5 Stereotypes Bashed

 My Little Mister has a fascination with houses; pink, blue, Barbie Dream house or Lego's castle makes no difference to his big imagination! This totally urks my husband! Standing in a toy aisle in a store, I hear, "It's pink! Don't let him play with that!"

I just have to laugh! Who laid down the law that boys wear blue and only play with cars while little girls, decked out in pink, wear mini aprons and dress up dolls all day! Please! I grew up with all boy cousins! I hated Barbie and refused to wear pink until I was 30!

This all started me thinking about crazy stereotypes and how they have been bashed in my household!

#1 - Tea Parties require an up-raised pinky! 

 NOT!

As you can see, Thomas and Friends showed up for the party!

He totally enjoyed pouring water from cup to cup.

Nothing girly here. We just got in some fun motor skill play!

****No pinky was raised during the duration of this activity****


#2 - Fairy costumes and princess dresses aside, ALL Superheroes need a good costume!

#3 - Flowers are super girly! Whatever!
The aroma of a sweet flower appeals to both genders. The beauty and complexity of the flower itself is a wonder to behold! 

#4 -  Dolls are for girls!
 Whether you call it an action figure, stuffed animal, stick puppet, or simply a doll, it's just something to love!

#5 - The room in the house where the stove sits ...  is gender neutral!
Why is it that the most famous chefs are men, however, the opinion that the kitchen should be left to the women still reins supreme???  

 

Yo Ho Matey! with Printables

Yo Ho, Yo Ho a pirate's life for me!
I'm not sure what the fascination is with pirates but my Little Mister thinks they are great. I admit it, I like the Johnny Depp version myself!

Here is our attempt of living a pirate's life for a day! 

I have also created some pirate theme printables including: letter recognition, size selection, color and shape review, pre-writing skills, tracing letters, patterns, number matching, counting and more. Take a look at the end of this post!

 

You all know how much I love hand print crafts. I couldn't resist making this cute little pirate!

What are pirates without their ships? Here is a cute little one we made while reviewing some shapes: squares and rectangles.

All truly worthy pirate ships have at least one thing in common .... The PLANK! Here we are working on some motor skills, enjoying the nice weather and walking the plank!

Then, we worked on some observation skills while inspecting our buried treasure!

Hope you enjoyed our attempt at a pirate's life.

Don't forget to check out our printables below. I would love to hear from someone who tried them with their little one's!

      

Geometry for Little Hands

This was absolutely my worse subject in High School.
Thought Little Mister would get an early start. HeeHee!
 
We made a simple Geo-board to practice shape identification.
I found a small wooden board at a thrift store and we hammered some nails in it.
Add some rubber bands and see what shapes you can make...
 (Yeah, the thought never crossed my mind to paint it until after we added the nails... then, he was ready to play so we skipped the artistic part.)

Leave it to Little Mister to find a way to make a circle on a square Geo-board!

Can you tell he was so into this!

This has been an educational AND fun tool.
We have carried this thing around for days.
He has taken it everywhere and proudly shows off his talents.

Go geometry skills!!


 

Math and Motor Skill Scarecrow

 Math and Motor Skills collide with this cute little guy. The body is a card board square and the hat and hat are colored card stock.

To practice math skills, we counted arms and legs. 

I removed an arm and he counted what remained. So 4-1=3. 

I added the arm back and he counted again. Well then, 3+1=4.

 You get the picture.

Not only is he sharpening those math skills he is working some motor skills as well. 

1+1 =  too cute scarecrow

 

Happy Counting Y'all!

It's Getting Corny in Here!

Corn is my favorite food and has been as long as I can remember. 

Even before I have memories, my momma has pictures to prove it!

It wasn't hard to get into the Fall corn craze and get crafty with my Little Mister. I even found ways to throw in some learning activities as well.

ENJOY!

This is our first time to do any bubble wrap painting and it was so fun. I taped the sheet to the table to keep it in place and let him do his thing. It didn't take him long to figure out those bubbles POP. We did however manage to make some cute Indian Corn to hang in our kitchen.

Some Language Arts fun. I used fruit cups and spelled out the word corn. I gave him a handful of candy corn and asked him to put two in the O cup. Then, put one in the R cup. You get the idea.

We did some pre-writing exercises with a printable I made. He traced the line to help the farmer get to the corn field. The printable is at the end of this post.

Learning the letter C. After I managed to convince him that it was NOT a hat, we put glue on it and attached some popcorn. More went in the mouth than on the letter!

We practiced some candy corn math. See the full post and get the printables here.

And of course we had to do some painting!

                      

Laundry Letters

Still working on fun ways to learn our name, by site and know the letters. Today's activity was a hodge-podge and touched in several areas!

Objective- Recognizes first name in print (MS Early Learning Guidelines for Infants and Toddlers: Language Development 1.3.4)

No Mess Painting! We baggie painted some t-shirt shapes. I printed some t-shirt shapes from the computer on card stock. After they were all cut out, I dropped some different colored paint on them and placed them each in their own baggie and sealed them up. Little Mister smashed and drew and swirled on them all and kept saying "squishy"! I removed them from the bags and let them dry. I them cut out letters and glued them on each shirt. Sticky letters would have worked well to but we were out.

I strung up a "clothes-line" in the playroom I used yarn and tied them to nails I tapped into the door jams. Little Mister practiced spelling his name by clipping the letters to the line with clothes pins. This allowed us to review name recognition and letters of his name while developing some motor skills with the clothes pins!

It's Raining . . . Rocks

Well, it's still raining and we are getting a severe case of cabin fever around here! With all this inside-time on my hands I have been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to inventory all our craft items and get them straightened out AGAIN. During this process, I found a box of rocks that we collected on our last trip to the creek. I thought, it's raining cats and dogs outside, why not rain rocks inside? So, we poured, scooped and moved our treasured rocks around with tongs for over 2 hours. I'd say it was a successful distraction. Not to mention a tune-up for Little Mister's motor skills.