Nursery Rhymes and Fun Times: balloons

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Tot School- b is for balloon and bat

Jonathan is 26 Months

We got off to a great start this week, but got sidelined by RSV. Grace had RSV last week and Jonathan came down with it Tuesday night. So most of our week was spent on the couch watching lots of Leapfrog movies (Jonathan's current favorite).

But, here's a summary of what we did at the start of the week: we talked about balloons and bats!

Bible

We continued to review the verse from Songs for Saplings.

Books

Here are a few of Jonathan's favorite reads from the last week (click on the link to read our review)

Too Many Balloons by Catherine Matthias

Hot Air: the (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot Air Balloon Ride by Marjorie Priceman

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon

Bat Jamboree by Kathi Appelt

Motor Skills

We played with balloons, pushing them in baskets:

and playing basketball:

Art

We did lots of art this week. We painted with balloons:

and did some work with glue. We glued shapes on a picture of a balloon:

and made a bat:

Math

Several of the books we read this week focused on counting 1-10. So as we read the books, we practiced counting. I also made a little game for him by printing out pictures balloons in different colors. The balloons corresponded with the book Too Many Balloons. I don't have any pictures, but he had fun laying out the balloons.

One of the art projects we did involved shapes and Jonathan did a great job naming and matching the shapes!

Jonathan enjoyed watching Leapfrog Ocean's Ahoy, Math to the Moon, and Math Circus while he's been sick.

Practical Life

We worked on dry pouring this week. We used black beans:

It quickly turned into a sensory exercise!

Snack

Jonathan's throat was sore at the end of the week due to our bought of RSV, so I made him Blueberry Banana Smoothies. I really enjoyed them- but my picky eater wouldn't even try them. (sigh.) What kid doesn't like smoothies?

So, Jonathan came down on Tuesday night with a severe case of croup that sent him & daddy to the ER. The diagnosis was RSV (Grace had RSV towards the end of last week). Thankfully, he started to gain his appetite back today, so hopefully we're on our way to recovery. So next week we'll hopefully finish our "b" activities with balls and boats! Then we'll finally be on to c!

How our week finished up

Question for other Parents: what toddler-friendly movies would you recommend? Jonathan's been wanting to watch his Leapfrog movies over and over again. Are there other movies you would suggest? What about feature length movies? Are there some that would be appropriate for a two year old? I'd love to have some ideas to vary things up a bit next time.

I'm linking up to:

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1
What My Child is Reading @ Mouse Learns, Mouse Grows

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

b is for balloon

picture source

Sign Language-

We reviewed the sign for balloon.

Books

Too many Balloons by Catherine Matthias

We have really enjoyed this book-- it's a simple story meant for early readers. In the book, a little girl buys one red balloon and shows the balloon to the lion, who likes the balloon. Then the little girl buys two yellow balloons and shows them to the giraffes. The story progresses up through the number 10 when the girl now has too many balloons! I like that this is a great book for practicing counting, labeling zoo animals and colors.We had some party balloons of some of the colors mentioned in the book and Jonathan had fun picking up the proper color whenever it was mentioned in the story. It was a very fun read that we both enjoyed!

Where Do Balloons Go? An Uplifting Mystery by Jamie Lee Curtis

This is such a fun story about what happens to wayward balloons. The story is told in imaginative rhyme that reminded me a bit of Dr. Seuss. Do balloons get cold? Do they tango with airplanes? Do they fly into outer space? The concept, however, was a little beyond Jonathan, who has never had a balloon float away. The pictures are very detailed and full of humor that adults and older children would grasp well. This is a cute read, but probably better for preschoolers than toddlers.

Pop! Went Another Balloon: a magical counting storybook by Keith Faulkner

This is another counting/balloon story, but instead of counting up, it counts down from 10 to 1. The story is about a turtle trying to bring 10 balloons to a friend for her birthday. However, a flock of birds is very interested in the balloons and keeps popping them. Jonathan enjoyed this book because of the holes in the page (so the balloons show through), but he didn't get the concept of subtraction. It may be a good book to turn to in another year or two.

Hot Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride by Marjorie Priceman

One last book we looked at was a Caldecott Honor book by Marjorie Priceman. I wasn't planning on this one, but chose it based on its Caldecott nomination and the previous book we enjoyed by the author (How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World). It is based on the first hot air balloon ride in 1783. During this ride, a sheep, a duck, and a rooster were sent up in a balloon. Priceman imagines what went on while the animals were up in the air. There's some detailed text at the beginning and end of the book, but most of the story is told in pictures. I wasn't sure what Jonathan would think, but he really enjoyed this book and asked to read it again! I learned a bit too about the history of the first hot air balloon ride. There are some homeschool web resources for this book as well, such as lapbooks (see below)

Motor Skills

We played with balloons, of course-- the possibilities are endless! We put them in a laundry basket and pushed them around:

We played basketball with the balloons-- this was Jonathan's favorite!

And we also just bopped them around and practiced hitting and catching. These were all very fun activities since we're likely to be stuck indoors most of the week!

Art

We did balloon painting, from an idea I got from Homemade Mamas. I pulled out some blue and brown paint and put it on a paper plate:

Blew up two small balloons and let Jonathan put the balloons in the paint and roll them, bounce them, etc. on fingerpaint paper.

This only held his attention for about 10 minutes or so, but he seemed to enjoy it!

Jonathan's masterpiece

We also did more work with glue sticks-- I used this template from First School to have Jonathan practice gluing shapes onto a hot air balloon. He was so excited to use a glue stick again!

I was very impressed that he figured out how to turn the shapes over to apply the glue- he didn't grasp that concept last week!

And he had a lot of fun gluing the shapes into place-- he did a fairly accurate job putting the shapes on the paper and correctly identified all the shapes and colors.

I know I'm a proud mama-- but I was impressed!