One of our favorite books in this house is Touch the Brightest Star by Christie Matheson. The story is great for toddlers because it involves them in the story, encouraging them to touch, tap, wipe, rub and more on various illustrations. The combination of physical actions with their associated words is great for vocabulary development too. It was also a perfect book for a week about nighttime as it incorporates essentially all aspects of the night - nocturnal animals, stars, the moon, fireflies, even plants that close up at night!
Read on to learn more about the "night sky" themed activities we did this week, as well as some "bedtime" activities.
Read on to learn more about the "night sky" themed activities we did this week, as well as some "bedtime" activities.
Starry Sky Painting
As an easy "night sky" art project, I gave T a plate of white paint, a star shaped plastic cookie cutter, and a piece of black construction paper. He went to town dipping the cookie cutter in the paint and (quite forcefully!) "stamping" it onto the paper.
After he had a good deal of white stars on the paper, I added some yellow paint to the white and he made a few stars with a marbled yellow appearance that really popped against the black and white.
Night Sky Sensory Bottle
I'm not even going to bother posting a picture, because the Kids' Activities Blog did a much better job with theirs! But, essentially, we followed their instructions to create a glow in the dark sensory bottle with hair gel, water, glitter glue, glow in the dark paint and glow in the dark stars.
We need to do some tweaking on this one. I love the idea, but it turned out just ok for us, and I wanted it to be spectacular. Despite using far less hair gel than the instructions originally suggested, the mixture in the bottle is really thick and the stars can't quite move. I might try again with much much less hair gel. Or I might attempt to transfer this to a sensory bag by putting the mixture in a gallon sized zip-top bag and duct taping the edges. If you try it, leave a comment on how it turns out!
We need to do some tweaking on this one. I love the idea, but it turned out just ok for us, and I wanted it to be spectacular. Despite using far less hair gel than the instructions originally suggested, the mixture in the bottle is really thick and the stars can't quite move. I might try again with much much less hair gel. Or I might attempt to transfer this to a sensory bag by putting the mixture in a gallon sized zip-top bag and duct taping the edges. If you try it, leave a comment on how it turns out!
Bedtime for Baby
I can tell that, at 21 months, my toddler is really starting to hit the point where he can engage in pretend play. I wanted to capitalize on that this week by creating an opportunity for him to pretend to put his baby doll to sleep.
We started by reading Llama Llama: Nighty Night by Anna Dewdney. T is a huge fan of Llama Llama books and, as I expected, this one was no exception. It's short and sweet but touches on every part of the normal bedtime routine - taking a bath, brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, etc.
After reading our book, we used T's baby doll to work through the process of bedtime through pretend play. First we gave his baby a bath and brushed it's teeth. Then we put a diaper and pajamas on baby and read him a story. Finally we gave baby a kiss and tucked him into his cradle.
The "bath" was an especially fun part of the activity, as it doubled as sensory play. I filled a small tub with warm water, added a few squirts of foaming baby wash, and gave my toddler a wash cloth and bath toy/rinsing cup. He had a blast "washing" baby and rinsing him off. Then we snuggled him on in a towel to dry him off before bed.
We started by reading Llama Llama: Nighty Night by Anna Dewdney. T is a huge fan of Llama Llama books and, as I expected, this one was no exception. It's short and sweet but touches on every part of the normal bedtime routine - taking a bath, brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, etc.
After reading our book, we used T's baby doll to work through the process of bedtime through pretend play. First we gave his baby a bath and brushed it's teeth. Then we put a diaper and pajamas on baby and read him a story. Finally we gave baby a kiss and tucked him into his cradle.
The "bath" was an especially fun part of the activity, as it doubled as sensory play. I filled a small tub with warm water, added a few squirts of foaming baby wash, and gave my toddler a wash cloth and bath toy/rinsing cup. He had a blast "washing" baby and rinsing him off. Then we snuggled him on in a towel to dry him off before bed.
We extended the pretend play by using our imaginations to pretend it was our bed time too. We got out some pillows and blankets, laid down and pretended to snore and sleep. T found this to be absolutely hilarious. It was a lot of fun!
Night Sky and Bedtime songs
Overall, this was a pretty easy topic to find songs for. The biggest challenge was not confusing our toddler by making our daytime activities appear to bleed into nighttime by choose really soothing lullabies. Here were some of our favorites this week:
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
- Moon Moon Moon - Laurie Berkner Band
- Stars are Shining - Laurie Berkner Band
- A Lullaby - Laurie Berkner Band (I reserved this one for actual bedtime)
- Goodnight - Laurie Berkner Band (also reserved for bedtime, but a favorite we've been singing to T since he was a tiny infant)
- Moonboat - Tom Chapin
- Blanketville - Tom Chapin