GREEN! (William's first notebook day!)

I made a notebook for William today during nap time.  While I don't think that William needs any direct instruction, I do like the idea that working on colors and shapes will make me focus on William and deliberately spend some time with him.  I often feel he doesn't get nearly as much one-on-one time as Natalie did, so its harder for him to pick up things like colors naturally as Natalie did.  I decided to focus his notebook on colors, shapes, and animals.  I have some ideas for adding some of the songs we've been missing at Baby Storytime, but didn't get there today.  My goal was really to give him something comparable while Natalie works on her notebook, because he gets jealous and wants to play what she is playing.  In the future, I hope to sit them both down to play with their notebooks for short periods of time (like say while I peel potatoes).  Today, we looked at it together, and we had a good time together. 

While Natalie was off having Daddy check her doll with the doctor kit, I had a little time with William, so I showed him his notebook.  He seemed to like it, so we stopped at green (which appears to be his favorite color) and I pulled out some dry erase markers and the green Do-a-Dot.

This was the final result of our combined scribbling. 

I thought we would just stick some stickers on the laminated page on the front, but then I got the idea to pull out for him a bunch of green stickers.  I quickly realized he was making a masterpiece and I'd want to save it, so I switched us over to regular paper.  In the future, I will sort out some color themed stickers and put them in a bag or page protector for him to play with as we explore the color.   We have some Sesame Street color themed stickers by Dover, but not for green. 

He really liked stacking the stickers. 

Of course, after all of this, Mike comes in and asks him what color his art is and William says, "Red." 

Green is a good choice for us to work on for a couple of weeks for just a few minutes a day. The end of next week is St Patrick's Day with two different themed play dates.  Lots of green occurring naturally around us. 

Future activities:
Play with green post-its
Color with green markers and crayons
Basket of big green items to play with (stuffed animals, cars, ball pit balls, etc)
Bin of small green items to play with (counters, pom poms, pipe cleaners, blocks, play food)
Paint with just green
Read a book with a lot of green in the illustrations and / or point out green in the illustrations
Green flash cards tucked in notebooks
Wear green clothes
Play with green Playdoh