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The crew was eager to color today, so when they saw the big bin of crayons ready to go on the counter, they cheered! After our morning routines we all settled in for some free drawing.
I encouraged the older children to draw bunnies, grass, and spring flowers.
The younger children and I focused on coloring ettiquette- using one crayon at a time, holding the crayon with proper grip, putting the crayon back when we were done and so forth. It's tough for the littles to decide if digging through the bin of crayons or the act of coloring itself is more interesting! I named the colors the littles were using each time they switched crayons.
When everyone had colored to their hearts' content, we bundled up and put on our rain gear and headed out for a chilly, rainy walk. Unfortunately we didn't make it very far; some of the littles are very independent and need more practice walking on the sidewalk and holding hands. It's only a matter of time, though, before all the littles are ready to follow along with our group safely. We walked back to our house and dug in the wet sand in the sandbox for a little while before we heard the call of the warm, dry indoors beckoning.
When we got in we washed hands and then moved on to more play with our homemade play dough. Today we added tiny farm animals and had them walk through the "snow" and "mud," made of white and brown play dough.
Some of the animals walked on top, while others became stuck in the mud. During this pretend play session, we talked about teamwork and helping our friends as our pretend animals helped out the animals who were stuck.
Squashing and flattening the play dough is nice for developing gross motor strength...
... while creating small items out of the play dough is wonderful for working on fine motor skills.
In the afternoon we did some color recognition as we perused a flower catalog. Tomorrow we'll be using the pictures in the catalog to create some pretty spring collages. There were so many pretty flowers in so many colors that it was impossible for us to pick our favorites! After that we read The Carrot Seed and took care of our own seeds, most of which have been growing strong. We will likely plant them outside within the next two weeks depending on the weather.
See you tomorrow!