I picked up a pair of kid scissors for Ava to try out. I found some that spring open to help with cutting. After discussing scissor rules she got straight to work. She caught on really quickly but you don't realize how much coordination goes into using scissors until you try teaching someone for the first time! This is one of her new favorite {highly supervised} activities now.
To round out our textural art projects with sandpaper, Ava colored on sandpaper using crayons. She used many different colors and told me it was bumpy to color on but she liked it. She told me she's had so much fun this week and can't wait to do beach week again :)
We painted on a piece of sandpaper this week. Ava picked out blue and I poured a little on the paper. The sandpaper provided a new textural experience to paint on---a lot different than regular paper! I thought it would be a good idea to sit Cole at the table to paint---all he wanted to do was eat the paper and paint. His painting time was a little short lived :)
Ava used cut up pieces of sandpaper to make sandcastles. I gave her some glue and a paintbrush to go with her scraps of sandpaper. We made sandcastles in the sandbox this week with water from her water table so she was excited to make one on paper too. Ava set to work naming the shapes and gluing them onto the paper. I just realized I forgot to take a picture of the end result so I'll post one later.
Ava & Cole explored sandpaper before coloring on it. Ava said it was scratchy and rough. Cole just tried eating it the whole time :)
I set out the bowl of shells with 2 paper plates labeled sink and float. I asked Ava if she thought the shells would sink or float---Ava thought they would sink. She sorted the shells onto the plates. We took one plate at a time and dropped them into the bowl to test our hypothesis. "Mama, they are all sinking!" Ava couldn't believe they had all sank to the bottom. She played with them for a while experimenting with which ones would hold water and pouring water from one shell to another.
After story time, we headed over to the children's area to look at some beach books. I tried to find some that we didn't have and we haven't read before. Ava was so excited to check out her first books from the library! We found 2 really great books and read them as soon as we got home and then again as a family before bed. Ava loves the library and always says that is her favorite part of the day and always asks to go there too. Glad she loves reading!
We made a tissue paper fish today. I cut a paper plate out like a fish and cut some tissue paper and placed those into bowls. I made a glue and water mixture and let Ava go to town. She was so careful spreading the glue around and laying tissue paper on the fish. She had a certain place for each color and then started layering them.
We have a nice little seashell collection here! Ava was really excited to explore seashells. I put out a bowl with a whole bunch of shells. She was really gentle exploring them and told me which ones were bumpy, smooth, big, small. She even separated them into different groups based on their characteristics. She found two that looked like ice cream cones which she was very excited about! She explored them for a long time---I loved hearing her observations about the shells too!
Summer isn't complete without some beach time! Since Ava's been really into going to the beach and beachy type activities I figured we'd do a beach theme week. I actually got my act together this week and wrote down our lesson for the week.
Activities
Cole has discovered there is a whole world just outside his reach. He now tries to get up onto his knees from a sitting position and reaches all the way over. He's really close but I'm so not ready for him to crawl yet! He does move all around the floor but not by crawling. Today while we were playing Cole grabbed onto my leg and started to pull himself up! He didn't get all the way on to his feet but pretty close. Yikes---he's growing up too fast!
