Weekly Curriculum

Monday: Handprint Birthday Card
Tuesday-Friday: Play Outside!!!

Monday: Handprint Birthday Card

 Nico made his cousin a birthday card.  We traced his hand with black construction paper and cut it out.  Then, he used the scissors to cut green paper scraps.  I chose three to be our stems.  We glued them so the hand was holding them.  Then we used glitter paint to make the flowers.  On the inside of the card, Nico drew a message with markers.

Tuesday-Friday:

  With such great weather (For Jan/Feb) Nico and I got outside every afternoon.  We did do some projects, but they were all repeats: water pouring, rice play and painting.

Weekly Curriculum

Monday: Water pouring
Tuesday:  Rice Puzzle
Wednesday: Snowflake Sort & Toothpick Shapes
Thursday: Shaving Cream drawing
Friday:  No Lesson

Monday: Water Pouring

Today I put out a big towel, a bowl of water and various containers.  Then Nico had to fill up the bigger containers by pouring water from the smaller containers.  This was a good exercise in big/little and water volume.  It also kept him busy for almost 2 hours!  After a while, I add ice cubes, and we talked about what happens when ice melts.  I also gave him some Tablespoons, an eye dropper and anything else I could find.  He did get pretty wet, but clean up was super simple.  We will definitely be doing this activity again!

Tuesday: Rice Puzzle

Today I wanted to work on shapes, so I filled a sterlite container with rice and hid shape puzzle pieces in the rice.  Nico loved digging through the rice to find the pieces.  Then he would identify the shape (with help) and put it in its correct place.  I put the puzzle on the floor and the rice on the chair so he would have to move up and down.  After he did this activity for awhile, he asked for cups to practice pouring again (like yesterday).  So I gave him cups, bowls, and spoons of various sizes to practice.  After about half an hour, he wanted to do the puzzle again.  This was another very successful lesson that kept him busy for a long time (2 hours or so).  I can see adapting this by using other puzzles or objects to fine.

Wednesday: Snowflake sorting and Toothpick Shapes

  We did two projects today.  Neither was as successful as the past few days, but both were good activities.  We just used printables from the internet, but they could easily be made.

Thursday: Shaving Cream Drawing

On Thursday I made letters out of shaving cream.  We have been working on the letter "N" this week, and he loves the letter "S".  Then we messed up the letters and drew new ones.  Nico did not like the shaving cream on his hands, so I gave him a paint brush.

Weekly Curriculum

Monday:  Paper Cutting

Tuesday: Aquarium

Wednesday: Window Painting

Thursday: Handprint Elephant

Friday: Paper Cutting

 Monday: Paper cutting

 

I let Nico turn paper into "snow" by cutting it.  He did the scissors all by himself, but I held the paper for him.

Tuesday: Aquarium

This project was a little more involved.  First we painted a blue piece of paper for the water.  Then we took a piece of clear contact paper and stuck various sea creatures to it.  We traced Nico's hand for the octopus, and used stickers and sequins (bubbles).  Then we folded the contact paper on itself in order to "laminate" our aquarium.  Lastly we stapled it to the blue "water."

Wednesday: Window Painting

Rather than have Nico paint on my windows, I cheated and took him to the Madison Children's Museum.  He was more into cleaning the windows than painting them.

Thursday: Handprint Elephant

 We made an elephant out of Nico's handprint.  First we dipped his hand in paint.  Then we cut out an ear and glued it on.  We added a tail and an eye.  Simple!

Friday:  Paper Cutting

We did paper cutting again.  Nico is really into cutting paper.  Every time I tell him we are going to do an art project, he says, "paper cut?"  Today we cut off little pieces of paper and then glued them on the center. 

Weekly Curriculum

Monday: Paper Plate Bug
Tuesday: Bear Decorating
Wednesday: Free Art
Thursday:  Free Art
Friday: No project

Monday:  Paper Plate Bug

 For today's project, we cut legs out of construction paper.  Then we stapled them on each side to paper plates.  We glued on googley eyes, then Nico decorated it with crayons.  Lastly we cut off the bottom so we could put our hands in it in order to make it a puppet.

Tuesday: Bear Decorating

 Wednesday: Free Art

Thursday: Free Art

Weekly Curriculum

We are finally back in Madison!!!

Monday: Color sorting
Tuesday: Mitten decorating
Wednesday:  Letter dipping
Thursday:  Fingerprint Spiders
Friday:  Modeling Clay Animals

Monday: Color Sorting

Due to our extensive travel over the holidays, I just needed an easy no-mess project.  I took Nico's blocks and had him sort them by color.  This could be done with pieces of construction paper as well.

Tuesday: Mitten Painting

Nico was happy that his friends could come and do art with him yesterday.  The project didn't turn out exactly like I envisioned, but that's OK.  First we traced the kids' hands and cut them out.  Then we glue on pom poms.  I was planning to let Nico decorate the mittens and then hole punch them and tie them together with yarn, but he needed a bigger surface to paint/decorate.  So instead we glued them to construction paper and let him paint.  Then he wanted to decorate with stickers (we only had underwater theme).

Wednesday: Letter Dipping

I forgot to snap a picture yesterday.  We took his letters from the bathtub and dipped them in paint.  Then we "stamped" them on paper.  We made sure to talk about lots of things that started with the letter we were stamping.

Thursday: Fingerprint Spiders

 For this project, we dipped Nico's fingers in paint and made fingerprint bodies.  Then we drew on 8 legs (counting each time) with marker.  This one I helped with.

 This one he did more himself.

 This one he did even more himself.

Friday:  Modeling Clay Animals

 Nico and I worked on making animals with modeling clay yesterday.  He really liked making the snakes.  He also is getting the hang of making "balls" by rolling the dough between his hands.