The theme I am using with Hailey right now is songs. One of her favorite songs is Five Little Ducks. So we have done a couple of activities about ducks. The other day we made Five Little Duck pieces for our felt board and then we did some duck stamping. Our last project in sticking with the duck theme was to make a duck pond.

Here’s what you’ll need: green, blue, yellow and orange construction paper, glue, scissors and a black marker.

Leave the green construction paper a full piece of paper. Cut the blue construction paper to look like a body of water. The cut 4 small dome shapes and 4 small circles from the yellow paper. Cut 4 very small triangles from the orange paper . For older children I would let them do the cutting but since this was a toddler project I did all of the cutting.

Glue the blue onto the green paper. Then glue the shapes together to create the ducks. After the duck pond has dried, add a black dot for the eyes on the ducks.

The finished duck pond.

Yesterday I showed you the felt board activity that we did to go along with The 5 Little Ducks song. Today I’m sharing another duck craft we did. I saw this over at one of my new favorite sites- No Time for Flashcards (if you haven’t been to this site yet you just have to check it out).

Here’s what you’ll need- paper, a duck and a stamp pad.  (As a side note- my stamp pads are for kids and are non-toxic.  But they were missing the all important word “washable.”  So you might want to make sure you get washable stamp pads.  I’m just sayin’)

Give the items to your child and let the creativity flow.  Hailey is working on figuring out exactly how it is working.

Having fun stamping the paper.

While I turned my head for about 2 seconds, Hailey picked up the stamp pad and stamped her face.

The finished duck stamping piece of art.

I’ve never met a child who didn’t love music and Hailey is no exception to that. So for the next few weeks I am going to be doing a bunch of activities all related to some of her favorite songs. First up- is Five Little Ducks… an adorable song about five little ducks who go out to play and then don’t listen to their mommy duck when she tells them to come back. If you haven’t heard the song- check out this Five Little Ducks link to watch it on YouTube.

Hailey absolutely loves this song, so I decided we should make some pieces for our felt board so that she can play with the pieces while we sing it.

Here’s what you’ll need: 5 little ducks and a mommy duck, some crayons and not pictured- contact paper, scissors, glue and felt.

Hailey colored the ducks.

Then I put contact paper on the front side of the ducks.

Glue the backs of the ducks to a piece of felt or Velcro.

After the glue dries, cut out the ducks and put them on your felt board. (My felt board is just a big piece of felt nailed to a wall in Hailey’s play room.) Then I sang the song to Hailey showing her how we could move the ducks to go along with the words of the song.

And Hailey loved it!

And here’s the words, just in case you need them:

Five Little Ducks

Five little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only four little ducks came back…

Four little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only three little ducks came back…

Three little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only two little ducks came back…

Two little ducks went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but only one little duck came back…

One little duck went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
but no little ducks came back…

Mama duck went out one day
Over the hills and far away
Mama duck said, “Quack, quack, quack, quack,”
and five little ducks came back.

Wow. What a catchy title I came up with, huh? 

Anyhoo, here is what you’ll need for this fun little sheep.

• Paper plate
• Cotton
• Glue
• Pre-cut pieces for the face, legs, etc-depending on the age of the child.  Since Hailey is too young for scissors I have the pieces cut out for her.  For children around age 3 I would have them cut their own pieces out.

Now let the fun begin!

Hailey had never touched cotton before (unless you count when I used to use cotton balls to clean her bottom during diaper changes) so she was pretty interested in how it felt.

Gluing the cotton balls on proved to be pretty interesting.  Hailey loves playing with the glue and got it on her hands.  So, the cotton started sticking to her fingers and she did not like that.

We managed to finish making her sheep though:

Of course while she was making this, I asked her questions about what the cotton felt like, what color it was, and about the color and shapes of the pieces to go with the sheep.

It will probably be a little while before we use cotton and glue at the same time even though it did turn out cute.

This week I have been concentrating on farm animals with Hailey.  She loves anything and everything that has to do with animals, so this is definitely a lot of fun.  There are tons of books about farm animals that we enjoy reading.  The other day we made a pig using a variety of shapes.  When I was teaching pre-kindergarten I always did this with my class.  It’s easy and cute and helps reinforce the names of the shapes. 

What you’ll need:

• pink paper in 2 or 3 different shades
• scissors
• glue

Because Hailey is too young for scissors I cut everything out ahead of time.  If you were doing this with preschoolers I would recommend letting them do the cutting.

I let Hailey do all of the gluing- which she loves to do.  She always cries when it is time to put the glue away. As she was gluing the pieces I talked about the shape of the piece she was working on and encouraged her to try to say the name of the shape too.

Once she had the glue on her piece I pointed to the place on the pig where the piece should go and she did the positioning of the pieces.  I try to let her do as much of the actual project as possible.

The finished pig