Recently, the boys and I have had fun with the letters R and N. I wish I could take credit for these ideas, but they were all Pinterest treasures that my sister and I uncovered. Our favorite R activities were focused on the theme of rainbows and colors...
First, I had the boys stamp rainbow fish pictures. Cody and Jaden dipped the end of celery stalks into paint and then decorated their fish. It was too difficult for me to manage the paint, the celery, both messy boys, and a camera, so I didn't get any process pics, but I am including their final products. I thought they turned out so cute! Surprisingly, Cody was my careful kiddo who made the first picture and really made his stamps look like scales.
Jaden seemed to enjoy the activity as well but was more interested in decorating the whole page.
Another day, we made rainbow rain! We filled a vase with water and then made a "cloud" of shaving cream on top. The boys chose which colors of food coloring to squirt into the cloud. Then, using pipettes, Jaden and Cody acted as the rain, squirting water into the shaving cream cloud.
Using the pipettes was good practice for their little fingers! The boys stayed very focused on the task.
After a few rounds of squirting rain, the water began to seep through the shaving cream, taking the food coloring with it to make... rainbow rain in the water below! Very fun.
This rainbow salt tray activity captured Cody and Jaden's interest much longer than I had anticipated. Cody and Jaden loved seeing the rainbow colors appear as they made brush strokes in the salt.
I didn't even ask the boys to make letters in their tray, but both of them started forming letters at some point in their playtime. I will definitely have to bring this activity out again for future writing practice as they enjoyed it MUCH more than using a marker or pencil.
On the same day, we did a Color Hunt outdoors. (And by the way, these pics are from November. Yes, we are still wearing short-sleeves and sandals. Crazy, this Texas fall!) Anyway, this color hunt was one of my favorite letter R activities simply because of my boys' excited reactions as we did it. First, I gave them a clipboard and a paper that depicted 8 different colors. Cody and Jaden's job was to find something outside that matched with each color on their paper.
I told them to choose a crayon and then circle each color as they found it. Interestingly, both boys were insistent on changing their crayon color for each circle so that their crayon matched the color they were searching for. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they were being a bit particular since their mommy shares the same trait! :)
Jaden and Cody were SO excited whenever they found their sought-after color. Most of the time, they didn't move on to search for a new color until I came over to rejoice with them and see what they had found. Our yard was filled with many eager cries of joy that afternoon.
Halfway through their search, Cody and Jaden paused to share their findings and help each other out. So cute. :)
For our letter R page that we are adding to our slowly-growing tactile alphabet book, we glued on rice and strips of red construction paper. Cody and Jaden (the only one pictured for this activity) are making a little progress on their cutting. We still use the training scissors exclusively. I love how both my boys use their tongues to help them concentrate! :)
We did a little math activity one day with rainbow matching cards. The dots on the opposite side of the rainbow were very tiny for Cody and Jaden to count, but they got most of the matches correct right away.
My other favorite R activity was our rainbow scavenger hunt. The website handsonaswegrow.com has a wonderful printout to use so that pre-readers can follow scavenger hunt clues on their own. By using color strips and picture-clues, Jaden and Cody were able to independently complete the scavenger hunt from start to finish. I simply love this idea!
The boys were quite proud of themselves!
Then, we used the color strips from our scavenger hunt for this rainbow Fruit Loop activity. The boys rolled a dice to determine how many cereal pieces to glue onto each color strip.
Of course, the Fruit Loops were fun to snack on, too! :)
Their final products made for colorful decorations in our kitchen for quite some time.
In addition to rainbows, we also looked at robots with the letter R. For this activity, Jaden and Cody again used a dice to build various parts of the body for a robot.
This fun game we found at www.733blog.com.
Finally, we pretended to be robots! Each boy helped me tape robot buttons onto themselves.
We took turns "pressing each other's buttons" and doing whatever the button said to do. All of the button-commands were large motor actions like, kick your leg, bend your knees, jump up and down, or walk like a robot. Cody and Jaden enjoyed wearing the buttons as much as they liked doing the actions (or perhaps even more so!).
For the letter N, we used noodles to make our tactile book page. This was a fun activity because Jaden and Cody were able to break the noodles down into smaller pieces on their own.
The boys are not big fans of projects that make their hands sticky, so their noodle-decorating mostly involved dropping the noodles from a safe height onto the glue-covered N.
Another day, we simply played freely with noodles! Cody and Jaden weren't too excited to stick their hands into the oil-covered noodles, but they loved exploring with various kitchen utensils.
After the noodle free-play, we painted pictures with noodles. Both boys thought this project was "kind of silly." Mommy thought their abstract results were kind of fun!
My favorite activity was doing an N is for nose smell test. I filled 6 small containers with strongly-scented foods (like lime, vanilla and vinegar). Initially, I made the mistake of using a powdery substance (cinnamon) and Cody sniffed a bunch up his nose. The poor kid was not a happy camper. So, we stuck with liquids and solid foods after that. :) I started by showing the boys each item and letting them smell each sample.
Then, the boys tried to identify the smells with their eyes closed. This was an easy, but fun, activity for them.
After they did a few trials, the boys happily held up the containers to my nose for me to test. Their favorite substance to test on Mommy was the vinegar because of the scrunched nose reaction I gave them. Cody and Jaden just laughed and laughed and continued to give me the vinegar. :)
We continue to love our letter-based fun!
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