Here's a link to our first session: Elmer by David McKee
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THE CAT IN THE HAT
Everyone loves Dr Seuss - I can remember reading the stories with my mother when I was only a bit older than D is now and he loves the funny words, rhyming sentences and wacky pictures. It's quite a long story compared to some of his other books but it is so catchy that the story is over before you know it and D will happily sit and listen to the whole thing without moving.
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| Having a sneaky read before anyone else arrived... |
Snack: Strawberry/banana hats
In homage to the hat in the story we made fruit kebabs with strawberries and banana. D could have pretty much made them on his own but I didn't trust him to cut the strawberry slices evenly so I did that! We used cake pop sticks as skewers so they were blunt at each end and perfectly child-friendly and put banana pieces at each end as that held the fruit on the stick. D was so pleased every time he threaded a piece of fruit on and was so proud of the final result! I think they look really good and were very quick to make. And they got eaten just as quickly aswell ;)
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| Proud little face :) |
Activity: Handprint Thing 1 & 2
We love doing hand/footprint crafts. D loves the process as he is completely "in charge" of his own hand, when he puts it down, how he holds his fingers etc. And I love it because they aren't small for long and it is so nice having concrete memories of just how small they once were. Anyway, back to what we did here...
I drew outlines of 2 jumpers on some card and cut out some circular white stickers. D coloured in the jumpers with a red crayon and then stuck the stickers in place. I then helped D put blue paint on his fingers and top bit of his palm and pale pink paint on his palm. He was surprisingly good at putting his hand down in the right place but needed a bit of help pushing his fingers firmly down on the paper.
It was slightly more challenging getting Iz's handprint so there are no pictures of that bit! But once they were dry I added faces with a sharpie and wrote Thing 1 & 2 on the t-shirts. I love how it turned out - and I think so cute having their handprints side-by-side.
I loved that D also free-styled on one of the pictures and painted a "head" and "hair" with the sponge. It's great when they let their own creativity shine through and we'll keep his picture next to the handprint one :)
How did it work?
I'm not sure if you can call it a pattern if it's only happened twice so far but we'll see after the next session! D loved reading the book (so cute when he was reading it to Iz and pointing out the "Things" to her) and doing the colouring and handprints but the other toddlers were much less fussed. I'm not sure if it's because they don't know the story and are a bit too young to engage if it's not something they are familiar with, or just because there were far too many new and exciting toys lying around to steal their attention away... Next time I might put a blanket over the toy shelves and see if that helps!
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| D even started colouring in everyone else's when they were too busy playing |
It was an excuse for a lovely playdate anyway and then D and Iz had fun re-reading the book in the afternoon and doing the craft again.
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| Priceless... |
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At our next book club we're reading "How to Catch a Star". If you've done any Cat in the Hat-related activities I'd love to hear below. Or if you're planning to join in next time it'd also be great to hear from you :)
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