Pi Day and St. Patrick's Day

I enjoy Pi Day and St. Patrick's Day, so was prepared for a lot of fun this week.  We enjoyed books about Ireland, math, rainbow and shamrock activities, and lots of other fun.

We read Celtic Myths by Sam McBratney and three books by Tomie dePaola - Fin M'coul, Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka, and Patrick Patron Saint of Ireland.  We read a couple books on Ireland, enjoying especially one by Koponen.  We cut a bell pepper in half, and used it to stamp some shamrock shapes.  A friend came over and we decorated some ceramic pots, planting sunflowers inside to create our own pots of gold.  We also decorated some treasure chests to store our treasures.  We had fun playing with a prism, to create our own rainbows.  We decided to play with light a bit, so also used our camera on our phone to see the infrared light from our remote.  Our black light is sadly broken, so we weren't able to use that.  But Genevieve has been playing with flashlights to create shadows, and as such, was using The Game of Light.  Genevieve also created a rainbow windchime.

For Pi day and other math activities, we read Creature Numbers, Three Little Kittens, Triangle, I Knew Two Who Said Moo, Little Hands 123, Over in the Jungle, and Mouse Count.  We measured weight with our bear scale, comparing the sizes.  We practiced dividing pizza.  We reviewed our shapes, coloring a picture using simple shapes.  We practiced counting money and Genevieve was able to use money to buy some things in the store, noting how money works.  We also practiced measuring distance, using some unconventional means like blocks and books.  We also talked of measuring time, and Genevieve created her own clock.

Genevieve has continued her fun with dress up, dressing up as a witch and making fairy wings this week.  She's also been playing ice skating and dancing.  Genevieve has planned a family trip to the moon, so she made a map of our landing area.  We had fun with Play-Doh and balloons, experimenting with static.  We also read some silly books that didn't fit with our theme, but that Genevieve really enjoyed - The Mouse Who Ate the Moon and Spike the Mixed up Monster.

Purim, Holi, and More Math

We started off our week with some great pretending.  We went sledding down to an ice skating pond and skated around.  We had a dance party and we made pirate hats, shaped like triangles.  We pretended to be pirates, with our hats and a flag.  She used a tube to create a larger version of her finger puppet, the black ghost Bob.  She's been busy turning boxes into rocket ships, building tents for camping, and making polka-dot princess hats.

Purim is a Jewish holiday, relating the story of Esther.  I thought it particularly appropriate for Genevieve as she is going through the princess phase.  We read Purim Superhero and Cakes and Miracles for Purim.  Genevieve dressed as a superhero, Tobias was a cowboy, and I was a witch.  We put on a puppet show acting out the story of Esther.  We also read the story of Esther in Tomie dePaola's Bible Stories.

Holi is an Indian holiday.  The night before, there is a large bonfire held to represent the story of Prahlad.  He was the son of an evil king, who thought everyone should worship him.  Prahlad refused, and his father sentenced him to death in a fire.  He survived a walk through the flames.  The next day celebrates Krishna, who would spray Radha and her maids with colored water.  When they went to clean themselves, he often stole their clothes, teasing them.  To celebrate, we related these stories and compared the story of Prahlad to that of Shadrach, Meshach and Obendigo.  We read stories about life in India, like The Jungle Book, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and Chanda and the Mirror of Moonlight.  They are all longer picture books, but Chanda had Hindi print as well.  We used powder paint, spray bottles and stamp pads to create art.  We mixed in finger and handprints, because of some of our other reading.

We read 10 Pigs, Little Goblins Ten, A Triangle for Adaora, Alpha prints 123, and Zin Zin Zin a Violin.  Many of these are favorites.  A Triangle for Adaora has great pictures of life in Africa and inspired our own shape hunt in the neighborhood.  It was cracking Genevieve up that Tobias has a circle head.  We talked about big and small, using stacking cups to identify which was biggest and smallest.  We used our cake to divide big and little, and split the cake evenly.  We played some Hide and Seek, practicing counting to 10.  Tobias has been working on building towers, so we counted blocks as we built and noted which tower was tallest or which had the most blocks.  Tobias also asked for some puzzle time, so we had an afternoon of puzzles and board games.

Read Across America and March Math Madness

I love Dr. Seuss books and so do Genevieve and Tobias, so we are using the whole week to celebrate Read Across America.  The rhymes are fun.  Illustrations are friendly.  Some words are ridiculously silly.  And there are great lessons, like conservation, humanitarianism, and being willing to try something new.

On Sunday, we read The Lorax.  We decorated some ceramic planters.  Genevieve made her own, Tobias helped me make one, and we had to make one for the cat.  We started a science experiment, testing whether seeds would sprout better on top of the soil or in wet paper without dirt.

On Monday, we read Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches an Egg, Yertle the Turtle, and And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.  We chose these books because they all feature animals you might see at the zoo.  Genevieve made a map of the zoo and also made some charts to fill in at the zoo.  We were scientists studying animal behavior and counting animals by classification.  She kept noting the animals that had hair like her, and were therefore mammals. We also had fun marching in our own parade in honor of Mulberry Street.

On Tuesday, we were going to explore rhyming words.  Oddly enough, Mr. Dan chose to point out rhyming words in the books he read in story time.  We played with our rhyming fish.  Genevieve also enjoyed finding rhyming words to finish my sentences.  She played a game with Wonder Red from Super Why on the PBS Kids app.  We also read some of Dr. Seuss's sillier, tongue-twisting rhymes like Hop on Pop, Fox in Socks, Oh Say Can You Say, There's a Wocket in My Pocket, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.  Genevieve relived the fun of yesterday, painting a giraffe.

Wednesday is busy with two gymnastics classes, park time, and dance but we found some time for Seuss.  We read Bartholomew and the Oobleck, which is one of the few non-rhyming Seuss books.  We also celebrated the beginning of March Math Madness by reading Hoot which counts to 5 and names colors.  We made our own oobleck, using math and measurement skills.  We used cornstarch and water in a 1:1, 2:1, and 1:2 ratio.  Each had a different color.  Then we played with our non-Newtonian fluid, watching it turn from solid to liquid and back again.  Since Bartholomew helps the king with the weather, we observed the weather outside.  Then we made cloud paintings with cotton balls, and shaving cream mixed with a little glue.

Thursday, we read Green Eggs and Ham and Cat in the Hat.  We used this as a prompt to try new food so we tried some dragon fruit, which they loved, and star fruit.  We read Pumpkin Countdown, which is a rhyming book which counts down from 20.  We played with our spatial reasoning skills, playing the Three Little Pigs game and with tangrams.

Friday, we went to a rainbow sign class, where we learned color signs.  We read The Butter Battle Book and her favorite, How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  After enjoying all these different books, Genevieve created a book on her own.  She drew pictures and used stickers, and then told me what happened on each page.  It was about the weather.  She also made a bookmark.  We read The Chicken Problem.  She recently discovered Peg +Cat games on PBS Kids, and enjoys the chicken dance game.  So we had a dance party, practicing patterns and she repeated my movement patterns.

Patterns

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.

Tobias had sign class on Thursday too.  This week was about getting dressed.  This week and the other classes fit this theme of patterns and routines as well.  So we talked about morning and evening routines and how these repeat.  Every night we watch Daniel Tiger while we clean up, then after Daniel we put go potty, put on pajamas, brush our teeth, share goodnight kisses, and then read many bedtime stories.  Daytime and nighttime are another type of pattern we also discussed

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.