Mother's Day Ideas

Oh my goodness, I have been neglecting this blog.  I was doing really good there for a little while and now I haven’t posted in several days.  The weather has been nice and we’ve been pretty busy being out and about. 

But, I realized that Mother’s Day is only three weeks away, so I thought I should post some ideas for Mother’s Day activities to do.  Of course I won’t tell you what I’m doing with Hailey for her grandmothers because I have no idea yet what we’re going to do then it won’t be a surprise.

Personally I love the homemade gifts from children for any occasion, so I am going to share some links with you to some sites that have cute ideas that your children can make.

• ChildFun Family Website– has a list of over 20 different activities.  They also have some Mother’s Day Poems.
• You can find many activities for Mother’s Day on the A to Z Teacher Stuff site. 
• At Family Corner you can find a variety of crafts, stories, recipes, etc for Mother’s Day.
• Kaboose has some adorable projects your kids can do for Mother’s Day.
• You can find cards, poems, crafts and more at DLTK.
• Free Kids Crafts has some really cute ideas for Mother’s Day.

There is a lot more out there, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many choices.  If you find a really spectacular site with Mother’s Day crafts please feel free to let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

Tags: free toddler activity, Mother's Day crafts

The Letter B

This week we have started focusing on the letter B and we will continue to focus on it for two weeks. 

When I work on teaching Hailey a letter I try not to actually “teach” but rather look for those teachable moments.  When she brings me a book we can look for the letter B.  When she wants to color I can have a paper ready with the letter B on it and talk about the B while she colors. 

While we are grocery shopping I can point out all of the letters that are around us and make special note of whatever our focus letter is for that week. 

I have some foam letters and we play a hiding game with them.  I hide the letter and then say, “Let’s see if you can find the letter B.” 

There are endless possibilities for teaching letters.  For me, I think the important thing for toddlers is to have fun so that they think it is all a game.  Look for those teachable moments rather than trying to teach an actual lesson.  The lesson you are ready to teach when those teachable moments occur are the ones your child will remember.

Tags: free toddler activities, Teaching the letter B to toddler

Turtle Craft

I saw this very simple craft for making a turtle in one of my Mailbox magazines.

What you’ll need:

• paper plate
• construction paper- green, yellow, brown
• glue
• marker
• scissors

Directions:

• Have child tear apart the construction paper into little pieces.  (This is an excellent way to help strengthen their hands)
• Glue pieces of torn paper onto paper plate.
• Depending on the age of the child- you can have them cut out the pieces for the head and legs.  I would probably start doing this around age 3.
• Again- depending on the age of the child- they can draw the eyes and mouth onto face.

Hailey wouldn’t have anything to do with tearing up the paper, so she just watched me do it.

Gluing, on the hand, Hailey loves to do.  If I tried to help her she said, “No, no, no.  I do.”

Gluing the torn pieces onto the paper plate.

The finished turtle.

Cute and easy.

Tags: free toddler activitiy, turtle craft

April Ideas

I try to do other things with Hailey, besides the crafts that I take pictures of to share here.  So, I thought I’d give a brief summary of the non-craft activities we have done or that I plan to do with Hailey this month.

• I created cards with pictures of adult and baby animals on them.  Then we matched up the babies with their mommies.
• We are going to plant some grass seed and take pictures as it grows.  (It’s still been a little bit chilly here, but hopefully we can start this in the next couple of weeks.)
• Play matching and sorting games with these umbrellas.
• I have a Randy the Raindrop story that I am going to use on a flannel board (that I still need to make).  I’ll take pictures of it when I actually do it.
• Make dice with farm animals on them.  Then sing “Old MacDonald” and roll the die to see which animal we will use for that verse.



• Raindrop writing- practice the letters in Hailey’s name using these raindrops.  The reason the raindrops are white is that is the color I am focusing on this month.

 That’s all for now.  I’ll be back to share more ideas as I come up with them. 

Tags: activities for april, farm animal activities, free toddler activities, matching, sorting, srping activities