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).

Toddler Theme: Dinosaurs

It's DINOSAUUUUUUUUUUUUUR week!!  Which is very exciting, if you can't tell. ;)  We borrowed a bunch of dinosaur books from the library and the biggest hit was Dinosaur Farm by Frann Preston-Gannon.  The book inspired a lot of quiet indoor pretend play with all of our dinosaur figures & the farm set.  A huge blessing since it was a rainy week.  Thank you, Frann!  In one of the dinosaur reference books, we learned that many dinosaurs had scaly skin like we see on today's lizards.  That gave us an idea for a special art project.  We looked through a bunch of old magazines for green and brown pictures.  Mia had the color identifying job, and then I cut out lots of paper scales from those pictures.  Once we had a good pile established, I cut out a rough dinosaur body shape from white card stock.  Armed with a wide brush and Modge Podge, Mia attached the scales to her dino.  She completed the project with a googly eye...and a prompt bath (it's a sticky project!).  If you don't want to buy Modge Podge, you could water down some Elmer's School Glue.

To make bath time a little more interesting this week, we tossed in all the dino figures and colored the water green with bath tablets I found in the Target Dollar Spot (they have Elsa and Ariel on the front of the package if you're looking for them).  There isn't a green tablet, so you have to use both a blue and yellow one but it's a great early lesson in color mixing.      

One morning, we took a field trip to Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison.  It's free to hike up the ridge and scope out real dinosaur tracks and fossils.  If you prefer, you could buy tickets for a driven tour, but we liked getting the fresh air and walking out some sillies.  Several types of dinosaur fossils have been found in this area and they are still discovering Stegosaurus bones now.  There is a section of the wall where you can actually touch the exposed dinosaur bones.  Perhaps the coolest area, though, is the section of the Dakota hogback with visible dinosaur tracks along the surface.  These prints date back to around 100 million years ago.  They've identified several different types of dinosaur tracks and you can actually see the run patterns.  A few of the tracks are available to touch and this was a very big highlight for Mia, literally and figuratively.

To wrap up our fun week, we made dinosaur track cookies by pressing the feet of Mia's various dinosaur figures into cookie dough before baking.  To keep baby sister Millie occupied and out of trouble while we did this, I prepared a simple dino sensory bin for her -- uncooked oatmeal with buried plastic dinos waiting to be discovered.

A summary of all Dinosaur week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Played dinosaur farm (based on the book) with all of our little dinosaur figures, Took green dinosaur baths all week

ART PROJECTS: Created a scaled dinosaur collage with green & brown magazine scraps and Modge Podge

OUTINGS: Hiked up Dinosaur Ridge

SNACK: Made dinosaur tracks cookies

BOOKS: Dinosaur Farm by Frann Preston-Gannon, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by 

Jane Yolen & Mark Teague

BABY BONUS: Oatmeal sensory bin with buried plastic dinosaurs

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: All About Me

Mia's third birthday is coming up in the next month and she's changing so fast these days.  I'll admit, this All About Me toddler theme might be just as much for me as it is for her.  It was fun taking the time to celebrate the little person she is right now.  To kick off our week, we pulled out a bunch of Mia-centric books -- her baby book, an ABC book I created for her, and her My Very Own Name book from I See Me (they offer such cool personalized books and this one is a favorite gift).  She really enjoyed seeing her baby photos and often claimed they were her sister Millie.  It delighted her to find out that she was a baby once...but not anymore because she's a "big girl now." <insert mom tears>

There are so many fantastic All About Me interview forms out there -- just search on Pinterest -- but I thought I'd share two of my favorites.  The first one is an editable PDF download available from Paper Nook (get it here).  I've actually saved off a copy for both girls and I plan to fill it out annually...it goes up to age 18.  The second is a fun printable from Tiff at A Day In My Life blog (find it here).  It's two pages and she's included a section for their signature, handprint, favorites, a photo, and interview questions.  We worked on filling this out all week...a little bit each night before dinner.  One of my favorite, and unexpected, answers was her reply for favorite book.  She told me it was "Jesus" and when I questioned further for clarity, she ran and got her special storybook Bible.    

We also used this theme week to start covering some locational identity items.  She's still a little too young to memorize her address but we worked on recognizing which button to push in the elevator for her floor (we live in a high rise).  I also created an Elevator Safety Plan with her in the event that the doors ever close before Mom or Dad make it on.  Yes, it's already happened once.  Ha!  If you're wondering what that plan looks like, I taught her to look for the elevator button with the star on it and to wait there for us to catch up.  The star is a universal symbol for the main floor so it's easier to remember to look for that rather than a 1 or an M or L...or whatever other designation is used.    

Next, we dove into a little learning about where we live -- Denver, Colorado (we'll cover the U.S. in a few weeks).  One afternoon, we did some iPad research and discovered that our state flower is the Columbine, our fossil is the Stegosaurus, and our state flag has a big C on it.  We got out that paints and tried to recreate the flag for ourselves.  Flags are good for painting because they are usually pretty simple in design and you can talk about shapes.  And lastly, we took a field trip to Four Mile Historic Park to explore what life was like for Denver's earliest settlers.  The Four Mile House is Denver's oldest standing structure and served as a stopover for travelers on the Cherokee Trail.  The park is perfect for an afternoon picnic and lots of toddler exploration.  There are chickens, goats, and horses.  Lots of cool structures to explore as well -- an old schoolhouse, a teepee, a miner's tent, etc.         

A summary of all All About Me week activities with links:

ACTIVITIES: Made an All About Me poster (check out this printable from Paper Nook or this one from A Day In My Life blog)

ART PROJECT: Painted the Colorado state flag

OUTINGS: Visited the Historic Four Mile House to learn more about early life in Denver

BOOKS: Read through her baby album and several other books made specially for her

BIBLE STORY: Jesus loves the little children and the song "Jesus Loves Me"

BABY BONUS: Made a 1 year handprint to save for the baby book and then finger painted with the rest of the paint

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).