For our 14th week of Tot School we focused on two colors: Black & White! I had originally planned to do two separate weeks for each of these colors, but when looking at some of the activities I had planned, I realized those activities could really teach both colors at the same time. So I decided to combine them…and I think it went pretty well! Here’s what we did.
We started our Black & White themed week off with two books I picked up from our local library. The first book was Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin. Our other book is titled Black Dog by Levi Pinfold. Both of these books were an instant hit with Grace as she loves cats and dogs! Pete the Cat was great for introducing the color white, but was also great for going over a few of our past colors, including brown from our last week’s theme! Black Dog is such a cute story with a great message. The book sleeve explains by stating, “This is a story about being afraid. It’s also a story about not being afraid. It all depends on how you see things.” Seriously love the message of this book!
We also danced to StoryBots’ Black & White Youtube videos all week long, and also enjoyed watching a Ba Ba Black Sheep sing along and an animated version of our Pete the Cat book, both of which were found on YouTube as well.
Our first activity of the week was a color sensory bin with all things black and white from around the house and Grace’s toy collection. I just gathered those items and tossed them into a small storage bin for her to explore throughout the week. It’s so cute to see her pull things out and study them before going on to the next item. She loves her sensory bins and whenever there is a new one for her to explore she gets so excited and can hardly wait to get her hands on all the newly grouped things!
I also had previously made textured color cards for her to feel and mess with for both Black and White. I just hot glued items found around the house and in my craft supply closet to a piece of cardboard and clipped the cards to a small clipboard to make it a little more sturdy for Grace to mess with and hold.
Our next activity of the week was marble painting a zebra! This activity is in lui of our typical Ziplock Painting we do for each color. To set this up, I just drew an outline of a zebra (without stripes) on a piece of white card stock (you can use a printable if you prefer). I emptied a storage bin I had that was big enough for the card stock to fit inside. Then I added a few drops of black paint, and a round marble and made sure to put the lid on securely. I then showed Grace how to maneuver the box so that the marble would roll around, grabbing paint as it rolled, and creating stripes on the zebra. This was cute at first, but Grace has a little obsession with balls right now, and when she realized the marble was in the box, all she wanted was the small ball in the box, and was quite frustrated she couldn’t get to the marble! The drama is strong with this one! So this activity ended rather quickly, but I still think the results look pretty good and it’s a really neat effect. I will say if I were to do this again, I would probably cut out a zebra outline from white paper and paste it to a black piece of paper so that the “stripes” will show up only on the white cutout. Below you can see why I would do this – you can’t really see the outline anymore. Cleanup was really easy since I used our Crayola Kid’s Paint. I was able to use baby wipes to clean up all the paint on the marble and in the bin after we were done!
I hung her Zebra painting on the refrigerator for the rest of the week so she could enjoy her meltdown masterpiece and plan to put this painting along with her Ziplock Paintings from previous color weeks into a book for her to reference her colors in the future.
Our next activity for our Black & White themed week was placing white “wool” on a sheep. This was also a pretty easy set up. I placed a piece of contact paper on a glass door, sticky side out. Now if you think ahead better than I did this day, you can draw your sheep outline first on the contact paper (non-sticky side) then tape it up sticky side out and you’re good to go. I clearly had mom-brain setting this up, but because I had some dollar store dry erase markers in my stash, I just went outside and drew the sheep outline on the other side of the glass door where I had already taped the contact paper on the inside. Then I set out a basket with some cotton balls (the wool) in it, set Grace down at the door and placed one cotton ball on the sticky contact paper to show her what we were doing, and off she went. Grace not only stuck the cotton balls to the sheep, she also “sheered” her sheep many times by taking the cotton balls back off before starting over again!
Our next activity for the week consisted of only two supplies: black card stock and white chalk. Super simple and really drove home our theme of the week. I just taped a piece of black card stock to our work surface so it didn’t move around, handed Grace a piece of chalk and she scribbled away! You can certainly change this activity up using things you may have, like using an actual chalkboard, or a white crayon instead of chalk, etc. I just used what I had on hand and I really believe Grace enjoyed seeing the contrast of the two colors because she has never colored as hard as she did with this activity.
Our last activity for our Black & White themed week was playing with black stones in a bin of water. I had grabbed a bag of black river rock at our local dollar store a while back for another project I had planned to work on, so I already had the stones. I just used a small storage bin, added the black stones, and filled the bin with water. It’s been miserably hot here recently so I decided to take this activity outside hoping playing with the stones in the cool water would help Grace stay cool but also get her some outside play time we’ve been missing here lately because of the heat! Also, Water = Life for this little girl so I really try to have a water activity for her to do for all of our themes. Grace loved this activity! I added a white disposable bowl and black plastic spoon to the mix as well, and she sorted the stones and sorted the stones and splished (this is a word in our house) and splashed!
We played with this activity for a good while before she wanted to explore more in the backyard, and to my surprise after doing so, went right back to this activity to play some more. Grace played until she had splashed all the water out of the bin, which was almost full to start with!
I can’t believe we’ve completed our 14th week of Tot School! Grace and I loved doing all things Black & White this week! ⚽️
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 