School Time: Bears

I decided to try having "School Time" with Davis each day as a way to provide his quick little mind with new information and experiences and to give myself something to plan and implement. Of course, as is with many of the best intentions, it has not gone perfect . . . but still much, much better than I had thought! We don't do it everyday and sometimes I get frustrated because Davis isn't doing something "right," but Davis has really loved it!

I took our theme for the week from Storytime at the Treehouse Museum, where they talked about teddy bears. They do a great storytime on Mondays with songs and stories that help toddlers get ready for preschool. I also found several websites with great ideas for toddler learning activities. This week I got several of my ideas from Totally Tots.

Day 1: We learned to trace circles and cut them out to make bear faces (Davis cut the scraps and I cut the circles).

Then we watched this cute video, "I'm Going on a Bear Hunt," where you can sing along and watch the pictures.

Day 2: We made and frosted bear-faced sugar cookies. This was a great test of my patience because the whole "cut out the shape, lift it with a spatula, and put it on the cookie sheet" concept was not what Davis wanted to do. He wanted to put the cup (our circle cookie cutter) down over and over and overlapping, then grab the shapes with his little fingers and pry them up, then throw the resulting balls of dough on the cookie sheet. But we finally got the bear faces on the cookie sheet and while they were cooking we counted little bears and sorted them into colors. The grand finale of the activity was definitely frosting the cookies. Davis loved it! I am pretty sure he ate enough frosting to cover 10 cookies, but he had a blast. He kept putting frosting on his cookie, then scooping it up with his fingers and eating and putting more frosting on the same cookie. We also got out the chocolate chips and sprinkles and he would put some on, then eat them off and need to redecorate the cookie. It lasted a long, fabulous time.
Day 3: We learned about hibernation. We watched this cute video where a family with small kids reads the book, "Bear Snores On". Then we made little bear caves with snow on top using brown paper bags and cotton balls.Day 4: (This activity is for today and I don't know if we will get to it). We will read "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and then sort objects in order of size (I borrowed this idea from this post at Totally Tots).

So far, so good. Next week - dinosaurs. If anyone has great activity ideas, let me know!