Car Counting

My youngest son is completely UN-interested in numbers--this frustrates me, slightly. Therefore, I've been trying to find something to interest him that will help expose him to numbers and hopefully get some recognition going on. We've done this activity three times this week, but I've yet to determine it's effectiveness. I'll let you know.

It's easy to prepare. I draw a parking lot on black construction paper with a white crayon and label the parking spots with numbers 1-10 (you could certainly do a different set of numbers, whatever you want to work on). Then I tell the kids to get 10 cars and line them up in "traffic."

The first time I did this activity, I just called out a number and the kids would park their cars in that number's space.

But it somehow evolved into my telling 10 little stories, with 10 protagonist drivers that are trying to get to various places represented by 10 different parking spaces.

Examples:

• A man trying to get his sick dog to the vet in space #3.
• An old person forgot their pills and had to run home to space #5 to get them.
• A mom and all her kids were going to the grocery store in space #10.

You get the drift. Anyway, the kids both enjoy this one, and I'm hoping it's helping.

Gonna Paint

Today was all about painting. 

First we read a book that we LOVE! This is the one: 

It's adorable! Really. Really!

Then we made bath paint. I forgot to take a picture of our home-made bath paint, and now, of course, it's all gone. So here is a picture of the bath paint from the website I got the recipe from 

(Homemade Bath Paints):

We only made 4 colors...

Next we were off to the bath to paint our own bodies, just like the kid in the book. 

AND finally, we got all washed off, just like the kid in the book.

This was a good activity! I highly recommend it!

Next time, when I get really ambitious, and when we purchase a black light some fine day, we're going to do this glow-in-the-dark idea from a different website-- Glowing Homemade Bath Paint:

Story Starters

My kids love to tell stories. Today I presented them with 2 story starters (the first few sentences of a story) and had them each tell the rest. I wrote down their stories for them and we've been reading them over and over all day. They love to hear their stories; they laugh like it's the funniest thing EVER!

You could use any story starter you want, or come up with your own. I just so happened to have come across a few on the website I referenced a few weeks back from my friend's school district, so I just used those ones. But anything will work.

Here are my kid's stories:

One day, a boy woke up early in the morning. As he got out of bed, he noticed a very strange seed lying on the floor.  It was a strange color and a strange shape...it was red and shaped like a diamond. Then he picked it up and then he planted it in a pot. Then it growed and growed and then it turned out to be a strange plant. It growed a strange kind of food. It actually growed and it growed treasures on it and rubies was the treasure! And diamonds! And gold! And the boy was SO surprised! He cut them off and he showed them to his mom and his mom said, "Holy COW!" The end.

Warren the worm lived in the dirt. He loved dirt! It was cool, just a bit wet, and quiet. But he was very curious about what was above the dirt. So one day, he decided to poke his head up above the dirt and grass. He tunneled through the dirt, straight up to the surface, and poked his head out. Just then...he heard a loud noise; it was a wookie. He goed like this: "woarrrrrrr!" But the wookie was a good guy. Then a ghost comed and put a sleep on him so he can't find Warren the worm. Then the ghost did a puzzle and waited. Warren the worm writed letters on the ghost's body and the ghost said, "that is NOT pretty!" Then the  ghost grew up to be a cow!!! Then he turned back into a ghost. Then he took those two-the worm and the wookie-away and then he locked them down in jail and they died. Then Batman comes and he was killin' the ghost and then the ghost came back to life. He killed Batman and then he singed a song, the Darth Vader song. Then Luke Skywalker comed and poofed him away and then he sang his own Luke Skywalker song. The end.

Nice, eh?

Rainbow Walk

Today we put duct tape, sticky-side-out, around our wrists (like bracelets) and went on a walk. The idea was that the kids had to find items of as many different colors as they could, then attach the items to their bracelets.












It was great fun, and interesting to see what things the kids picked up--petals, leaves, pinecones, rocks...etc. The sky's the limit!