Last October was all about skeletons (this topic is still on and off) but this year E. has found her new favourite Halloween character: the Jack-o-lantern.
Jack-o-lantern Feelings
I made this printable with 6 kinds of different emotions:
happy
sad
angry
surprised
cheeky
scared
You can find this printable at the end of this blog post.
matching the words
I've also made word cards to it in the end, but the picture above shows these little pieces of felt (scrap) and the feelings written on them (with a permanent marker)
What you can do with these cards:
matching the faces
Match the picture and the words
Match the faces/emotions which are the same
Play a memory game with 2 sets
Place one set face down on the table. The players choose a card and don't show it to anyone, then make a face expressing that feeling. The other players need to find out what feeling it is.
(With bigger kids) Place one set face down on the table. The first player picks up a card and says I feel this when... and need to finish the sentence
Identify body parts on the face (eyes, eye brows, nose, mouth)
Identify shapes on the faces (This mouth is an oval, The eyes are circles. Can you show me a crescent mouth? What shape is this nose?)
So here is the printable. I hope you'll find it useful:
Everything centres around pumpkins and Jack-o-lanterns. It seems a never ending story. However, we could revise some shape vocabulary while making Jack-o-lanterns.
If you want to prepare this activity you just need:
thicker orange felt (or card board - the felt gives another interesting feel of it)
black construction paper or cardboard or more felt (for the shapes)
green construction paper (for the leaves)
brown cardboard (for the stem)
hot glue gun (or other glue)
scissors
Preparation:
Draw and cut out the pumpkins from the orange felt (I didn't use a template, just drew 3 similar pumpkin shapes on the felt - I used a dark orange marker - then I cut along the lines)
Out of the brown cardboard (which was actually an old postal box) I cut out 3 stems.
I couldn't find green construction paper at home so I used some scrap wrapping paper to cut out the leaves.
I glued the stem and the leaf on the back side of the orange felt pumpkin
I printed shapes for the eyes, nose and mouths for our Jack-o-lanterns. (Click on the link to find the printable) I copied the picture above in a word document and made it size A4. After having printed it (I can't print on construction paper) I attached it to black construction paper and cut them out (it takes a while but it's worth the trouble)
I placed everything in a big envelope and presented to my sweetheart.
Of course, she needed to wear her Jack-o-lantern costume
While she was placing the shapes, she named them. We also matched the same shapes. And talked about feelings expressed by certain mouth forms. (Another post is coming on emotions and pumpkins)
We did this activity again... and again... and again...
Although we had a week having fun with all kinds of apple games and activities (including the study of an apple) we couldn't avoid being ill again. Anyway, here is a collection of apple fun we've done lately.
I've found a great number of apple activities online but I fell in love with the free printables by 3dinosaurs' Apple Pack. This set contains 60 (!) pages of apple activities up to the age of 8-9. Wow! What a great collection! I've just selected a few games that would suit my 3-year old. Thank you, 3dinosaurs for this excellent Apple Pack.
Here is an insight what you could find in the pack:
What comes next? Patterning activity. I brushed it a up a little with Velcro
"The spotty apple is coming now"
Which one is different? Your child needs to find and circle (or put a manipulative on) the odd one out in the row
Pre-writing practice. We tried the easier sheet (laminated so we can reuse them).
Easy-peasy lemon squeezy
But the harder one seemed a little bit too challenging
Picture puzzles with numbers from 1-10 (We were talking about what she could see in the picture: -How many apples can you see? etc.) well, she's always been into numbers, even when she was little (click on the links for earlier posts)
And skip counting by 10s
Shape tracing and matching - a little bit of revision as we've already dealt with shapes a lot
After she's placed all the shapes we practised the "there is..." structure. It didn't appear to be a problem:
Mommy: - There is a red apple in the circle. And in the next?
E.: - In the square there's a green apple. In the triangle there is a yellow one. In the rectangle there's a checked apple and in the oval a spotty apple... or... what's the other name, Mommy?
Mommy: - Do you remember?
E.: - No. You say it.
Mommy: - Polka dotted.
E.: - Haha, it's funny. M., did you know polka dotted? (she turned to her favourite toy, the doggy you can see next to her on the table in the picture above)
Shape revision - tick.
Grouping. Apples and non-apples
She's clearly enjoying it)
Roll and count apples. I guess she enjoyed this one the most. I couldn't find red manipulatives, so we had "green apples" instead of red ones. The Apple Pack has a die cut-out, but I used only the apples and after having laminated them I stuck them on the six sides of a big die I'd found ages before in a OneEuro shop. First, she guessed which apple will win (which apple will reach the top of the chart). Her guess was the spotty. Mine was the yellow and M., E.'s doggy's guess was the stripy apple. Then we rolled the die. Everybody had a turn. Even the doggy :)
M., it's your turn to throw the die.
Of course, M. won.
Apple memory game
This game involved a lot of fun and useful tasks: matching, memorizing, counting. And at the end E. tested her toy dog whether he can name what's on the cards :)
E.: - What is it, M.?
Mommy (in M.'s voice): - Er... I think it's a tree.
E.: - Good job, M.
-And this? Do you know?
Mommy (in M.'s voice): - I know, I know. It's an apple pie. (and so on)
This was real cute.
We've played these games several times as she's asked for them both in English and in Hungarian.
We also studied a real apple to see what parts it has. For this I printed the apple parts booklet by A Little Pinch of Perfect and I highlighted the parts on each card. I didn't put them together like a book, we just had a look at the cards and also the real apple.
She examined all the parts and match them with the cards.
We practised earlier vocabulary like cut it in half, slice it, peel it, sharp knife etc.
She was fascinated by the word "flesh" so she was more than happy to consume it :) I hope the weather and our health will let us go for an apple-picking adventure.
When E. asked for the Christmas tree set (construction paper cut-out Christmas trees and decorations, like tinsel, buttons, stars, cotton wool balls etc.) I was more than happy. It took me a while to prepare this Christmas tree activity but at first it seemed to be a failure.
nicely prepared set
E.'s choice instead
But at the second time it was a hit. E. was chatting away (in Hungarian this time), sticking and encouraged me to decorate my tree too. I did as she told me and didn't take many photos. We just enjoyed being creative, being together, being full of Christmas spirit.
busy with decorating
Our final results (done in Hungarian)
Our first try (done in English)
In both cases E. made the light green trees.
If you give it a try you can widen your little one's vocabulary in the field of
Christmas: tinsel, bauble, star, snowflake, beads
colours: light green, dark green, silver, gold, shiny
shapes and sizes: round, star-shaped, snowflake-shaped, long, tiny
Halloween is here in less than two weeks and E. is so excited about it. She has already chosen what to dress up as (a skeleton - what else a 2 and half year old girl wants to be?)
I'm trying to do some Halloween projects with her.
The first one was a skeleton out of cotton buds. I found this easy cutton bud skeleton craft idea on a fellow blogger mommy's site. (Q-tip is the equivalent of cotton buds in the US)
What you need:
cotton buds
black coloured or construction paper
glue
printed or drawn skull
She loved the skulls at first sight
Gluing in progress
(I was making it with her to show her how to and where to put the bones. Although she's got and almost perfect knowledge of bones of the skeleton. I'll write about our little skeleton craze in a later post)
This craft idea combines Halloween, shapes and colours. While E. was in the nursery I cut up the shapes and when we arrived home the sticking could start. (I should have chosen some more colours - she wanted to add red eyes)
orange rectangles for the hair
black rectangles and big triangles for the hat
small black triangles for the nose
green circle for the head - could be any other colour
pink small and bigger rectangles, semi-circles for eyes eyebrows, lips etc.
At first we identified the colours and the shapes
Then we put together the witch
Funny witch... not scary at all - stated E. happily.
E. is into shapes to a great extent. About 2 months ago (when she was 16-17 months old) she already knew all the basic (and some not so basic) shape names. So it made me think what we can do to practise and play with the shapes in more varied ways.
When E. was quite small, around 6-8 months old, we watched and we've still been watching the following videos concerning shapes.
The Shape Song:
Shape Song 2:
Shape song: (I don't really fancy this one, but E. does)
We have some new favourites. While we are watching some of them she bursts out with laughter, like in case of the following:
The next video might seem very monotonous and boring but my daughter loves it and sometimes wants to watch it 4 or 5 times.
There are a lot more videos on shapes but I do not want to bore you. You can search for them on youtube.
E. got a shape cube for her first birthday, but she was totally untouched by it after taking a first look.
Birthday present with potentials
Mostly, I was playing with it and she was watching, or was just playing away next to me. When she was about 14-15 months old, she started to name the shapes out of the blue, much to my surprise.
We also use the shapes of the cube to match shapes in a little bit more different way. I took out a piece of paper and 9 shapes from the cube (I don't know why 9... it could have been 5, 7 or 10. It was a sudden idea.). With the help of a brown crayon I drew them around (E. was watching closely and tried to help a bit too :) )
Then I gave her the shapes and I didn't even have to tell her what to do. She started to put the shapes on the paper.
To initiate more talking I always asked what she was doing, what shape it was she was holding etc. Plus, she sometimes said the colour of the shape, too, all by herself.
Sometimes E. needs motivation to eat. At dinnertime I prepare some 'soldiers' and different shapes carved out of bread, ham, salmon or veggies. It is much more fun for her to eat a pentagon or a triangle than a slice of simple cucumber.
When she turned 16 months we found some books in the library on shapes. This picture dictionary contains two pages of colourful shapes (solids too).
Before taking the book back to the library I had these (and some more pages) photocopied and used the shapes to make flashcards as well.
And a famous favourite (alas, we've got it in Hungarian in the library but this unfortunate fact does not keep me back to use it for other language purposes):
Another Hungarian one: Kun Fruzsina: Formák
Stars
Last but not least a Baby Einstein book on shapes:
There are tons of books on amazon.com all about shapes. No matter which book you use, but it is another fun way to talk about shapes and see them in different contexts.
Baby's Best Start (Helen Doron beginner baby course 3rd CD) has a song about shapes. We listen to it twice a day and E. knows it by heart. Also the book contains pages of shapes and objects of a similar kind (circle-sun, triangle-sail, square-book).
Often E. identifies shapes by herself. On the table cloth of our dining table there are some diamond shapes and whenever she walks past she points at them and says: - Little diamond. Here. Big diamond. There.
On the basis of this experience, sometimes we just walk around the house and identify shapes. (The mirror is a rectangle, the washing machine is a cube, the socket is a square and the hair bobble forms a circle etc.) It is also a good idea to collect smaller objects of different shapes in a light box that your child can walk around with. When you have like 10-15 things you can throw them all onto the floor and group them according to their shapes.
For E.'s first birthday I also bought a second hand Froggy with shapes on his tummy. When you turn it on one of the shapes starts flashing. You need to push the flashing button and the Froggy starts singing a famous nursery rhyme/song (Star - Twinkle, Twinkle, Triangle - Mary had a little lamb, Circle - Pat a cake and so on). Unfortunately, the square does not work any more, so whenever E. tries to make the square work I sing the Helen Doron Shapes song.
As Christmas was here I was planning to do a little christmasy shape fun, but I did not have time to make it. You can find a lovely Christmas tree decoration game with shapes here (ketnyelvugyerek.hu). The description is in Hungarian, but the picture speaks for itself.
