Toddler Theme: Bravery & Heroes

The theme this week was Bravery & Heroes and it's a little lead in to next week's theme of Independence Day.  In our house, bravery has been coming up a lot in terms of being brave when getting injured and building resilience, but I wanted to start making Mia more aware of bravery & courage for the greater good.  Heroes.

We made a trip to the Denver Firefighters Museum which is housed in the original Firehouse #1.  It's a self-guided tour but on the first Wednesday of each month at 11:00am, they have a special story time -- Firehouse Tales for Tots.  Some other field trip ideas are visiting your local firehouse or police station.  Or military base.  Some communities offer events like Touch a Truck or you may even be able to capitalize on the upcoming Fourth of July parades to see heroes and discuss together.

Mia has a lot of military members in her family, most notably her dad and also her Uncle Alligator who is currently still serving.  Uncle Alligator pointed us towards Operation Gratitude as a way to do something to help our military service members.  As our art project this week, we wrote (and colored) several letters to mail out to deployed soldiers.  I also discovered that they accept donations of Beanie Babies, Webkinz & Trolls for deployed soldiers to pass out to local kids in return for IUD location information.  We actually have several of these items so Mia selected some that she could send off.  Their website also lists some bandana and Paracord bracelet crafts that older kids could do and send.  I provided the link in the summary below in case you want to check it out.

And while we were on a little hike together this week, we had an opportunity to practice courage.  Mia wanted to climb some boulders on the side of the trail but was a little scared at first.  I actually get a little scared myself when climbing on things, so I showed her how I could be brave too by climbing a fallen tree.  Once she saw me do it, she gave it a try.  Turns out she really likes climbing.  We ended up scratching the hike just to stay and climb the same boulders over and over again.  

A summary of all Bravery & Heroes week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Wrote a letter to deployed soldiers via Operation Gratitude, Practiced courage by climbing boulders on a hike

OUTINGS: Visited the Denver Firefighters Museum

BOOKS: I Am Amelia Earhart by Brad Meltzer, The Bravest of Us All by Marsha Diane Arnold, You Call That Brave? by Lorenz Pauli & Kathrin Scharer, Coming Home by Greg Ruth

BIBLE STORY: Daniel and the lions, David and Goliath, Sampson

If you'd like to share a photo of your kid doing theme week activities, you can email it to me (email button in the left menu) or tag me on your Facebook photo or use the hashtag #weeklytoddlerthemes on Instagram (if you are private, just make sure I'm following you or tag me in the photo).

Toddler Theme: Wild West

The toddler theme this week was Wild West and it was inspired largely by where we live, Colorado.  Originally from the Midwest, the whole history of Denver's early foundation with its gold rushes and migration of people westward is fascinating.  I still get excited when I come across cacti growing wild along my path.  At the toddler level, this week is all about dressing up with cowboy hats, bandanas and sheriff badges like Woody from Toy Story, but we were able to sneak in some learning, too.

My favorite field trip for this theme week is the History Colorado Center.  The exhibits there cover so many different aspects of our state's history but the Living West one, in particular, is good to see.  We learned about Pueblo life in Mesa Verde and living in shelters built into the sides of cliffs.  Eventually, I'd like to take the girls to the actual Mesa Verde but this exhibit does the job well and gets us home before nap time.  The Destination Colorado exhibit was made specifically with kids in mind and they can see for themselves what life was like for the early settlers.  There's a (fake) cow to milk, a general store to run, and even an outhouse for some extra giggles.  We also visited the Four Mile Historic Park.  This is one of my favorite places to let Mia loose to explore because it's wide open yet not too large that I can't keep up and it's hardly ever crowded.  Her favorite spots are the horse barns and the miner's camp with the tents and teepees.  Some other great field trip options are the town of Golden (there's a small historical village next to Clear Creek and you can feed the chickens for a quarter) or even the Argo Gold Mines in Idaho Springs.  If you are up for a longer road trip, then there's also Mesa Verde National Park.  

For our art project, we decided to paint rocks to look like various cacti.  Mia has been collecting quite a stash of rocks these days and she really enjoys painting them (as you saw in our Fathers week), so this seemed perfect.  I set her up with different shades of green acrylic paints and let her go to work.  The next day, we sat together while I drew various prickly patterns on the green rocks with a white paint pen.  While those dried, Mia filled a few small clay pots with gravel and then we added the cacti rocks.  They turned out so well that Mia's dad ended up taking one for his desk at work.

Last year, I cut out a simple cactus shape out of green construction paper and let Mia paint glue onto it and then sprinkle rice "prickles" over top.  It was a messy -- yet fun -- project but you can contain most of it if you set it all up in a baking sheet.  PS - Look how little she was!

A summary of all Wild West week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Played Wild West dress up (bandanas, cowboy hat, boots), 

ART PROJECTS: Painted rocks to look like various cacti, Glued rice onto a cutout cactus 

OUTINGS: Visited the Four Mile Historic Park by our house but other great Denver options are the History Colorado Center, the town of Golden with their historical village beside Clear Creek, or even the Argo Mines in Idaho Springs

SNACK: Made s'mores

BOOKS: Armadillo Rodeo by Jan Brett

If you'd like to share a photo of your kid doing theme week activities, you can email it to me (email button in the left menu) or tag me on your Facebook photo or use the hashtag #weeklytoddlerthemes on Instagram (if you are private, just make sure I'm following you or tag me in the photo).

Toddler Theme: Fathers

Father's Day is coming up and with that in mind, we focused on dear old dad this week.  Similarly to how I handled Mothers week, I'm going to keep this post simple and just share our handmade gift idea.  You know best how to celebrate dad in your house and you certainly don't need me telling you how to do it. ;)

We thought long and hard about what we wanted to make for dad and one day when we were out collecting rocks, it dawned on me that any gift from Mia had to be rock-centric.  It's such a big piece of her personality currently.  And I think with Father's Day, you get a free pass to use all the puns you want so "You ROCK Dad!" sounded like a perfect sentiment.  Mia hand selected a few larger rocks and painted them one afternoon.  She said she wanted them to be bees so that's what we did.  She coated them in yellow and gold and I added a few stripes as they dried...under her direct supervision, of course.  "I need three stripes!"  The next day I used a white paint pen to draw eyes & wings and then wrote "You ROCK!" on the bottom of each one.

Lastly, we packed them up in little burlap gift bags with crinkle shreds.  I found both of these items in the (recently improved) scrapbooking aisle at Target.

A summary of all Father week activities with links:

ART PROJECTS: Made a chalk drawing scene and snapped a photo for a Father's Day card, Collected smooth rocks and painted them for "You Rock" Father's Day gifts

BOOKS: Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney, Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems 

BIBLE STORY: Abraham and Isaac

If you'd like to share a photo of your kid doing theme week activities, you can email it to me (email button in the left menu) or tag me on your Facebook photo or use the hashtag #weeklytoddlerthemes on Instagram (if you are private, just make sure I'm following you or tag me in the photo).

Toddler Theme: Under the Sea

Growing up, I was always intrigued by the ocean and the creatures that lived in it.  Mia is no different.  It's like a whole new world and we spent this week focused on finding out what's Under the Sea.  Not exactly an ocean-themed book, but we read Where the Wild Things Are and it ended up spurring a whole session of boat pretend play.  Mia found all kinds of items around the house to assemble her boat and I cut out a little flag for her.  Millie naturally fell into the role of pirate, trying to climb aboard the boat and ruining all of Mia's fun.  Little sisters...sigh!

Boats have been fascinating Mia lately, so I grasped onto that and ran with it.  I found a cool wooden balloon-powered boat at World Market for under $5.  We also Googled how to fold our own paper boats.  With our two types of boats in hand, we went down to the creek to play.  We hiked a bit upstream and launched the paper boats from the edge and ran back downstream to catch them as they floated along.  The balloon-powered boat is pretty fun but you'll get the full effect if you try it in a non-moving body of water.  We had to bring it back home and try it again in the bath tub.  It definitely provided a little learning moment about currents, though!  Colorado is about as landlocked as it gets, but I managed to find a little lake beach for the girls to play on one morning.  We went to the swimming beach on Big Soda Lake at Bear Creek Lake Park, but Chatfield State Park & Cherry Creek Reservoir both offer good options as well.  And we also made a trip to the Denver Aquarium this week.  I personally enjoyed the jelly fish tank but I'm pretty sure Mia's favorite was the mermaid show in the big tank.

My husband just bought a GoPro camera for ski season but seeing as though that's not for several more months, Mia and I took it into the pool to play with it.  LifeProof sells waterproof iPhone cases that you could also use for underwater photos, if you were interested.  The GoPro doesn't have a feedback screen so we just snapped a bunch of little sis Millie splashing around and then shared giggles as we looked through them on the computer later that night.

We also did a more traditional art project this week -- a paper plate mosaic sea turtle.  I pre-cut a bunch of green shapes and a turtle head/flippers/legs/tail.  I set Mia up with the cut-outs and Elmer's School Glue and let her apply them to the underside of a paper plate.  Googly eyes completed the look.  Last year, we made a sponge-painted jelly fish during this theme week.

A summary of all Under the Sea week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Pretended to sail the high seas with items found around the house, Played in the creek with paper boats and balloon-powered boats

ART PROJECTS: Made a paper plate mosaic sea turtle and a sponge-painted jelly fish, Took funny underwater pictures at the pool with our GoPro camera

OUTINGS: Checked out life under the sea at the Denver Aquarium, Spent the day at the swimming beach at Bear Creek Lake Park

BOOKS: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, If You Want to See a Whale by Julie Fogliano

BIBLE STORY: Jonah and the whale

BABY BONUS: Water sensory play with assorted sponges and foam letters on a cookie sheet

If you'd like to share a photo of your kid doing theme week activities, you can email it to me (email button in the left menu) or tag me on your Facebook photo or use the hashtag #weeklytoddlerthemes on Instagram (if you are private, just make sure I'm following you or tag me in the photo).

Toddler Theme: Cities

This week, we learned about cities and big buildings.  We live in an urban setting in a very tall building and I feel like we spend most of our time searching for nature & quiet.  But not this week...we celebrated all of the things that make cities great.  I planned a full-day field trip to visit dad at work in his big building downtown.  Driving a car would be too easy, though, so in the spirit of celebrating city life, we hopped aboard the light rail at the station by our apartment building.  I grabbed a map at the station and we studied it during our ride downtown.  One of the things that makes cities cool is the population density and the layout of the streets.  I let Mia identify shapes she saw on the map...lots of squares, rectangles, and a few triangles.  We got off at the big station -- Union Station -- and Mia was able to see other forms of public transportation like buses and high-speed rail.  Dad's office was a few blocks away still, so I decided it might be fun to hop on the free 16th Street bus from there and ride that a couple of blocks.  Mia agreed.  As if all of this wasn't exciting enough, dad's office offered all kinds of fun things to explore.  Like a jar of M&Ms, a graphing calculator with lots of buttons, and whole cup filled with yellow #2 pencils -- her favorites.  We took Dad out for lunch and then for a scoop of ice cream.  After he went back to work, we walked around the city for a bit and practiced our crosswalk safety.  Mia shouts out "Walking guy!" when it's safe to cross the street, but don't even think of trying to cross when it's "red hand."  That's a no no and will get you a Mia scolding as one stranger found out the hard way.  Ha!  Then it was back to the train station and onto the light rail towards home for naps.

We have one of those giant rolls of paper from IKEA that I always forget to use, but this week I had an idea.  We rolled out a long piece on the floor and grabbed the markers.  Drawing all kinds of big buildings, we made our own skyline.  It was probably fine like this but for some extra fun, I cut out the skyline and we hung it up in one of our windows.  As the sun set in the evening, it made a cool city silhouette.  Another day, we went up to the roof of our building and took pictures of the Denver skyline.  Mia has one of my old cameras and little by little, I've been showing her how to use it.  If you google "best place to view <your city> skyline," you should be able to come up with some cool places to try this with your kid.  Here in Denver, an awesome viewing spot is along the back of the Nature and Science Museum (walk straight through the Space exhibit and take the elevator up a few floors).

A summary of all Cities week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Rode some of the public transportation options downtown (bus, light rail), practiced street safety on a walk downtown

ART PROJECTS: Made a long city skyline banner with a roll of paper and markers, Took pictures of our city skyline from the roof

OUTINGS: Took lunch to dad at work downtown

SNACK: Bought an afternoon snack from a street cart vendor

BOOKS: Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems, This is New York by Miroslav Sasek

BIBLE STORY: Joshua and Jericho

If you'd like to share a photo of your kid doing theme week activities, you can email it to me (email button in the left menu) or tag me on your Facebook photo or use the hashtag #weeklytoddlerthemes on Instagram (if you are private, just make sure I'm following you or tag me in the photo).