Monday Morning Messes with Maddie Bear

I've been trying to keep Madeline busy as these cold months drag on here in sunny New England.  We get out of the house a lot, and she goes to preschool a few mornings a week.  But on days when it's too cold to get dressed and Eric works late, I try to provide some interesting indoor activities for her to explore.

To lead into Saint Patrick's Day, we've been focusing on rainbows. 

For our first activity, I cut small squares of colored paper for Madeline to sort into a rainbow.  She enjoyed sorting the colors into different piles, but she wasn't too interested in gluing them down in rainbow formation.  

Instead, I left the squares out on the table with some glue and paper in case inspiration struck.  She poured the glue all over her paper to make "roads". Then she used the paper squares to make "houses".  By the time she was done, she had created a map of all our loved ones' houses.  Florida and Africa were also included because obviously...

Next, we used Skittles to practice counting and graphing.  I used a printable found here. She liked this because she got to eat the candy at the end.  She learned a little subtraction as she ate the candies one by one.  

I'm helping Madeline learn to spell her name, so I printed letters on the leftover squares of paper.  She arranged the letters in the correct order to reveal her name in rainbow colors.  

I followed up by asking her to use words to describe herself.  I wrote down her answers on strips of colored paper and attached them to her name. (I was going for a cloud...whatever.)

I was surprised, and pleased, that I didn't have to prompt her to come up with adjectives.  She is a confident child.  I love it.

M's favorite activity was a rainbow scavenger hunt.  We took turns picking bits of colored paper out of a box.  Then we had to find something in the room that matched our color. (Luckily, there were Legos nearby.) We continued until all the paper was gone, and we were left with a rainbow of toys on our living room floor.  She loved this!

We also played with color mixing using an ice cube tray, some food coloring, and a dropper.  I filled the tray with water and dyed three boxes red, blue, and yellow.  Then she used the dropper to create new colors in the empty boxes.  I showed her how red and blue make purple, etc, then I left her to investigate on her own.  We squirted some of the colors on a paper towel to observe how they mixed too. 

This activity kept her busy for a long time.  She kept asking, "Mumma, what will happen if we mix in this color?"   Pretty soon all we had was brown or gray.  

 Lastly, we finished up by making a rainbow cake. Maddie helped me mix the batter, but she mostly spent her time licking frosting from the beaters.

We had eaten half of it before I remembered to take a picture.   Yum, cake!