Can you believe Summer is officially here?! We celebrated this new season all week long, by doing all things Summer for our 17th week of Tot School!
Our first activity for the week was a Summer themed sensory bin filled with summer items that corresponded with our book of the week. I gathered a beach towel, small bag, flip flops, sunglasses, a swimming tube, a sun hat, some fake daisies from the dollar store, a yellow ball, a fish shaped sand mold and some felt play ice cream. I scored the pretend ice cream from Target that included a few other things a while back. The popsicle sticks slide out and have a color written on them that match up with the felt pieces. I got this set to help with color recognition and was glad we could use it for another theme as well! Grace really loved the swimming tube and playing with all the items in this bin. We played all week long with our Summer things!
Our book for the week was Baby Loves Summer by Karen Katz. We scored this cute lift-the-flap book off of Amazon for around $5. Again, we had no luck finding an age appropriate title for our theme this week at the library, but I don’t think Grace will mind having this adorable book in her collection. This is a super simple and colorful board book, and Grace loves lifting the flaps to see what’s behind them. I only wish the flaps were a bit more durable. Grace, in her excitement to see what was under one of the flaps, was able to easily tear the flap a little bit. However, we enjoyed this book all week long, and Grace could point out all the different summer things throughout the book when asked.
We danced to Pancake Manor’s and StoryBots’ Seasons YouTube Videos throughout the week as well, and we also enjoyed dancing to Barney’s Mr. Sun video on YouTube and a cute Ice Cream music video by a little four year old named Tydus.
Our second activity for our Summer themed week was playing with foam watermelon slices on the front door. I cut out some watermelon shapes from some red and green craft foam and added seeds with a black sharpie. I placed the foam pieces on our little cookie sheet with some water, used our beach towel from our Summer sensory bin to protect the floor and set Grace down. She knew exactly what to do, as we have done this activity multiple times with different foam shapes for previous themes. She loves sticking the foam pieces to the glass door and taking them off again and again.
I plan to keep these pieces for future activities, since I made the watermelon slices into a whole piece, halves and quarters. Yay for early math skills!
We enjoyed the summer outside for our next activity! We scored a water table recently from a family member, and have been itching to try it out. I made sail boats out of pool noodles, paper straws, and paper. They were the perfect accessory for our water table and Grace loved every minute of our outside play time! To make the sail boats I cut off slices of different colored pool noodles I had picked up at our local dollar store. I cut some paper straws I had from previous parties in half, and punched holes in the foam slices with a screw driver then popped the straw halves in each slice of the pool noodle. Next I cut out some triangles from card stock for the sails and punched holes in the top and bottom of each one so I could thread them on each straw. Grace loved the boats, but what she loved even more was taking the boats a part and sorting all the pieces into different piles. She would grab a boat, take off the sail, then take out the straw, and combine the like things together. After she was done sorting, all she wanted to do was climb up into the water table. So with a little help from mommy she did just that and had so much fun just sitting and splashing in the water! After all this playing in water and in the grass and mud, I decided to get out the water hose and spray her off. I’m not sure what she loved more…playing with the sail boats in the water table or being chased around by mommy with the water hose!
Our next activity was again perfect for my little sorter! We made pretend ice cream, complete with sprinkles and a cherry on top! I grabbed a bucket we had and filled it with cotton balls for our ice cream. I put small craft multi colored pom poms in a small container for our sprinkles, and larger red craft pom poms in another container for our cherries. I grabbed two different bowls, added some spoons, and an ice cream scoop to our ice cream bucket and showed Grace what to do. She was not too interested in scooping the “ice cream” into the bowls, but loved adding the sprinkles and cherries to the “ice cream” and pretending to eat it with the spoons. This activity lasted a good while as she would not only add all the ingredients but then take them all off and back out of the bowls and sort the different items into their original containers, and then we’d start all over again!
Our next activity was another family outing! We enjoyed a beautiful day on the lake over the weekend! This time we went to our usual spot complete with little beaches for Grace to play! She loved it! She had so much fun sitting in the water and enjoyed the little waves splashing on her. She loved picking up handfuls of sand and seeing fish in the water. We enjoyed dinner on the lake complete with ice cream…which Grace is still unsure of…Ha! Then we headed back out on the water to enjoy the sun set.
We also enjoyed some time in our little kiddie pool over the weekend as well…because what’s summer without a pool day!
We had so much fun celebrating the arrival of summer! Summer has never really been this mama’s favorite season, but seeing the excitement and joy on my daughter’s face doing all things summer just may make me a lover of summer after all! 🌞
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 