Toddler Time - Red

Today's Toddler Time kicks off something new I'm trying. I'm starting small "units" or as I'm calling them to the parents "series." Each series is going to tie together several weeks of programming. I'm starting with a Colors Series. For 6 weeks we'll focus on a specific color and then on the 7th week we'll do a rainbow Toddler Time tying all the previous weeks together. Other series ideas I have planned for the future are "Things That Go," "Animals," and possibly "Shapes." It's just something to keep me motivated and investigating new opportunities for Toddler Time.

Books We Shared:

Our first book is a very sweet and simple story. Red Sled by Patricia Thomas is a rhyming story about a young boy and his dad who take a
late night sled ride. This is perfect for short attention spans since each page has no more than 4 rhyming words on it.

Our second story is one of my absolute favorites. So much that I have the book memorized, lol. It isn't a new story by any means, but to me it's a classic story time book. The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, And the Big Hungry Bear by Audrey and Don Wood is adorable and has wonderful illustrations.

Flannels We Shared:
For the Colors Series we'll be repeating the same flannel every week. I want the kids to recognize the game/flannel and play with me every week. I'll probably add other flannels, but I want to have some aspects that are the same for all 7 weeks of the series. I found this flannel game over on Hushlander's blog. Little Bird is a relatively easy game for kids and the rhyme is an easy one to remember.

     Little Bird
     Little Bird you've flown so far,
     And now it's time to rest.
     Fly back and sleep in your
        RED nest!
     Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue,
     Purple

Action Rhymes We Shared:
We did three action activities today! Our first was a fun shaker song from Jbrary. We only sang the first two stanzas of the song since we have a young group that loses focus with long songs, but the two were plenty for us. They loved the song. And it's an easy one that I can remember! :)

    

 Shake Your Shaker

     Tune: London Bridge

     Shake your shaker in the air

     Shake it here, shake it there

     Shake your shaker in the air

     Shake your shaker

     Shake it up and shake it down

     Shake your shaker on the ground

     Shake it up and shake it down

     Shake your shaker

Our second movement activity was to dance with scarves to Raffi's De Coloroes. While the music played and the kids danced and I asked them to do specific actions with their scarves. We waved them up & down, side to side, high & low, over our heads & toes, in circles, behind us, and anything we could think of. They always love this type of activity so it was a big hit.
Finally we finished up with a rousing rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with our shakers, scarves, and twinkled with our hands.

Early Literacy Tips We Shared:

• Color and shape are among the first concepts babies learn. Babies can begin to associate words with objects and people as early as 6 months. Parents who identify the color of objects and frequently repeat this concept will find that their toddlers will start to recognize color names quickly. 
• Rhyming breaks down words into easy to understand syllables.
• We had some newcomers to Toddler Time today as well, so before we began we had a discussion of how children may not participate at first, but they will learn from their grownup and from watching their grownup participate. This is something I say at the beginning of every Toddler Time, but this dad was new so we had a nice dialog going.