K and I did more fingerpainting yesterday, they turned out quite well I think. He's getting over the fact that you're supposed to get your hands dirty! So that was a nice distraction after lunchtime.
I also made up some frames out of craft foam. They're for my Oma and Opa, so I put the kids' names on them. The idea is they'll be able to put them on their fridge, and it will help them remember their great-grandchildren's names. Okay, okay, so we gave them unique names, but at it'll also just be a nice addition to the Valentine's pack we're making up for them. After he woke up from his nap, I got K to help me put some foam stars on the frames. We worked on naming the colours as he picked them out and stuck them down. Today we may put some glitter on them (cause we can!), and then try to print out some pictures to put in them.
While looking through a bunch of homeschooling sites for crafting ideas, I made up a learning game for K. I came up with it while trying to figure out what to do with the multicoloured crafting feathers I bought so I'm calling it the Feather Game. I took some leftover plastic cups from his birthday and put pieces of coloured construction paper inside, making each cup one colour (I was going to glue the paper on the outside, but this seemed like too much work at 10:30pm). So there's a square of blue in one cup, then red and yellow. I counted out five feathers for each colour, and the idea is to put each feather in the matching colour cup! It honestly took me five minutes to make!
This morning we tried the Feather Game. At first, K was more interested in grabbing the cups and pulling out the paper. Then I started to show him the idea, taking a blue feather from the pile and putting it in the blue cup. He did a few, and then decided to dump them out, then knocked the cups on the floor. *sigh* Okay, so I grabbed the feathers and gave them to him one at a time. This worked much better, but he still only had an attention span long enough for two or three feathers of each colour.
I had also thought that making him run to put the feathers in the cups would be a great way to burn some energy while staying inside and playing the game. So, I put the coffee table on the far end of the living room, and the feathers on the floor at the other. I showed K that we were going to run and put the feathers in. He got all excited. "Fast!?" he says, and runs over to the feathers, grabs a handful and runs to dump them all in one cup. Okay, so it's a work in progress. Plan B. I took all the feathers and sat holding them at the other end of the living room, giving him one at a time.
This plan was working out. So well in fact, that he had taken a yellow feather and dumped it in the closest cup, which was a blue one. When he went back with the next feather (a red one), he put that one in the red, then took the yellow out of the blue cup and put it in the yellow cup! I was so proud of him! It shows me that he is learning his colours, as well as rules for games. However, he still only has a two to three feather attention span!
