Week September 19th ~ 26th 2011

For a few months I have been collecting preK workbooks that I find on clearance and for good deals. Last month I bit the bullet and got some of the dry erase crayons that crayola released. I had read mixed reviews and I was hesitant to buy them. Not anymore! As far as crayons go they aren't cheap but they are a great investment.
I remove the pages from JJ's work books and slip them all into plastic sleeves and place them in a three ring binder. This works remarkably and instead of using pages once; I am able to wipe them off and let JJ try them several times.

Today was the first day that I let JJ loose with a crayon on his work book pages. For the last few weeks we have just been pointing to, discussing and learning about some of their concepts. I believe he did remarkably well. You can see for yourself below.

Sensory ~ Hot and Cold ~ 20 months

Today JJ and I did a thermic sensory activity.  In one container I  heated some water in the microwave until  it was hot. In reality it was only warm. I did not want to burn. In a second container I chilled some water with ice.

We then dyed the hot water red and the cold water blue and I let JJ alternate putting his hands in the hot and cold water. He loved to splash it around. I then gave him a whisk and he created some bubbles with soap flakes.

JJ then practiced transferring bubbles with a spoon from one container to the other. Then of course I just let him free play and dump bubbles everywhere and splash water.
    

We are linking up to  check out what other tots are doing this week.

Colors ~ 20 months

JJ and I have been working on sorting his counting bears into into their respective cups. He has become quite proficient at sorting red, blue and yellow, and he is good at sorting three sets of colors at a time. He does become overwhelmed and struggles to complete the task when I add the green and purple as well. Below is a little clip of him sorting bears.

 

Everyday Learning ~ 20 months

Everyday is full of many little learning adventures. These are often mundane simple things in our eye, but a new and exciting adventure for a tot. Today I let JJ choose his bath water color.

He chose yellow. I put a few drops in the bath and he loved the color. He even liked it so much that he said “YEH” a few times.  Which is an amazing thing for a non-verbal. I would like to believe that he really was saying yellow.  You can judge for yourselves

To enhance JJ’s bath time fun we also did a little experiment first. We took a bar of Ivory soap and nuked it in the microwave for 90seconds to watch it expand. In my mind I thought that the bar would be a fun puffy sensory experience. Not so much. It just felt like rubber and not very appealing. I decided to add it to JJ’s yellow bath water anyways. Soap is soap after all. JJ didn’t like it much either. He spent more time pushing it to the end of the tub so that it wouldn't touch him rather than enjoying a sensory experience.