So many rainbows!

Since out theme for the last few weeks was "weather" we made more rainbows.

Painted Paper Rainbow

I cut out rainbow semi-circles of different sizes and Alicia painted them in the colours of rainbow:

We left them out to dry to put them together into a rainbow next day, but she didn't want to do it. So I organized the pieces on the white mat this way to get her interested when she gets back from preschool:

Then she got interested and started glueing rainbow piece by piece. We coloured rainbows with her before and she also has wooden rainbow toy, so she knows the sequence of colours quite well. So I left the rest up to her - only helped straighten pieces up a couple of times.

Play Dough Rainbow

We actually made 2 types of rainbow using play dough: the one with pipe cleaners stuck in play dough and rainbow from actual play dough.
I've borrowed the idea of pipe cleaners rainbow from one of the blogs (It was either "Learning 4 Kids" or some other blog - I'm sorry I can't remember now - please let me know if that was your original idea and I'll put up a link). We stuck pipe cleaners' ends to play dough and added cotton balls as clouds. I was helping Alicia actively in this process as our play dough was rather old and not very soft any more, so I didn't take pictures in the process, only end result can be seen on the pictures to follow.
Then we moved on to make a rainbow from actual play dough. I bought a "party pack" set on sale for very cheap price before and it finally found its use. All I did was opening the containers for Alicia - they were quite tough, the rest she did herself. Here are the photos of her work:

Then she wanted to cut it up and make "dessert" for her toy "friends".

 

Rainbow Sugar Tray

This activity I saw on Learning 4 Kids blog and I thought it would be great for our "rainbow" theme. Only I didn't make rainbow paper myself, I bought it from dollar store and also used sugar instead of salt (we didn't have a lot of salt in the house that moment). Alicia got excited with this activity: 

Then she tried to draw a rainbow, although up side down by some reason. 

 She was drawing circles and some other things.

Then it was time to clean up the mess! She vacuumed the floor under the table as well (I didn't take a picture). 

Coloured water play: drinks for "friends"

Today we decided to make some coloured "juice" for toy animals. I bought some rainbow food colouring and flavouring essences (orange, coconut, strawberry).
In the morning I set up a tray with all things we need: a few short glasses, toy teapot with clear water, food colouring, flavouring essences and also some toy spoons (Alicia wanted them in the short glasses). We also set up a "table" for toy animals - just a large wooden board we had.

First Alicia poured water from the teapot to short glasses. She has already learned how to do that so that water doesn't overflow: "poor and stop" concept I showed her before . I leave for her jugs with water, diluted juice and milk in the fridge which she can poor for herself any time she likes, so she became quite good in pouring lately.

Then she picked the food colouring that she wanted to use: one colour for each short glass. I instructed her to point little bottle with food colouring  down into the glass first before squeezing - to prevent it squirting out to the walls and making mess. She was concentrating so well and did not make any mess at all!

 After colour was done we scented the "drinks" with flavouring essences. I wanted her to use eye droplets for this activity, however I didn't get a chance to buy them, so I helped her adding scents to each glass - she only had to pick which goes where. Then she put a small spoon in each glass and gave the drinks to her stuffed animals - she calls them "friends".

 She had a couple of small spills, but carefully cleaned them with a paper towel.

And then cleaned the table. 

While leaving her animals to "finish drinking juice", she went to preschool and when she came back in the afternoon we continued playing. 

I also got her to smell the glasses and guess what flavour was there: orange, strawberry or coconut? She did guess a few right! (She's smelling the glasses here, not drinking :))

And here cleaning up all the drops again. Surprisingly there were not many!

Then there was time to put toys away and clean up all the glasses. However she wanted to do some more pouring. So I gave her some plastic jars and funnels. She had fun with mixing colours:  "Look mama, adding blue to yellow makes green!"

Then she wanted to sort water by colour: green and blue went to big jar and red went to a smaller jar.

Then she wanted to put "juice" back to short glasses and then to the jars again, and again! 

Then it was time to clean up. I let her wash all the dishes herself and she actually enjoyed the process. 

Then it was time to dry them with a towel. Although not much drying actually happened, she did try very hard!

She did end up going to bed quite let that afternoon (although it is winter in Australia and gets dark pretty early - so not as late as it looks!), and it was rather tiring activity for me to supervise, but we both had a great day. Alicia liked this activity so much so we repeated it to some extend in the next two days.

Weather sensory box.

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).

Alicia came from preschool this afternoon to discover playbox. "What's in there?"  

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.

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).