Days of Creation Play Stations: Day 2 The Shamayim

On the Second Day, Hashem created the Shamayim (translated as the Heavens/sky). We happened to reach our afternoon of Day 2 Creation Play Stations right before last Shabbos, when we read Parshas Noach (the story of Noah and the Ark). S is learning more in depth about this parsha in preschool and we did a lot more at home with it last year, which you can read about here. I did not want to entirely skip over it at home, so I rotated in a toy boat, a Fisher Price "Noach" and some plastic animals to our bathtub playtime. To incorporate the idea of the rainbow both to learning about the creation of the Shamayim and to Parshas Noach ,I also prepped some colorful Shabbos treats...

Rainbow salad...

Rainbow fruit salad...

...and a chocolate cake with rainbow icing...definitely not the healthiest of the three options, but certainly the most beloved!

I covered our dining room table in white craft paper so S could decorate our Shabbos table with our favorite rainbow themed art materials and stickers...

Both boys have been enjoying our play stations. I've been preparing sensory bottles for each of the days (mainly with Y in mind, but S still enjoys these as well).

Day 1: water (dyed black with a bit of paint) and vegetable oil for Dark & Light
Day 2: blue dyed dry rice and cotton ball clouds

I especially love the small sized Gatorade bottles for sensory bottles. They are the perfect size for little hands! So when my husband came home with a pack before Yom Kippur, he saw an easier fast and I saw a future play at home project! I always hot glue and/or duct tape the caps to securely seal them. Numeral stickers help identify the day of Creation on each cap.

 On the topic of colorful rainbows and clouds, we've all been a bit under the weather here since the end of the High Holidays. It started with four green noses and progressed to five pink eyes. (Don't even ask... My preschooler is bringing germs home like a first year teacher!) We've kept many of our afternoon play sessions very low key, and that has been quite lovely nonetheless. For Day 2, we did some cloud themed sensory play using shaving cream and blue & green paint inside our water table. There's a great science experiment and story stretcher you could add in if you wish that I posted here.







I had no audible voice for reading a story that day, but S loved using a plastic fork to marble the paint inside the shaving cream and afterward got his hands into it as well! I like to make the most of my activities, so before he really had at it, I took a piece of white cardstock and made a print over top of the shaving cream. I used a squeegee to scrape off the excess back into the sensory table and allowed the beautiful marble-painted paper to dry. It would be perfect for use in our process art Days of Creation Counting Book.

 We've been creating a page with each of the days, along with a title page and this introductory page along to the song below, one of our favorite Bereishit themed songs:

(t.t.t.o. "This Old Man")

Hashem created a world so fine, 
He did it all in six days' time
How did He do it? What did He do?
Each day He made something new...

On Yom Rishon, there was dark and light
Hashem made the day and Hashem made the night,
On Yom Sheini, up very, very high, 
Hashem created the big, blue sky!

On Yom Shlishi, the rivers and the seas,
And from the earth grew flowers and trees,
On Yom R'vee'ee, the sun so bright
The moon and stars just for the night.

On Yom Chamishi, the fish in the sea
And way up high the birds in the breeze
On Yom Shishi, big animals and small,
Adam and Chava, most important of all!

On Yom Shabbat, Hashem worked no more
So we should know what this day is for,
A day of rest is the rule,
We learn Torah and go to shul!

Here's a peek back at our Day 1 page, white (light) chalk and crayons drawn onto black (dark) paper...

For Day 2, I set out "cloud paint brushes" in white paint. Simply pinch a cotton ball between a clothespin for these super simple paint dabbers! They are always a big hit and great fine motor practice for little hands. (Even Y was able to use it with some extra help from me.)

We are gearing up for another day of play here and will surely be back to post about it. In between our organized play sessions, S has really enjoyed this makeshift DIY Days of Creation garland. I printed out the beautiful clipart for free from this website and laminated/cut out the circles for each day. I hung some yarn across our deep freezer with magnets (we use every inch of available space here!) and wrote numerals 1-7 on clothes pins. An envelope placed below is great for holding on to the pieces between play. Both fine motor and math/sequencing skills are called into play with this activity, but your little one will likely be having too much fun playing to even notice he is learning, too!






Happy Playing!

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!

Noah's Ark Theme: Part 3

Time to add the blue!

We're sailing right along on our exploration of the story of Noach this week with some more colorful fun! As we continue on our investigation of the colors of the rainbow, we are taking a hands-on approach to learning how primary colors mix into secondary colors in a variety of ways. We even took to the kitchen for a tasty theme-related snack...

In addition to our orange experiment with red and yellow water, we tested out color mixing with paints at the easel. 

Next it was time to see what happens when you mix yellow and blue. I set out a gallon sized sealed ziplock bag with a squirt of each color prepared inside. This is a great sensory experience and mess free to boot! He loved squishing around the colors until we ended up with green!

 For an extension on this activity, you could read Little Yellow and Little Blue by Leo Lionni!

Finger painting in a bag is a great activity for your tabletop and equally wonderful hung on a vertical surface. Even very little ones can enjoy some independent playtime while you're busy in the kitchen if you hang a sensory bag like this one on your refrigerator or a cabinet door.

Speaking of keeping busy in the kitchen, there are a lot of wonderful parsha related snacks when it comes to the story of Noach. Between the themes of animals and rainbows, the options abound. I've seen rainbow colored challah, cupcakes, cakes, animal shaped sugar cookies and just think of all the calorie-laden and sugary treats you could create with colorful cereals, jello and candies. But after a month of holidays and overindulgence, we were ready for something a bit healthier this time around.

With Rosh Chodesh right in the middle of the week, I wanted to add a festive theme-related dessert to our family dinner. I decided on rainbow fruit cups and animal cookies. The rainbow fruit kabobs are absolutely lovely and could really beautify a party table or even Shabbos meal. Nonetheless, sharp wooden objects are not so toddler-friendly, so we opted for the rainbow in a cup option. In the past I have also done this activity with paper plates and trays of fruits and/or veggies in each color of the rainbow for little ones to build (and eat!) their own rainbow.

One year we even did a rainbow salad! The options are endlessly colorful and need not be full of dyes and sugar to be fun and tasty. (And don't worry, I'm planning a lavish and colorful dessert for Shabbos this week!)

Noah's Ark Theme: Part 2

The Noah's Ark themed fun and learning continues here. As we explore the colors of the rainbow, I am strategically also placing in hands-on learning and experimenting with how primary colors mix into secondary colors. While we began our texture collage yesterday with the red and yellow sections, today we explored what happens when you mix red and yellow to create orange!

Today, I set out two pitchers of water, one dyed red, one dyed yellow.

We poured red water into the bottle until it was about half full and yellow to fill the other half. I sealed it tightly and then (mainly just for the fun of it) it was time to shake it up! Sure enough, we made orange! Adding color to water play activities with tools like measuring cups, empty containers, funnels and droppers is a great way to add some fun to this already wonderful sensory activity and experience color mixing. Since adding all of the colors at once generally results in brown here (an equally important educational experience though it may be), I usually provide two primary colors at a time. To extend this particular activity, I provided a bit of yellow and red paint at his easel for some color mixing process art.

What Goes Where in Noach's Teivah? In Noach's teivah (ark), there were three separate levels. Noach and his wife as well as his three sons and their wives all resided on the top. The animals all lived in the middle. The bottom level was reserved for food/garbage. Activities like this are a great way to introduce the important mathematical skills of sorting/categorizing and can also be a fabulous tool for teaching early spacial language skills--in this case, the concepts of top, middle, and bottom. 

We started by sorting plastic people, animals and food into their designated levels.

We repeated the same activity, now with pictures cut from old magazines of people, animals and food. Older children could participate in cutting out magazine pictures and if you also teach about the concept of garbage being stored on the bottom level, crumpled up pieces of tissue paper or scrap paper/newspaper could be used.

Now we have a wonderful visual reminder of today's activities! It's hanging at child-level for the artists' appreciation. 

My little one is loving this song about colors right now!

Noah's Ark Theme: Part 1

This week's parsha (Torah portion) is Noach, the story of Noah and the ark. This story can be very child-friendly and can expand to include a variety of learning/play themes and concepts including...

• Animals
• the mathematical concepts of pairs as well as practicing sorting and patterns*
• the teivah (ark), boats and water transportation
• rainbows, the order of a rainbow, the science behind a rainbow, prisms
• colors, color-mixing, primary and secondary colors
• Rain, weather, the water cycle

*I will delve a bit deeper into some activities associated with these skills in a later post

Learning and playing about the story of Noach can include reading together, dramatic play, building activities, arts and crafts, science experiments, fun snacks and more! Here's a peek at what we've done so far...

Dramatic play with our Parshas Noach Discovery Basket

There are a lot of children's books and texts to teach about the story of Noach. Some are more conducive to snuggling up on a lap and listening and beyond that--when it comes to introducing more of the detailed aspects of the story I want to give over to my son-- I utilize props he can enjoy and explore. As he played, I talked about some basic points of the story of the righteous Noach being asked by G-d to build a teivah to protect him and his family as well as a selection of animals from the pending mabul (storm/flood). I explained that Noach needed to collect pairs of both "Mommy" animals and "Tatty" (father) animals, and demonstrated this through having two of each kind of animal in our discovery basket. I did go as far as to say that from kosher animals, he took seven pairs of each kind and from non-kosher animals, he took only two. These numerical concepts are a bit advanced for a two year old, but we are already in the process of teaching him about the difference between kosher and non-kosher animals. To demonstrate how long the mabul lasted, I counted all the way to 40 for him. (He was quite impressed and clapped at the end!)

I went through a few other key points of the story--the end of the rain, the return of the dove to announce safety and dry land, the beautiful miracle of the rainbow G-d sent to show His promise to never again send a mabul, and how Noach and his family built a mizbeiach to show their gratitude. I verbally introduced one of the most important morals learned from this story--one that we try as parents to instill even now in our little one--that even when others are acting in a way that is not nice (as the people of Noach's time were), we must always act kindly as Noach did.

As part of learning about the rainbow, we are working over the course of this week on a texture collage. I squeezed a bit of alphabet learning into today's portion of the activity and introduced the letter "R" for rainbow, red...

...and ribbon! With this age group, I provide materials in only one color at a time. I chose to add a thin layer of glue to the designated strip prior to setting out the paper, but you could assist/direct a toddler to paint on a thin layer of glue if you wish. Older children can work with more than one color at a time and even follow a key (I have a dot of each color on the right side of each strip) or a model to complete their rainbow. You could even set out a seven sectioned serving platter like the one pictured below (these are often available at Dollar Tree) with one color in each section and glue with a brush in the middle. In addition to building skills in sorting and teaching the order of the rainbow, this is a great fine motor activity for little hands and the different textures are a wonderful sensory experience.

Our open play time involved some Mega block teivah building and a variety of puzzles, stacking and sorting materials to teach color recognition.

We focused our science lessons this week on precipitation and the water cycle as well as a fun sink/float activity.

We're watching how clouds form and rain falls!