We are starting off our 9 week curriculum with a full week focusing on LOVE. I tried to incorporate his everyday learning with the Fruit of the week. And throughout the week, we talk about God’s love and try to include activities that he could do around the house that show J’s love for others.
The main verse for the week is Luke 10:27 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”
BOOKS
Books are always such a great way to teach your toddler about anything, and we got some really good books that we have been using with J this week. This page contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase after clicking a link, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
- God’s fruit in me. A book about Fruits of the Spirit
- The color monster: A story about emotions
- Love from the very hungry caterpillar
- Llama Llama I love you
- Fruit of the Spirit by Daily Grace
- Jesus loves the little children
- Jesus Storybook Bible
MAIN ACTIVITY
We repeated a ‘Theme’ activity every day- Identifying actions of love. For this activity I printed out images from Google (here), some of which showed how a toddler can show love to others, and the others showed what it meant to act out of anger/ disobedience.
The first 2 days I explained the pictures to J and separated the pictures as Good vs Bad. The next 3 days I encouraged J to identify activities and separate them by himself. I really loved doing this activity with J as it could be done anywhere, and the toddler conversations we had made my heart soar each day.
JOY Playlist
I created a YouTube Playlist for J’s screen time this week. We let him take half an hour of screen time in the evening and I just play a few videos from this list every day. J loves the songs in the list and he’s a fan of VeggieTales, so this list worked great with him.
Let me go through the activities I did with J every day.
Monday
We start off the day working on the morning bins I prepped before for that day. After our breakfast and morning devotions, we head on to his playroom for that day’s activity.
- Heart letter Sensory bin :
I found this really cute printable from Pocket of Preschool website. I printed the puzzle and mixed it with the colored rice I had on hand, and it was as simple as that.
J is still learning his lowercase alphabets and I’m constantly on the lookout for games to make learning them fun. This activity was perfect and J could identify lower case letters by the end of it.
- Fine motor skills activity :
We used candy hearts for this activity. J separated the candy hearts by color into the corresponding colored cups. I kept this tray out throughout the week, and I saw that his use of forceps had improved by the end of the week.
Tuesday
- Scissor practice Heart craft :
J is still getting the hang of using his scissors, so I started out this craft with drawing lines on red and pink construction paper. I helped J cut along the lines, he’s still working on perfecting his scissor technique, and if your toddler is not ready for this activity, you can help him tear the papers with hand. You can use the printout I made for this craft from here.
But he sure loves gluing things. So next, we pasted the cut papers onto the heart. As he did this, I talked about his much God loves him, even when he makes mistakes.
- Math tactile board with hearts :
I created these boards and you can find the free printable right here. J kind of speeds up after he finds 3, and count all the way to 10.. Haha, so this activity is to help him work on his counting and recording the number at the end.
I bought these clothespins, and it became yet another fine motor skills activity for J to work on.
Wednesday
- Save the felt hearts from sinking Sensory bin :
This was a great activity to work on J’s fine motor skills. And a water Sensory bin is sure to be a hit with any toddler!
I cut up heart shakes out of felt and filed the Sensory bin with 1-2 inches of water. I encouraged J to pick up the hearts with his ticket forceps. He got a few before they sunk and still got more after they were at the bottom of the bin. The activity ended in water play and a very happy toddler!
- Painting on crayon shapes craft:
This activity was a pretty cool science experiment and craft rolled into one. I first drew I ❤️ U with white crayon on a white construction paper. So it essentially looks like a white page.
I asked my toddler to paint the whole page red. We used giant pompoms to paint for a change. As he painted, the pattern I drew with white crayons was revealed. It had him fascinated, and he thought he had drawn a great masterpiece!
Thursday
- Heart stamping with pipe cleaners :
I made heart shapes out of pipe cleaners and used finger paints for this craft. J made heart stamps after I showed him how and we talked about all the things he loves – starting from monster trucks to ‘do activity’. It was pretty fun for both of us.
- Pattern blocks activity :
I recently got these plastic pattern blocks from Amazon to try out. I thought J might be too young for this activity, so I started out with a simple heart pattern that I found on Pinterest.
But J loved figuring the patterns and matching them. I’m looking forward to do more patterns with him in the future.
Friday
- Matching lowercase letters using Felt hearts
J is slowly familiarizing himself with lowercase letters and I’m constantly on the lookout for new games and activities to incorporate the learning. I found this great printable from Planning Playtime bundle, that’s really helpful to identify and familiarize with lower case letters.
I used the felt hearts that I had cut up for Wednesday’s activity and asked him to place one heart on the matching small alphabet for every big alphabet. He actually did pretty good. We stopped after he reached G add I decided to take it slow.
- Gross motor activity
I decided to end the week’s activities with a really fun one. The setup was so easy and the activity can make your toddler think and use his ‘athletic abilities’ at the same time.
I drew hearts on construction papers and cut them in the shape of hearts, each paper had different numbers of hearts on them. I pasted these hearts (easy enough for the toddler to take out) around the playroom where J could reach.
I asked J to find the hearts and count the mini hearts on them. He was so excited during the whole length of the activity and it was a joy to teach and count with him.
That brings us to the end of our week of LOVE! I’m already excited for the next week to of JOY and the activities in store for J.
