(tiny) tot school - rainbow theme

15 months

This week we had a rainbow theme, not quite a nursery rhyme but we used "I can sing a rainbow".  The main aim was to reinforce our weekly rhythm (background post) - each day has a different colour.  The secondary aim was to ensure as a family we are eating a rainbow of fruit and vegetables, and also broadening our selection. Rainbow fruit and vegetable resource links. ( At the end of the week I discovered that there is a rainbow blog hop, I have linked this post there are lots of ideas from the hop via outlaw mum)

 I made some pages of fruit and vegetables in colour groups.


Pages made using this source

  



I also made some 3 part cards using free clipart by sweetclipart.  I didn't end up using these as I discovered the above colour charts after I made them (I made them while Luath had a long sleep, they are more for the future anyway).  They are split into colours and have some fruit and vegetables per colour group, nothing major but you can download if helpful.  red, orange, yellow, green, blue/purple

Activity File
This week's books were a bit of a mixture. We had some books that featured rainbows, others that had fruit and vegetables and some that had colours. I found a great book at the end of the week called "what makes a rainbow" (a magic ribbon book), it has a colour per double page, starting with red, there is a ribbon added for each colour, and ultimately you have all the ribbons of a rainbow.  It ends with a pop up rainbow.

our books

I kept out the stacking toy as Luath really enjoyed that last week - she didn't play with it much, so it does show that us rotating toys is a good idea. A stacking cup caterpillar, she was only interested in this a little, although she had fun throwing it off the sofa one evening. Her tray of fruit and vegetables were the most popular thing this week. They are velcro cutting food, but Luath puts the knives in her mouth so we just take the food apart.

activity file toys

Luath still is just taking puzzles pieces out, although she does try to put them back in at times (not in the right spaces I might add).  I was working this week to see if she would take the pieces out and put them in a basket.  I placed the basket on the right of the puzzle - this was a hit and miss activity.

Our Rainbow Week

(linked to posts for the week for more detail)

red

We began the week by attempting to do some paint/crayon art and coloured rice play.  I discovered that Luath is still at the eating stage.

a little bit of red rice
play before tasting

a little bit a drawing before

Luath started to eat the crayon

 







helping prepare our red dinner



orange
 We linked up with a virtual book club via toddler approved this month's book was  The Carrot Seed so our orange activities were carrot based.  I tried to make paint coloured by carrots, we made and ate carrot muffins



carrot muffins



carrot coloured paint



artist using a carrot
and pastry brush



butternut squash, carrot and chickpea
curry and an orange

yellow

No extra activities today, but we continued with wearing, looking for and eating the day's colour



sweetcorn, cheese and egg (with spinach, it looked
too bland without the green)



banana and peanut butter snack






green
I got myself all confused as I had looked out blue clothes for Luath and it was only after we were dressed I realised it was supposed to be green day, so she wore blue clothes on green day and green clothes on blue day (way to confuse us all!)

Today was also a odd day so I took almost no photos and as Luath and I were still crashed out until almost 6pm daddy made a high speed meal coloured orange!

We did eat a pear and I pointed out green objects.

blue
Apart from wearing some blue/green clothes we were back on track with our colour of the day.  We ate some blueberries for breakfast, and I made and we played with blue playdough.

home made blue play dough



blueberry porridge



purple

I made some yummy purple frozen yoghurt - frozen berries mixed with natural yoghurt, it was a lovely colour.  We spotted some pretty tiny purple flowers on blue day and on white day, but were too busy to go to the woods to spy them on purple day.

spotting a purple flower




homemade frozen berries yoghurt

   










white
Apart from Luath's clothes today was more of a rainbow day than white.  We had multicoloured meals and looked for coloured stones on the beach - the beach looks white/grey from a distance but close up it is a multitude of colour.

rainbow
One major hit of the week were the coloured stars I had stamped out to use to record what colours of fruit and vegetables we eat over a week/month.  Luath played multiple times and for some quite long sessions with them, some of the things we did with them - poured, transferred, threw them in the air, put them in our hair and scooped them.  Yes sometimes they were all over the floor but they were easy to clean up. I made more over the week so we could fill a jar for an I-spy game.  I am thinking if I stamp more I could fill a tub as it is as close as we will get to rainbow rice for a little while.

who would have guessed
stamped colour paper stars
would be so much fun

Luath was fascinated by the
star stamp

 

Other things this week

We attended a fashion show at the high school.  Daddy did some modelling.  I had won a design a t-shirt competition so we saw how it looked on the cat walk.

Luath played a lot with her golf clubs and football

Luath has taken a huge leap in her verbal skills, she has been saying and repeating for months, but this week she started saying the last word in many of the rhymes/poems/stories that we read.  It is quite amazing how much has been lodged in her brain just waiting for her verbal skills to catch up.  It really shows how beneficial it is to repetitively sing and read simple rhymes and stories.

This week's 7adys7ways

This week's 7days7ways to add a little more to our outdoor time:
we had some wild weather a few days this week, strong north winds, but we were out everyday, a couple of days Luath stayed on my back while we took the dog out, but I made an effort to point out some thing special.

Day1. wave at passing boats and canoeists


 Day 2. walk on different surfaces (seaweed and stones)
   
Day 3.  have some fun on the swing with your baby (doll)
Day 4.  watch the seagulls fighting against the strong winds

Day 5.  get wet while on mummy's back on a dog walk
Day 6. look for the colour of the day - we found a lovely tiny purple flower, which wasn't the day's colour but was well worth a good look










Day 7. help mummy with some weeding

Background:

I read about famiglia&seoul's 365days outdoor challenge she set herself after reading Rebecca P. Cohen's Fifteen Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Out of the House and Connect with Your Kids (you can get 50 ideas via Rebecca's blog if you sign up) and I also have read Greening Sam and Avery's everyday outdoor play resolution and I decided to do the same.  Simple things to get more out of our outdoor time (we already are out most days dog walking) and to try and be outdoors everyday (some days it is so wild daddy walks the dog, but we will try and go outside for a little while).

(Luath is 15months)

Blue playdough and blueberries

We started blue day with some porridge mixed with blueberries.  There is something about blueberries that just makes me smile.  Luath has never eaten blueberries before.

She tried them but she can't have taken to them, she ate some porridge but decided to do some fingerpainting with most of it.  Oh well I loved them.

 

The blueberries were frozen and I noticed that the bowl they had been defrosting in had some lovely coloured water.  I had planned to make some playdough and thought I would try using the blueberry juice to dye it.

It is the first time I have made playdough and I genuinely was surprised at just how quick and easy it was.  I used a cooking method.:
Mix 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup salt, 1 tablespoon cream of tartar and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil.
Add 1/2 cup cold water (and colouring) into mixture and stir. Then add another 1/2 cup cold water.
Heat over a low heat, stirring until thicken and almost into a ball.
Tip out, let cool slightly.  Knead for 2 minutes.

The blueberry juice turned the dough a pretty light violet colour.  If I had more I am sure it would be even better.  As I am still wary of Luath eating the playdough I wanted it to be as none food coloured as possible, so I added some food paste to the mixture and turned it into a bright blue colour.

I looked out some blue kitchen items.  Luath wasn't too sure initially.  She prodded it with her fingers.  I took the knife and cut some of the dough.  She loved this and cut into the dough.  We used a cookie cutter, rolled, squeezed, pressed the dough. Luath's favourite thing was pulling the dough apart. She went to try to eat the dough once, I said "It's for playing with", which resulted in quite a few tears (she is such a sensitive soul), which stopped when I showed her the cookie cutter. She kept all the dough on the mat which really made the clear up quick.  More playdough sessions soon.

(Luath is 15 months)

Book of the week - Rainbow Rob, and this week's 5-a-day books

Book of the week - Rainbow Rob
(this is the book that Luath has enjoyed the most over the week)

A large board book with something on most double page spread to feel. A rhyming text. Rob wonders what it would be like to be a colour, other than black & white.  He tries out different colours of different animals  "Could he be a pink flamingo from San Domingo"  For every colour there is a reason why he can't be that colour.  It is probably the feeling part that Luath loves the most.

5-a-day books
(I started doing this after reading this post from almost a year ago on the Imagination Tree blog about selecting five books to read everyday for a week and why it is important.)

Rainbow Rob (as above)

Cool as a cucumber

This was almost Luath's favourite book.  She loves looking at the pictures of all the children but isn't quite so keen on listening to it/  On each double page there is a picture of a vegetable and a child with the vegetable, you then open a double page flap and see the different parts of the vegetable and these parts are named - skin, seeds, raw.  The vegetable is then described to other foods i.e. pepper bitter like chicory, olives

Go wild with colours


A board book, bright drawings, with only the colour word per page.  A pink flamingo, grey dolphin through to a yellow canary and a multicoloured chameleon.  I add in the name of the animal and sometimes I will add in more - a white polar bear looking up at the snow.

Handa's surprise

A picture book.  Set in Kenya.  A girl sets off with seven fruits for her friend.  On the way a different animal takes a fruit from the basket.  The surprise is what she ends up with for her friend.  Colourful pictures.  Luath started saying mango this week, I am hoping it is from this book and not from a banana phone a cousin gave her that says things like "musical mangoes"

Look there's Elmer

Elmer is playing hide and seek with bird.  Bird thinks he spot Elmer (a cut out on the page) but discovers that it isn't Elmer it is something else - washing, a boat.  An animal on each page helps bird by pointing at another cut out that you think is Elmer.  Where can a large multicoloured elephant hide?  Luath laughs each time I say "that's funny bird" - each animal says this.  By a few reads she seemed to get the thinking we saw Elmer through the cut out.  She can also say Elmer now.


( Luath is 15 months)

Virtual book club – The Carrot Seed

I decided to link up with the virtual book club again this month.  This month's book is The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss. We watched the book here.  It's the story of a boy who believes his seed will grow, even though everyone else doesn't.  We spread our activities over the month.

We sowed some sunflower and sweet pea seeds in pots.  Luath helped with the dibber and ensuring that the plant markers were taken for a walk round the garden.  She has helped me water the seeds.  We do have more seeds to sow soon (the ground is still a bit too chilly) including some non-orange carrots.

We did some cooking using carrots as an ingredient.  Carrot cake bars and  carrot muffins.

I had an experiment making paint coloured by carrots.  I need to work on the extraction of colour as it was much lighter than I had hoped. 

Luath did some painting onto orange paper using a pastry brush and a carrot.

As we didn't have the carrot seed book we read two other books about seeds.

What's this?  A seed's story

We have just returned this library book and I have missed reading it.  Luath really enjoyed it and it became her book of the week (her favourite book),  A bird then a girl finds a seed. She plants and cares for it. It grows into a sunflower.  She saves the seeds and shares them with other pupils, who all sow and grow a sunflower.

Jasper's Beanstalk
I first saw this book when it was read at a Bookbug session.  Jasper plants a bean seed, each day of the week he tends for it in a different way, he is impatient and digs it up at one point.  It does finally grow, and grow,

Two others on our to read list

A seed is sleepy

We are on the lookout for this book, our library doesn't have it.  The illustrations look great.

The Tiny Seed
We didn't read this one this month as it was out on loan, but I like it as it tells all the misfortunes that can happen to a seed.

(Luath is 15 months)

Paint coloured with carrots

Following on from yesterdays crayon and red rice eating I thought I'd play it safe and use some safe to eat paint.  I wanted to use orange paint so I thought I would dye it using carrots.  I did end up with some juice to dye the cornflour paint with but I need to work on my extraction technique. I probably should have checked for some ideas on extracting dye from vegetables before I started. I have now found this on fruit and vegetable based paints.  Bookmarked I had information on egg dyeing which would also be useful,  from Clean on natural egg dyes  linked to this tutorial (for pre hard boiled eggs) at the Kitchen blog or here for fresh eggs  Kindling also had a post about natural dyes including a table for different colours.  She used some coriander leaves to make lovely patterns on the eggs.  (I have revisited extracting dye from carrot and butternut squash  here)

What I did was to cut a large carrot up small, should have grated them but was in a rush, microwaved them for 8 minutes, let them steep in some water for half a day (while we were out), then mashed and pressed them in a metal sieve over a bowl to collect the carrot juice.  I didn't end up with much juice.

I made paint by mixing cornflour with a little cold water to make a paste, then added boiling water to the consistency I wanted.  I then added the carrot juice.  It did turn a slight orange colour.  I added some tiny bits of carrots for fun.

I was going to give Luath white paper but since the paint wasn't as orange as I had hoped I give her orange paper.   Luath wasn't keen to put her hands in the paint (odd as she prefers to eat her porridge with her hands than a spoon) so I gave her a pastry brush.



And added a carrot.  She used the brush and the carrot for a while.  Then threw the carrot onto the floor, where the dog was only to happy to have it - another reason to go with edible paint!

Not once did Luath try to eat the paint or the carrot.  She must prefer crayons and dried rice!  The final masterpiece:



shared with Tuesday tots, see what else tots have been doing


(Luath is 15months)