Cupcakes and Commentary

When A gets home from school each day we have about an hour before J goes down for a nap and A has quiet play time. Typically this hour is filled with the boys going CRAZY if it is too cold (or rainy) to play outside. I have started coming up with some quick activities that both boys can participate in, here are two of them! It will take you less than five minutes to pull them together as well!

1. Magnetic letter match (A’s teacher shared this idea with me!). All you need is magnetic letters and a cookie sheet for each child. We dumped all the letters out and then while J happily put letters on his cookie sheet, A and I did sight words with his. I let him pick a vowel and then I would put two consonants (or more) beside it and have him sound it out.

This is also great for J (who is learning to talk), as A would sound out the letter, say the word, and then J would repeat the word. Quick and simple!

2. Mona Lisa Emotions. All you need is a magazine, pencil, and sticky notes. But first, a bit more about our Da Vinci Study.

If you remember from last week A and I are studying Leonardo Da Vinci this week. Last Saturday we did the activity from here. If you follow me on instagram you will find the long piece of easel paper I had spread out in our yard. The boys painted their Last Supper interpretation on that (it came complete with a foot wash!).

Here are our Da Vinci quick facts:

Born: 1452

Place: Italy

Period: Renaissance

Type: Painter, Inventor, Scientist (we discussed how he did MANY things, but these are our top three of discussion).

Quote: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” (“A” meaning: Simple is good).

In addition to talking about The Last Supper painting, we looked at the diagrams of many of his inventions and watched a little video I found on you tube about them.

So now on to that activity! We also have talked about the Mona Lisa and how people have always tried to figure out what her facial expression is, and what she was thinking in the painting. This is a terrific opportunity to help your child start discovering what different emotional expressions mean. Young kids, especially boys (it’s a fact), aren’t as tuned in to facial expressions. The more you can help them figure them out, the more intuitive they will be and will be able to help express their own emotions better!

All I did was pull out pictures of people with different facial expressions:

And then gave J sticky notes to color on (good distraction), while A and I labeled each picture with what each person was thinking:

I asked A questions like “what do you thinking he or she is thinking about?” “why do you think that?” I found that he connected a lot of their thoughts to their attire, which was pretty humorous.

Here are our results:In case you can’t read the sticky notes, here is what he said (from l-r in a circle starting with Flo the Progressive Lady):

1. Happiness

2. He’s thinking about the news.

3. Contemplating basketball (I swear he said the word contemplating. If you know A, you will know that it’s true!).

4. The guy is thinking about football (A decided this because he thought he was wearing a football jersey). A thought the bunny was thinking “oh man, I hope I stay on his shoulder!” Which is probably pretty accurate.

5. Thinking about winning.

And that’s it! It took me less than five minutes to pull both activities together, and the boys spent about ten minutes on the first activity, and five-ten minutes on the second. A round of puzzles afterward and we were headed towards nap time!