Toddler Time - Opposites!

This week's Toddler Time (there's another missed week in here due to 3 months of bronchitis) was all about opposites. This is a theme I will go back to time and time again. It's such a versatile and easy, but fun, theme for toddlers.

Books We Shared:

What's Up, Duck? By Tad Hills was our first book. We used our scarves with this one following the actions of Duck, Goose, and their friends. It's a short and sweet book that's perfect for our short attention spans.

Our second book was Black? White! Day? Night! By Laura Vaccaro Seeger. This is a fun lift-the-flap cut-out style book. I think most of the opposites went over my kids' heads, but they liked the surprise of the lift-the-flap style.

Flannels We Shared:
This was a super short and easy flannel since I have been dying of bronchitis for the past 3 months and it is showing in my voice. (Someday I will have my voice back. Someday.) I found it on Storytime Katie's blog, and it's one that you can repeat a billion times (or 3 if you have no voice) and the kids love it each time. I just went super easy and printed off 3 balls in color, laminated them, and put a piece of velcro on the back.

     Big, Bigger, Biggest
     A little ball, a bigger ball, and a great big ball I see
     Now help me count them, one, two, three!

Activities We Shared:
My parents have been begging for a parachute activity, so I went in search of some. Many talk about having the kids sit on the parachute while you walk in a circle to spin them around. We have a narrow room with brick walls, so that was a no for us. I'm also not super comfortable with kids sitting on the parachute while you move it up and down, but I thought we'd try it. I had the parents sit on the floor and we gently waved it up and down while we sang and I blew bubbles. It went.. ok. Not sure I'll be doing the parachute again, our room is so small it seemed really dangerous to me.  I found this song on Read Sing Play.

     Ten Little Bubbles
     One little, two little, three little bubbles
     Four little, five little, six little bubbles
     Seven little, eight little, nine little bubbles
     Ten little bubbles go POP POP POP!
     Pop, pop, pop, let’s pop those bubbles
     Pop, pop, pop, let’s pop those bubbles
     Pop, pop, pop, let’s pop those bubbles, at the library!

Early Literacy Tips We Shared:

• Learning about opposites helps children build their vocabulary and describe the world around them. Exploring opposites helps a child to put words and meaning to items and events that they experience all the time. The larger a child’s vocabulary the more words he will be able to recognize and understand in print and in speech.
• . Rhyming promotes Phonological Awareness in children as they learn to read. Phonological Awareness is a huge way of saying the Ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words- for example rhyming. 
• Aside from being fun, singing songs with your little one helps them hear  words being broken up into smaller sounds. Later this skill helps with reading.