the paint.






Science
This is something that I found on pinterest, and I've wanted to try it out with the girls. The book, "Little Yellow and Little Blue" of course is the perfect set up for an experiment in the mixing of colors.

I just had three cups of water. In one cup I put yellow food coloring, the middle cup was just water, and the third cup was water and blue food coloring. I then place a paper napkin in the yellow and blue cup and place the other end of the paper towel in the clear water.

She had to climb on the table to get a closer look :)

Food Experience

I simply made the vanilla pudding yellow and blue.

Sensory

Using her eye-hand coordination to scoop the rice into the cup

What a fun week of sensory play. On Tuesday and Wednesday the girls played with the rainbow rice. This had colors other than yellow and blue in it, of course, but it was still a messy good time.

We also made yellow and blue spaghetti for the girls to play with. This is simple to make, you just prepare the noodles as directed on the box, drain, let cool, place noodles in bags or bowls for each color, add a tablespoon of olive oil, and drops of food coloring, and mix.

Ripley is using her sense of touch and taste!!

             

        Leia discovered that she had "little green" on her fingers when she was all done. 

    

Bugging Out!!

The last two weeks, we have been focusing on the theme "bugs." My house backs up to a small wooded area, so we see a lot of different bugs in our backyard.

Literacy

We focused on four different books for this theme. The first, "In the tall, tall grass," by Denise Fleming. This book has vibrant verbs, which makes it easy to engage the children. After doing my first reading, I had the children act out what was happening on the pages of the book.










The next book was, "There was an old lady that swallowed a fly." This book is based off an old folk tale and we read the version by Simms Taback. The illustrations in the book are wonderful and make it easy for children to predict what animal the old lady will swallow next. We also listened to the Pete Seeger rendition of the story in the form of a song. 





The third book was, "10 Little ladybugs," by Melanie Gerth. This is a board book that has plastic ladybugs on it, which is fantastic for infant and toddler exploration. It also has engaging rhyming text and is also a counting book, which you could probably tell by the title, which makes it easy for one to sneak mathematics into literacy. 

The last book was, "the very hungry caterpillar," by Eric Carle. Luckily, we had a toy that worked as a perfect retelling tool for this book. The toys were made of different textures and made different noises, which helped keep the infants engaged during story time. You can find it at toys r us.

                                                                   
                                                                   

Also, as a fun little side note, my daughter, Ripley, celebrated her first birthday last week and her theme was, "The Very Hungry Little Caterpillar."

 

Mathematics

This week in math, we focused on sorting bugs. I made a file folder game called, "bug sort." I found this while doing a google search. Unfortunately, after saving it as a pdf on my computer, I havent been able to find the original source of the file folder game, but if you are interested in the bug pack, please let me know because it included many other activities for preschool aged children. I would be happy to send the pdf to you via email.

Science
Explore, explore, explore, is what I had the girls do this week. They explored the backyard and looked for bugs. They were certainly not afraid to get dirty while they looked under rocks, around the trees, and dug in the dirt.

Art
I tried to get out of my Head Start mindset this week, and come up with projects for the children that had a little more structure to them, yet at the same time allowed them to create there own thing. So instead of simply placing art tools on the table and letting them make whatever (which is a wonderful thing to do), I gave them supplies and gave them a theme or told them, use these materials to make a ____. This isnt something I would do all the time, but it does help when teaching children how to follow directions or steps.

The first art project the children used dot a dot art paint and insect foam stickers. The girls didnt have any instructions while doing this, it was more of my typical open ended art.

 

Leia made, "the sky for all the bugs."

Another project the girls created was butterflies. This had a little more instruction because I wanted the girls to focus on how butterfly wings are symmetrical. I had the girls paint one side of the butterfly and then fold it over so that the wings would look the same on both sides. The girls enjoyed smooching the wings together.

Leia is showing her sister, Ripley, her finished butterfly.

The last art project was the paper plate ladybugs. This project had the most step by step instructions for the girls. The first task was to paint there paper plate. I allowed the girls to chose what color they wanted, they both chose red. The next step was to place a strip of black paper on the plate and finally the spots on the ladybug. Leia also wanted her lady bug to have legs, so I made these for her and had her tape them on the back of the plate.

Rainbows and Clouds

Over the past two weeks, the books we have been really focusing on were, "A Rainbow of my Own," by Don Freeman and "Little Cloud," by Eric Carle. The books are not repeating books or predictable, but with all the rain we have been getting here in Iowa, I knew the themes of the books would be something Leia could relate too.

For the book, "A rainbow of my own," we did a few activities. The first was a food experience, where Leia was able to paint her toast. She loved doing this so much, that she asked to do it every morning that week.

Making rainbow toast is simple. You just put food coloring in milk and use that as the paint. After painting, lightly toast.  I found this idea on  teachpreschool.org

For sensory play this week, I made rainbow rice. To make the rainbow rice, I put the rice into zip lock bags, added about 8 drops of food coloring and a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol and shook the bags. I then put the rice in the bin and let it dry on the deck in the yard. When first making it, I made sure that the colors were sorted, because Leia likes to have her items sorted by color.

When she first played with the rice, she was careful not to mix the colors, but after about an hour of playing, she began to allow the rice to blend together.

The girls also did rainbow art this week. I did an open ended art experience, where I place the materials on the table, and just let the girls come up with there own ideas. They used finger paint, wax paper, brushes, and plastic bottles.

When doing, "Little Cloud," I didn't have a lot of extra activities to go with the book. It was finally nice enough to go outdoors, so for the first day, we laid on the grass and talked about the different shapes of the clouds. We also took a field trip to the Family Museum, and lucky for us, the sensory play that they had out was cloud dough.

Here you can see one of my child care children trying to cut the cloud dough with her scissors.

When reading the book, "Little Cloud," I used the pictures in the book to add some math into the mix. We talked about the positional and measurement words.

Leia and I also made "cloud jello" this week. This is a super easy snack, you just need to layer blue jello with cool whip. Not the healthiest snack, but sometimes its nice to have a special treat.

In the area of open ended art, I gave the children blue paper, cotton balls, contact paper, and Leia scissors. Leia chose to both cut and tear her blue paper. The toddler that I watched watched as I tore the paper and then was able to tear some of the pieces herself.

Leia's Little "seaweed" cloud.

Some other highlights of the last two weeks, not dealing with the book themes included, bringing housekeeping toys outside.

Another important part of our daily routine is music and movement. This is something that children of all ages can enjoy. For the babies that are not mobile, some ideas to get them involved include handing them an instrument, placing them on your lap to bounce them to the beat of the music, or simply hold and dance with them.

Here is a video of the girls playing instruments to the song, "Victor Vito," by Laurie Berkner. Please excuse my singing at the ended :) This song has parts that move slow and fast. In the video, I tell Leia to "go slowly," in order for her to try to keep tempo with the music. My daughter, Ripley and one of the infants I watch, shook the egg shakers throughout the song, and at moments swayed to the music as well.