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Sorting Purple Circles

Purple paper circles

Materials

Purple construction paper (light and dark colors)
Scissors
2-3 size circular objects to trace around

Directions

On purple paper, trace around 2-3 different circle shapes.  Cut out circles.

Invite your child to sort the circles into two groups:  big and little
Sort using a different criteria:  light purple circles and dark purple circles

For an added challenge, encourage your child to copy your pattern.  Then she can try extending the pattern that you have started with the circles.  Once your child understands that a pattern repeats, invite your child to create their own pattern.

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Using a Hole Puncher

Hole puncher

Materials
Strips of purple construction paper approximately an inch wide and 5-6 inches in length
Hole puncher

Directions
Place strips of purple paper in a basket or on a small tray with a hole puncher.  Encourage your child to punch holes along a strip of paper, starting from the left side and moving across the paper towards the right end of the strip.

This simple fine motor activity is excellent for developing eye and hand coordination and strengthening the child’s fingers and hands.  It also supports learning to manipulate scissors and will aid in naturally guiding your child to move from left to right across the paper, an important skill needed for reading.

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Food for Toddlers

After a baby’s first year, growth slows down and so does the appetite.  Here is a list of foods to try with your toddler.  Present food as good, rather than good-for-you.  Have happy mealtimes. Encourage without urging, forcing, or rewarding a child to eat.

Finger Foods

 
Toddlers enjoy the independence of eating by themselves.  Eating with fingers is a good way to give this independence before baby has the skill to use utensils.  As baby sees you eating with utensils, he’ll want to develop his skill.  Start with a child’s spoon for spoon foods.

Fruit – cut into appropriate sizes

  • Apples, peeled – raw or cooked
  • Bananas
  • Blueberries
  • Canned fruit and fruit cocktail
  • Canned Mandarin oranges
  • Cantaloupe
  • Dried fruits softened by soaking in a little hot water (or they can be chopped)
  • Figs
  • Grapefruit sections
  • Grapes, halved or quartered
  • Kiwi, peeled
  • Oranges, sectioned
  • Peaches, peeled
  • Pears
  • Plums
  • Strawberries, halved
  • Sweet cherries, halved and pitted
  • Watermelon 

Vegetables

  • Cooked asparagus tips
  • Ripe avocado
  • Steamed broccoli
  • Carrots, steamed or grated
  • Cooked Cauliflower
  • Celery, with strings removed
  • Cooked green beans
  • Shredded lettuce
  • Cooked mushrooms
  • Slightly cooked green peas
  • Potatoes, mashed or french fries (oven-baked)
  • Cooked squash, zucchini and yellow
  • Tomatoes, peeled 

Meats

  • Beef roast, sliced thin or ground
  • Crisp bacon
  • Chicken or turkey, diced or sliced very thin
  • Frankfurters cut in small pieces that could not cause choking
  • Ham, cut into bite-sized pieces
  • Hamburger, meat balls, or meat-loaf pieces
  • Lamb
  • Luncheon meats
  • Tuna
  • Veal 

Dairy

  • Cottage cheese (add fruit, or blend and make into dip.  Serve on crackers)
  • Cream cheese on cracker or bagel
  • Eggs, scrambled, or hard-boiled, deviled, omelets
  • Mild cheese – small pieces, or grated

Breads

  • Arrowroot cookies
  • Bagels
  • Biscuits
  • Bread pudding
  • Breads – white or dark
  • Cereals, hot or cold, unsweetened varieties (with or without milk)
  • Cooked pasta (noodles, macaroni – different shapes and colors, spaghetti, ravioli, and         many others)
  • Cookies – oatmeal, or plain
  • Corn bread
  • French toast fingers
  • Graham crackers – plain or with peanut butter
  • Milk toast
  • Pretzels – without excess salt
  • Sandwiches – egg salad, lunch meat, tuna or chicken salad, peanut butter and jelly and many more
  • Soda crackers
  • Toast strips, with a little butter
  • Zwieback
 

Other Toddler Foods

Drinks 

  • milk
  • eggnog
  • fruit juice
  • milk
  • fruit juice blends 

Spoon foods

  • Casseroles of meat or fish, vegetables, and pasta
  • Cereal with fruit
  • Cooked spinach
  • Custards or puddings
  • Eggs (soft-cooked, baked with milk, creamed hard boiled)
  • Gelatins
  • Ice cream
  • Junket
  • Soups
  • Tapioca or rice pudding
  • Yogurt (plain, vanilla, or mixed with baby fruits)
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Cornstarch Goo

Cornstarch goo creation

Materials: 

Layers of newspaper to cover work space
Large bowl or plastic container
1 cup cornstarch
½ cup of water
Food coloring (optional)
 

Instructions:

Pour 1 cup of cornstarch into plastic bowl or container. Slowly add ½ cup of water (add food coloring to water if making colored goo).  Mix cornstarch and water with your hands.  Add just enough water so that the cornstarch and water mix will flow very, very slowly.
 
Things to try:
  • Pour it from hand to hand. If you go slowly, it will pour freely.
  • Pick up a handful and squeeze it. Stop squeezing and it will drip through your fingers.
  • Roll it into a ball. Then stop rolling. The goo will trickle away between your fingers.
  • Bounce it!Smack it with a spoon. If you hit the mixture really hard, it might even break.
  • Rest your fingers on the surface and let them sink down to the bottom of the bowl. Try to pull them out fast.What happens?
  • Put a small plastic toy on the surface. Does it stay there or does it sink?
Store cornstarch goo in a Zip-loc baggie.
 
IMPORTANT: The cornstarch goo will not stay mixed indefinitely. Once the cornstarch has separated from the water and has formed solid clumps in the bottom of the storage bag, dispose of in the garbage.  Never pour the mixture down the drain as it will clog the pipes.
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Fishing Game

Craft fishes
Materials:
1 magnet on a string tied to a short rod or pencil (fishing pole)
Paper clips
Paper cut into the shape of fish (use fish template)
 
Directions:
On a fish shape, write an upper case letter (A). On another one, write the same letter in lower case (a). Continue writing different upper and lower case letters on all the fish shapes. Place a paper clip on the mouth of each fish and put the fish in a “pool” on the floor. Using the magnetic fishing pole, invite your child to go fishing. As fish are pulled out, encourage your child to name each letter and match the upper case letter with each lower case letter. Continue until all the fish have been caught.
 
Variations:
For toddlers:
Color Sorting: Cut out fish shapes in a variety of colors. Children group fish by the different colors.
 
Letter or Numeral Matching: Match upper case letter to upper case letter (A-A) or numeral to numeral (1-1).
 
For preschoolers
Alphabetical Order: Write a letter of the alphabet on each fish shape, using either all upper case letters or lower case letters. As child goes fishing, he places the letters in alphabetical order.
 
Numerical Order: Write numerals 1-10 or 1-20 on the different fish. As the child catches each fish, she places them in numerical order (1,2,3,4,5, etc.)
 
Numerals/Dots: Write numerals 1-10 on fish shapes and draw one dot up to ten dots on each fish. Child matches the numeral with the corresponding number of dots.
 
Opposite Concepts: Write words that are opposites on the different fish shapes (e.g. big, little; hot, cold; fast, slow). Child matches opposite pairs.  
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Painting with Balloons

Painting with balloons
Materials
3 balloons
3 colors of tempera paint (match balloon colors, if possible)
3 paper plates
1 piece white construction paper
 
Instructions
Inflate the three balloons, different sizes for added interest, and not too large for easy handling by your child. We used red, yellow, and blue balloons and matching tempera paint.  Pour a small amount of tempera paint onto each plate.  Allow your child to dip the blue balloon into the blue tempera paint and make blue prints onto the white paper.  Encourage your child to match the color balloon to the paint.  Cover the paper with various colors of balloon prints.
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Counting Red Cranberries

Materials
Bag of cranberries
Styrofoam plates
Permanent Marker
Large container of water

Instructions
Using a permanent marker, write a numeral on each styrofoam plate and float them in a large container or tub filled with water.  Empty the bag of cranberries into the water.  They float well!  Have child identify the numeral on one of the plates and place the appropriate number of cranberries onto the corresponding styrofoam plate.  Continue with all remaining plates.

Extension:  Invite child to remove each plate one at a time in numerical order.

Principia School Acorn Program

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Games and Activities for Infants (0-3 months)

  • Talk and sing to your newborn with your face about 12 inches away
  • Have large pictures of faces available
  • High-contrast patterns and colorful pictures
  • Objects that move slowly and have a gentle sound/music
  • Mobiles and hand-held toys that are held within the child’s line of vision (develops visual motor skills)
  • Soft books with high-contrast patterns
  • Unbreakable mirrors
  • Sensory toys that squeak, twill, or tweet
  • Sock and wrist rattles
  • Wind chimes
  • Tummy time – place baby on her tummy on a firm surface for brief intervals throughout the day; gives your baby practice in lifting her head; arrange things for her to look at when on her tummy
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Games and Activities for Infants (3-6 months)

Baby activity center
By three months, your child will discover his own hands, suck fingers, grasp objects that are placed in the hand, will begin to reach for objects, and will soon learn to pass objects back and forth and rotate wrists to inspect all sides.
 
  • Activity centers: bat at toys, spin them, pull them, rattle them
  • Lightweight rattles that can be easily grasped
  • Activity bars
  • Soft, cuddly animals (no wires, buttons, ribbons, yarn)
  • Squeaky rubber toys
  • Board books (read often; helps language develop; vary sound of voice)
  • Colorful teething rings
  • Activity quilts and mats
  • Play Peek-a-Boo
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Games and Activities for Infants (6-9 months)

Baby mirror

Your child’s play is becoming more vigorous. He can grab two toys at a time and he has more precision when banging objects. Fine motor skills are developing – growing dexterity which allows him to pick up raisins and Cheerios. Your child will begin to notice objects still exist even when he can’t see them. Your child will also become more mobile and will begin to pull himself up around nine months.

  • Books – board, soft, cloth (reading becomes more interactive; let your child handle the books)
  • Busy boards – parts that slide, twist, spin, squeeze, make sounds
  • Soft dolls and stuffed animals
  • Lightweight fabric balls to roll back and forth
  • Household items – plastic bowls, plastic measuring cups and spoons; let your child “cook” next to you
  • Wood or soft blocks – show how to stack, dump
  • Moving and pop-up toys; toys with springy antennas
  • Water toys for the tub
  • Bounce baby; dance with baby
  • Play Hide-n-Seek with objects and Peek-a-Boo