The Rainbow Clouds Craft

I saw this beautiful rainbow craft a few weeks ago in Pinterest and I totally forgot the main site, so please if you own this craft leave a message and I’ll include the credits. 

I’ve been introducing Vito to the spring season using our Spring Season Picture Cards, books and outdoor activities.  Today, I’m sharing the rainbow clouds the boys made last week.  The weather was terrible at that time  and we couldn’t explore our yard so I made use of their free time doing crafts at home.  So I tried to scan through Pinterest in search of simple crafts that BOTH of my kids could work on, and this is one of them!

Crafts projects allow children to exercise their fine motor skills, improve manual dexterity and understanding of visual-spatial relationships.  They provide opportunities to use their imagination as well.  Just be vigilant when using small items and sharp objects like scissors.

Materials:

• strips of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple cardstocks
• white cardstock for the clouds
• cotton
• glue

Procedure:

1.  Pre-cut the white cardstock into a cloud shape.  I made one for each of the boys.  Apply glue on the clouds, and I suggest you provide each kid a glue as they tend to fight over one object when working.  In our case, I just instructed them of what to do, and they’re the ones who executed it. Mostly, Vito follows what his brother is doing

2.  Place a generous amount of cotton.  The fluffiness of the cotton bothers Vito though and he tried to avoid touching the glue as well.

3.  Apply glue at the bottom side of the cloud for your rainbow.  Place accordingly the strips of coloured cardstock to form a rainbow.  You can demonstrate this to the kids or instruct them of the order of colours if they are not yet familiar with rainbow.

4.  Strike a pose when they are dry!  See how Vito refuses to strike a pose in the camera LOL.  See what happens when your toddler is camera shy.

                                

5.  And don’t forget to put  them on display. They look adorable as wall decors and kids love looking at their masterpieces!  The cherry blossom was another project that we made earlier last month and will post the details soon.

 

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St. Patrick’s Day Activities for 28 Months Toddler

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Vito is 28 months old.

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and we are excited to watch the parade in the city this year!  To introduce Ireland’s big celebration to Vito, I prepared a bunch of work trays for him this month as he turns 28 months old.  I featured 9 activities here but in reality we’re doing so much more, so I’ll just update the blog of other activities that are not included here.

1.  Ireland Matching Cards.  These cards are similar to the picture books that I have already in the shop.  The cards here are all about the icons of Ireland.

2.  Sorting Erasers.  Owned this since last year and it is just now that Vito enjoys sorting it.  You can get the erasers from here.

3.  Sorting Colors.  Using the Montessori Colour Tablets #2, Vito will be sorting the rainbow colors using our Learning Resources counters.  In the picture we’re using the insect counters, he likes them!

4.  Letter R and Round Magnets.  This Rainbow Do a Dot was printed from here and I saw this from Deb’s page.  It’s a good practice of hand eye coordination.  Vito makes sure he places the round magnets exactly into the dots.

5.  Creating a rainbow using Do a Dot Markers.  Similar to the Rainbow do a dot but this time we’re using the markers.  I showed Vito how to color the rainbow and he finished half of the page. And no, he didn’t follow the order of the rainbow colors (as expected).  You can get the rainbow pattern from Making Learning Fun.

6.  Pouring lentils using a funnel.  Out of all the activiites, this one is Vito’s favourite.  More on this later.

7.  Scooping lentils. He’s quite bored with scooping activities lately, I guess its because we’ve been doing it all throughout the week.  And besides, he enjoys using his hands more than using a scoop or spoon.

8.  Counting gold coins.  I bought the gold coins in Amazon for our Pirate Unit last year, and this time Vito gets to use it for St. Patrick’s Day.  We have more counting activities than letters because believe it or not, Vito is more interested in counting than letters.

9. Patterning.  This is for colour recognition and introduction to patterning.  We are using the link cubes I bought from Singapore years ago, but you can also purchase this in Amazon.  This March, we’re working on orange and green colors, so our color activities will revolve around this two.

10. One to one correspondence using clothes pins.  A new addition to our monthly work trays is this counting cards and clothes pins.  We have lots of pins at home but found them difficult to open, so I bought the wooden ones for Vito to practice on.  He’s able to open and close it, and now his biggest challenge is to clip it on the picture. This activity is counting practice and enhancement of hand-eye coordination skills.

 

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How We Learn Colours These Days

We finally started our colour toddler basket last week wherein we put red objects in the basket for learning colours.  We started with the colour Red, the colour of Valentines Day and Chinese New Year

There are so many versions of this basket, sometimes they are called discovery baskets or treasure baskets wherein Mommies gather specific or themed objects and place them in a basket for the baby and toddler to explore.  Now what makes our version different?

Vito is good in colour sorting activities but still a hit or miss when it comes to naming the colours.  It would have been easier if I assemble the objects myself but I realized that Vito will learn much more if HE DISCOVERS and ASSEMBLES the objects by himself with my assistance.

Yes, Mommies! Don’t assemble the basket on your own, do it together with your little one. It’s fun, engaging and they will love doing it for you! As Mavi described it, it’s like Easter egg hunting or treasure hunt.

To start the activity, we earlier had a painting activity to re-introduce the color red.  You can also do colouring activities using red crayons or pens.

The next day, we did a red colour hunting at home!  We roam around the house, open drawers here and there in search of objects that are red.    During the activity, I would ask Vito something like “where’s the red block?”, “is this a red train”, “can you pick up the red duplo”?  Then we placed the objects in the basket and let him play with it for as long as he wants.  When not in use, I just place the basket in the shelf.  Just side note, Vito tends to scatter them around the house, so the objects are in a ziploc.  Whenever he wants to play with them, he would ask me to open the plastic.  This will keep the objects intact and your sanity as well!

Items that we have discovered in the house that are red:

• Playmobil Children’s Train Set.  We got this for free!
• Red disk from Wonderworld Disk Stacker
• Red soft block from B Toys Squeeze Blocks
• Red felt craft paper from local store
• Strawberry from M&D Fruit Set
• Red tweezer from Learning Resources Jumbo Tweezers
• Red duplo from LEGO Amazon

Make sure that when you play with your kids, always use “red” as an adjective like “let’s play with your red train”, “can you stack your red block?”  This will further familiarize your child with the colour and associate the word “red” to the colour itself.

For more toddler activities, click here or visit my Toddler Board on Pinterest!

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