Counting [1-5] : Grain Bins & Cupcakes

I've been having a little bit of a hard time getting Henry to want to do any kind of activity lately.

Especially anything that's remotely educational.

I brainstormed, trying to figure out what he'd like to do, but still work in some numbers.

This is what I came up with :

Counting with Grain Bins

I numbered five empty baby food jars.

[I'm overstocked right now, but I'm finding lots of uses for them lately. 

What do you use them for?]

I numbered both the sides and the lids of the jars 

with matching colored paper.

[I only did five so Henry wouldn't get overwhelmed, 

since he seems to be struggling with counting.]

I filled each jar with the corresponding number of marshmallows.

[I did this to show Henry the number to begin with so he wasn't expected to know it.]

I set out Henry's track tractor and wagon 'grain cart' along with the grain truck.

Henry's a farmer to the bone, 

so I figured this would get him more involved.

It did.

I set out a toothpick, as well, with the intention for him to poke the marshmallows 

to transfer from the 'grain bins' to the grain cart.

This wasn't fast enough for Henry, so he just dumped the bins out.

Henry loaded up his grain cart with all five bins worth of marshmallows corn.

Then transfered the corn to the grain truck.

Which then hauled the corn back to the bins.

When it was time to unload into the bins :

 Henry unscrewed each lid off, 

filled up each bin until it was 'full' (to the correct number), 

then quickly found the matching lid and screwed it back on.

[nice work for the fine motor skills, my toothpick idea didn't work, but this did.]

Henry had no problems with counting 1-3. 

At 4 he added a few too many.

When he got to 5, he realized he didn't have enough and was puzzled.

So, I redirected him back to 4 to recount.

He hauled the corn from bin to grain cart to grain truck a few times, 

until he eventually ate all his corn.

[He then found Cheerios beans to haul and did the same.]

I also found this nice printable for counting : 

Counting Cupcakes at FileFolderFun 

[same place where I found the ABC = abc matching printable.]

Henry pretty easily matched up the 

numbered cupcakes with the 'sprinkled' cupcakes.

[they're actually cherries on the cupcakes, 

but to make it more fun and easier for Henry to understand, 

I called them sprinkles.]

Henry first tried matching their colors, 

but the colors weren't right to match 

and he quickly understood that he needed to count them. 

He still struggled a little with 4 and 5. 

The printable includes cupcakes up to 10, 

but to keep Henry from getting frustrated, 

I only used 1-5.

I'm glad to have found a way to include Henry's interests in counting. 

Hauling anything is always a hit with him - 

the Grain Bin activity wasn't solely focused on counting, 

so it was much more fun for him.

And me too.

   - Henry is about 35 months - 

What We're Reading

Since today is Read Across America Day,

I thought I'd share with you our favorite books in this house.

The number one book in this house :

Cars and Trucks and Things That Go 

Or to us, its known as Goldbug. 

This was my husband's favorite when he was little, and now its Henry's favorite. 
There's a little tiny 'goldbug' on every page, peaking out from somewhere. Henry finds him on every page. (Kind of like Where's Waldo.) The story is pretty funny too along the way. Its about a trip the Pigs are making to the beach for a picnic and their adventures along the way. 
Be prepared for a lot of 'What is that?" questions. There's a lot of odd vehicles and objects along the way.
Bananamobile? Doughnut Car? Rhinoceros Car? Yep, they're all in there.[don't worry, you don't need to make up these names, they're provided]

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Any of the Berenstain Bears Books are the current bedtime favorites : [not really bedtime stories, they're just in Henry's room, so that's what we read.]We currently have been reading these:

 

I'm not sure how I feel about some of the Berenstain Bears books. I know as a child I loved them, as did my husband. But as a parent, I don't always like the message they're getting across. And maybe this is only because Henry is still a little young for them. 

The Berenstain Bears' New Baby : [And no, this is not an announcement that I'm pregnant, we got this book for Henry when I was pregnant with George and Henry still pulls it out to read.] Brother gets too big for his small bed, so he and Papa set out for the day to build a bigger one. While they were gone, Mama gets his little bed ready for Sister who is born that day. The only part I don't care for is at the end when Sister bops Brother in the nose (yes, she's a baby and doesn't know better, but Henry doesn't understand that).

The Berenstain Bears and the Trouble at School : Brother is sick and misses school and forgets about studying, then does bad on a quiz and loses his place on the soccer team. He gets mad about it and then Gramps comes in and helps him fix it all. No consequences?

The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Dream : Brother and Sister learn about dreams and how your mind still thinks when you're sleeping, but in a mixed up way. This book has taught Henry what a nightmare is and now he thinks he has them all the time. Even before he's fallen asleep. 

The Berenstain Bears Go to the Doctor : I really like this book and Henry loves it. He actually really enjoys going to the doctor and has had no problems with shots. But this book helps kids get over the fear of getting their immunizations. It also lets them know that even sometimes Papa might get sick too!

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Flip Flap Farm : this is a newer book of Henry's, so we're still finding all the treasures. "I find a new flap every time I read this!" - Henry's dad.
Henry loves farming and this book is actually pretty educational about all that happens during each of the seasons of farming. And there's tons of flaps, flaps inside flaps, and much more!

  
- Henry is about 34 months -

Bubble Print Shamrock Diptych

Before we made our Bubble Pop Roads, Henry made a print with his bubbles [or pops].

  I'm loving that St Patty's is coming up 

because I can always give Henry the choice of color, and the answer is always green!
[I added yellow and orange for him to use so we could get some gold in there, too]
Henry went to town sponging the paint on.

Once we got the bubble wrap covered with a nice coat of green and yellow-orange paint 

we flipped it over 

and pressed it onto a piece of 12x12 scrapbook paper.

Henry also did a little finger painting once we peeled it off, 

so we pressed it on again.

And again!

Henry liked seeing the prints it made.

This is Henry's finished piece.

I then cut a shamrock out of it.

I was disappointed though, 

I loved the outer edge of the paper, it had the nice dots showing through.

So, I decided to make both the inside and the outside work 

and make a diptych of the shamrock print!

Two for one!

[Though, I'm bummed because I don't have two of my 12x12 frames yet!]

- Henry is about 34 months -

Bubble Pop Road & More

  I order a lot of my baby supplies (formula, baby food, diapers) online.
My latest shipment came with a ridiculous amount of packaging. 

I ordered a stovetop's worth - it came in 3 gigantic boxes (above) and had about 1 1/2 boxes worth of packaging. 




Since I had no control over the first R (reduce), we moved onto the second one - REUSE!
Henry and I spent a morning making a road.We laid out the bubble wrap on the floor and taped it with painters tape [my latest friend, it doesn't ruin my wood floors]
I think the most fun was in making the road because it popped as we crawled a long it.

We made hills going over the boxes.

[This made it very hard to take the the dump truck over though :

we had to support the bubble wrap with pillows.]

Henry found that the bigger dump truck popped the most bubbles, 

but the smaller vehicles were easier to drive along it.

But running on it made the most noise!

And now its Recycled.

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Our next activity turned out kind of funny and gross looking.

When I saw this Dinosaur Excavation at TinkerLab I thought the slimy jell-o might be fun!

TinkerLab has great directions on how to make the mold.

I had troubles finding toys that would sink into the jell-o. 

We ended up using flat marbles, 

a Lego, and googly eyes (they floated).

Oh, and we added food coloring.

[I thought this would give a nice swirl of color in the mold... 

as you can see below, it did not]

I probably should have let it set up overnight, instead we only waited about 2 or 3 hours.

[not quite long enough]

Henry then went to work excavating.

Turned out the food coloring mistake that I thought looked gross, 

ended up looking like black dirt!

Henry spent a lot of time digging out the marbles.

Once everything was excavated,

he put all his findings in a strainer in the kitchen sink 

and ran water over them until they were sparkly clean.

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This next activity happened completely by accident. 

I got out our large containers (formula and oatmeal) to do a fishing activity that I wanted to try, 

instead Henry made his own Noisemaker!

[I love it when the activity is completely ran by Henry]

I bookmarked these in a High Five! a couple weeks ago : 

Noisemakers at Family Fun Notebook

Since this wasn't planned, we didn't get to decorating the cans at all. 

And Henry didn't even get the lid on some of the cans : which made it kind of fun! 

Whoa, there goes the G!

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Here's more Reuse for our boxes!

Henry and I put together this 'parking garage' of boxes.

All I did was cut off some flaps and used them for ramps and taped them together.

I wanted to make a two-decker something with the boxes.

Playhouses work well for girls, what can you make for boys?So we came up with the parking garage.

What do you make with boxes?What activities do you do with packaging materials?