I love book extension activities. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy doing Before Five In a Row with the boys. So when I introduced the book Harold and the Purple Crayon, I knew that its a story that we can explore beyond than just reading. The book itself is enjoyable to read, engaging and the boys found it funny. Vito was glued to it for a long time. At times, he would even “pretend” to read it by himself, mimicking how I read it to him at night.
If you love this book, or if you plan to get one (highly recommended!) I listed below the areas of learning we touched by just doing this simple easy to set-up activities:
I am starting Before Five in a Row with Vito. I am a fan of FIAR and I’ve been doing it with Mavi for years.
Last week, we did Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? Vito loved it instantly! He can relate to the daily activities of Jesse Bear and how amazing he recognizes most of it as part of his routines. Like changing his shirt, high chair and mealtime, bath time and when running towards Daddy when my husband arrives from work.
Now here are the activities we did to go along with Jesse Bear:
Morning
We played in the yard, put on his jacket and red pants 
Then try to play sand just like Jesse Bear. That is Kinetic Sand and we are loving it!
Noon Time
Lunch time, he ate some steamed veggies, then apple and drank milk. He insisted that we place the book in his table to make sure he’s doing what Jesse Bear is doing.
Afternoon Time
To kill time we played with colored rice and scooping because Jesse Bear was playing with his rice!
We also played matching shoes game! When your child is about 1.5yrs old, they’re able to discriminate objects. Try matching games as simple as matching their shoes! Vito is such an expert!
Bedtime
Vito’s bedtime routine includes brushing his teeth (like Jesse Bear), washing his face and putting on his PJs. I say this out loud as I do it so he’ll understand what we are doing. And just like what I did with Mavi, I would read him books while I put him to bed. This actually calms him down…. and make us both sleepy LOL.
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Here’s the Moon unit we did for the past few days to go along with our Goodnight Moon Before FIAR.
Read books which I borrowed a few books from the library aside from the ones we already have.
My son can now appreciate space facts, astronauts, rocket ships and planets. Unlike the first time we had the moon unit.
The space toob which was a gift for him was very useful during his play pretend of space and planets.
Now on serious stuff, I discussed the the position of the moon, earth and sun in space.
Then I talked about the moon revolving around the earth and that the earth revolves around the sun. I demonstrated this using our felt planets and he was fascinated. He tried doing it by himself.
Then we worked on the phases of the moon. I was very careful telling him that there’s only one moon but it looks different from time to time. Since this topic is a bit complicated for a 3 year old, I just compared to it making faces. Sometimes we look sad, happy or mad but we only have one face. And with this, he started making faces as well... just funny that he was able to get the point somehow.
Here he worked on the nomenclature cards of the phases of the moon.
And using felt moons, we talked about the moon getting bigger and getting smaller.
I made him worked through the phases by positioning the moon phases as to the ones on the book. From here, I asked him on what side does the moon gets bigger or smaller.
So everytime we’re outdoors, and he would see the moon, I love that he would describe it to me as “it’s a gibbous moon” or “it’s a crescent moon”... not just “ a moon”. As a mom, it really makes you happy that your child digest what you have taught them :)
Over the weekend, we made a hanging moon phases and placed it on our verandah. I cut out the shapes of the phases and my son covered it with kitchen foil.
Here they are... the phases of the moon all in silver!
Then I put it all together and hanged them for us to look at each night :) The camera though cannot do justice on how good it looked during the day, especially when the sun would shine on it... it sparkles!
And the silhouette looks lovely too!
I hope you enjoyed reading my post. These days, I really don’t have the luxury of time to make an update so I just try to post as much photos to describe what we did. Till next time!
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