So, who's excited for the 4th of July?! I have said it before, and I will say it again- it is one of my favorite holidays! I am excited to check out the parade in our new city and then we are hosting our first party at the house for the whole family. Can't wait!
Anywho, the point of the post today is to share the 4th of July activities I did with the boys last week. In no particular order... (all printables and some of the ideas were found at
Oopsey Daisy and
2 Teaching Mommies).
F is for Firework Dot page: I couldn't find our dot markers (and I don't like the ones we have anyways), so we used dot stickers on this page. Matthew really impressed me because he filled every circle perfectly instead of being haphazard.
Pre-Writing Practice: Matthew loves drawing with markers, so this was great for him. John loved doing these pages too and asked to do them several times. Again, Matthew impressed me with following the lines pretty well.
Scooping Red/White/Blue balls: John didn't care for this all that much, but Matthew really liked scooping up the small balls and carrying them around the room and transfer them somewhere. I added a dice for John and he would roll to see how many balls to put in the tin. He really liked that game (even though it seemed really boring to me!)
Star Cookie Cutter Painting: The boys made paintings with cookie cutters. Matthew's was cute with red and blue stars...John's was with random shapes and didn't quite fit the theme of the week! Then they wanted to take out the easel and continue painting which was so cute! Matthew LOVES to paint, but it is hit or miss with John.
Sticker Pages: I quickly drew an F on a page for John and an S for Matthew. They then filled in the letters with the appropriate stickers. I knew John would keep his stickers in the lines, but Matthew again impressed me with how much he has improved with fine motor skills since the last time we did activities! Dad even jumped in to help Matthew (after putting away all the stickers that were dumped out on the floor!).
Firework Painting: We took the paints, small koosh balls, and paper and headed outside one afternoon. The idea was to dip the balls in the paint and then throw it on the paper to make a firework image. I think if we had bigger koosh balls (and some more powerful throws) it would have been better. The boys still liked it...in between jumps in the pool. I would not recommend doing this near the pool because it distracted the boys and the paper got so wet that we couldn't keep the artwork, but the boys had fun!
Sorting Colored Balls: We took out the ball pit balls and sorted them into three buckets: red, blue, neither. We did this by throwing the balls into the buckets which was a fun gross motor activity.
US Icons cards: We played with these US icon cards for a little while. Matthew and I did matching with them (which was too boring and easy for John). John didn't want to play memory with them, but I gave them the cards to hide around the room and then go find them to match them up. They REALLY liked that game (even though they hid ALL the cards in the toy kitchen!).
Counting Clip Cards: This was the first time for John to do clip cards. I wasn't sure if he would be able to do it, but it was as if he had done this 100 times! He loved this activity so I will be sure to add more clip activities for him to do.
I think we may have a couple more activities to do this week, but mostly it will be baking and making desserts for Wednesday! Hope everyone has a fabulous 4th of July!
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