Toddler Art Tuesday - Baking

Last week we did baking themed activities for tot school. So I wanted to match up our Toddler Art Tuesday activity to the theme. Since we were baking and decorating cupcakes, I connected the activity to the book 'Cupcake' by Charise Mericle Harper. It is a pretty cute book and John wanted me to read it to him 429 times last week.



Before my nieces came over, I had the boys make chef hats for our baking adventures. I cut a strip of white paper and let them color it. John made all of 3 lines claiming he drew a hat and Matthew didn't color his at all. Typical! I guess I should cut Matthew some slack considering he is 13 months. :)







Then I wrapped the strip around each boy's head to get the size right and taped into a circle.



Lastly I taped some tissue paper to the inside of the paper strip to creat the top of the hat.




The BEST part was after all that work (taping is hard work!) John wouldn't wear his. Again, typical.

Once the girls came over we made icing from scracth and then decorated cupcakes. Bella's turned out...interesting. I think she used the entire bottle of sugar sprinkles on her three cupcakes.









Notice that Bella has a cute chef's hat. That is because I sewed it for her as a Christmas gift. :) My poor boys are slighted sometimes, huh?




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Tot School - Baking Themed Week

First of all, Happy Birthday to ME! I am turning 31 on Monday...dang I am getting old. :)

As I am spending my birthday with my favorite boys (probably treating myself to a fancy lunch at McDonald's), I am leaving you with this little post on our baking themed week during tot school last week. I thought it turned out really cute and finally made up some new games for John. Woohoo! So, here it goes...

**All games that I made can be dowloaded HERE!**

Cookie Monster Game:
I printed off a picture of Cookie Monster and attached it to an empty tissue box. Then I printed out different pictures of cookies- either different shapes or with letters, numbers or words on them. I put out all the cookies for John and pretended to be Cookie Monster asking for a certain cookie. John loved it and would crack up every time he fed Cookie Monster the correct cookie. I threw in words that he spells on his own to see if he could recognize the words and he did! I was so excited! We played this game several times (even with Daddy at night). Matthew joined in on just putting stuff in Cookie Monster's mouth. Seriously, John LOVED this game and wanted to play it every day. So, I consider this one a success!







Counting Cookies Game:
I printed some different style cookies, laminated them, and glued them onto magnets. My mom has been giving me advertising magnets for a while so I have quite the stash of magnets now! (Thanks, Mom!) I took a block we had at the house and used stickers to number the sides. John would roll the cube and the put that many cookies onto the baking tray. I used a muffin top pan for this which worked perfect because each cookie fit nicely into its own spot. You probably could even do without the magnet part but I thought it might be fun to let Matthew use them on a the fridge late or for another activity.





Fine Motor Skills:
John practiced pouring rice krispie cereal using measuring cups. After he did this a couple times he decided he just wanted to eat the cereal and made a HUGE mess. They had fun so it was ok that I had to vacuum up half a bag of cereal off the floor. :) I am still nervous about Matthew choking on small items so I am hesitant to use beans or something else that isn't edible.



He also practiced scooping up 'candy' (decorative stones) and put them in a muffin tin. Not very exciting for him so he only did this one time.



Sorting:
I put out a pitcher of different spoons for John to sort by size. He did a couple and lost interest. Then I let Matthew play with it and was interesting because he didn't quite know how to get the big spoons back in the pitcher. So this was a great activity for him too- very simple but he is still fine tuning those fine motor skills.





Dot Pages:
I made a C is for Chef page and downloaded a B dot page from Confessions of a Homeschooler. John really loves dot pages so I thought he would enjoy playing around with the marker. However, I guess he decided he wasn't as interested in dot pages this week and only did the C page. You can download the C is for Chef page I made and the other cookies games HERE for FREE!

Random Kitchen Stuff:
I put out a tray of random kitchen stuff for the boys to play with: measuring cups, spoons, sifter, slotted spoon, and cupcake liners. Matthew liked stacking the measuring cups and squeezing the cupcake liners. So this was kind of just like a sensory bin without the beans. We also played with the play kitchen for a little bit. The boys aren't super interested in the kitchen at our house yet they love to play with toy kitchens at other people's houses! So weird!







Real Life:
We made cupcakes and icing during the week. Of course I had my helpers with me the whole time! Then my nieces came over for our weekly playdate and we decorated cupcakes together. So fun! and super yummy! Tomorrow I will post more about this for Toddler Art Tuesday.







Science:
We mixed up pudding and watched it change colors as we mixed in food dye. That counts as science, right?! We then turned it into a sensory activity and I let the boys paint and play with the pudding. Matthew had a cooking brush and John has a bottle cleaner and they just sat there mesmerized by how it felt with pudding all over it. So cute! Of course we ended up with baths (and a quick mopping of the floor!) to clean up the mess.
















The printables I made are available for free download HERE!

John starts preschool tomorrow so wish me luck on not crying when I drop him off!

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B is for Bear {part 2}

We finished up our letter B activities last week. There weren't quite enough activities to fill up the whole week, but since it was icy and snowy all week, we just took it easy and did activities when we felt like it!

We started by reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear which is one of John's favorite books. He can 'read' it to himself now since he has it memorized. Then we did the heads & tails puzzle (from 1+1+1=1) that matched the pictures from the book. He likes to pretend he can't put the puzzle together and have 'Mommy do'. Halfway through he will do it on his own and enjoys it. He came back to this activity a couple times. The last time he did it, he tried the whole 'Mommy do' again so I put the pieces together incorrectly and he would laugh and fix my mistake. It was cute! So after doing this puzzle a couple times throughout the week, he is getting much better at putting puzzles together! (well, two piece puzzles!)





We then colored a brown bear, brown bear book. (sorry- I don't remember where I found this one!!) He had to color each animal a certain color. This is the second week have to done this type of activity and he loves to scribble on each page!



I gave John a cup of gummy bears and used this sorting page from Creative Learning Fun. I thought he would really like this activity because he loves fruit snacks and figured he would like gummy bears. He wasn't very interested in sorting and then wouldn't even try a gummy bear! oh well! It was a cute idea though!



From the same blog as above, I used the gummy bear counting page and we counted out teddy grahams. He is still trying to get the one-to-one correspondence down, but at least was good at counting as I put out the teddy grahams. If I let him do it on his own, he would just count out a random number of crackers instead of trying to count the number on the page. :)



I found a wooden net with a magnet attached in a box of toys at my mom's house. I have no idea what toy it actually goes to, but I thought it looked like a butterfly net and would be perfect for this week! So I laminated some butterflies from Confessions of a Homeschooler, wrote 'B' or 'b' on them, and attached a paper clip. I put them out on the floor and John had to 'catch' the butterflies with his net. Once he caught them, we sorted them into two piles- upper and lower case. This was also great practice for fine motor skills since he had to hold the net so that it would catch the paper clip part of the butterfly.





Last but not least, we used these ABC cards (from 1+1+1=1) to put them in ABC order. John did surprisingly well with this and got the first couple cards in order without my help. Halfway through he got his fridge phonics toy and started matching up some of the letters and then just playing with the fridge phonics. It is so interesting to see how the kids relate what they are doing to something they have done before!





I am so excited for this week and next week- lots of Valentine's Day stuff, hearts, love...and hippos! :)

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Letter B for Bear {part 1}

Last week we worked on our Letter B week. The pattern seems to continue in that I plan too much for one week. Combine that with being busier than I thought we would have been (play groups, library story, Kidokinetics class, being sick, baby sitting my neice, etc) and we definitely run out of time! No biggie- we will just extend it to this week too! So here is what we did last week for our B activities.

John practiced putting his pegs in the letter B and stacking towers. He did this once, put it away, and didn't go back to it for the rest of the week. So I think I might pack this one up for a couple weeks since he seems to be bored with it!



Using the Letter Of The Week from Confessions of a Homeschooler, we did a butterfly cut and paste. I cut out the parts and John glued them down. He did pretty well (and thanks to my new table cover I wasn't worried about our table getting glue all over it!)





Uncle Tyler made this golf tee game several years ago and we are now using it with John for his fine motor skills. He practiced putting the tees in the hole and then balancing the golf ball on the pegs. He LOVES golf balls so this is perfect for him!



We used a bean bag to place on different parts of John's body. So, as I called out things like 'head', 'shoulder', etc, he would put the bean bog on that body part. He also would put the bean bag on his bear's body parts. It was cute!



At Kidokinetics (which John LOVES), the kids played with beach balls this week. How perfect was that?! I am so glad I signed John up for this class because he loves to run around and play sports. We also head straight to storytime at the library after this class so it ends up being a really great morning out!



We have been reading The Baker's Dozen (a cute counting book) so we baked cupcakes on Friday. I tried to dye the batter blue, but ran out of blue food coloring so the cupcakes ended up green. haha! I found bear sprinkles at the store which were perfect for the week! John practiced using a spatula to spread out the icing (which was really difficult for him) and he enjoyed shaking the sprinkles on top. Once again, he only ate a bite or two of the cupcakes without frosting and decided he didn't like cupcakes all that much. What a silly kid!











We pulled out the big foam letter floor puzzle and had some fun practicing John's letters. I gathered up all his bears (how does he have so many stuffed bears?! And I have only bought ONE of those for him!) and I would call out a letter and John would put a bear on that letter. After we did that once or twice with all his bears, we would throw the bear on the mat and call out the letter that the bear landed on. John really liked this activity and we came back to this one the next day at his request!








We used the fridge phonics this week and now sing the song that goes with it for the letter B. It has really helped John to learn the sound that goes with the letter! (sorry- no pics of this one!)

This wasn't really related, but twice this week we walked down the street where they are fixing part of the road to see what was going on. John LOVES cars/trucks/tractors and really enjoyed seeing the big construction vehicles. The second time we went, we watched the workers smooth out the cement and watched as they poured the cement from the truck. John just sat down on the sidewalk and watched in amazement. It was so cute! The workers probably thought we were weirdos, but oh well!





Tomorrow starts our Letter B week part II! :) woohoo!

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