Crystal Merritt Each week, I choose a theme and pair it with toddler-friendly books, recipes, and activities to keep your kiddo engaged and exploring. These activities are simple, most ingredients and materials you probably already have around the house. If not, I’m sure you need an excuse to get to Target anyway. These week, we’re exploring clouds so everything is Cloud Theme!
I made a joke about clouds. It went over everyone’s head.
This week’s theme is CLOUDS! (Which suits our finicky Florida weather perfectly.) After reading one of our cloud books, my son noticed it was raining outside. It was the opportune moment to make a text connection to the books we were reading and our weather right outside!
Books:
The Cloud Book by Tomie dePaola
Little Cloud by Eric Carle It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw
* Literacy Tip*
When reading these books (or any!), have your kiddos tell YOU what is in the pictures. Keep your kids engaged and participating in the reading process by asking them WHAT shape the clouds changed into! My son knows trees, birds, and bunnies so when I turn the page and Little Cloud turns into a tree…I read and STOP when I get to the “tree” and have my son shout it before I read it! He gets excited to see what’s on the next page and is participating in reading.
Recipes:
These Jell-O Cloud Parfaits, courtesy of My Food and Family are absolutely delicious! And an easy enough recipe for the kids to help make. My son especially loves to “mixy, mixy” things so stirring the Jell-O powder with water is perfect. I can’t even remember the last time I has Jell-O! (Well, without a shot of vodka in it anyway). We mixed the Jell-O after breakfast so it had plenty of time to chill before serving for an after lunch snack! I served them in small snack cup containers (again, leftover from the Jell-O shots) so the kids could still see the Jell-O and clouds! I love this recipe because it’s low cost; all you need is Jell-O, water and Cool Whip topping (YUM!). It’s easy cleanup, especially if you serve in the snack containers because everything can be tossed. Or, you can prepare ahead of time, cap the cup with it’s lid, and take them to the park for a sweet cloud-watching excursion!
Activities:
This shaving cream sensory activity brings me back to my childhood. Our elementary teachers would let us “wash” the tables with shaving cream at the end of the day. Does anyone still do that? Since the shaving cream is not edible, I would recommend to keep this activity for older toddlers or kiddos who aren’t apt to putting everything in their mouth. For this activity, I sprayed the shaving cream into our sensory water table outside and let the kiddos explore. Keeping it contained to the water sensory table is nice for easy cleanup and minimal mess. Plus, you can hose everything (including the kids!) off after you’re finished. The whole point of a sensory activity is for kids to explore their environment through their senses. In this activity, they will explore the texture and feel of the shaving cream through touch! Use words that you could also use to describe clouds when you are talking about the shaving cream. Words like fluffy, soft, and light can help describe both! We also have a few cups and different tools to use in the water sensory table that you can put out with this activity. Most of them I purchased at the dollar tree and keep in a cheap plastic laundry basket outside for easily accessible and ready to clean, and dry, use!
Making fluffy Cotton ball Clouds is one of my favorite of these cloud theme activities. Again, minimal materials and cleanup required and most materials you will have lying around the house. For this activity, we used fingerpaint paper, blue paint (and coordinating brush and containers), cotton balls and glue. For younger kiddos, you can substitute the painting portion with blue construction paper. If painting, I always suggest doing it outside. We have a kiddo table that is used exclusively for crafts and eating because it’s easy to wash off outside. Painting outside also allows for the paint to dry quickly because you’ll need the paper dry to glue on your cotton ball clouds! I purchased glue sticks to minimize the globs of glue that kiddos will squeeze out. Have the kids pull and rip the cotton balls into different clouds or shapes and glue them onto the blue painted “sky”.
What other activities can you do to learn and explore the theme of clouds?
