We started our first week of Tot School and our theme was the color red! This was a scary week for this mama! I was so worried about how my daughter would react to all these different activities. What if she wasn’t into it. I had all these plans and ideas for how things would work and what if she hated everything? Well guess what? She loved it! Did everything work out exactly how I planned…no. Does anything with a 14 month old? Ha! But our first week of Tot School was completely amazing never less. Her eyes lit up at every activity because it was different than what she was used to. And even when an activity didn’t go exactly as planned she still had a blast and we adapted to her own way of doing things. Seriously, AMAZING!

So here is the rundown of our different activities for Red week!

Our book of the week was Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney. We read this every day, at least once but most days it was twice. By the end of the week Grace would hand me the book to read. I also had a board book called The Tale Of Little Red (dollar store find) we read as well.

I also made some color texture cards out of cardboard, hot glue, and random things I had in my craft closet. Grace loves to feel different textures so I thought she might learn better from being able to feel different things that are the color we are talking about.

We danced to Pancake Manor’s Red YouTube video and Story Bot’s Red YouTube video all week long. She would get really excited when she heard them start playing!

Her first activity of the week was a color sensory bin filled with all sorts of different red items from her toy collection or around our house. I tried to make sure there were several different textures, shapes, and hues of red. This bin stayed out all week long for her to play with and explore. I will be doing one of these bins for each of the colors we will be learning.

The next day’s activity was water painting! I drew a pair of pajama’s (to go along with our book of the week) on some red card stock with a sharpie, then laid the card stock on a cookie sheet. I handed Grace a sponge brush and had a cup of water beside her, I showed her how to dip the sponge in the water and then put it on the paper, and that was that. She took off with the painting! So this activity is minimal mess! You are just dealing with water here so there are no stains! The water turns the paper a different color of red so she could see where she was painting and that it was different. Her favorite part was figuring out she could squeeze the sponge brush to get more water out (she loves water) and then tipping the cup of water onto the cookie sheet so she could splash! While not the intended lesson, cause and effect is an added bonus here!

Her third activity of the week was by far Grace’s favorite! We placed red apples on the apple tree I drew on the front door! The prep for this was super simple as well. I drew a tree on our glass storm door with dry erase markers. I cut out apples from a piece of red foam. I put some water on a cookie sheet and placed the foam apples in the water (foam sticks to glass when wet). I got a bath towel out, sat her down, showed her one time what to do and she was mesmerized for a good 30 minutes! Grace would put the apples on the tree then take them off then do it all over again and again! She actually threw a fit when we had to stop due to a messy diaper! One word of advice from one mom brain to another…if you draw the tree on the opposite side of the glass from where you are placing the apples it won’t disappear like ours did with all the water from the foam running down the door! Ha!

Our fourth activity was a mess free painting of a strawberry! All you need for the this project is a gallon size Ziplock bag, white paper (I prefer card stock for it thickness), a sharpie or printer, and red paint. I drew a picture of a strawberry on white card stock, placed it in the Ziplock bag, added a few drops of red paint, sealed the bag and showed Grace how to press/slap/move her fingers around to make the paint move. She was a little unsure of this activity, however as you will see in future posts, we have actually been doing a Ziplock Painting for every color and she now gets more excited to do this. I don’t think she fully understood the first time what exactly was going on, but now she does and can move the paint around in the bag herself. I have saved every color painting she has done, and after all the colors we learn I plan to take them all to an office supply store to have them laminated and bound into a flip book for her to reference her colors.

Our last activity for the week was a sensory color bath! We picked up some Crayola bath drops that change the water different colors and added all the things from her color bin that was bathtub friendly to the water! She of course had a blast because it’s water! Ha!

So that was Red week! ❤️ It was magical and so much fun! If you plan to do some of these things with your little one(s) just keep in mind that these activities worked well for us, but they can certainly be tweaked for your child’s personality and needs. Pinterest has so many different ideas on activities as well! A lot of really talented mama’s have already done the hard part for us so kudos to them for prep, planning, and inspiration!

If you’d like to see a sample of how I plan out themes for a week check out the Tot School Schedule 🍍 page!

You can also check out a list of this year’s themes on the Tot School Themes ☂️ page!

EVERYDAY a little Grace 🌷