Our bedtime stories lately have all had one thing in common, a sheep! So I decided for our lesson that we make a super soft sheep. For older children, you can add smooth grass made out of foam or plastic and hard fence made from popsicle sticks. If your child is younger though don’t overload them, one texture to focus on is perfect!
- Gather your materials. You will need 2 pieces of construction paper, one a lighter color and the other black. Scissors, cotton balls, glue, markers and googly eyes.
- Have your child draw the farm background, ask them what sheep eat, even my 23 month old could do this and drew grass. If you are doing multiple textures have them glue on the grass and fence here, make sure there is enough space for your sheep!
- While they work on the farm, draw a sheep body and head out of the black paper and cut out.
- Glue the body on and add glue and cotton balls, we ripped our apart to spread them out.
- Glue on the head.
- Add the eyes!
- All done!
” How Big Is A Pig”by Claire Beaton has fast become a favorite in our house around bedtime. I love the felt illustrations, the detail amazes me and helps distract me from noticing that I have read it 20 times in as many minutes. The story itself is great too, it focuses on opposites in the farm yard with a zippy rhyming text.“Brown Bear Brown Bear”by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle is a classic, it is genius in it’s simplicity. So often we think things have to have fancy bells and whistles to keep toddlers and preschoolers interested and this book proves us wrong yet again. I haven’t met a child who hasn’t responded well to this book about colors and animals!” Duck on a Bike” by David Shannon tickles my funny bone. I love this book, the message is awesome too. Just because it’s never been done before doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try! Also how cute is a duck riding a bike? The illustrations are amazing and your child will love the farm animals .
This is a fun activity that anyone can do. Older children should be encouraged to close their eyes and try to identify the objects while describing the way they feel. Toddlers can just explore with you labeling the textures, and if they are able you can play a little game of “Find the Texture”. Simple games like this are so valuable even if they seem bland to us on paper your child will love it. So try and see! My son loved the sticky tape and bumpy gourd.
What a perfect time to talk about gentle touches. Having been both a teacher and the dreaded director of a childcare center sometimes I felt like all I did all day was talk about gentle touches, remind little people that we use gentle hands and words with our friends. So this is my plea for all of us parents to practice this with our kids, it doesn’t come naturally to most but with lots of reminders and praise we can help teach them how to be gentle even when it’s so hard to , basically from ages 1-5 !