O could only really be represented by one thing couldn't it? The Olympics! As the Olympics ran for 2 weeks I decided to let this letter also run for a Fortnight, I knew I had tonnes of activity's planned so was confident I could make it last and also it not get boring.
We began the letter of the week a little bit early by watching the Opening Ceremony, as they were on so late I recorded it so Aidan could watch in the Morning. I thought he would get bored of it but the music and pretty light displays kept his attention, I must confess to fast forwarding through the parade of countries as I felt it was a bit too much for a 3 year old!
On the first Sunday after the Olympics started we had Olympic rings for Breakfast made of Pancakes, blueberries, strawberries, green grapes, bananas and finally chocolate spread. OK OK so chocolate spread is brown not black but everything else I tried didn't look remotely right so I just ran with the closest!!
Our first make was the Letter O, represented by an Octopus. I made 8 legs, numbered them and jumbled them up so Aidan had to make sure he put the legs in the right order once he had done I let him decorate it freely as he wanted.
I think it turned out cute!
Aidan loves to try and help in the kitchen, so we made some Team GB cakes. Not strictly O I know but whilst we made the cakes we talked about how there were lots of different countries competing against each other and as we lived in Great Britain that's what Team we would support.
A few weeks ago one of the Newspapers had a coupon for a free Olympic Sticker Album and 3 packs of stickers, my Mum also bought the paper which meant we had 6 packs of stickers, I put them by until this week not really thinking how useful a resource they would be.
Once I got them out I found that they were great in so many ways for Aidan! Firstly I had him look at the numbers on the back of each sticker, I really hadn't considered that they would be individually numbered and that they would provide some great number recognition practise. Once he had identified the number I had him search for the matching number in the book but to help I narrowed it down to a couple of pages for him.
Peeling the backs off of the stickers gave his manual dexterity a great work out as they were quite fiddly, he then stuck the stickers in the book and was very particular about the way he placed them in! As we stuck them in we discussed what sport each person was doing and he got up and acted a few out for me!
We worked on those 6 free packs of stickers and album for over an hour and it was a great learning tool for him, he referred back to the album as we watched sports on the TV and looked to see if he could spot any of the people!
I found a really Fantastic FREE Printable pack here at 3 dinosaurs, I mainly used the Tot pack but did delve in the others. It included some great activities including pre-writing practice, sequencing and spot the difference. Aidan loved doing the spot the differences and we played it several times over the 2 weeks, to save money I just had him point the odd one out on the screen rather than print them out.
We spent some time looking at the Olympic Flame and we chatted about how he had seen the Torch a few weeks ago as it came through our town. We set about making our own versions, I provided him with a (very badly) drawn torch, some glue, red, yellow and orange tissue paper and also foil. I knew how I envisaged him using them but left it up to him, luckily we agreed!!
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| Ignore the mess in background, Chris was decorating! |
The finished version came out great :-)
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We also used an old kitchen paper tube to create a Torch he could hold and run with!
We had a trip planned to the National Sealife Centre in Birmingham, I used the opportunity to link to O for Oceans, Aidan loved looking at all the strange fish.
Once we were home I got out some blue paper and also some stickers and he set to recreating his own ocean scene, whilst he worked we chatted about the creatures we had seen, what they looked like, what he thought about them, their colours and textures.
Our 2nd Olympic breakfast was toast and scrambled eggs but in an inventive way, in truth it probably looks a bit too much like an Ice cream but hey ho!!
To work on some Maths skills I found a graphing game with an Ocean theme, you roll the dice and then tally for the sea creature it lands on. Aidan is all about the stickers so I made some fish shape ones out of blanks for him to stick onto the correct column, first to 10 wins but to link to the Olympics we did gold, silver and bronze positions!
**I cannot find the link to the source of this printable but I will keep looking and if I find it I will post it here so they get the credit they deserve**
Octopus's (or is it octopi??) made a reappearance for a second time with a bit more counting practice. This time I drew an Octopus and made suckers for Aidan to stick on, 1 on leg 1, 2 on leg 2 etc. If I haunt have been a bit rushed with this activity it would have looked nicer as I would have actually cut out the circles rather than leave them square, Mummy's bad not Aidan's!
Once he had finished he coloured it in a bit, I am always keen for him to personalise his work so he really feels its his effort not mine.
Isn't it great what you can make from toilet rolls! We used some coloured tissue paper that Aidan rolled around 5 loo rolls to make our own Olympic rings which we then had on our fireplace as decoration.
One of the books we read was "Owl Babies" by Martin Waddell, the story really captured Aidan's attention and we read it several times as well as watching a good version on Youtube
Aidan wanted to make the 3 little owls from the story so after a quick search I found these cute paper plate owls to make.
....yep still brown, all's good......
.....cute finished brown owl, shall we make the next one Aidan? Yes a pink one!
Ummmmmm not sure where he imagined these ones from but they look pretty cool!
I made them a little branch to sit on like in the book.
For a sensory activity we played with playdoh again, used cutters to create Os, free formed them using sausage shapes curled round and Aidan created these two,
a green Owl baby,
and an Octopus who for some reason has orange hair!!
I also filled a Ziploc bag with cheap hair gel, some pom poms, feathers, sparkly shapes and glitter to form a squishy yet contained surface, I think we will use this a lot as he can practice writing letters in it as well as shapes and heck its squishy, who doesn't love to squish something!!
We watched The Olympics several times a day and Aidan was most keen on the Diving, BMX biking and synchronised swimming! He was less interested in the Athletics but watched nether the less and was impressed by how quick Usain Bolt was :-)
So that was our Olympic Fortnight!
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