Our Pets Week - Stitching Up Some Animals

We've been working with a lot of paper lately, so for our small motor activity I wanted to play with some different textures. To go along with our pets theme I decided to make some felt animals, that had owies and needed to be stitched up.

For now I'm just letting her play around with them, pushing the yarn through any hole she wants. The next time we pull them out we might use them to work on different stitching patterns. But for now it's hard enough pushing the yarn through the little holes without worrying about which hole to put it through!

If you want to see how I made the felt animals, you can check back later for the tutorial.

Our Pets Week - Making a Cat Face

I wanted to try something a little different for one of our art projects this week. For our cat face I wanted to see how well Ava could follow directions.

I had all of the different parts of the face cut out ahead of time and then put them into a big pile. I started by telling her and Riley to each take from the pile 2 eyes, 2 ears, 6 whiskers, etc. (sneaking in a little counting practice). Then I gave directions like "glue the blue eyes onto your face", "glue the black pupils onto your blue eyes." I left the actual placement up to her (as you can see from the ears!)

This certainly wasn't the most creative art project we've ever done. However, it was great for practicing  listening and organizational skills, and Ava had fun trying something new!

Our Pets Week - A Fish Bowl Sensory Bag

I love this sensory activity - all of the fun, without any of the mess!

I saw these great sensory bags over at Teach Preschool, and knew they would be a big hit with Ava. All you need to do is put about 1/2 cup of hair gel (we got ours at the dollar store) into a Ziploc bag, add some food coloring, and squish it around until it's all blended.

We added fish to ours to tie it in with our pets week - I just cut a few fish out of construction paper and laminated them (like I did here) so they would hold up in the gel.

We hung ours up in the window, and everyone in the house has been over there playing with it. The fish have a tendency to get clumped together, so it's become a little game to get them separated from each other - which just makes it a great small motor activity too - bonus!

Our Pets Week - The Vet Clinic

For our dramatic play for pets week we set up a little vet clinic. Riley was home sick one day (though apparently not too sick to play!) so he got to join in the fun. I set it up into four small areas: reception, check-in, operating room, and waiting room.

We treated all kinds of animals - cats, dogs, monkeys, and as you can see Ava was very concerned about her hamster with a broken leg.

We already had a lot of the materials we needed from a couple of old doctors kits that were Riley's when he was younger. We did stop at the dollar store to get some gauze and surgical caps (or shower caps), and that $4 Michaels art smock gets used on a daily basis.

All of the signs and banners came from Pre-K Pages again. I love that site!

What Else We Did During Our Colors Week

This week we also sorted some pom poms and matched clothespins to our color wheel (this was a great small motor activity!).

We also did this Visual Discrimination Worksheet
this Visual Discrimination Worksheet
and this Shades of Colors Worksheet

Our favorite books from the library were:

Our Color Week - The Video!

Here's our week - in video form.

Our Colors Week - A Fizzy Time

I was trying to find a fun science project to go along with our colors theme and came across this post on In Lieu of Preschool. We found a bunch of different containers and filled half with water and the other half with vinegar, then I let Ava put food coloring in each one (I'm pretty sure that was her favorite part). Then the fun began - adding baking soda!

Ava was really good at guessing which ones would fizz (the ones with vinegar) and which ones wouldn't (the ones with water). Then she had fun mixing the colors together; we talked about primary and secondary colors - and then she just mixed all of them together until they were all the same shade of brown!

Any ideas for any other color themed science projects?