We celebrated the 4th of July all week long for our latest Tot School theme!
We started off the week with a 4th of July themed sensory bin from items acquired at a local dollar store. Grace loved wearing the headband and light up necklace from this bin throughout the week!
Our book of the week was The Night Before the 4th of July by Natasha Wing. This is the second book we’ve read by this author. We read the The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day back in March. These books have an easy familiar rhyme and include all sorts of things that go along with their theme. After day one reading this book, Grace could identify the fireworks, flags, and stars throughout the story. We also worked on identifying the colors red, white, and blue.
We danced to a School House Rock Song called Fireworks on YouTube throughout the week as well!
Our second activity of the week was making a foam flag on the front door! I just cut out strips of red and white craft foam for the stripes, a blue rectangle, and used a star shaped toy from her shape sorter box to trace out stars from white craft foam and then cut them out. I placed all the parts on a cookie sheet with a little bit of water and Grace started placing the foam on the door. Craft foam will stick to glass and a bath tub/ shower when wet! I had decorated our home for Independence Day a few days prior, and Grace has been really interested in all the new things, especially the Stars, so she has seen a flag, and of course our book of the week has flags as well throughout. I placed the blue rectangle on the door, then placed two of the stripes and she went to town with the rest until we got to the bigger stripes, I started one, then she continued the rest and we were left with the Stars. She learned how to say “Star” as well, so she was super excited when she got to those and kept repeating what they were. I pointed to where they should go and she placed them all on the blue rectangle! I was honestly a little shocked about how well she put this flag together! Go Grace! She of course would take the pieces back down, dip them in the water still on the cookie sheet and start all over again!
Our next activity for the week of the 4th was dropping red, white, and blue pom poms down a firecracker on the front door. I took some red card stock and rolled it into a tube and taped it together. I put two notches in the top of the tube and cut out a blue triangle for the top out of blue craft foam and placed it in the notched tube. Then I hole punched the bottom of the tube and attached some pipe cleaners and twirled them just for fun. I also added some blue star stickers to the red tube to dress it up a little. I put a small container underneath the firecracker, and gave Grace red, white, and blue pom poms and showed her how to drop them in the tube and they would land in the container below. She did this activity for a good bit before all she wanted to do was play with the “balls”.
Our next activity was super cute. Grace painted fireworks! We broke out our red and blue Crayola Kid’s Paint and I poured some of each in two different paper plates. I took some bendy straws I picked up at our local dollar store, and bound about 5 or so together with a rubber band and bent the straws out to look like a starburst. I made two of the straw stamps, one for each color. I then handed Grace the first set of bound straws and let her dip it into the paint and stamp it on the paper making fireworks as she went. After a few stamps we switched to the other straw set and the other color of paint, and off she went again stamping away.
The result is really cool, and because of her book of the week, and this project, we could ask her where the fireworks were and she could point to her painting.
The night before the big day, we enjoyed a baseball game with family. We stayed past her bedtime so Grace could see her first fireworks show. She loved it! She would clap and say “yay” and point at the fireworks.
On the fourth, we woke early to go to a Fourth of July Parade. She loved seeing all the flags and the paper confetti flying everywhere! We ended the holiday with a pool day with family, a cookout, and some more fireworks!
Grace can identify a flag now and loved pulling some out of the ground at her Nana and Pops’ house over the weekend. She paraded around waving the flags while visiting with cousins.
We had so much fun celebrating Independence Day! Grace learned to say “Star” this week, which just happens to be our first shape we will start learning about next 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 