Baa Baa Black Sheep

Homeschooling with a toddler can be....interesting to say the least.  ;)  The challenge is to be able to teach the older ones while keeping the baby happy, occupied, and stimulated without your house being torn apart. There are many ways to actually involve them in what the older children are learning, and we do this quite a bit and I will share on future posts a few examples.  But for this post I wanted to share a few specific activities I planned just for Ashley, (our 2 year old) today having to do with Baa Baa Black Sheep. While toddlers don't have a need for formal academics they still definitely need one on one time with mommy and various experiences and stimulation.  I always plan for a fer a few fun activities for Ashley and I to do together each morning during learning time.  Often it's just simply pleasures like reading books, playdough, doing fingerplay songs, building a block house, fingerpainting, or playing baby dolls together.  If I have the other two girls working on something, I'll grab Ashley and we'll play together.  Often we'll all end up playing together as soon as they are finished with their task.  ;)  I also try to plan a few different activities that are educationally appropriate for a 2 year old to give her different experiences.  I love nursery rhymes and this week I made a few activities for Baa Baa Black Sheep.  First I read her the rhyme from our Mother Goose book.  She's heard it many times before, but she doesn't mind hearing it again.  Then we held hands and danced around in a circle as we sang the rhyme.  She loved this and we repeated it several times.  Then I showed her four pictures I printed off online that showed the progression of the rhyme.  I repeated it again and showed her the pictures.  Then I mixed them up and said, "Oh no!  They're all mixed up!  Can you help me fix them?"  I then said the rhyme while she put them in order and she also recited it with me.  Another activity I had made was printing off 4 black sheep and 4 white sheep.  I then drew a simple black barn and white barn.  I added some real hay just for fun and laminated everything.  Then I told her the black sheep live in the black barn and the white sheep live in the white barn.  She understood right away and began sorting them.  Then when she was finished she said, "Night Night sheep!"  :)  Another activity I did was a simple arts and crafts.  I traced her hand on a sheet of paper and had her color it and a printout of a sheep's head and body black.  Then she glued black yarn to the sheep's body and then I cut it out and glued it together. It turned out pretty cute.