We started this week exploring simple patterns. She "read" me a color book and a shape book to prepare. Then we created patterns using colors, shapes, and size to make simple ab patterns. We used her birthday cake toy to create simple abc patterns and noticed how this pattern places the same decoration opposite each other on the cake. We read Bear Snores On, Bear Feels Sick, and Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site and noted how these stanzas ended in rhyming patterns - abcb in the bear books and abab in the construction books. We pulled out our rhyming fish and fished for some rhyming words as well. She also pulled out her plastic canvas and practiced stitching, saying up and down as she pulled her needle through.
Tuesday we talked about more complex patterns. We used our pasta to create rainbow color patterns. We listened to Roy G. Biv by They Might be Giants and I sang my own rainbow song. We also made patterns out of the shapes. We also played with some stamps, noting the combination of colors on the stamps. She tried to make her own pattern, creating a line of balloons. We made patterns on her magnet board. The shape magnets that came with it are great for this. The cushion on the back is helpful for angling it well or for setting it comfortably on your lap. The main problem is that the images are light and the erasing bar a bit difficult for her to move. We explored texture patterns in her beads and in her foam alphabet floor tiles.
Books also have different types of patterns. Instead of rhyme, Tuesday we looked at books that repeat larger ideas. We read the Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade, Two Friends: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, and If You Take a Mouse to School. We talked about how Two Friends had an introduction, then looked at Susan's childhood, had the quote "The right to live free. The right to vote. Some people had rights while others had none," then spoke of how she fought for rights. Then it followed a similar pattern for Frederick Douglass, starting with his childhood, using the same quote and then addressing how he fought for rights. We looked at how books like We're Going on a Bear Hunt and Let's Go Camping, which came with Violet, repeat chunks of text. She loves We're Going on a Bear Hunt now, but it took awhile for her to get into the sound book because there is an image of a dog in a snowstorm that makes the sound of a snowstorm instead of a dog. She used to get upset that it didn't bark. But she likes the story and sound now, but parents be forewarned, this is a book that is great for kids but can annoy parents with its repetition. We read I Love Saturdays y domingos, which has a pattern between sets of grandparents. It's also nice as it includes some Spanish words. We ended with Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do You See and Peek-a-Boo Forest, which have sentences that repeat, with the slight change in animals in each page.
Wednesday we went back to dance class, and we realized music and dance are another place to explore patterns. We listened to some musical patterns and tried to make our own with her various instruments. We also practiced some movement patterns, with clapping and stomping. We read one of my favorites, Zin Zin Zin, a Violin, which I love because it counts to ten, introduces different types of instruments, and uses some musical terminology. We also read Do Re Mi, which was the interesting story of Guido d'Arezzo. I didn't know a lot of this story, so it was interesting for me and written at a level children can understand.
Later we colored and worked on the Animals of the Alphabet book. We had lots of R and S animals - raccoons, rabbits, rhinos, red pandas (which have long been an animal she loves, as it was the first animal she really reacted to at the zoo), snakes, sea dragons, sloths, sea horses, sheep, sea urchins, shrimp, sharks, sea stars, skunks, squirrels, scorpions, and seals. She thought it was amazing how many ocean creatures there were. 
Thursday we discussed routines. We looked at bus and train schedules at the train station, and she built a train. We looked at her calendar and I introduced some of her new chore options on her calendar. The felt calendar is great because we can add things as we need them, but it doesn't always stick well. There are some great options by Melissa and Doug instead, if you don't want to make your own. There are activity and chore charts, but we combine these in our felt chart. And yes, Genevieve does have chores at age 2. She feeds the cat, sweeps, helps with laundry and dishes, waters the plants, and brushes her teeth and hair. We talked about how her chores repeat and so do the activities. We talked about how we feed the cat every day, but other things we only do once a week, like soccer and dance class.
Friday we talked about some longer patterns, like how the moon changes, the 4 seasons, and life cycles of caterpillars. Ready, Jet, Go has interesting episodes about the moon and perspective. The younger character Mindy believes there are a bunch of different moons, and the older kids discover that this is not the case. It doesn't necessarily bring up the lunar cycle, but it was a good launching point. We've been observing the sky a lot in the morning and we've seen a large moon for a couple days last week. We also saw some hot air balloons and clouds as a side note.
We watched the episode of Curious George with Hundley Junior, the caterpillar. We read The Hungry Caterpillar and talked about the cycle a caterpillar goes through. We looked at pictures of Genevieve when she was younger and compared them to pictures of Tobias. So even though we don't go through the same changes of the caterpillar, we do go through similar growth patterns and learn skills in a similar order.While talking about similarities, we also managed to have a few different versions of the Cinderella stories in the house at the moment, so we compared Raisel's Riddle, Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, and The Talking Eggs to the Disney version, and Rexerella. We looked for similarities and similar story arcs, and differences.
Genevieve has been very interested in bones this week, so we also watched an episode of Dinosaur Train with Fossil Fred and read an introduction to the skeletal system. Wild Kratts has been introducing new episodes with Chinese animals, and Genevieve loves pandas so we also read a little about pandas and monkeys in some National Geographic books. We were also lucky to find a female duck in our yard and a camouflaged bug in the grass.
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