Theme: Halloween & Pumpkins

I had the girls on Halloween, so naturally, they came in costume.  You’ll see as the day went on that the costumes didn’t stay on for too long.

I’m obsessed with gak.  I love it.  It’s so gooey, but yet it’s kinda clean (assuming you’re not playing on carpet and you’re not wearing your Halloween costume).  I made a yellow and a red pink batch of gak, then mixed it together.  I didn’t have the chicks mix it because once you’ve reached the gak consistency, it’s really  hard to mix colors.  But, I wanted them to see that yellow and red pink made orange.  Excuse the runny red.  It was a little too solid so I had to add water to soften it a bit.

They watched me mix and then I sent them back to play while I set up the activity.

I just buried these little toys at the bottom of a bowl and placed a blob of gak over the top.

I let it sit and “drown” the toys hiding them in the gak.  Then, I had the chicks dig in and find the hidden toys.

Pooh Bear was really hesitant to get her fingers in there, but once Uniqua showed her how to find a toy, she was a lot more willing to dig in.

As they pulled out he toys, I had them sort them.  It was one of those activities where everything went as planned.  The chicks had a great time digging for treasure and they successfully sorted all of their toys.Once everything was sorted, they wanted to keep playing, so they put the toys back in and it bought me a good 20 minutes (which in two year old time is REALLY LONG) to prep the next activity.

Continuing the orange theme, I had them just mess around with scissors.  I drew lines on the orange paper, but cutting on the line wasn’t necessarily the goal.  I just put it there for the chicks who wanted a line to follow.  The idea was to use their cut up pieces for the next activity, but that’s all it was…an idea.

I talked a little about rectangles and how they come in different sizes.  We identified rectangles around the room and then I showed them the rectangles on the paper.  We talked about which ones were bigger, smaller, sideways, tall, short, and the same.  I had pre-cut orange rectangles for them and gave them q-tips and a plate of tacky glue (less runny).  

The goal was to be able to get the glue on to the rectangle and find a matching orange rectangle to glue down.  When they were done, I gave them jack-o-lantern face pieces and let them glue those down.  They were thrilled when they realized they had just made a jack-o-lantern.

When little ones are engaged in any activity that I don’t have to do much guiding and directing, it gives me a sense of accomplishment as their “teacher.”  That’s what learning is all about.  Direction and guidance, but ultimately allowing them to take ownership of their task.

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