Toddler Ideas Tuesday: February 11th, 2014

Welcome back to Toddler Idea Tuesdays! Have you been busy with your young children?

This week I wanted to focus on what we did at co-op last week. This month I am once again in the preschool room, which is where the younger children go while their older siblings have classes. We can have children ranging in age from infants through preschool.

Because of the cold and snow I wanted to choose a snow-related craft. I decided to read the book The Mitten and have the children create a mobile. I have to tell you, I didn't realize there was more than one version of The Mitten. It turns out that this story is a traditional Ukrainian folktale and can be found in different retellings. I had only ever seen Jan Brett's version which I think is lovely and is what most printables are based on. However, the only way I could get her version was to take out her Christmas Treasury, and I really didn't want to drag that along to co-op. Fortunately I had decided to take out two other versions, one by Alvin Tresselt and another by Jim Aylesworth. I love the illustrations and the storyline in the latter, so that is the one I took with me. There are fewer animals than in Jan Brett's version and I loved the ending, I found it more realistic. As realistic as a bunch of animals fitting into a mitten can be, I guess.

Here is what we did.

While I read the story I had the children color their animals. These are the animals that are in Jim Aylesworth's retelling. I just searched for coloring page images on Google and shrunk them down so they would all fit on the page, as I normally do.

When they were done coloring we traced their hands in the shape of a mitten on their choice of construction paper, cut them out and helped them lace them. Then we used a string of yarn to tape the pictures to in the order that the animals entered the mitten.

I also wanted to share the fun game that my friend at co-op made for the children to play. 

She had cut out shapes in different colors of construction paper. Each shape was cut out once per color. She then drew and colored each shape in each color on individual index cards. The children gathered around and had to pick a card and go fishing for the correct color/shape combination.

Loved this idea for color and shape recognition.

Now onto:

Toddler Idea Tuesday Features

There were so many neat ideas shared that I can't help featuring them all. 

1. Rebecca from Raventhreads shared these very pretty Tissue Paper Snowflakes. If you like cutting snowflakes, but want a way for your little ones to be involved this is a great way to do so. Stop on by to see how simple it really is. 

2. Jennifer from Hint Mama shared some wonderful ideas for letting your kids have their own mail and ways to make it tons of fun for them.

3. And she also shared a simple way to create your own play food.

4. Lisa from Our Country Road shared quite a few wonderful ideas in her weekly wrap up post. They also had worked with the book The Mitten, using Jan Brett's version. They really got into the snow theme. 

The Two Most Popular Posts

This week there were two posts that received the highest number of clicks. 

If you are looking for an online reading program for children you will want to check out Rachel's review of Reading Eggs over at The Philosopher's Wife. You can also sign up for a free 5 week trial and check out how to become involved in the Reading Eggs Read-to-Cure challenge in support of the National Children's Cancer Society.

Victoria from Homemaking with Heart shared great ideas for using what you have to keep young children busy and learning. Stop by to get some new ideas for keeping things fresh and new for your children.

What sort of activities do you do with your toddler? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on my Toddler Ideas board and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up. Please know I will share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our toddler time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your toddler, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

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