We took some ice and put our Toob Arctic Animals in for some imagination time. I loved how she took the penguins and made the skate across the ice! She also had the polar bear jumping in the ice.
Next, we practiced our colors by matching colored hats to penguins with colored scarfs!
My new favorite tool to use during activities like these are Glue Dots. I suggest buying some and keeping them in stock in your house! They are mess free and so easy to use! I just placed one on the back of the hats and let her match them up!
To practice more on her fine motor skills and ordering items, I grabbed this awesome Melissa and Doug Snowman Stacker! She loves this activity. She has played with it every day.
We also worked with our Snowflake Play-Doh Mat from last year. Olivia loves rolling the Play-Doh to make the snowflake shape. I was excited to see how much she had improved from last year!
Next, we did some snowflake pasta sorting! I had planned for her to count these out (1 per cube) but she didn't do that. lol. We just explored with these some and I threw the plan out. She still had a blast with them!
One item I LOVE from Amazon are these fine motor tools! Last year we tried them and she couldn't quite get it. This year she loves them! I had her use the tweezers to pick up the penguin erasers and put them in the ice cube tray. We counted as we went! She loved this activity so much. I loved it because it wasn't messy!
We used this jewelry tray to do many of our activities this week! It came in very handy. For our watercolor igloos, I just froze water in recycled fruit cups. Then I had Olivia paint with watercolors. It was awesome! I love how pretty the blue turned out.
Next, we played with instant snow. I love this snow so much! I used it last year too. It is cold to the touch and so simple to make. You just add water! It doesn't melt and it makes a great sensory bin! I just used my penguins from the earlier sensory bin with ice and these fake trees and gems.
Then, I moved it to her sensory table. I think this sensory table is the best purchase I have ever made. It is so well made and sturdy!
She had even more room to play here! In fact, this was a week ago and she is still playing with this snow every day!
I had planned to do so many more activities but oddly enough, we had an ACTUAL snow day. Two snow days actually!
In East Texas, snow days come about once every 3 years. Seriously. We were so excited. Rex stayed up late the night before to watch the snow start falling. We spent a great deal of time outside the next day (but it was 12 degrees) so we had to do it in short intervals.
We did sled riding, wagon riding, built a terrible looking snowman :), and made snow ice cream!
We also played on our playground!
And we napped!
We also did a couple of activities inside. One of my favorites were snowglobes!
We used plastic jars, glitter, water, and some of the items from our sensory bins.
Just mix in water and glitter. Then hot glue the animals and trees to the inside of the lid!
(Special note, I ended up taking out the green trees because they started turning the water a shade of green. If that doesn't bother you, then you can leave them in.)
All in all, we had a great couple of weeks doing these activities, playing in the snow, and just enjoying time with each other!
