Circles

I love crafts, and apparently so does my two year old.  She is even willing to clean up her play area, and eat vegetables to earn craft time.  I have decided to take advantage of this and make craft time also learning time.

Our routine goes as follows:

With her safely gated in the living room, I set everything up so that there is not too much running around for miscellaneous items.  This is because I know that if I step away from the craft table my daughter will manage to glue herself, or one of our pets to something or each other.

Then I have her step just into the room and put on her "listening ears".  To test the functionality of her listening ears, we do a toddler version of Simon Says - which is basically where I just tell her to point at parts of her body to see if she is listening.  (BTW she has phalanges and sternum down.)  If she passes this test she gets to go to her craft table.

Last week we did shapes, so for circles I had a circle cut out of a nice colorful piece of paper.   Then on a white sheet of paper I drew a larger circle and wrote the word circle at the top.

Armed with a glue stick, she glued the pretty circle onto the page inside the circle I had drawn.  We talked about the shape, and things that were shaped like circles.  Then came her favorite part.  Using a toilet paper tube and a plate of different colored paint, she got to "stamp" circles onto the sheet.  She loved it so much I gave her a second plain sheet to do more.  

Stamping circles is serious work!

 We did the "okay, two more then we are done" and there was no fussing when the project was over.  We followed it up with squares, triangles and rectangles on other days that week - and I made sure to review her previous projects before starting the new ones. 

She loved the projects, but I  was worried that it had been too simple - then the other day she was playing a game and she pointed to the O and said "Circle Mama!".  So now I am happy with the results.  It has made her a better listener, given her a creative outlet, and she is learning.  Happy Mama and happy kid.