As the first day back at home it was a bit rough to get back into the swing of things. I have some kind of bizarre poison ivy like rash all over my arms and face. Super itchy, very annoying and spreading!
Anyway, after a very long nap Sam, Avery and I headed outside book in hand. Today we went with "First Picture Nature" an Usborne book. We looked at the book, page by page, and on each page we would talk about what we could find in our yard. Then once we had a few things picked out we would go and try to find them.
Our list of found objects from the book include -
- dog
- sky
- tree
- leaf
- flower
- cloud
- sun
- pine cone
- bird
- ant
- butterfly
- bird nest
Sam loves "hunting" for things in our yard and she got really excited to bring her book outside, so the combination was a big success.
Sorry no pictures this time. Now that Avery is much more mobile I am trying to get her more involved with what we are doing (carrying her around with us so she can hunt with us and see what we are looking at and hear what we are talking about). Great for Avery bad for my ability to also carry and work a camera at the same time!
_________________________________________________________________________________________
The Nitty Gritty! (YUP, it's back!)
This is a great activity because it can be done with SO many books. Just take out any book and look in the background for plants, animals, scenery or insects. Nature doesn't necessarily have to be the main point of the book because so many books use the outdoors as the setting.
A way to get older kids interested in this is to focus on WHY you can find certain things and not others. For example, on one page of the book that we used we were able to find a dog, tree, sky and several others but we couldn't find goats, sheep or cows. Sam was able to tell me that we couldn't find those because they live on farms and not in our backyard. But she couldn't make that same distinction for some of the pond animals and insects that were on other pages in the book. Older kids could explore this idea much more in depth.
aww how fun!!
Posted by: kristen | 08/22/2010 at 07:17 PM
That sounds fun. I do enjoy those Usborne books. It is hard to take pictures and watch a baby simultaneously. I never mastered the sling unfortunately. Thanks for sharing. I hope your rash heals quickly. Peace, Angela
Posted by: Angela | 08/23/2010 at 07:24 AM