Toddler Theme: Tropical

I credit my mother for instilling such a strong desire to learn within me at a very young age.  That desire has fueled me well beyond my school years and even inspired these toddler theme weeks.   I can only hope that I am able to create the same fascination with learning and exploration in my own two girls.  When Adam & I asked her to watch Mia & Millie while we went to Hawaii for a week, I should not have been surprised that she wanted to do her own toddler theme while we were gone -- Tropical week.  

Of course, Colorado had a blizzard right after we left but Nana & the girls were all comfy inside pretending they were on an island.  They dressed up in grass skirts, leis and sunglasses and danced to traditional Hawaiian music on Pandora.  We sent back lots of tropical animal photos & video clips to support Nana's efforts, and they researched them further in books.  Mia specifically enjoyed researching whales, the largest mammal in the world, and the life cycle of the sea turtle.  On the days that Adam & I visited Volcanoes National Park (and sent back photos like the one below from Kilauea's crater), the girls were learning about mountains and how some were formed by volcanoes.  They also watched the Lava animated short film that is included with the movie Inside Out to get a better visual before creating their own volcano with baking soda & vinegar.

Nana made the girls super special tropical juice drinks with paper umbrellas and she created a palm tree island made with kiwi, banana, and orange slices.  One afternoon, they cut up a pineapple and talked about how it's suited to grow in tropical environments.  They also did two fun art projects together.  The first was a puffer fish painting using a fork to make the spines.

The second project was a rainbow fish mosaic created by gluing together lots of paper scraps.

When we got home, I let Mia look through all of the rest of my photos and she was an excited wealth of information about lava, craters, and how volcanoes form.  She even taught me a few things.  Hopefully she stays curious and finds herself driving all over the Big Island one day in search of her beloved volcanoes, too.  And in that moment, Nana's legacy will have passed on to yet another generation.  We love you Nana!

A summary of all Tropical week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Learned about lava & volcanoes and then crafted a baking soda & vinegar volcano, Researched the tropical animals Mom & Dad saw on their trip, Played dress up with grass skirts and flower leis

ART PROJECTS: Made a fork-painting puffer fish, Created a mosaic rainbow fish collage

SNACK: Tropical mocktails garnished with Swedish fish and paper umbrellas, Celery sticks with peanut butter and goldfish crackers

BOOKS: The Magic School Bus Presents Volcanoes and Earthquakes by Tom Jackson, How Mountains are Made by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld, Blue Whale Babies by Matt Reher, Sharks by Gina Cline, This is an Ocean by Gina Cline, The Life of a Sea Turtle by Gina Cline, National Geographic Kids United States Atlas

BIBLE STORY: Jonah & the whale

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: Weather

Transition seasons like spring and fall usually usher in all kinds of wacky weather (or at least a little weather variety) and make it a perfect time to explore Weather further.  I recently learned that the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is located here in Boulder, Colorado.  A perfect field trip for us this week!  If you aren't local, don't despair; their website is chock-full of wonderful resources like videos, simulations, games & activity ideas (check out their Learning Zone here).  We spent a whole morning exploring their public exhibits.  Mia created her own microburst storms in a special tank, made lightening, watched tornadoes form, and even touched clouds.  If you diffuse essential oils at home with an ultrasonic diffuser, then you already have access to a cloud machine.  Open it up while it's running and check it out!  You can also look to see if your local science or children's museum has a weather exhibit.

We decided to do a bunch of weather science experiments at home this week.  One day, we placed a cup out on our balcony to measure rainfall.  Nada, dry as a bone here in Denver.  Another day, I pulled out a prism and we made rainbows on the walls.  And do you remember the old tornado in a soda bottle trick?  Yup, we did that, too.  Hobby Lobby sells both the prism and the tornado tube in the science aisle.  

As a special data collection & recording activity, we called up some of our family around the country and asked them what their weather was like that day.  I also reached out to my Instagram friends so we could get more data points.  Then we recorded it all on a blank map (find one here) and created our own weather map thanks to all of our friendly weather spotters around the world.  We also took a walk around a local pond one afternoon and I was able to show Mia the wind.  Back when I was learning how to sail, I realized that you can see the wind on the water before you can actually feel it, and I was excited to teach Mia the same thing.  Can you see the wind coming across the pond towards us?

After reading the book Windblown by Edouard Manceau, we did a little windblown collage creating of our own.  I cut out shapes just like the ones in the book and Mia created animals with them.  Here's the one from last year that I've kept all this time...makes me giggle.  Or maybe you could make a wind chime with found items as well.

I'm starting to get little sister Millie involved in these theme weeks a little more so I planned a very tactile weather art project.  The goal was to create skyscapes with finger paints but not just any old paints -- weather paints.  To prep, I stuck a tray of blue & purple glitter paints in the refrigerator and then a few tubes of red, yellow & orange paints in a pot of warm water.  I set out the cold, snowy paints with the warm, sunny paints and also some watercolors & straws and let the girls paint away.  You can use the straws to blow drops of watercolor paint on the paper almost like rain drops.  Last year, Mia did a very similar painting project and then while she was napping, I doodled all over her works of art and cut them up to create a weather station.  We still use this station to this day as we check out the weather each morning.  In fact, we did another little data gathering project this week.  As Mia updated the "today" arrow each day, we also recorded it in her notepad.  At the end of the week, we made a little bar graph to summarize the data.  A nice little counting activity and it's never to early to start learning how to make sense of lots of data!  

A summary of all Weather week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Created our own weather station, Did several simple weather science experiments, Watched The Wizard of Oz

ART PROJECTS: Created our own Windblown inspired animals with assorted paper shapes, Created sky paintings with various weather-inspired paints (warm red, yellow & orange finger paints and cold blue and purple glitter finger paints and watercolor "rain" droplets)

OUTINGS: Visited the Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder

SNACK: Made cloud sandwiches (fluffer nutters) for lunch

BOOKS: Windblown by Edouard Manceau, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paolo

BIBLE STORY: Rainbows, a sign of God's promise

BABY BONUS: (see weather art projects above)

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: Spring

Spring is starting to show itself around these parts so we focused on that this week.  There are a lot of directions you could go with this toddler theme.  Explore the rebirth of life that happens in the spring by visiting a local farm (if you're in Colorado, I suggest Sunflower Farm in Longmont).  Maybe celebrate Earth Day within your community.  Or learn about seasons and the change of weather.  I chose to focus on plants because there will be animal and weather weeks later on.   

We took a field trip to the Denver Botanic Gardens to see all kinds of plants - trees, grasses, weeds, flowers, cacti.  A highlight for Mia was the "tree house" (really an observation platform) in the Tropical Conservatory.  She loved the vantage point of being in the treetops.  We spent a lot of time learning about bug hotels at a learning station, too.  And she was also fascinated with the cacti in the desert gardens.  So much so that we ended up going to the nursery to pick out one of our own.  We ended up bringing home a baby beavertail which is the exact kind we frequently see on our nature walks. 

One of my favorite (read: easy!) activities to do is a season scavenger hunt.  We set out with an objective of finding signs of the season, in this case, Spring.  The dogwoods are in full bloom right outside our front door and petals cover the sidewalk.  We collected some of those, but not before we had fun blowing handfuls in each other's face.  

She found dandelions and other flowers growing along the creek and a branch with buds on it beside the bike trail.  We also spotted a baby bunny hiding under a bridge.  Very exciting!  Upon returning home, we realized we had a treasure trove of spring goodies in our basket.  I pulled out several items -- a flower, blunt stick, some of the petals -- and made a little sensory bin for baby sister Millie to explore.  Under my direct supervision, of course.  We pulled out a magnifying glass to get a more detailed look at a flower.  I showed Mia some of the different plant parts: stem, leaves, petals, stamen, pistil.  Is she going to remember those part names?  Doubtful, but I think I planted the seed for a growing interest in plants.  Sorry, plant puns.  And speaking of planting seeds, we tried that, too.  As of this posting, there is no noticeable growth on our forget-me-nots but hopefully within the next week.  This last activity was my attempt at making a connection between the foods she eats and their source.  We made tacos one night for dinner and cut up lots of green onions to top them.  Instead of throwing the bottom white root portions away, we put them in a Mason jar with a bit of water and placed the jar on the window sill.  I had read about this on The Kitchn (check it out here) and wanted to try it.  Those things grew back and quickly!  As a follow up activity, we're going to harvest them (cut off the new green tops) to use for another dinner.  I may never buy green onions again!           

And lastly, our spring-themed art project was creating coffee filter flowers.  We've done this a couple of different ways -- markers and watercolors.  I prefer watercolors for the aesthetic.  Mia prefers watercolors for the mess she can make.  I laid out a number of filters across her table and let her paint them.  NOTE: The flowers will look pretty soggy but they should still dry up nicely.  

The next day we folded them into eighths and cut little fringes into the edges.  You could cut a scalloped edge design or anything else your heart desires.  Then, I used green washi tape to tape the filter flower petals to a wooden (cough, Starbucks) coffee stirrer.  Makes a pretty bouquet!

A summary of all Spring week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Planted seeds and bought a cactus to learn plant maintenance, Dissected a flower and identified plant parts, Learned how to regrow green onions from kitchen scraps (instructions here)

ART PROJECTS: Made watercolored coffee filter flowers, Painted a wooden bird house

OUTINGS: Went on a spring scavenger hunt, Visited the Denver Botanic Gardens

BOOKS: The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, Some Bugs by Angela DiTerlizzi

BABY BONUS: Made a spring sensory bin to explore (flowers, sticks, petals)

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: Easter

This is one of those holiday toddler themes that you can explode into a whole week long exploration.  And that's just what we did!  One afternoon, we went down to the creek across the street from our building and fed bread to the ducks & new ducklings.  And on another, we did an egg hunt at a local park.  We're not big candy eaters in this family (we all prefer ice cream, donuts & cookies) so I filled Mia's eggs with assorted polished rocks, an adjustable dinosaur ring, and hair clips.  Just little trinkets that I knew she'd appreciate.  An annual egg hunt is a big tradition in Adam's family so he got the all-important job of hiding the eggs.  Can't fool Mia, though.  She found them quickly but spent much more time going through all her spoils.

It wouldn't be Easter week without egg dying.  I made my own egg dye by mixing food coloring with boiling water and a splash of vinegar.  Mia picked 3 colors this year -- pink, orange, purple.  I put her in charge of color saturation timing.  If she said an egg was done, then we pulled it out.  She very quickly noticed that the longer she left the egg in, the darker the color got.  The next day, I gave her some egg stickers I found at Target to embellish her dyed eggs.  A little KISS Tip: cut a little ring from a toilet paper tube to rest the eggs on.  This easy, non-messy art project kept her busy for quite some time and the results were pretty fantastic.  Don't you think?  

We happened to have some fresh flowers in the house, so I proposed an experiment.  What would happen if we put some of the dye we used to color eggs in the vase water?  She didn't know but was eager to find out.  This time, she chose the blue dye and we added a few drops into the vase.  Within merely hours, we could see blue striations in the white flower petals.  The next day it was even darker.  This made it easy for her to see that the flowers actually "drink" the water in the vase through their straw, the stem.

And lastly, we learned about Jesus and his death & resurrection, the Easter story.  For snack one afternoon, I prepared a mini Last Supper with naan (or you could use pitas) and grape juice.  I told her the story of how Jesus said goodbye and gave instructions to his disciples over a meal just like our snack.  I also made a construction paper scene with a cross on a hill and a tomb with a rock to cover it.  Some of these abstract religious topics are tough to impress on a child so young but I presented Jesus' resurrection as the best game of Peekaboo ever played.  He died and was placed in the tomb but when people went to visit his tomb, he had vanished!  If you have other ideas for presenting the Easter story to young children, please comment.  I'd love to hear it!

A summary of all Easter week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Did a little science experiment by putting food coloring in the vase water of a flower, Fed bread to the ducks swimming in the creek

ART PROJECTS: Dyed Easter eggs and decorated with stickers

OUTINGS: Went on an Easter egg hunt at the park

SNACK: Created a "Last Supper" with naan and grape juice

BOOKS: Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman, Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney, Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter, Miffy by Dick Bruna, My World by Margaret Wise Brown, Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems

BIBLE STORY: The Easter story

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).

Happy Easter!

Toddler Theme: Bugs

It's Bug week!  While I don't necessarily love bugs, I do love Bug week.  It was last year's Bug week that made me realize the power of doing toddler themes and exploring new topics each week.  Mia was so intrigued by these little critters that it ended up being a year-long (and still counting) obsession.  I'm not so sure I would have learned this about her otherwise.    

Since we're still blanketed in snow, we had to seek out the bugs indoors.  Our first stop was the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.  They have a little alcove dedicated to native Colorado bugs, but Mia's favorite was the tank filled with Madagascar hissing cockroaches located in the Discovery Zone.  There are magnifying glasses and picture cards showing the different stages of the cockroach life cycle.  We were able to identify larva, pupa, and mature adults in the tank.  Another day, we went to the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster.  There are so many cool things for toddlers to explore here but our highlights were listening to the buzzing bees in a hive, getting up close & personal with Rosie the tarantula (Note: you must be 3 or older to hold Rosie), touching a starfish & horseshoe crab, and of course, seeing all of the butterflies in the rainforest.  We bought a butterfly field guide at the ticket desk and Mia tried matching up the butterflies she saw.  Personally, I enjoyed the warmth & humidity of the rainforest on a cold day so we found a quiet corner and sat for over an hour watching the butterflies flutter all around us.

 

I'll admit, we got a little carried away with bug art projects this week.  I think Mia is still riding an Art week high because every afternoon, she wanted to paint.  I used a white crayon to draw a spider web on white card stock and then let Mia watercolor it to reveal the surprise picture (this is very similar to the clue cards I made for Detective week).  She got a little carried away with the water so it's not pictured below, but it was a fun & easy project.  We also made butterflies with water colored coffee filters, clothespins, pipe cleaners, and beads.  We'll be using coffee filters for another art project in a few weeks so it might be worth picking up at the store, but mostly, I'll be sticking to the items listed on the Supplies page and other basic household items.  Household items like egg cartons, for instance.  Google "egg carton bugs" and you'll get so many ideas.  I jumped the gun and cut our egg carton into 12 singles, but you could use multi-segments to make ants and caterpillars.  Mia painted them and after they dried, I gave her googly eyes and glue.  I had to help cut the holes for the pipe cleaner wings and draw spots with permanent marker (I let her use a Sharpie once...it wasn't pretty).  Our last project was a paper relief bug with painted wings and marker body.

I may be a little late to this game, but have you heard of Hex Bugs?  They sell them at Target for under $10.  Hex Bugs are little robot bugs.  We bought the Nano ones and they vibrate when you turn them on, eerily mimicking real bug movements.  There are larger ones with articulated legs, too.  When we first pulled our Hex Bugs out of the package, we just let 'em go along the floor.  Their movements were a little too life-like for Mia and she hid behind me as I kept them contained in a small area with my hands.  I got out the bag of wooden blocks and we made little mazes and obstacles for the bugs.  Those bugs are sneaky, though, and could escape between the blocks...and then they were off!  Tearing across the living room, dogs barking & Mia shrieking behind them.  So next we pulled out the Duplos and made a bug stadium with one entrance/exit.  Mia made a game of letting 2 bugs loose at the same time and the winner was the bug who escaped the stadium first.  I made a little score chart so we could keep track of the results.  In the science world, this is known as making and documenting observations.  There we go, learning by playing again!

 

A summary of all Bug week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Played with bug finger puppets, Constructed block mazes & obstacles for Hex Bugs, Made bug tracks in play dough with little plastic bug figures

ART PROJECTS: Water colored a spiderweb color resist, Made butterflies with coffee filters & clothespins, Created little egg carton bugs with pipe cleaners and googly eyes, Made a paper relief beetle 

OUTINGS: Went to the Butterfly Pavilion and also the Denver Museum of Nature & Science

SNACK: Made "ants on a log" with celery, peanut butter & sunflower seeds

BOOKS: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aardema, The Illustrated Anansi by Philip Sherlock, The Snail's Spell by Joanne Ryder, The Best Book of Bugs by Claire Llewellyn, Fireflies in the Night by Judy Hawes, From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman

BIBLE STORY: The bug plagues (gnats, flies, locusts) that God sent down on the Egyptians (3 of the 10 total plagues)

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: Snow & Mountains

This week we explored snow & mountains.  Luckily for us, we woke up to snow Monday morning.  Lots of it!  We headed straight to our neighborhood sledding hill to take advantage of the fresh powder.  Mia even made a tiny snowman.  Later in the afternoon, I mixed up a couple of squirt bottles of snow paint (water with a few drops of food coloring) and let Mia paint the snow in a big grassy area.  CAUTION: This stuff will stain (you know, coats, mittens, sides of houses) so just be mindful of that.  As an alternative, you could soak some old, dried up washable markers in cups of water overnight and pour that into squirt bottles.

Living in Colorado, I realize we may have a bit of an advantage when it comes to exploring the concept of mountains.  I took the girls on a short hike that led to an overlook point.  All I was trying to impress upon Mia is that mountains are land formations that have risen upwards from the Earth.  You can make this same point on any hill, overlook, or trail that gives them the vantage point of being up higher than the land around them.  Doesn't actually need to be a mountain.  My favorite easy trails close to Denver are the Evergreen Lake Trail & Maxwell Falls Trail in Evergreen, Trading Post Trail at Red Rocks Amphitheater & Park, and Fountain Valley Trail at Roxborough State Park.  Also this week, we tried the Colorado Trail starting at the Waterton Canyon Recreation Area and saw a whole herd of bighorn sheep!  What are your favorite places to go for a hike with a view where you live?  Share the name(s) & location(s) in the comments.  Maybe we can come up with a good list to help each other out.

If your kids are a little older, you could talk about the different mountain climate zones: montane (5,600-9,500 feet), sub-alpine (around 9,000-11,000 feet), and the area above the treeline known as the alpine tundra (starting around 11,000 feet).  Rocky Mountain National Park's page on the National Park Service website has some brief but informative tidbits if you want to learn more together (check it out here).  Another fun angle on the mountain theme is to focus on the animals that make their homes there.  Black bears, mountain lions, moose, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, mule deer, golden eagles, pika, marmots.  Do they have any special features that make them specially suited for mountain life?  Here are some of the animals we've seen on our mountain adventures (clockwise from top left): moose, elk, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep.

 

If your kid is really into Frozen, then they may appreciate a "Build a Snowman" play dough station.  I set up a platter with baby carrots, button, sticks from one of our walks, and a large chunk of white play dough and let Mia make her own snow creations.  Lately, she's been into mimicking the things she sees me do and I frequently catch her pretending to drink "coffees" out of an old sippy cup.  To make her more official, I cut a coffee sleeve out of felt (just a quick hand sew along the edge) and then some miscellaneous felt shapes in different colors.  She glued a few hearts on her sleeve and felt ever so cool sipping her hot cocoa during our afternoon story snuggle time.  I included a link to a tutorial & pattern in the summary below.  And lastly, we made a mountain range collage with an assortment of shapes I pre-cut out of black, brown, and green construction paper.  You could provide cotton ball "snow" as well.

We made a super special theme lunch one day, too -- Snow Mac!  After breakfast, we bundled up and went outside to collect a bucket of snow.  We let it sit on the counter all morning and checked on it periodically.  You'll never believe this, it turned into water!  So then we transferred it to a pot (this is when I did the old mom switcharoo to clean tap water) and waited for it to boil and make steam.  We used the pot lid to catch some of the steam and it turned back to water droplets on the lid.  Neat!  And totally an early science lesson on the states of matter and also precipitation.  Oh, and Mia confirmed that macaroni & cheese tastes waaay better when made with snow.

A summary of all Snow & Mountains week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Built a snowman, Went sledding

ART PROJECTS: Made a mountain range collage with cotton balls and triangle cutouts, Painted the snow with colored water in squirt bottles, Setup up a "Build a Snowman" play dough station, Made a hot cocoa cup sleeve with felt (here are instructions)

OUTINGS: Walked an easy "mountain" trail (i.e. a trail with an overlook view), You could also go on a sleigh ride if there is one available in your area

SNACK: Sipped Hot cocoa with extra marshmallows, Made "snow mac"

BOOKS: This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren

BIBLE STORY: God gave Moses the 10 Commandments up on the mountain

BABY BONUS: Snow sensory play

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: Simple Machines

Most of our weekly toddler themes are going to be really basic.  Like Colors or Feelings.  Under the Sea or Up in the Air.  But this week I wanted to share a seemingly difficult toddler theme -- Simple Machines -- and show you how easy it is to introduce your toddler to some advanced science concepts.  First a quick refresher...A simple machine is a device that changes the magnitude or direction of a force.  There are 6 types: Wheel & Axle, Screw, Lever, Wedge, Pulley, and Inclined Plane.

We did our biggest exploration into Simple Machines at the playground.  Think about it.  A playground's target audience is the toddler crowd.  Little people still honing their gross motor skills but looking for a thrill (a force amplification, if you will).  Slides & ramps are inclined planes.  Does your playground have a spiral slide?  Good, because a spiral slide provides the perfect model to explain a screw (it's just a slide, er inclined plane, wrapped around a cylinder).  If you're lucky enough to have a seesaw on your playground, then you've got a lever.  And even if yours doesn't, I bet it has a sandbox and you can use a shovel as a lever.  Mia brought her own wheels to the playground and we had fun racing the cars down the slides.  I should mention that not once did I stop Mia and try to give her a simple machines vocabulary lesson.  Instead, I conscientiously tried to help her solve her toddler problems with the use of a simple machine.  Here's a perfect example.  She's still scared to climb a ladder to get to higher playground platforms, but our playground has this spiral pole (screw).  I showed her how to get on and shimmy herself around in circles.  It was slow progress but she eventually made it up to the height of the platform and jumped across.  Classic simple machine application.

We also made a trip to our local science museum, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and played in the Discovery Zone.  Mia made ball chutes with magnetic half pipes on the wall and played with gears on a huge pegboard table.  The museum also has a kid-powered machine that sends colored golf balls whizzing around on tracks.

At home, we made a cardboard car ramp to mimic the fun we had with the cars on the slides at the playground.  I used washi tape to make it look more official.  We got out the Duplo set and made 2 cars.  We put a wheel base on hers but not mine.  You guys, I didn't win a single race.  Not one.  Those wheels & axles sure are important!

A summary of all Simple Machine week activity ideas with links:

ACTIVITIES: Watch Rube Goldberg machine videos on YouTube (like this one), Play games like Mousetrap or GoldieBlox & the Spinning Machine, Pretend play with a tool set (screw, hammer as a lever), Take something apart with your older child and try to find simple machines

ART PROJECTS: Make tire track paintings by running your favorite cars & trucks through paint and then over paper (You could also do the same but make the tracks in play dough), Play with the Playdoh press...it's a lever  

OUTINGS: Simple machines scavenger hunt around the neighborhood, Free play at the Science Museum, Go sledding, Check out all the simple machines at your local playground

BOOKS: Rosie Revere Engineer by Andrea Beaty