Wednesday, May 27, 2009

WFMW - "C" Activity Trays

Tot School
"C" school hasn't been as crazy as "B" school, though there has been lots of cool stuff to do! We have only 17 photos of our "C" trays today, though we shall more than make up for the shortage next week when we go through "C" adventures!

Here are the "C" things on our activity tray shelves that worked for this 25-month-old for the last two weeks...
Sensory Tub. For "C", we swapped out beans for corn - specifically popcorn. I love the feel of this stuff - it is nice and cool! Mommy hid a bunch of "C" objects in there for me to find, like little wood cats and candles. Plus there were some little circle cups in there for me to scoop and pour. Of course, hiding myself (at least my hands and feet) is always the most fun.

My 4-year-old buddy came to visit, and he wanted to cook the corn in the microwave, but Mommy wouldn't let us...

Scratch and Sniff. For "C" I had a cinnamon stick and sandpaper. I "wrote" with the cinnamon stick and then sniffed it - it smelled really good!

Candle. I have this lovely-smelling candle in a cat container! Perfect for lighting (with Mommy's help) and blowing out and singing "Happy Birthday!"

Counting. I got to count coins! There were 15 of them - 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of each denomination, and I was supposed to put the right number of coins in each cup.

I decided I'd rather put the coins in my purse, though. I learned how to use vending machines last week.

By the way, I am getting really good at counting. I can count the number of fingers someone is holding up. I've been working on holding up 2 and 3 fingers and can do those on
demandrequest now. And if you ask me "how many?" of something, up to about 12, I can count and tell you. Though Mommy says sometimes I skip one at the beginning or add one to the end.

Color Clips. Mommy made some color cards by gluing construction paper to an index card, then covering with contact paper. Then she put them on a tray with two paper clips of each color to match the cards. I had to sort out the clips by color and then attach them to the right card.

Matching colors was a breeze. Mommy had to help a little with putting the clips on the cards, but I'm gettin' it!

Egg Tray. I had colored pom poms to put into each section of an egg tray. We didn't use tongs since Mommy couldn't find any small enough for this activity, but it was fun using my hands, too.

Though I had lots of arguments with Mommy over the names of the colors. How can three different pom poms of different colors all be "blue?" Colors can be so complicated.

Puzzle. I had a color circle wood puzzle to work on. It was kind of complicated since all the circles were the same size and I had to match by color only. And frankly, being a clothing fashionista, I think mixing colors is a good thing, so I didn't always match the colors.

Clock. I also had a clock puzzle that I had to put the numbers into. I did great on this. Mommy says she is amazed at how well I'm doing puzzles now.

Color Bottles. On our first "C" day, we made some color bottles by mixing water, a little bit of oil, and a few drops of food coloring in each bottle, then hot gluing the bottles closed. Then we put the bottles on my activity tray shelf. It was fun to watch the oil bubbles go up whenever we turned the bottles over - kind of like lava lamps.

Stickers. Stickers were really fun these weeks - candy and cupcakes! I made a few cards.

Coloring. I had my standard clipboard with crayons - only with "C" coloring pages these weeks. And of course a new mug - with cherries on it.

By the way, I have entirely stopped chewing crayons now that Mommy leaves them out for me all the time. Maybe if she leaves out candy all the time, the same thing will happen!

Play Doh. We just swapped out the cutters - for "C" we had clouds, candy canes, Cookie Monster, the letter C, and circles. I liked circles the best!

Rubber Stamping. Always fun. We swapped out the "B" stamps for "C" stamps and I made some more stamped strips, as well as stamping myself a lot.

And then I practiced cutting some of the strips. Only cutting is so much more fun now that I got new scissors for "D" week...

Magnets. We pulled out the picture frame magnets again and found "C" pictures in magazines to put in the frames. Let's see: cherry blossoms, Care Bears, cotton candy, cuckoo clock, and chickens. And for some added culture - an African cooking and a map of Cambodia.

Stacker Cups. I am an expert at these things, of course. I've had them since I turned one. It's fun to play with them, still, and make castles.

Calendar Matching. This is another activity I've had for a long time. Many calendars have thumbprint photos on the back page that match the photos inside. So Mommy lays out the big photos on the ground, and I take the little photos (which Mommy cut out for me) and match them up to the big photos. Piece of cake!

Chalk. Always a good thing for an artist like myself. I used my new chalkboard a lot. I also threw my chalk and broke it a lot. Now I have LOTS of pieces of chalk!

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10 comments:

daysease said...

I LOVED these C-day activities!!! Love the popcorn find!! I also love the feel of it--- yummy tasting, too. :-) So many great ideas. when I have no ideas coursing through my mind or am blank, I must come back here. You are stock full of creativity, Esme's mommy. Esme, your mommy is a remarkable woman. Enjoy her!! :-)

Gidget Girl Reading said...

great activity trays!!! looks like Cc study will be lots of fun!

ShEiLa said...

It appears that you are back to your awesome organization schedule.

Miss Esmé,
are you planning to be a tattoo artist? Photo #6 just makes me wonder.

ToOdLeS.

Michelle Gibson said...

Fun! Or should I say cool! Thanks for the great ideas!

Dianna@KennedyAdventures said...

WOW! What a busy Tot school post! I bought some colored pom poms for Rachel .... guess who has been playing with them?? You got it ... the BOYS! They LOVE them!

grammy said...

Very CCCCreative! and lots of fun (o:

Madeline said...

Esme, sounds like you've had a blast learning about the letter C.

Mozer said...

Lots of wonderful ideas!

Pamela said...

We had to put our "c" week on hold because we all had "C"olds, but I am glad we did because now we have some awesome ideas (not glad we were sick though!) Thanks for sharing. I agree with Sheila that you have a future tattoo artist on your hands, lol!

RockerMom said...

What a wonderful week for a wonderfully smart girl. Thanks for sharing!!