Soap Foam Sensory Play

I've been trying to do some sort of sensory play with Archer every week (sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't). This week I decided to try out some soap foam.

To make it, I put 2 tablespoons of dish soap in the mixer with 1/4 c water.  I added some liquid water color, just to make it slightly orange for our Color Themes. Then I put the mixer on high until some peaks formed. 

Since it has been to cold to do messy play outside, I set him up in the tub.  I put water in the two sides of his little lap desk and popped him in. 

He discovered he could use the sides to rinse his hands. 

Since he was already in the tub, cleanup was a breeze.  I just drained the water and used the shower attachment to rinse him off really well.  Definitely something we will try again sometime!

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Fall Tot School Activities

Hooray for fall! Since my brother was in town visiting, we spent the last two weeks on fall activities.  It let us take a very relaxed pace without worrying about fitting things into one week.

His little shelf had several fall books. Some he was interested in, others he wasn't. I figure they'll get more use next year. Right now, he still prefers books with photographs.

He spent some more time working on his Fall Sight Words. He seems to like it when I set out 6-8 of them and have him find certain words.  If I do too many, he has trouble finding things and gets frustrated.

Fall play dough. I used some fall cookie cutters, some acrylic leaves, apples and pumpkins (vase fill) and a few tools.

For a couple of weeks I showed Archer the fall words lesson on Little Reader (aff link), after we did our regular curriculum. I had these 3 part cards I made for Xander, to go with the lesson, so I figured I'd get them out and see what happened (Xander was a bit older when I did LR lessons and 3 Part Cards with him).  Archer got almost all of them correct and he really enjoyed it! He struggled a bit with the pocket chart, so next time we'll do it on the ground or a desk. I guess I'll have to start making more word lessons/cards for him!

Fall sensory bin with popcorn kernels.  I threw in some more apples, leaves and pumpkins, plus some little metal containers.  After a while, we threw in his rainbow wheel as well. He got such a kick out of picking up the kernels and then watching them flow out of his fingers!

We really haven't done too much sorting yet, so I wasn't sure how this would go.  I got him a little container of leaves and apples, with a little card that had them both marked.  He did pretty well with sorting, until he got too excited and tried to put them all on at once. I love seeing my little guy focus so intently on things that interest him!

I found this cute little pumpkin shape printable from Totschooling. It was one of Archer's favorite activities, and he wanted to do it several times.

We did lots of playing toys.  Here are a couple of pics I snapped.

Kaysha @ Memorizing the MomentsFallFollow On

Pom Pom Sensory Play

Sometimes you need a super quick and simple sensory bin.  This was on of those bins! I grabbed a bag of medium sized pom poms, a paint tray, some scoopers and containers. He had a great time making a mess  learning with pom poms.

I love that things don't have to be complicated to hold his attention! 

Purple Week

Archer is 16 months

In August I posted our Color Themes Goals. Those are what I had in mind while we started Tot School this week, not actually learning the color.

His little shelf had several books about colors or Purple.  I also got out two of his Non-Fiction Sight Words books and one of his Meet the Sight Words readers (he likes those better than story books at the moment).  The poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I also hung up the pages to his color book (free here).

Playroom shelves this week.  The goal of the toys is to entertain him and give him some fine motor practice.  Things like building, sorting and puzzles also provide some spacial awareness (math and even physics). 

Shelves included the purple sorting basket and food, shape cupcakes, purple silicone mold activity, race car carrier, hedgehog, a tray of squigz, gear caterpillar, magnadoodle, bin of purple objects and a pattern puzzle.

Purple foods 3 part cards (free here). I still did most of the matching for him, but we did it every day. We also did the corresponding Little Reader lesson to go with most days. He is getting better and better, both and picking up the words and at learning the idea of matching. By the end of the week, he could do 5 of the 6 on his own.

 Coloring his Purple Book (free here). We used crayons, markers and Do a Dots.

Bin of miscellaneous purple objects.

This was the first one to one correspondence activity I did with Archer.  I just had a little silicone mold and some pom poms in a cup.  He seemed to grasp the activity all by himself and completed it pretty quickly.  Someday, we will move on to doing it with tongs or scooping, but he's not ready yet.

Excited about all the circles he made on the magnadoodle.

For sensory play with used purple spaghetti.  More pictures on this post.

We got our his color paddles with the light table.  He had fun playing with them.  I also showed him how to combine red and blue to make purple.

 

Being silly with Daddy, making the world purple.

In addition to his normal running, wrestling and climbing, I got out Xander's purple spooner board for Gross Motor play.  He would sit on it and I would spin him.  He also did some spinning on his own. He's also gotten really into our Plasmacar lately.

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Colored Spaghetti Sensory Play

For Purple Week of our Color Themes, I decided to make Archer some purple spaghetti. Now, I will preface this by saying, I did it wrong, making it much more messy than it needed to be.  He had fun and it all washed out, so no harm done. The purple color would perfectly for Halloween!

I tried putting the food coloring into the pasta while it was boiling.  It looked ugly and made me overcook it, hoping it would take the color. Then, I actually got it purple by taking the cooked pasta, tossing it with a little oil and the food coloring and letting it sit for an hour or so. 

The pugs REALLY wanted to try it.

He spent a long time putting the pasta in his bowl.

He eventually decided to put it all over the porch steps.

Fall Sight Words Printables

Lately, Archer has been a little obsessed with apples.  He wants to eat them constantly and loves pointing them out.  He also LOVES sight words.  I find this really funny, because Xander hated them.  He didn't like the sight words DVDs and he liked to read books but would skip all the little sight words, going straight to all the "interesting" words in a sentence.

I'm trying to embrace Archer's interests, so I made him some apples and leaves with sight words on them.  I used 36 of the Pre-K Dolch Words.

I printed each page on its own color and laminated them. For an older kid, you could easily print two copies of each and play matching or memory games.

While he recognizes a lot of words, he has trouble finding them if you give him too many options at once. I started out by giving him six of the apples, with the idea of having him put them into the tractor wagon.  He didn't really want to do that, but he did have fun pointing to each one as I asked him to find it. Using only six also made the game go quickly, to suit his 16 month attention span. We will play this game with other apples throughout the fall.

You can print the Fall Sight Words Here

If you're looking for other Fall resources, you might check out my 3 Part Fall Vocabulary Cards and Fall Early Reader