Learning Through Play-- Day 1

Here are some photos from our day full of learning through play!

Reading books

They are so sweet together! :)

Cutting paper with scissors.

Our ongoing project right now is to cut little pieces of construction paper in several colors and then make a collage using glue stick!  She is getting better and better at using the scissors!

Letters and numbers in the box

Weston spent some time putting letters from the bag into the box.  He mostly liked filling up the box and then taking all of the letters back out.  Then eventually it turned into spreading out the letters on the rug :).  I like that he gradually felt more and more freedom to just explore!

I just love all his facial expressions! :)

Play dough structures using tookpicks

I set up a model so she could see an option of what we could make.  I also showed her how to make the little balls of play dough.  In the end though, she wanted to stick the toothpicks in the playdough and make "a sun"-- sure, why not!!  Then she wanted to make birthday cakes and candles, then sing happy birthday to daddy and have him blow out the candles.  Of course! That was a very creative idea! :)  Sometimes play activities don't turn out exactly how you had planned, but it is still successful because you are allowing the child to explore and use their imagination.

Her model of the sun-- the toothpicks are the sun's rays!

Three birthday cakes for daddy, with one candle in each cake!  

Time to sing Happy Birthday!

Domino Parking Lot

We practiced counting with the dominoes parking lot activity.  We have done this activity before but it's a really great one for practicing basic math skills while still keeping it fun.  

Weston loved playing with the dominoes too!

Experimenting with baking soda and colored vinegar.  

We have done this several times but it is always a fun activity.  It is so great to see her eyes light up when we try this.

Then she wanted to dump out all the vinegar and try again!

 And so we did!

 We did all of the activities that I had originally planned for today.  I forgot to take pictures when we were playing the Zingo sight words game-but oh well :).  All in all I would say that this was a successful start in being more intentional about providing fun and engaging play-based learning activities for my kids!  I did not feel like I was trying to do too much, and it didin't feel "scheduled."  Many of the activities took 15-20 minutes, so we had plenty of time for other fun.  It was more organized that anything else-- but it worked well today.  Can't wait for tomorrow! :)