We started our 11th week of Tot School this past week and our theme was the color Pink!
Our book for the week was Paulette – The Pinkest Puppy in the World by Tim Bugbird. We ordered this book from Amazon. Grace loves dogs, so when I came across this title and read the reviews, I knew we had to have this for our collection. I really try to use either books we already have, or our local library for our theme weeks because, let’s be honest here, books are expensive! I just couldn’t pass up this book for Grace. It has beautiful, albeit girly, illustrations, a cute rhyming rhythm, and the message is really great as well. Without giving the whole thing away, the pink puppy is a bit ashamed of being different, and after a little mishap, all the other puppy’s along with the pink one have to get shaved, and everyone realizes they are all the same underneath. Grace loves this book! We read it all week long and I’m sure it will be loved for many more weeks and years to come!
We danced all week long to Pancake Manor’s Pink YouTube video, as well as StoryBot’s Pink YouTube video! Grace gets so excited when she hears Pancake’s Manor’s theme song start!
I also made a color texture card to go along with our theme from items I had in my craft closet. I just superglued those items to a piece of cardboard and put it on a small clipboard I had to make it a little more sturdy and let Grace feel all the different items. Sometimes she tries to pull things off, so we just transition to something else. I’m trying to keep them nice for use in the future!
Our first activity for the week was a Pink colored sensory bin! I just take items from Grace’s toy collection and items around the house and place them in a small storage bin for her to explore throughout the week. We do this activity for all our color themes.
Grace also made sure one of our cats we affectionately nicknamed Nanny Cat, joined in on all the Pink fun we’ve been having throughout the week as well! Ha!
Our second activity for our Pink themed week, was Ziplock Painting a Pink Flamingo. Again, we do this activity for every color theme, and I am saving all her paintings to make a book so she can continue to reference her colors. I just use a piece of white card stock with a drawn outline of a flamingo (you can certainly use a free printable if you prefer), then I place it in a gallon sized Ziplock bag, add a few dollops of our Crayola Kid’s Paint, seal the bag, and let Grace maneuver the paint to color in the outline. Sometimes she gets a little wild with this activity, like squeezing and crumpling the bag, but the beauty of this activity is not having to worry about paint going everywhere since it’s contained within the bag.
After she’s finished I take her masterpiece out of the bag to dry, otherwise it will stick, then hang it on our fridge for the week. Grace loves to point at her paintings on the fridge when we are in the kitchen and we reinforce to her what color it is: “Yes, that’s your Pink Flamingo!”
Our next activity was really cute. Grace played in the pig pen! I found a version of this activity on Pinterest, and as soon as I saw it, I remembered I had leftover pink balloons from Grace’s first birthday, and it went on our activity list. Anytime I can use items we already have for our activities I do! I just blew up our leftover balloons, drew a pig’s face with a sharpie on the tops of the balloons, placed Grace in her pack and play (the pig pen) and tossed the balloons in there with her! She had so much fun playing with the pigs in the pen! I did this activity outside because it was so nice and there was a nice little breeze as well.
Grace also enjoyed letting the pigs escape and watching them blow across the yard and mommy chasing them! Ha! The original activity I found on Pinterest showed a toddler corralling pigs into a pen, by getting the balloons and tossing them in the pen. While she is making great strides, she is not quite a walker, so I knew she wouldn’t be able to do that particular activity. So I tweaked it to her skill level. So please feel free to tweak any activities to your child’s abilities!
Our next activity for the week was supposed to help build those fine motor skills – threading pink hearts onto paper straws. I cut out pink hearts from our craft foam stash, and punched a hole in the center of them. Then I used a piece of cardboard and hot glued some pink paper straws, cut to various heights, so they were standing upright. I taped the piece of cardboard to our work space so Grace couldn’t move it, and set out the pink hearts for her to thread onto the straws. This is only the second time we have attempted threading, however I was confident that Grace would really catch on this time, since she likes to put lids on things, like some of her food pouches, and is quite good at doing so. Also, different from the first time we attempted a threading activity, the straws were stationary, and I was hoping this would make it easier for Grace to do this type of activity. However, this was not what happened. After showing Grace what to do, she attempted several times to thread hearts onto the straws, but just could not manage to do this activity. I even punched larger holes into the hearts half way through to see if that would help, but by that point Grace was frustrated and unwilling and uninterested in trying anymore. We had our first major activity fail! But we tried, and then we moved on.
I just took the foam hearts, along with our little cookie sheet with some water in it to the front door, laid down a towel and let Grace place the hearts on the front door and take them off to her heart’s content! I wanted to share this failure for us because your little one(s) could very well attempt this activity and be successful at doing so, or it could be a total failure like it was for us. Sometimes all the planning and preparation just doesn’t pan out and that’s ok! We just have to adapt and move on!
In addition to all things pink, we took a little trip to a local strawberry farm at the end of the week! While this doesn’t really fit into our theme , it was so much fun for us to do as a family. This child had no issues getting down and dirty in the strawberry patch and picking and eating all those fresh strawberries! It was a complete sensory experience for her and she loved every minute of it!
I did have another activity planned to finish out our Pink week, but between strawberry picking and all the fun Mother’s Day activities we had planned for the weekend, we just didn’t have quite enough time! Being Miss Grace’s mama has been a dream come true in every way! There are simply no words to explain the love I have for this little girl!
This mama really enjoyed doing all things Pink with Miss Grace this week, as well as visiting the Strawberry Patch, and celebrating Mother’s Day with the one who made me a Mom! 💕
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 see a list of this year’s themes on the Tot School Themes ☂️ page!
EVERYDAY a little Grace 🌷
Everyday a Little Grace 