Jenny's Surprise Summer & Shapes

Since our last post, Little Mister has been learning shapes more and more. Just this morning we had a breakthrough with getting Triangle and Rectangle named correctly!!! Yay!

We have been using his shape activities lots (see our recent post), and he has picked out shapes in everyday life, ALL ON HIS OWN! Love how all of a sudden he excitedly points and says "Circle mum, look Circle!" etc.

I posted a lot of the ideas we would use to learn shapes, some we have used, and some are still to be used. We will keep on with shapes until he can tell me them all without any help. Yes, it may be another month (or more!) but Little Mister is still enjoying it, so we'll keep on going :)

For the previous two weeks we 'rowed' Jenny's Surprise Summer by Eugenie. A beautiful story about a little girl, Jenny, who is holidaying by the beach at her Gran's place, when she finds 2 kittens. At the end of the summer holiday she has to decided which one to take home with her, and she decides based on the character of each Kitten. In this time, we also spent a 4 day weekend camping near the beach, and so Little Mister was able to 'get inside' the story with exploring and finding rocks, shells and seaweed etc, and chasing seagulls, and swimming in the ocean (unfortunately we didn't find any stray kittens).

We used:

Printables from Homeschool Share

Observation Ideas from Before Five In A Row Manual

Our fortnight in  pictures...

Will it sink of will it float? Daddy did this activity with Little Mister about 3-4 times through the fortnight. Little Mister loved the idea that there was a difference between things floating and sinking, pretty sure he understands the concept, just gets the words confused!

 

I can't remember where I found these colouring pictures... we coloured one in grey for Smokey and one in orange for Pumpkin, the two kittens in Jenny's Surprise Summer. We talked about why they had these particular names and about their different characters. Then we found each kitten on the pages of the book.

 

We looked through and talked about different kinds of cats, looks personalities, oddities etc. It's hard to tell how much Little Mister understands at this age (almost 2.5), but we talk about it anyway and he picks out different things in the pictures that interest him also.

We also sang cat songs and read cat poems/rhymes etc.

 

Here's Little Mister exploring the beach and building a car wash with Grandma and Grandpa. He loves to see the waves race up he beach and fill the holes he has made. It was Little Misters imagination that turned the hole into a car wash! We spent a few hours one day exploring the beach and ocean. In Jenny's Surprise summer there are seagulls, shells, crabs etc, and we did our best to find everything in the book. We collected about 30 flat smooth pebbles to bring home, which Little Mister has had a great time using as "bumpy roads" for his cars, and seeing how high he can stack them etc.

 

We spent a half hour or so watching remote-control gliders at a cliffs edge. Little Mister's first time seeing such a thing, and he was thrilled!

True bush camping. Lots for Little Mister to explore, lots of wildlife and lots of creation to just be amongst. The Kookaburras came in each evening for a nosey, the kangaroos came in also for feeding, and we even saw a Joey climb into it's mother pouch!

 Good, old fashioned, do-nothing relaxing was on the "activities" list :)

Little Mister is telling the Kookaburras to "get in cart, Kookaburra". Very cute. We think he thought they would do as they were told, like when playing with his hens and goats at home!

All in all, a wonderful fortnight with lots of fun memories :)

Shapes

My hubby and I sat down with Little Mister to play with his Shapes Jigsaw last night, and he surprised us by knowing what most of the shapes were! We certainly haven't sat down to teach him before, so this is a very good example of learning through play :)

We've picked this as the prime opportunity to reinforce shapes and for Little Mister to learn the ones he hasn't learnt already. We plan to do lots with shapes for a fortnight, and have a ball!

 

We intend to use a lot of Montessori style learning, and here's some of what we intend to use!

Ideas from The Activity Mom

• Candle Build-A-Shape Mat
• Bottle Top Shapes and Colours (printable)

I printed the Shapes Colouring Pages from Colouring Castle and the Shape Worksheets from Have Fun Teaching and covered them in smooth clear contact for Little Mister to colour and trace etc with soft crayons (you can use Crayola's Dry Erase Markers, or head to a cheap shop and buy a packet of crayons that are soft to the point where you can draw on your skin).

I sorted through our toy box and found...

• My First 1001 Words - has a couple of pages on shapes
• Fisher Price magnetic drawing board with 4 shape magnets and pen
• Tupperware Shape-O
• A Play-With-Me Book on Shapes with shapes on each page that pop out like a jigsaw piece
• Shape On Shape - A never ending wooden puzzle (I'll post pictures later to show what it looks like!)

Other ideas:

• Look through magazines/old picture books for shapes to cut out and make a collage page.
• Use Pipe Cleaners (I think some call them chenille sticks?!) to make each shape
• Make a 'stained glass window' toddler style (we did one quite some time ago, so time to do it again). Here's how you do it: cut a cardboard frame in each shape. When ready to make each 'window', cover one side with clear contact, leaving it sticky on the back for your child to stick cellophane pieces to. Then when that's done cover the other side in clear contact too. Done! Imagine all the shapes lined up on the window in the sun :)
• Look for the shapes in every day life, for example traffic signs (stop, give way, keep left, pedestrians etc
• Little Mister has plenty of playdough toys and cutters, but only one shape! So to incorporate playdough into this one, I'll help him role lengths of playdough and create the shape that way.
• Make a mobile from cardboard and attach it to an old coat hanger (we have tones!)

Wow! I've even surprised myself and I still have ideas filling my head as I type! Definitely thinking that this might be the main topic for a month rather than 2 weeks.

Check out my Toddler Basics page for even more ideas on teaching colours, shapes, letters, numbers and also Gross and Fine Motor Skills.