Archeology and Dinosaurs
Bake or buy M&M cookies and have a cookie excavation. With toothpicks try to remove the M&Ms unbroken from the cookies like archeologists do when they’re digging up artifacts or bones.
Colors
"A rainbow of foods" is what is often suggested to insure a balanced diet, but kids can be highly amused by a mono-chromatic meal. For an orange meal try mac and cheese, mandarin oranges, and baby carrots with orange jello for dessert. The possibilities are endless, let your creativity run wild. Repeat the color of your meal over and over to help the work stick with the visual. A green breakfast of green eggs and ham (curtosy of food coloring from your local grocery store) is twice the fun because you're learning colors while also enjoying a class book.
Learning Letters
Tape the outline of a letter of the alphabet on the floor in a frequently used part of the house (in ours it's the kitchen) to use in whatever way the children want. Fill the outline with cereal/pretty rocks/flowers, dance on it, make a game of taking turns jumping on it and screaming a word that begins with that letter... let the kids come up with their own games. Next week have a new letter and continue the fun.
Learning Letters
For breakfast make pancakes into different letters instead of plain circles.
Reading
At age 2, my daughter loves to be read to & never gets tired of her favorite books. On nights when I am tied up nursing the infant at bedtime, I ask her to read to me. She often resists this, so to get the ball rolling, I "read" the pictures to her, by describing what I see. She adds the details that I've forgotten, and I love to hear her story-telling. I've peeked in on her "reading" the pictures to her little sister, and aloud to herself when she thinks no one is listening. She's on her way!
Nature
Next time you are out for a walk with the little one, consider letting her out of the stroller to walk that last block by herself. I usually do this - but what I don't usually do is to let her walk at her own pace. I tried this & found that though her pace is painfully slow, its worth it! I have the chance to see things through her eyes as she picks out details that I would generally overlook. She points out "words" on 'for sale' signs, finds beads, branches, pine cones, rocks, trash & leaves to marvel at. Many of these treasures can be taken home and pasted on construction paper to display & discuss.
