In My Girl's World

Here's what's on the shelf this week for St Patrick's Day themed activities. I do my best to keep the activities age and skill appropriate for Ella. Sometimes I have to observe her with them and do some tweaking, but that's part of the process.  Because her St Patrick's Day activities aren't really "toys" per se, I do have more open ended play things available to her this week, which I explain at the bottom of today's post. Enjoy! xo

Learning variations in size using clovers-

This activity requires Ella to separate the clovers by size, either big, medium or small. The clovers begin in the basket and Ella separates them out either by hand, or with tongs. I demonstrated this for Ella one time and she immediately understood that the large section of the tray was for big clovers, and the medium for medium sized clovers etc. I originally set this up so she would just transfer them by hand, but she actually grabbed the tongs from a different activity to transfer the clovers into the appropriate spots which I thought was so cute. 

Counting 1, 2, 3-

I labeled these little plastic pots with the numbers 1, 2, and 3. We have been working on number identification for a while now and I think she is pretty well mastered with 1-3. However, we definitely need to work on counting. I thought this was a great way to practice her skills. I demonstrated for Ella to show her that the "1" pot gets one coin, the "2" pot gts two coins etc. She ended up playing with the pots for something else, but I think this will be fun practice for her. And if it's too advanced, so we can always try again later.

Familiar objects tray-

This is an easy one to throw together. I just found a bunch of green colored familiar objects and put them all on a tray. I then printed matching labeled picture cards to go with them. (These aren't pictured.) Ella worked to match up the various objects and also named them out loud as she did it. 

Pom-Pom transfer-

I kept the pom poms lower than the cup, so Ella would have to work for transferring the pom poms not just from left to right but moving her wrist in the upward direction as well. 

Rainbow sticker tray-

Ella loves stickers and it can still challenge her to peel them off herself. I found the rainbow stickers at Dollar Tree and thought they would be perfect for St Patrick's Day!

Counting gold coins-

I made this wooden counting tray a while back with things from the craft store. I added the gold coins to each spot so Ella can work on her counting and number identification. 

In addition to her shelf activities, we have several open-ended play activities for Ella this week.

-Kitchen with accessories

-Picasso Tiles

-Baby dolls with accessories 

-Regular lego-type blocks

-Basket of animals

Thanks for checking out our shelf this week! As soon as St Patrick's Day is over we are heading straight into Easter themed fun, and then we'll stick with basic shelves or Spring themed shelves until the next major holiday. Have a great weekend.