Good Evening, Parents & Children! Today is Monday!

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     Bored yet? Pulling your hair out looking for ideas to keep those young kiddo’s engaged? We thought that we would try to help by offering up a few book suggestions with ideas for extended activities to promote learning during this time of sheltering in place.

     We have always promoted reading aloud and using picture books can take a child out of their world and send them on an adventure stimulating curiosity and imagination and also offers a smooth transition to extended activities. Studies have shown that hands-on-learning improves retention of information and offers a sense of empowerment when children take ownership of learning through real experience. It also offers up experiences that can be applied to real life and gives background knowledge that can be recalled when needed.

     Our first suggestion is a book that you can utilize for the entire week: Today is Monday. It’s actually a traditional folk song used to teach children the days of the week that celebrated artist, Eric Carle revived with his unique artwork. If you don’t have a copy of the book, look for a read aloud on YouTube and also look for the poem along with the song on-line to share with your child(ren). Start each day with the song.

     Have a calendar at the ready or the days of the week cards and then read the story each morning and discuss what day it is and where it falls in the week. If you have cards, have children place them in order to reinforce sequencing. Other ideas include:

• Each day, have children create a menu for dinner that includes the featured food. Older children can write out a menu and younger ones can draw pictures of their menu.
• Look for coloring pages for each food or even search on-line for activities for Today is Monday.
• Each day use the featured food in a different way. For instance, young children can count the number of letters or draw a picture of that food. Come up with other foods that are the same color or start with the same letter.
• Older children can come up with an acrostic poem using the letters of the food for that day, use the letters of the food to see how many new words they can make or just use the first letter of the food and come up with other foods that start with that letter.
• Look and discuss Eric Carle’s unique way of using collage for his artwork and each day have children come up with their own unique illustrations for that day of the week. Let them unleash their inner creative spirit even trying Carle’s collage technique.
• On Monday, cut out some string beans and string them up.
• On Tuesday, sacrifice a box of spaghetti and have children count how many noodles are in a box. Play a game of pick up sticks or use the spaghetti for artwork.
• Be creative with Wednesday’s ZOOOOP. Actually make soup that day or pretend to make a soup. Name it and decide what will go in it. My daughter made a letter soup with magnetic letters, cardboard letters and pasta letters all mixed in a Tupperware bowl and then we used them to spell simple words.
• For the next three days, create outdoor scenes of where this meat and fish is found or find coloring pages of each.
• Sunday, Ice Cream! Make your own ice cream in a bag or cut a cone out of construction paper and then scoops of ice cream and sprinkles to top it off.
  
• You can always have your child make one large illustration and add each food to the picture every day. Let them use their imagination and be creative.

     Enjoy your week and just keep reading! And be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, so you don't miss any book suggestions or activity ideas!

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Author

We are three generations that seek a way to get back to basics. It’s not that we eschew technology, but sometimes simpler is better, especially in raising our children. Mom was a reading teacher, Amanda is an early childhood educator and Kate a children’s literature specialist and former school librarian along with the latest additions, a daughter (now 4) for Kate, and two sons (now 1 and a newborn) for Amanda. We advocate reading aloud, the simple toys that use imagination and encourage creativity and learning in the kitchen, which can be a fun mess but also teaches life skills. Join us in raising healthy, happy, inquisitive and intelligent children.