Creation Class!

Since school is over for the summer, I knew Q would be ready for some fun, challenging investigations to keep her busy! I decided to use Bible stories as our basis, and then plan activities around that. Creation is a perfect toddler topic because it involves counting, includes animals (which are very hip in the toddler crowd...), and there are lots of fun creation songs.
Here are some of the things we've been doing:

Yesterday we painted a shoebox black to represent darkness. It was interesting to see Q's reaction to painting the box, because she normally only paints on paper and flat surfaces. She was a little unsure, so I provided some modeling and she became interested after a bit.

Today I cut out a big circle (which would later become the earth) out of the back of a discarded Cheerios box. First Q painted it blue with a paintbrush and her fingers. After it dried a tad, we used cotton balls to dab on white paint (clouds). I love to introduce a variety of tools for children to paint with, beyond the basic paintbrush. Once again, she was a little unsure about the cotton balls, but she came around! She was very happy to pick all the cotton off her fingers once it got stuck on there!

I also cut out a big 1 out of cardboard and we made it black and yellow for dark and light.
We sing the song:
Day 1, Day 1
God made light when there was none!

I cut a little hole in the side of the box and we shine the flashlight in the hole and onto the earth and talk about how God made light.

We also went and sat in my closet with a flashlight and turned it on and off while we sang:
Light, light,
First God made the light!
He made the sun to shine in the day
and the stars to shine at light.

and
(to the tune of Skip to My Lou)
Light, light,
let there be light
light, light,
let there be light
And there was light!!

Today we played a gross-motor game--
I shined the flashlight beam in different places on the floor and had Q jump on the spots. Then I shined it on furniture and she would climb up to touch the light. That was a fun game! I tried letting her shine the light for me to jump on, but she had a very hard time holding it still enough for the beam to stay in one spot. We'll be working on that this week!

To go along with the earth, I chose circles as our focus shape. This afternoon we glued different sizes of construction paper circles onto a piece of paper with a gluestick. Q did pretty well with the gluestick and was fairly independent on this activity!

I also let her free paint after we finish a project--ie: after we painted the box black I gave her some paper and she used the rest of the black paint up painting away on her paper. I have been cutting the dried, painted papers into different sizes of circles and taping them to our dining room window. She loves to go look at them!

I will be bringing up the fact that the earth is actually a sphere. Sphere is the 3-d shape, and circles are flat....More on that to come!