Craft fun: Duck hat & headband

With the new addition to the family, life is a little busier these days (read: extremely busy). So whenever I get a chance throughout the day, I'll do activities with EV, whether planned or impromptu, sometimes even breaking up the activities I had planned earlier. This ensures that I get to spend precious time with EV, while still being able to attend to the little demanding one.


We did two crafts today - the duck headband from Jann's class and a duck hat from SimpleKidsCrafts. For the duck headband, EV coloured the beak orange, while I coloured the face yellow. For the duck hat, EV pasted the eyes while I pasted the beak. I then let her choose which one she wanted to try on. She chose the duck hat, and had a ball with it for the next half hour. Singing the song '5 little ducks that I once knew', EV 'quacked' around, and even put her hands behind her to make a 'tail'.

Colours
EV really loves colouring these days; she even asks for it before bed. So I've been trying to get more different colouring activities for her. To go with the duck theme, I got these colouring sheets from 1+1+1=1's Tot School. Before letting her colour, I asked her what the picture is, and she immediately said 'duck'. She also wanted to trace D & d, with my help. Rather than dictate specific colours for her to colour, for example, that the beak should be orange, I let her imagination run wild and let her choose whatever colour. The result is a multicolored duck. The second activity required her to look at the different colour words (printed in its respective colour) and colouring the ducks with the right colour. Besides asking her the colour indicated on the ducks, I also asked her to choose the correct colour.

A very heartwarming experience when she coloured the duck. I was holding on to a bottle of milk which I had just warmed up for her little brother. Dear hubby was carrying the little one. Dear EV took the bottle and gave it to dear hubby, saying 'daddy feed. mommy colour'. Sigh.. warms my heart.


Ok.. back to colouring. I also gave her some activities from the Kumon First Steps Workbook Let's Colour. EV is getting better at colouring. They look less like scribbles now, and her hand is more controlled. She is able to colour within the whole indicated area, as much as possible.

Motor Skills
We also did some handwriting practice of zigzag lines. I demonstrated to EV how it's done, saying 'up, down' while I did it. Imitating what I said, she then traced the zigzag lines, and did very well, in fact!

Story Time
We read Eric Carle's '10 Little Rubber Ducks'. A nice little story that also involves counting the numbers 1 to 10, and explores the world as each duck meets different creatures, like a dolphin, polar bear and flamingo.