Fun with Plastic Easter Eggs

This year, instead of coming up with activities for Eva to do with plastic eggs, I gave her a basket full of them and let her creativity guide her.  Each day she has come up with something to do with them.  She has used eggs tongs to transfer them from the basket to a tray.

When she got bored with that, she dumped the eggs on the floor and then used the tongs to collect them again.

Here's a list of a few other Easter egg activities she came up with:
*  hide the eggs and then find them again (great training for Easter egg hunts!)
*  open the eggs and see what will fit inside (she's tried everything from dinosaurs to crayons to buttons)
*  put something in an egg and have someone else guess what it is by shaking it
*  sort eggs by color
*  sort eggs by size
*  roll eggs to see which ones will go the farthest
*  put small objects in two eggs and use as shakers to make music

Harvest Sensory

Our sensory/exploration area had gotten quite crowded with all the fun Halloween games so it was nice to pack it all away and put out just a few things for harvest.  Every week when we go grocery shopping or stop by the farmers market, Eva requests a gourd.  We have built up quite a collection so I laid them out on a tray.  Later in the week we will sort them by various attributes, but for now they are out to touch and examine.

Our turkey, Mr. Gobbles, is keeping watch over them.  I also packed away the Halloween cookie cutters leaving just pumpkins and turkeys to stamp in the pumpkin pie play dough.  Eva can also use Indian corn to make some neat impressions in the dough.

Finally I replaced the spooky sensory tub with a simple harvest one.  Drawing on Counting Coconuts tub from last year, I filled it with popcorn kernels.  I added some funnels and a few measuring spoons to use as scoops.

It's pretty basic but Eva played with it non-stop for almost an hour when I set it out!  She even figured out how to get the funnels to balance in the kernels.

(Check out her cool stamp- she got that for being a good listener at dance today and couldn't be prouder.)

Let the Pumpkin Fun Begin!

At the grocery store this morning, Eva set her sights on this pie pumpkin.  After seeing Jess's post on Structured Play I had been meaning to try baking a pumpkin so we bought it. Eva had a blast examining it before we cut into it.

She wasn't quite as impressed when she saw the inside but after a few pokes, she started touching the "goop."

She also helped separate the seeds from the pulp for us to use in another activity later in the week.

After I cut the pumpkin into wedges, Eva sprinkled it all with cinnamon sugar and into the oven it went.

When they were done baking (a little over an hour in a 350º oven) I scraped some out, added a little whipped cream and we dug in.  Turns out as much as we love pumpkin flavored treats, just plain pumpkin isn't our cup of tea but we can say we tried.  (Eva chose to just eat the whipped cream.)

Back-to-School

Back to school has always been one of my favorite times of the year.  It is all about new beginnings and the joy of learning.  While Eva isn't old enough to go to school yet, we are still celebrating all the buses that are back running through the neighborhood and all the fun things associated with school.  This week we are helping out at my sister's preschool for a few days so we truly will be going back-to-school!  We have also begun having a more structured time in the lounge each day including some calendar work and circle time.

Crafts
Shape Bus- what shapes will we need to create our own school bus?

School Supply Mobile- we'll make pencils, scissors, crayons and other school essentials into a fun mobile to decorate the lounge

Paper Bag Back Pack- one can only imagine the supplies we can carry in this fun bag!

Activities
School Bus Graph- we'll keep track of how many buses we see each day and record our data on a graph

September Sensory Tub- what new things will we discover as we explore the tub this month?

Songs
The Wheels on the Bus
This is the Way We Go To School

Books
            

Five Senses Exploration Station

We have a new exploration station!  I placed items that allow Eva to explore four of the five senses in the area- I left out taste because I figured a little furry friend might enjoy that a little too much.  For seeing there are magnifying glasses, a paper towel tube to use as a telescope and a fun color puzzle game.

When we were at Home Depot over the weekend I grabbed a few of the paint sample cards and then cut between the colors.  Eva has to put them in order from darkest to lightest (or vice versa).  I thought this would be a little tricky but Eva breezed right through!

For the hearing area, I have a few musical instruments, Eva's drumming Snoopy toy and some medicine bottles filled with different things- beans, pasta, rice.  For touch there is a bag full of various fabric scraps  for Eva to touch and experience different textures.

Her favorite so far though is the smelling area.  I put cotton balls dipped in extracts in baby food jars.  Eva gets to open and sniff them to see what they smell like.  (It also works on the practical skill of opening jars!)

I made five- peppermint, vanilla, orange, raspberry and garlic.  She knew the garlic right off the bat!  (Eva loves anything with garlic!)  Because it was a little tricky for her to identify the smells without help, I drew pictures to coordinate with the smells on the paper.

This made it much easier for her to match the smells to their source.

To round out the station, I added a Five Senses puzzle I found in the Dollar Spot at Target a few weeks ago.