Water and Rainbows

We started our week with learning about the water cycle and rainbows.  My girls are still pretty young so we didn't go into a lot of detail but had fun doing the activities outlined in the Teachers Guide.

We started with the bilingual book, coloring each page.  Miss M is getting more detailed, using multiple colors and trying harder to stay within lines or at least color blocks.  Littlest still isn't really "coloring", she likes to draw circles of various colors but she is starting to add facial features to those the circles, which is fun to watch.  After they colored, I had them show me which page was number 1, 2 and so on and we assembled their books to be read later with Daddy.

For the Puddle Jumping activity, I made a new game based on what they had come up with because I thought it would hold their attention a little longer.  I made ten puddles out of blue paper and numbered them.  I made a trail around our living room that led to our circus tent or "rainbow".  We used one of the foam dice that we received with our materials and the girls took turns rolling it, counting the dots (I counted for Littlest while she touched and tried to say the numbers) and then they hopped that many puddles until they reached the rainbow.  They played this for 15 minutes, easily.  Littlest is starting to be able to leave the ground when she hops now, so it was very exciting for her.  Miss M made up variations where she hopped from puddle to puddle while counting in Spanish or backwards.  It's one we will do again.

They loved making the Rainbow Dancer craft.  Miss M cut out her rainbow colors (although she got frustrated and upset a couple times when she accidentally cut into the next color but I showed her how we could fix it with tape) and did most of the construction herself, except the stapling.  I gave Littlest a piece of construction paper with wider spaced lines to practice cutting on because I thought it would be more developmentally appropriate and I didn't want her to maul the rainbow strips.  She actually did pretty well, holding the scissors up more often and squeezing instead of simple tearing with the scissors.  I put tape on the color strips, then named a color for her to hand me, which we put on the plate together.  She got all of the basic colors (I didn't even try to test her on indigo) and was very proud of herself.  When they were done, they chased each other around the downstairs while Miss M chanted "Rain, Rain, Go Away!"

We enjoyed these activities and they've been timely since we have had rain for a good part of the last couple of weeks.  Hoping that changes sometime soon but looking out my window, that doesn't seem likely...