Skip to main content

Theme Week: Water

As we were hurtling towards the summer holidays, I started panic-planning.  What was I going to do with Toby at home all day every day?  And would I ever get anything done that I wanted to do?  With the horrifying prospect of six weeks of "I'm bored" before me, I decided it was time to resurrect my toddler theme weeks.  I can hardly call my long-legged almost-four-year-old a toddler any more though, can I?

This time round, I've gone elemental, with Water, Earth, Air and Fire, plus Plants just for good measure.  Water filled a week and a half, because Toby's preschool finished on a Tuesday, and there are almost endless things you can do with water when it's warm and sunny.

Activities
1. Defrost the freezer!  
Well, that was my job.  Can you believe I spent my last few hours of preschool freedom defrosting a freezer?  And as I scraped the chunks of ice off, I thought: Toby would love this.  I hoped it might amuse him for ten minutes; he was out there for over an hour!  Once the ice melted, he filled the bowl with water and carried on.

Theo liked it too


2. Water Music.  
 Not Handel, unfortunately.  A selection of jam jars to fill with water and hit with a spoon provided some entertainment.  And listening skills, and pouring practice, and volume measurement, and all good stuff.

Equipment: jars, spoon, jug of water. (Ignore the fruit)

Making different notes

Topping up the water level
 3. Ice painting.
I think Toby was a little confused that we were actually painting the ice, rather than painting with the ice.  This was an idea borrowed from Ellie's blog.  She went all natural with her colourings; I just used food colours (hey, I'm a baker).  Nice and simple: We made some highly-coloured water and froze it.  Next day we used the ice cubes to make pretty patterns on an old muslin.




 Outings
1. Feeding the ducks at a local park


2. Meeting some friends for a walk and a play at Foremark Reservoir

3. Admiring the fish at the garden centre in the village


Food
I have to admit to having no photos of my attempts at themed food.  We had fish tacos one day - chunks of fish and vegetables in a tortilla - but we were too busy eating them to take a photo.  We also made blue jelly, to resemble a pond, from gelatine, blue food colour and one of those clear flavoured water drinks.  Then I put some supposedly fish-shaped fruit snacks in, but they were tiny and just looked like weird blobs.  It tasted OK but I deleted the photos.  Just imagine some kind of great artistic jelly fish pond, in a glass bowl with red and green and yellow fish sweets, and maybe even a lily pad on top.

And that won't be what it looked like at all.
Labels:

Comments

Sally Eyre said…
Check this link out - I don't know what theme it would go with though: http://www.funathomewithkids.com/2014/07/make-slime-with-laundry-detergent.html
8 August 2014 at 03:27
Martha said…
That looks like a fun link! I've got tons of PVA glue at the moment so will have to track down the detergent and give it a go.
14 August 2014 at 12:46
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Springtime walks: Croxden Abbey and Shining Cliff Woods

It seems to be taking a long time to get properly warm, this spring. But suddenly there are flowers everywhere and the world has turned green. We had to go and see it all. Croxden Abbey 800 years ago, there was a community of 70 monks at Croxden Abbey, hidden away in a beautiful nook of Staffordshire. Now there are peaceful ruins, carpeted with soft green grass. It was hard to imagine the space filled with busy worship and work. Croxden abbey cloisters the west door of the church We had parked at the village of Hollington and walked down the hill, playing a game of spot-the-animal. In just a few short fields we had seen sheep, cattle, horses, alpacas, rabbits, a dog, and even a donkey. We decided we only needed pigs to make our farm animal collection complete! It wasn't a long hike - we probably spent just as long eating snacks and playing hide and seek in the abbey ruins, as we did walking. Our return journey took us past a few horses, but sadly no pigs. We followed an old Roman r
Post a Comment
Read more

God is Not a White Man: Spiritual Formation Book 8

"I studied Theology... Despite the fact that most of the world's religious people are not white, we learnt very little about the theological thinking and experiences of Black and brown people." Chine McDonald is director of Theos, an organisation which provides research and opinion on the place of religion in society. She moved to the UK from Nigeria at the age of four. McDonald has been involved with the Evangelical Alliance, Christian Aid, and Greenbelt, as well as working as a journalist, so she has some wide-ranging experiences within the Christian and secular culture. This book uses stories from her own life, and historical examples, to illustrate the problem of racism in the church. She focuses on the British church in particular, although she refers to American events too. What are the main themes of this book? McDonald's argument is that white people - men in particular - have been assumed to be superior. They are regarded as more intelligent, more authoritati
Post a Comment
Read more

Walking the National Forest Way (with a two year break)

Remember when it was lockdown and we were all stuck in our houses for months on end? Well, way back then I hatched a plan of walking the National Forest Way as a family project. I ordered the map, downloaded the route guides, and we did the first section in 2021: Yoxall to the National Memorial Arboretum (Stage 12). The photos tell me it was a beautiful April day - I was wearing shorts! The 5-mile route was pleasant, across fields and through scraps of woodland, then hopping over the Trent and Mersey Canal into the village of Alrewas. After that we had a hair-raising walk along a pavement right next to the A38 dual carriageway, with cars zipping past at 70mph, but fortunately that was a very short section before we turned off towards the National Memorial Arboretum. Of course we had to celebrate with an ice cream - why else would we finish at the Arboretum instead of starting there?  Smaller boys! Lockdown haircuts! At the finishing point A well-deserved treat There followed a very. l
Post a Comment
Read more