Noah's Ark Theme: Part 4

We wrapped up an amazing week of learning and play in the theme of Parshas Noach. Within the story of Noah's Ark, there are so many sub-themes that could easily stand alone! Animals are a fun and incredible topic to explore with children, and I usually devote a few weeks to a theme like this one rather than cram into part of one week. The animals on Noah's ark still made an appearance in our activities, nonetheless, particularly gaining a lot of attention from my toddler in the theme related discovery basket I set out and in our teivah sorting activity. Building the teivah could also become a theme in and of itself through building with different materials at home and other construction related activities. I made sure to have some building toys, hard hats and tools accessible this week for theme related independent play, and many an activity was spent over the last few days with me wearing a yellow hardhat because my son requested it!
We shifted our focus this time on the colors of the rainbow and some basic concepts of clouds and rain. It was fabulous to watch my son learn through art, science and hands-on exploration. Perhaps the absolute highlights were watching how excited he was each day and engaged in many of the activities. As an added bonus, he walks around the house singing the Rainbow Song now!
We read Eric Carle's Little Cloud together and had some sensory fun with shaving cream to make our own Little Cloud. To help weave in our learning about color mixing, I added a squirt of red and blue paint to the shaving cream. I offered a plastic fork for mixing and playing but also let my little one know he could get his hands in there, too! He does not mind getting his hands messy altogether, but seemed to favor the fork overall and also likes to be able to clean off his hands independently as he feels ready. For that reason, I also provide a wet wash cloth when we work with messy materials so he doesn't need to leave the activity to intermittently wipe off big gobs of paint or shaving cream or glue. With the red and blue paints, he experienced hands on the mixing of our final secondary color in the rainbow, purple! This led us right into the final strip of our rainbow texture collage.

For some more purple themed fun, read Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon!  Now, having explored each of the colors individually, we had some playful fun with all of the colors of the rainbow.

I saw a lot of cute ideas using playdough and pipecleaners to build a rainbow. Somehow, I lacked a set of pipecleaners in each color, so I checked my craft stick stash--also missing colors! Guess it's time to restock, but for now, I was inspired to create an Invitation to Play with the Colors of the Rainbow using loose parts. 

He had a blast! 

After sticking the foam beads inside the ball of sparkly purple playdough we made earlier last week, he used the craft sticks to cut up his "challah" and even made a brachah on it!

Then he used the foam beads for building (and knocking down) towers! I confess to breaking my own rule and buying those beads from the dollar store over a year ago with no plan in place for them. They have sat in a container for that long and today, my son showed me what to do with them! I suppose it was worth the dollar!

We took our easel outside with paints in all three primary colors for some color mixing process art. Mixing to brown is a learning experience, too! Although this time he didn't quite reach the brown stage!

We usually reserve our Friday mornings for Field Trip days. I find that focusing the "homeschool" aspect of our week into four days allows us both more time to unwind at the end of a week and for me to plan for the week ahead, wrap up anything we didn't get to and/or prepare for Shabbos. Plus, having a fun outing in the morning helps us spend quality time together before my husband and I get busy preparing for Shabbos to begin. This week we visited our Science Museum, which has a fabulous exhibit for children ages 0-5 all about colors and light! He always has a great time here, and we were able to incorporate the themes of animals, weather, rainbows and even building while we made our way through the museum!

Join us this coming week as we start exploring the theme of Autumn. Until then, happy playing!