Rain does not want to go away and I've been "thinking weather" again. I saw this weather themed sensory tub on "Counting Coconuts" blog and got inspired to make our own.
This is how I set up our weather sensory box: some rice as a filling, cocktail umbrellas, glass "raindrops" from dollar store, lightning made out of pipe cleaners, cloud and sun cut-out foam shapes, cotton balls, rainbow that we previously coloured with Alicia and another wooden rainbow we had from before. I also added some lego little girls that Alicia loves.
This is what the whole "invitation to play" looked like. It included some of our previous activities with rain and rainbows + some paper strips with Russian words to name all the objects in the tub (good pre-reading activity).
The first thing she did she picked out all the "raindrops" - sparkly glass pieces. Then she put all the cocktail umbrellas into the foam mat and lay her lego dolls under them like on the beach :). She was pretty much not interested in anything else. She hid all the "raindrops" in her "Dora" thermos and took them to bed :)
Next morning I reset the box and play continued. She took out her "raindrops" and arranged them on the paint tray. She also got interested in the painbow pieces this time and put them together (we practiced this before).
Then she played with the other serving tray - put all the "raindrops" in the middle and little lego dolls on the sides - so cute! I also tried to use Montessory-style "3 part cards" (I love making cards) to learn some more vocabulary, like "sunset", "sunrise", "fog" - some of the pictures I took myself while sailing East Coast of Australia (before Alicia was born). She wasn't interested in them much, but learned the words.
This is how I set up our weather sensory box: some rice as a filling, cocktail umbrellas, glass "raindrops" from dollar store, lightning made out of pipe cleaners, cloud and sun cut-out foam shapes, cotton balls, rainbow that we previously coloured with Alicia and another wooden rainbow we had from before. I also added some lego little girls that Alicia loves.
This is what the whole "invitation to play" looked like. It included some of our previous activities with rain and rainbows + some paper strips with Russian words to name all the objects in the tub (good pre-reading activity).
Alicia came from preschool this afternoon to discover playbox. "What's in there?"
Next morning I reset the box and play continued. She took out her "raindrops" and arranged them on the paint tray. She also got interested in the painbow pieces this time and put them together (we practiced this before).
Then she played with the other serving tray - put all the "raindrops" in the middle and little lego dolls on the sides - so cute! I also tried to use Montessory-style "3 part cards" (I love making cards) to learn some more vocabulary, like "sunset", "sunrise", "fog" - some of the pictures I took myself while sailing East Coast of Australia (before Alicia was born). She wasn't interested in them much, but learned the words.
She played with the box a bit more on the 3rd day, but quickly lost interest. I put it away. Then 2 days later she asked to play with it again (I don't have photos though).
Oh my goodness, I love this!! We have the rainbow and some little umbrellas. I have to do this one! In answer to your question on the fetus cards (sorry I couldn't email you from your question), I took this image: http://www.thebabycorner.com/pregnancy-calendar/week-40/ and turned it into black and white. Then, I colored in the parts I wanted to be learned. For the stages cards, I printed off various stages and laminated them. Sorry, all the images are copyright protected so I can't actually share my set. Hope that helps!
ReplyDeleteOur Country Road, thank you so much for the nice words and sharing my post in your blog! I only started my blog a week ago and there is still a lot to learn. Also thanks for sharing the source of the fetus cards - I'm thinking of making them very soon - I think it will help my 3 year old a lot to prepare for the new baby. I totally understand about copyright.
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