Candy Week for Preschoolers - Part 2

Candy Week! Should I have included all sweets?  I thought it'd be fine if I just stuck to pure candy since the concept is  so large. I wish we would have had time to do more but I do prefer doing things well and enjoying them over rushing things and doing more. This week would have been perfect for tasting bottles again for example and pretending that they are candy extract. It would have been a perfect time for smelling bottles too for the same reasons but we all know I still haven't accumulated enough spice bottles yet! :) So here is what we did instead...

Playdough Candy - Art & Fine Motor

Don't these look yummy? I personally made these for the picture but Adrian made the ones pictured below. The reason why is simple: I'm currently trying to strengthen his hands () so every so often we'll be, working with Theraputty instead of play dough. Theraputty is pretty much Silly Putty...with a very important twist...it comes in different strengths. I got him a jar of medium firmness for now and wow, towards the end of the 9th candy, it was getting a bit difficult. The stretching of the putty, the "cutting" the shaping, and finally the "candy" wrapping and twisting of the wax paper? Quite the workout. But you know what? He loves working with Theraputty so you'll be seeing more of this stuff.

Theraputty Candy - add an extra challenge!

Gummy Bear Patterning - Math

Using Haribo's Tropical Gummy Bear variety, I started a pattern on a plate which Adrian then had to pursue. I always encourage him to say it out loud: "red bear, yellow bear, red bear, yellow bear,..." as a way to make it rhythmic. That rhythm always helps him find out what comes next.

Write your name in chocolate chips - Literacy & Fine Motor

I bet your name has never sounded so yummy! :) I personally wrote Adrian's name on cards and then let him organize the cards in order to form his name (he can spell it). The last task was for him to place chocolate chips on top of his name. He had to place them the way he would write the letters of course. 

Lollipop Color Tablets - Sensorial & Math

Ah the Montessori color tablets. *sigh* I've been longing to buy them but never could justify spending that kind of money for something used "so little". Then I thought of making them with the paint samples from a hardware store but could never bring myself to "stealing" the samples knowing very well I wasn't going to buy these paint colors. In the end, Adrian is 4.5 years old, he knows his colors pretty well so I never really bothered any more than that until two weeks ago when an idea germinated in my head: lollipop color tablets! Candy week was coming! Lollipops come in many colors and I had this big stack of felt in 40 colors! I quickly set to work and came up with my own set of color tablets. Now of course, the "real" color tablets are serious business with three different sets and a proper way to be handled. Mine are more on the fun side and well, I presented all 40 colors to Adrian since he's older but when I present these to Zahavah, I'll probably present set "1" first (blue, yellow, red only) and then move on to set 2 and finally set 3.  Adrian did pretty good matching the lollies adjusting his mistakes as he went. I then asked him to group them the lollies into color families and to finally organize them within their families from darkest to lightest. 

Smarties Graphing - How many Smarties in One Tub?

Unless you live in the U.S., finding a tub (or box for my Canadian friends) of Smarties should not be too hard. This made this exercise quite easy to put together. I printed the graph here on Life on Canterbury Lane and then, using the entire tub of Smarties, Adrian put one of each color at the bottom and then sorted the rest. He finally counted them all (just because he likes to count everything) and tasted one of each (just because he could). I guess this could be done with M&Ms or Skittles. Any colorful candy would work in fact. I simply used Smarties because we do have these on hand every so often. I quite fancy them...even if they are not as colorful as they were in my youth! :)

M & M Dissolving Race - Cold VS. Hot

Will an M&M dissolve faster in cold or hot water? Have your child guess and then find out but having  him or her drop a candy in a cold tub and a hot tub. Adrian thought it was a pretty exciting race. (He also really liked how the M&M  dropped on the side of the bowl made an entire circle by the time it had completely lost its red coat.) After seeing how the candy produced such beautiful colored water, we decided to make paint out of it  by dropping more red M&Ms and then making other "paint" colors. See my previous post on Candy Week for the beautiful results. Original idea: Mamas Like Me.

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Today, I'm happily linking up to:

Living Montessori Now, B-Inspired Mama, I can Teach my Child, No Time for Flashcards, and

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!