As you probably already know, we love Safari Ltd. Their figurines are so versatile. You have seen us use them for Krystal's gender reveal, Maddy's baby shower and of course for our fun and educational #teachmytoddlertuesday.
Being that Annemarie just started school and is on a Monday - Wednesday - Friday schedule, I wanted to make sure I had activities for her on Tuesday and Thursday so that she would stay on somewhat of a routine. As a former teacher, I know the ups and downs can off balance any child, so consistency is key.
What is great about this activity is that it isn't a one day affair. You can repeat it and add more information as your little one grasps the concept more and more. Making the charts more complex or using different attributes of the animals to sort. For today's activity we sorted the animals by land, sea and sky. First we prepared our station, which helped to get her excited for the activity.
Materials:
Play-Doh
Blue food coloring
Water
Cotton Balls
Paper
Black Marker (If your child is older you may want to let them color the land and sea and be creative with that.)
Once everything was set up we were able to begin. Since Annemarie is only 2.5 years old, I started with the concept of land and sea animals first. This is where I would let an older child get creative with the diagram and let them decorate and color. After the explanation, I let her sort the animals and although she did get a few wrong, I was very proud to see how many she got right! That's why repeating these activities are so important so that she masters the concept.
Now that we were done sorting out the land and sea animals, I wanted to add another category, animals in the sky. I tried to teach her this concept by explaining the clouds in the sky and asked her what birds do with their wings, which she began to flap her arms (lol). For the second part of the activity we brought out a tray with three sections. One section had brown Play-doh for the land, the next had water with blue food coloring and the last had cotton balls representing the clouds in the sky. Of course my daughter doesn't like to get dirty, so every time her finger would touch the water she thought it would be a good idea to use the cotton ball to clean it (hahaha).
Now to pick up and clean up, we gave the animals a "bath". We got a small container with water and washed each animal and put it back into the BLOP mini cube. She takes her little bag with animals everywhere because you never know when you need something for your little one to be entertained with!
I hope you enjoyed this week's #teachmytoddlertuesday and join us next week for another fun and educational activity! Don't forget to tag us if you give any of our activities a try (@bambinadiaries).
* Coupon code: BambinaDiaries for 20% off your purchase from Safari Ltd.*
This post is sponsored by Safari Ltd.