The Runaway Bunny

Welcome to the Poppins Book Nook! The theme for this months is "Where in the World?" - adventures, explorations, travelling, and the discovery of new exciting things.

For our 2 year olds we chose "The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown.

We've built a hidden garden with flying insects from an old box.

 

Making flowers from construction paper and a TP tube was so much fun! We counted fish, rocks, flowers, birds, sailboats, carrots. The book gives meaning and motivation to counting - so great!

 

We reviewed letters while playing and building spring flowers with pattern blocks. If you haven't seen it, you can read about it here: Spring Flowers - Pattern Blocks

We have learned about circus and played "circus" on rainy/snowy days at home. Unbelievable, but we had snow on the ground this afternoon! What's with this long winter?

The simple matching vocabulary game: walk, climb, sail, drive, fly. We matched the objects to printed out scenes and reenacted the actions. Sorry, no pictures - I was too busy playing and the scenes got destroyed in action ;)

Camilla's all time favorite Do-A-Dots got used with these lovely printables: Crystal&Comp

Where in the world?

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Spring Flowers - Pattern Blocks and Letter Review. Free Printables.

We are having a week of spring flowers: I combined learning the names of the flowers with the letter reviews and introduction to the pattern blocks. Camilla is happy and motivated to do the activities - YAY - it works!

Spring flowers

I chose pansy, crocus, daffodil, daisy, hyacinth, and tulip for her first exploration of the variety of beautiful flowers. It's not an easy task at this age: to name the flower correctly, they need to be able to compare the colors and shapes of different parts of the flowers. It always amazes me how fast little kids learn and how much they are able to accomplish when they are interested in a subject.

This subject is wonderful: the best colors of the Mother Nature!

There are several activities on each page: name the letter and trace with fingers, name the flower and the first sound of the flower, add the blocks to complete the leaves (and name the letter and the flower while doing it), make the letter from the patter blocks, trace the letters with the marker, match the magnetic letters to the name of the flower.

We are doing one page per day with the tracing the letter review for the next day. Camilla was able to trace the letters with her markers. I offered her to match the magnetic letters to the written word for the first time. She was able to do this, but it was challenging and she got bored quickly. I've realized my mistake: I should offer her only several letters that are in the given word.

Spring flowers - free printables

Here are the links to pattern blocks printables (6 pages of activities). We worked with triangles and squares only for the easiest difficulty level: this was my daughter's first experience with pattern blocks.
Pansy. Crocus.
Daffodil
Daisy
Hyacinth
Tulip

Pattern blocks

I chose magnetic foam pattern blocks: they are nice and thick, and don't slide around easily. They are available at Amazon from different brands. When choosing pattern blocks, make sure to buy the standard shapes and colors because they can be used with many patterns readily available for different difficulty levels.

 

 

Where's de air?

That was a question my daughter asked me when she woke up after the nap. Land, water, and air sensory bin.

Sorry, we moved!

Please, find the updated version here:

Land, Air, and Water. G is for Globe.

Toddler curriculum review

Up to this point we were busy exploring different activities and media. Now I realized that Camilla is up for a next level of learning (she is 28 months at this time). We were in need of developing a nice new routine too so that Camilla knows what to expect and look forward to; and I have activities readily available for her at all times. I looked around and found the best ever set of activities for us!

I am very excited and Camilla loves our new curriculum that can be found here: Alphabet Printables & More Thank you, Carisa, for all your creativity, hard work and attention to detail! We are your huge fans!

To use Carisa's Tot Pack, I had to print out 14 pages for our letter of the week. We chose R for our Rainbow theme. I love that the pages are simple and not too busy with images, and at the same time, have enough spark to be very engaging for Camilla. The 14 pages cover all the points of interest for us: the letter activities, numbers, colors and shapes, new vocabulary activities, and a space for creative work and arts.

Here is Camilla's favorite at this time: do-a-dots. There are letters R hidden in the rain forest. I modeled a couple for her; and she surprised me by finding all the rest of the letters by herself!

Here are the two most challenging pages for us: color the rainforest with the color stated on each part, and numbers 1-20 activity. I was afraid she wouldn't be interested enough to keep attention, but she loved the activities! I offered her pens for the first time - that kept her busy until she went through everything on the pages, and then some. I didn't know she could name some numbers correctly and trace them - a wow factor!

She loved her new pack so much she went through almost everything in one sitting and kept me so busy I didn't have much time to take pictures. Here is another surprise: she was able to lace the card we made from the pack. I punched flower shaped holes - they have sharp edges which helped to keep the rope from slipping back out of the hole.

Our new 3 part rainforest puzzle looks very pretty!

I have also made matching to the shadow cards and sequencing cards. Love them!

Learning to Share with the Rainbow Fish

Introduction to rainbow for toddlers
Ocean animals for toddlers
Pouring and transferring with water
Rainbow Fish
Learning to Share with the Rainbow Fish

Sorry, we moved!

You can find an updated version here:

Rainbow Fish Crafts and Play for Toddlers

Colored Sand. Letter H Activities for Toddlers.

Salt shaker for the colored sand

Here is our new favorite activity. It meant to be a craft for the Chinese New Year. We'll continue with our awesome colored sand for Valentine's crafts!
For the year of the horse, Camilla painted a horse (printed from ActivityVillage.co.uk). I cut out the horse, and she glued it onto the red construction paper.

We applied the glue onto the paper. Then I showed her how to use a salt shaker to sprinkle the yellow sand over the glue. Squeezing the glue from the bottle is great for her little hands. Working with the colored sand - she loved it so much!

We had to get all the different coloring pages for her gluing-shaking obsession. Who would imaging it can get to be that much fun?

The picture is held inside the box so that the loose sand is collected back into the shaker and reused.  I let Camilla get some sand back into the bottle by hand for the fine motor exercise.

Letter H activities

This page is a great free printable from 3Dinosaurs.com. Camilla colored it with crayons while we discussed the letter H.

Of course, she had to shake some sand over this page too. This time we used the glue stick which is easier to use. The sand is held by the glue stick just fine.

Vocabulary exercise: where do they live?

We discussed the different places to live for different animals, then tried to describe the pictures. Counted the bees and eggs. Letter H activity: H is for home, hive, hole, and house.
Finger play:
Here is a home for a robin (cup hands to make nest).
Here is a hive for a bee (clasp hands together).
Here is a hole for a bunny (make a hole with hands).
Here is a house for me (arms above head to make a triangle).

Matching game for CNY animals

I printed out 2 copies of a page from ActivityVillage.co.uk. One page is cut into separate cards to match the pictures on the main page. For Camilla's age (27 months), it's easy enough to increase her confidence in matching.

This post is a follow up on our CNY and year of the horse activities that can be found here:
Sensory Bin and Story Time
Green Horse 2014

Sensory Bin and Story Time: Chinese New Year

River sensory bin

Chinese New Year set up
12 animals for the swimming race
Story time with the sensory bin

Sorry, we moved!

 

Please, visit the updated version here:

 

Chinese New Year Sensory Bin

A Birch - Russian Soul (Winter Olympic Games)

I love a Russian birch

Winter Olympic Games are held in Russia. I hope, terrorism will not be an issue there! Meanwhile, we are getting ready - it's time to learn about Russia. Everybody knows about Matryoshka.  There is another, very special for Russian people, symbol: a birch tree.

Birch is often described as a beautiful Russian girl dressed in a traditional bright Russian sundress. Sometimes, the birch is a beautiful bride in a white wedding dress. The painting above is "Birch Grove", a romantic landscape painted in 1901 by Arkhip Kuindzhi.

 

"Birch Grove" by famous Ivan Shishkin. There are several types of birch trees that survive in US (their common enemy is insects). As you can see, the Russian birch has white bark with black stripes, and a wonderful crown of leaves. This makes birch woods look outstanding and breath taking. Maybe that's why a lot of Russian poets devoted their poems to birch.

 

A beautiful white birch tree is in a Russian soul, she is a part of a Russian soul.

 Play-doh tree craft

I drew a tree on white construction paper and glued it onto the piece from a box for durability. Camilla made "carrots" from the black play-doh and stuck them to the tree for stripes. She also made snow under the tree from white play-doh "carrots". The activity is great for fine motor skills!

Tree activities for toddlers

We talked a lot for these activities. About different lands that look and feel different than what we are used to here. About the different kinds of trees. We looked at the paintings and talked about birch. I used several trees to compare the color and the size.

 

We built our small world winter forest with several trees and animals, and a fur rug for a snow. Camilla immediately decided that she wanted to sit in the forest and read a book.

The oak tree has pockets for animals/acorns. With our oak, we reviewed parts of the tree and how trees are used by people and animals. The Christmas tree is a great printout from 3 Dinosaurs. Camilla is very much into Do-a-Dot activities now!

 We have also read a beautiful Russian poem. It's written by Alexander Prokofiev. The translation is mine (Hmmm, blogging is interesting - it makes you do all kinds of things :) ).

 



I love a Russian birch.
Sometimes she's light,
but at other times she's sad.
In the white sundress,
kerchiefs in her pockets,
with beautiful clasps
and green earrings.
I love her standing over the river
in her festive mantle.
Sometimes she is bright and exuberant;
sometimes she's sad and crying.
I love the Russian birch.
She's always with her girl​​friends
dancing in the spring
and kissing, as it happens.
She goes to where she'd want to
and sings at places nobody else does.
In the wind, she bows to her feet,
and bends, but does not break!

What are your favorite trees? Tree activities?