The Art Box – April 12, 2010

 The Art Box stayed pretty much the same this past week as it was the previous week (lazy mama syndrome), with the addition of some stickers and a wooden caboose to go with the train M has been putting together.

M needs a kick in the pants.  Or something.  He has been following me around for the past week saying “what can I do?  Can I watch TV? (no)  I can’t think of anything to dooo… whine, whine, whine.”  I’m pretty fed up with it.  He is suddenly not interested in even looking through his art box, unless it’s as a final resort to tackle the boredom. 

Anyway, this is all just to say what was done here was done only half-heartedly and I’m thinking of taking the art box away for a couple of weeks and simply putting out an art project (open ended, but not entirely child-directed) that he can choose to do or not do.  I am hoping to renew his interest in using his imagination and creativity.  My theory is he’s been sick on and off for the past 2 to 3 weeks and during that time has been allowed to watch too much tv and videos.  They can be a lifesaver sometimes with a sick kid, but they sure can become addictive and stifle the imagination pretty quickly!  I’ll still be doing my Art Box posts, but they may look a bit different for a couple of weeks.

M did enjoy painting his wooden caboose, albeit reluctantly:

 

He colored this coloring page with his sparkly gel pens:I love how close he’s getting to actually staying within the lines.  And I wish you could see how this thing glimmers in the sunlight!

 

M picked out two little pots at Target to move his sprouts into.  We planted some forget-me-not and shamrock seeds a while back and they are doing quite well.  It’s definitely time to move them to larger pots.  He decorated these first with some foam stickers:

Finished product (minus the plants):

 

He drew a picture for Daddy:

Then taped pieces of scrap paper to the back of it:

Then drew one for Mommy:He gave this to me, then very sweetly asked me to be his Valentine. :)  It’s a good thing Mama thinks you’re cute, kiddo!

Have some children’s artwork you’d like to share?  Link it up below, and make sure to include a link back here in your blog post! 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner – April 11, 2010

M is 3.5 years old.

Since we observe Lent, we waited until this week to do a lot of our Easter-themed activities (except for a few crafts the week before of course!).   In the Catholic church Easter is celebrated for 50 days, so we are just getting started!  We did not get through everything I had planned for this week because poor M is sick again!  I feel so bad for him… first pneumonia which we thought he was totally over, now what seems to be a run of the mill cold… but with a stuffy nose that won’t let him (or me) get any sleep.  Many of the Easter activities I had planned will easily fit into a spring theme, so we’ll just plug away at them as we have time in the coming couple of weeks.  Here’s what we have done so far…

Sensory:

The picture is not much to look at (I don’t know why I didn’t think to take pictures of the eggs open), but these are sound eggs.  There are 8 eggs total, with 4 different sounds.  M matched the sounds up with no problem and then opened them to see if he was correct.   I used egg noodles, buttons, sea shells, and erasers for the sounds.  There are so many options (coins, beads, pebbles, sand, etc.) and M loved doing these!  I’m tempted to keep this out on his shelf for another week and add in more sounds.

Fine Motor Skills:

I cut a bunny shape and an egg shape from some foam, punched holes around the edges for lacing, and then added in some pony beads.  M laced them, adding a bead in between holes.  He really enjoyed the change that the beads added to this activity.

I found this egg puzzle at Dollar Tree; it’s definitely advanced for M, but we had fun doing it together.  Each of the stripes separates from the others, and to put the egg back together you have to sort largest to smallest from the center out (if that makes sense?), then match up the little notches too. 

Math:

M did this Easter basket file folder game I put together for him.  You can find it here.  He enjoyed this, mainly because there are slits in the baskets that make little pockets for the eggs.  He had fun sliding them in, although he did feel bad for the zero basket which got… zero. :)

I also set out a dot painter page from here with tweezers and a small container of pom-poms:  M practiced one-to-one correspondence as well as his fine motor skills by putting a pom-pom on each circle with the tweezers (I’m really lacking in action shots lately, sorry!).  We are doing more and more activities like this with these dot painter pages.  After he’s done with the activity the page goes into his art box for coloring later.

Literacy:

I made some quick egg cards with letters on them to spell M’s name.  We strung them up with clothespins… so much more fun than simply placing them in order!  He has a somewhat long name with a digraph (th) in the middle of it; apparently we weren’t taking ease of spelling into consideration when we picked his name.  He had fun with this, but he’s not super interested in spelling yet.The lamb has nothing to do with this activity, it’s just a random coloring page he insisted on taping up right there. ;)

Play:

Of course we colored, “stickered”, and “glittered” eggs:

Then had fun hunting them in the backyard:

Then went to grandma’s house and did it all again:

This was the first year we really talked about what Good Friday and Easter are all about.   I wasn’t 100% sure that M even understood that people can die, and was a bit worried about questions that might arise when we talked about Jesus dying on the cross for us.  We tried to keep it pretty simple, but of course there were a million questions.  What with all the sickness going on around here, we had no activities to go with the real meaning of Easter this year, but our talks were quite deep for a 3 year old.  And I was so thankful to share the joy of Easter morning with M this year… how beautiful to hear my little child talking about Jesus rising.  :)

I hope you all had a beautiful week!! 

For more Preschool Corner posts, go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)