Press Here Activities

I am extremely thrilled that I have two littles that LOVE to read. We can literally take a stack of books and sit and read them together from beginning to end, which is no easy feat when you have two squirmy three year olds! I firmly believe the saying that says, "Readers are made on the laps of their parents." It's a lot of fun to now hear Brother and Sister "read" books themselves. They can recall and picture walk with the best of them. They can also read some phonics readers with basic sight words and word families!

We recently discovered the book Press Here by Herve Tullet. Let me implore you to run and get this book. I promise, even if you have a child who is hesitant to sit on your lap and read, he will once you pull this book out! It is a series of dots (pretty basic) but the neat thing about this book is that it is interactive. The kiddos do fun things to the dots (rub, blow, tilt) and the subsequent picture illustrates that! It is so much fun! It also introduces color mixing, which is quite fun for littles. Here are a few activites we did with the book (some I have pictures for, some not).

1. Contact Paper Circles-This was a lot of fun! I just cut a bunch of circles out of tissue paper and brother and sister put them on the contact paper. After the large circle was completely covered, we hung it on the window and you can see the colors blending to make the secondary colors!


2. Tilting and Turning-I have toilet paper tubes with magent backing on them that we use for our marble run on our fridge. We made a hand-held marble run on a baking sheet and tried to get the marble to run through the tubes by tilting the pan (just like in the book).

3. Q-tip Dot Painting-I put circles on white copy paper and only gave the littles the primary colors. They used those to fill the circles with dots only using the q-tip (I am planning to revist this sometime in the future when we study Monet).


4. Venn Diagram Color Mixing-I drew a Venn Diagram on white copy paper and the kiddos took two primary colors and colored in the circles, which allowed them to see what colors they created in the overlapping sections (I forgot a pic, which is sad because these were neat).

5. Kool-Aid Playdough- We made colorful Kool-Aid playdough, which didn't really have anything to do with the book, except that we got to mix it and then press the dough!


8. Patterns-We made patterns using circles made out of the primary colors. We love making patterns of any kind!

7. The last thing we did was create our own Press Here book. We made ours about a balloon that we can blow up and it floats up. Then we pull it down. Eventually it pops! It was pretty cute and the kiddos were really good about coming up with ideas for what to make the balloon do.

If you are looking for some other ideas for Press Here, you can try downloading this mini-book for starters!

Herve Tullet also has some great coloring books that we will be looking out for as well.

10 Super Easy Easter Crafts and Activities

It's been a whole month since I've made a post-Ekkk! That's pretty bad. I'll try to do better (try).

So here are some super easy and cute Easter crafts that we did for Mommy School this past week. Most of these are from pinterest, but some I have just made up. If you need something for the littles to create on Easter Sunday, this is your one-stop shop! My kiddos are three but these can be adapted for any age.

1. Montessori Egg Trace-This was an idea I read about in a Montessori activity book. It was great! My kiddos have had limited opportunity to trace items, so this was a new experience and they also worked on fine motor skills to draw the lines from one side of the egg to the other.











2. Egg Wreath-I cut eggs shapes out of construction paper and let the kiddos decorate them (much less mess that the real decorating kind. We'll save that one for later). Then we taped them around a paper form. You could use this to illustrate the Easter story to tell a sequence or make specific patterns on each egg. The possibilities are endless!

3. Crayon Resist Eggs (Or Tape Resist)-I wrote a message on a white paper egg with white crayon. The kiddos painted water colors all over the egg. We've done this type of project before and the kiddos call it magic painting! If you do the tape resist, put the blue painter's tape down and water color on top. Let dry and remove painter's tape. Make sure to use water colors. If you use regular finger paints, you may tear the paper while removing the paint.



4. Egg Match Up-Here is one of the great projects I found on pinterest. I wrote on plastic eggs (top is capital letter and bottom is lowercase) and the kiddos had to match. We also made a number set which had dots on the top and the numbers on the bottom. I went all the way to 20, which got a bit difficult with the dots.

5. Egg Pattern Match Up-This one was super easy for my kiddos, but they had fun racing to see who could get the most (and it was a completely independent activity, so I could work on something else)! I made an egg shape out of lots of different scrapbook papers and glued them to white paper (index cards might work too). Then I cut the card in the middle and then scattered them all over the table. Then the kiddos just had to race to see who could make the most matches!

6. Styrofoam Egg Print-I learned this process from my Art for Elementary School teachers class. It is very easy and fun to do. Before the activity I cut an egg shape out of styrofoam and drew a pattern on it with a pen. Then the twinkies each painted their egg and then pressed it down on paper to make a print. Then we wiped off the paint and made another print with a different color. Fun and Easy!


7. Peep Patterns!-Who doesn't love a peep at Easter (actually I don't). The kiddos got to try their first peep this year, so they were thrilled. Then we made patterns with some peeps I had printed on paper. I got the image from Petit Design Co (she made a cute peep shirt, so check that out!). Anyway, we made various patterns, which my kiddos are AWESOME at (if I may brag for just a minute). I think at this point they are only "supposed" to know AB patterns, but mine come up with some crazy ones. Sister said what if I did, "purple pink pink green, purple pink pink, green"-Crazy, right? That's ABBC for those of you wondering! This activity was really fun, especially since we got to eat a peep afterward!


8. Peep Counting- While working with the peeps, we just decided to keep right on working. I printed a basket for each kiddo and then some number cards. They picked a number card and had to put that many peeps in their basket! Fun, easy, and good practice!


9. Name Egg Hunt-Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this, but hopefully this description will be enough. I used colorful scrapbook paper and wrote one letter on each egg. Then I gave each kiddo a basket that had a simple sight word on it. They had to find ONLY the eggs that spelled that word (Brother just wanted to find ALL the eggs- "All of 'em, Mommy"). Then we glued them on the basket.

10. Bunny Handprint-Since you know I'm such a sucker for a handprint art, you knew there had to be at least one, right? Here's a cute litte bunny (or kitten-did you know baby rabbits are called kittens? I didn't until we read Rabbits by Gail Gibbons. I cut out all the pieces and let the kiddos figure out how it went together. They did really well and only got confused with the ears. Sister said, "Mommy, I'm going to spell bunny on the top," and then began to sound out the letters, which is something she is doing for EVERYTHING nowadays. I wasn't really paying attention and when I looked over, she already had B U N Y on her paper! I told her there were two N's and she had left a large space, so she was able to fit it in. I was really proud of her for sounding it all out by herself!