Today for our emotions week I played egg-streme emotions with my toddler.
Egg-streme Emotions is simple enough. All you have to do is draw faces on the plastic eggs you get from Easter. Draw sad, happy, mad and many more that your toddler will recognize (we don’t want to make it too difficult for them).
For a Toddler I would do around 5 eggs a child. So some options besides the 3 I listed earlier are: silly, sleepy, sick, disgusted, scared, surprised.
Once You draw your faces and let them dry separate the top from the bottom of the egg and let your toddler try to put the faces back together.
Discuss the different emotions, help your child understand them. You don’t have to stop at what I listed for emotions either. Just remember to have fun.
Today we did rubbings of emotions. A rubbing is when you color over something and it leaves an impretion behind.
To do this I made pictures out of glue on a white piece of paper. Let the glue dry. Once your pictures are dry you will need crayons to rub the picture into sight.
My children love coloring so I thought this would be a great way to start our special week of emotions.
The glue adds a new dimension to coloring and my kids enjoyed it.
I suggest having the glue on the back of the picture (glue facing your table) because you will get a better result.
I can’t really take much credit for this activity, since we printed off someone else’s idea, but it was such a good and entertaining activity, I saw no point in reinventing the wheel. To see this great activity at the source, click here. It comes from Mr. Printables, and I had a pin that sent me on a goose chase to find the original owner, but I’m glad I did (when in doubt, do a reverse image lookup, haha). Anyway, head on over to his (I’m assuming it’s a him, since it’s called Mr… but I actually only know that he had a printable that I liked and nothing more) site and download the printable.
I modified what they had a little based on the supplies we had at our home, so I printed off his pattern, then traced the shapes onto colored cardstock. For the asterisks in the eyes, I just used a marker (that didn’t seem like a fun shape to cut out. Marker was way easier!) Then I “pre-drilled” the holes and handed my kid a lot of 6 brad’s. (Bonus! More pincer grasp practice!)
As you can see, I totally cheated on the cardstock. I printed 1 sheet of plain white paper and glued it to the back of a capri sun box (so that the color doesn’t shine through). Then I used the same white paper to do the background of the teardrops and the eyeballs.
For the record, she wasn’t determined to keep this one on a sad face, that’s just the best picture I got of her holding it, go figure. We made all kinds of faces and talked about how different parts of our face move when we feel differently. Sometimes I’d say make a mad (or happy or worried) face! Then I’d show her on my face and see if she could see what moved.
When we were talking about what activities to do this week, we noticed a common thread occurring. We both picked out activities that had to do with feelings. Maybe it’s the change of season, or maybe it’s just part of growing up, but it sounded like a good time to talk about feelings. And when we got to talking, we decided that it wasn’t something exclusively for preschoolers. Even newly-christened-toddlers are learning emotions in full force!
But my littles can’t handle some big grand activity on emotions, it’s all so new and undiscovered territory; However, they can definitely mirror your expressions and try copying your face. So, we just did that on purpose for an activity. That’s a lot of what this whole experiment is about – doing things with intention.
Really, it’s super easy and you’re probably already doing some form of this activity with your babe. I have found it easiest to either turn the camera around on my phone so you can set baby in your lap, or do the same but with a good old fashioned mirror. Letting baby see your face and theirs at the same time. You can just make faces across the dinner table, or even from any place your kid can make eye contact. It just ends up more fun when you can snuggle and when they can see themselves. Note: babies love seeing themselves!
Anyway, the post is short and sweet, but it is definitely fun to make faces on purpose. Try smiling and pulling silly faces and winking (don’t expect them to even come close on that one, haha). Definitely stick with happier emotions if your kids are still little like me, because they don’t understand the difference between pretend sad and real sad.
Since this is a fairly common practice even subconsciously, I’d love some feedback if anyone has actually thought about playing monkey see expressions with their kids!
It’s emotions week for us. Today I did yoga with my toddler. Since she is only a toddler I chose to start with only 5 poses. The poses are inverted sitting, resting, sea lion, train, and downward dog.
I was amazed at how much my toddler loved doing this activity. She actually sat still for longer than she has ever before. If you know my child you know she id constantly moving and getting into things so any time I can get her to sit still it is a miracle.
My toddler’s favorite pose was the inverted sitting pose. She thought it was so fun to sit with her legs up the wall.
Resting pose is as simple as it sounds. Lie flat on your back with your hands resting beside you.
Sea Lion pose is one of the hardest I chose to do with my toddler. Lay on your belly and lift your top half up on your arms. Make sure you are leaving your legs resting on the floor and bending back at the waist.
Train pose is another fun one. Sitting with your back and legs straight move your arms around in a circle like they are your wheels.
The last pose is one I think is the most well known yoga pose. Downward dog you form a triangle with your body and the floor. Legs straight, bend at the waist and place your hands on the floor.
Your child’s poses might not be 100% correct, but know they will get better over time so don’t be a perfectionist on them. This is supposed to be calming, not stressed because they can’t get it right away.
Anyways, have fun. It is so much better when you don’t place too much expectations on it.
Today is the first day of our special Emotions week. I decided to get my preschoolers to form emotions with playdough.
My sister was amazing and made me the face to use for my face border. Once I printed that off I found out that if you trim printer paper a little it fits into a gallon size bag.
Once I placed the paper in the gallon bag I let my preschoolers have fun with the playdough and allowed them to create their faces.
The bags I used did have some problems. The playdough didn’t stick very well to them. I know sone bags are smoother than others so maybe if I tried an off-brand it would stick a little better.
In all it was a great way to talk about feelings with my preschoolers. They understood a lot of different emotions too.
first off, I have to give a disclaimer! We try to do activities that don’t take lots of prep time, but this is not one of those activities! And it would have been much longer if I didn’t beg for and receive a Cricut for Christmas (No perks received for name dropping).
I was looking over ideas for the week of activities I could do with my preschooler, and she was looking over my shoulders. When she saw a Cookie Monster beanbag toss she begged to make it. And asked about every hour on the hour. So, while she was at school, I worked hard to get it done and surprise her with it after school.
First, I pulled out my Cricut and paid the $1.99 for a cookie monster template (time was of the essence, so something premade was a must). It had a solid black mouth, but it was easy enough to cut it out. Especially because it cut out placement lines, so it did a lot of the cutting for me. I’m not all that familiar with my Cricut yet so that kinda surprised me. But it helped, so even thought it was a surprise, it was a good one.
Then I used the cricut to cut out circles in the felt. It didn’t go all the way through, even on the deeper setting, but it did make it easy enough for me to cut out the circles and get them to actually look like circles. And they’re all the same size, so once again, even though it wasn’t as expected, it was helpful. Once I got them all cut out, I blanket stitched around them (you could easily glue them, but I know how rough my kids are and that I’m pretty quick with a blanket stitch so I wanted them to last and maybe even survive the inevitable wash I foresee in their future). before you get them completely sewn, add some batting (beans might be better if you don’t intend to wash them. there isn’t much weight to the batting so they’re harder to throw.
Then I added the “chips” with a simple tack stitch. I know that a) it would have made more sense to sew these on first. So if you’re sewing them, do that first, and b) one little stitch isn’t gonna hold them on long, but it’s all I had thread and time for and I don’t really care when they come off. Obviously, hot gluing them on will work splendidly here, and if you are hot gluing, I really would add them after you get them together. You could also use permanent marker (I considered this but I had already pulled out the brown felt) or buttons (I might use buttons later. But don’t tell my button-collecting mother. She would say it is a waste of buttons. If you do buttons, sew them on really well. We do not want any choking kiddos).
Then I glued Cookie Monster’s face onto a cardboard box (if you want the game to last, laminating it is a good idea), used an X-Acto knife to cut out his mouth, and utility scissors to cut a window out of the top of the box for easy grabbing once the cookies are all in, and set it where my preschooler would see it when she got home.
She was pretty excited, and she made sure that everyone in the family had a turn throwing the cookies (seriously, you know how hard it is to avoid the “tossing cookies” idiom?) into Cookie Monster’s mouth. It is hard to make them all in, even for the adults, so once my daughter got bored she was just as happy to cheat (she giggled knowing it was cheating), and just feed Cookie Monster on her own for a while. My toddlers were all for that option, and they all played together happily for quite a while.
I’ve been reading a lot of child development resources lately, both to know some good activities for this blog and to better serve my kids (which is the point of doing activities for the blog… so, yeah), and in passing there was a mention about how metal bowls are great sensory tools because of how easily they make noise. I found that fact interesting and decided to test it.
I had already celebrated the childhood pastime of turning pans into drums, so I decided to put a ball into the bowl and roll it around and see what happened. I found that hard plastic balls made the best noise, and it didn’t take long for the kids to think so, too.
As you can see, the ice cream toy was experimented with, too. That was a toddler addition. And it did roll, so they liked it. Obviously not as well as an actual bowl, but the point is letting toddlers experiment and learn, so there really isn’t a way to go wrong.
The preschooler got in on the action, too, so although this activity is definitely geared toward toddlers, and I don’t know if it really would have been fun on her own, she enjoyed rolling the ball in the bowl. And since that was over the toddler’s ability to really get the ball going, really, it worked out well that she helped. I’d say maybe an older toddler would be able to roll it herself, say 2-ish? And if they’re rolling it themselves, my unprofessional guess is that it works on bilateral movements. It’s a fancy word that keeps popping up in developmental contexts, meaning that it works with both sides of the body and helps a kid learn to use their limbs together.
(yes, I know. Halloween jammies in September. I mean, I would classify myself as one of “those people,” that like Halloween – the cutesy side of Halloween. I don’t like creepy – but also, they were on sale at Walmart, and all of my girls needed new jammies. so, it’s a win-win. Especially for Minnie Mouse jammies. And my preschooler wishes Halloween could be every day, so she had no complaints! Seriously, costumes, fancy things, spooky things, and candy!?! You just read off all of her favorite things in one holiday! Needless to say, we’ll be sporting Halloween jammies in May, too.)
This is a simple game you can play with your child. It teaches patterns, which is part of early math.
To start you need something to create the pattern with. I used different colored cups. Place the cups, or what you are using to create the pattern, in a pattern on the table. Assign actions to the items. Let the child perform the actions. Then mix them up and see if they can perform the actions.
I can’t say my preschooler loved this game at first, but has asked to play it multiple times today.
I assigned actions like clapping for the blue cups, patting for the orange cups and stomping to the purple cup. What other actions can you think of for this activity?
Let me know in the comments.
I mean, unless you want your kitchen a sticky disaster…
Today we played Color Scavenger Hunt. To play you have your child search for different color toys. Once they find a toy of the color they are searching for they place the toy on a piece of colored paper.
The supplies you need are construction paper of different colors and toys.
My child loved this game, though it took her a little to understand what I was asking her to do.
This is a game that is meant for older toddlers since sorting is learned around 2 years old. If your child doesn’t understand the concept at first don’t be afraid to revisit this game at a later date.
As you can see we had more yellow toys than any other toys, but yellow was also the first color we searched for and my preschooler was helping more for that color.
The first time you play this game will be more of a scaffolding to play. In other words you are walking right along the child and point out the different toys and the colors they correspond with.
The subsequent times you play you can stand back a little more, but just enjoy the ride with your child while they learn math precursors. That’s right it is an early math game since part of math is sorting into numbers. Enjoy!
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