Week five of Alphabet Adventures is complete! If I thought letter D was tricky finding activities for, letter E turned out to be even more difficult. Mix that with the fact that Logan and I both had a cold at the start of the week, our adventure through letter E was a nice, slow stroll.

However, the day before we started E week, our chickens laid their first egg! The timing could not have been more perfect

Our sweet neighbor’s son made us this tray so we can display our eggs on the counter (did you know farm fresh eggs can stay on the counter for a while?”)

If you are just now joining us on our “Alphabet Adventure”, you can read all about what it is in the post below—>

Alphabet Adventures

For this week we focused on: Eric Carle & Earth!

During Alphabet Adventures, every week needs to include these things:

1. Craft

2. Food

3. Outing

4. Books/Activites

5. Sensory activity

I also decided that every week we are going to do a handprint craft that we will eventually turn into an “ABC” book!

Here is our fifth page!

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Craft

For our crafts this week we made earth playdoh, earth seed bombs, Eric Carle suns and earth balloon stamps.

Earth Playdoh

Started off with some more color mixing! Gave Logan green and blue play dough and he immediately jumped in! Asked him to show me what he was making and he held out his hand (picture below) it made me chuckle how much it actually looked like Earth!

Earth Sees Bomb

This activity probably would be better suited in the spring, when it’s not triple degrees outside with absolutely no rain!

Blended up some recycled craft paper, mixed with a little seed/soil, and done!

Eric Carle Sun

Logan got to paint a piece of card stock yellow and orange. He did a great job filling most of the paper!

I then cut it and laminated it, so we can hang it on the window!

Earth Balloon Stamping

This was a cool process art to do and Logan was really interested in it! I have never stamped with a balloon before and was surprised at the unique patterns each stamp made!

Highly suggest allowing your toddler to stamp/paint with a balloon

Food

The food of the week were energy bites! The name almost made me not make them, because what toddler needs MORE energy?!

Logan’s rating- 7/10. Handed him the spoon to lick and he immediately said, “mmmm!!” And then he immediately wanted to share with Dada. Ended up eating half of the energy Ball I gave him, but set the rest down for later because he was so thirsty after all the peanut butter.

Outing

This week we went to our city’s Utility Exploration Center! It’s free, has a bunch of activities for kids, and our music class happened to be moved to the building right next door this week so it worked out perfectly!

Lucky us, we went on a day that they had a field trip touring the facility. That means there were probably 50 other young children running around, which was entertainment for Logan!

Despite all the distraction, Logan really enjoyed some of the exhibits, especially the dump truck that they could go inside! He doesn’t understand what it all means yet, but it was still a good experience for him. I look forward to taking him back on a day when there are no field trips.

Books/Activites

Toy Rotation

Even though we only had a couple activities that were specifically “E” related, it’s important to note that these items get put into his toy rotation. So he still has other things to play with during the week, these are just extra!

It’s also a good reminder that children do not need something new all the time! Quality over quantity

From left-right

Earth ball- amazon

“enjoy” erasable tablet- amazon

Matching egg toy- Amazon

Disappearing Egg Shell Experiment

I thought everyone has done this once or twice before in elementary/middle school. It’s the coolest and easiest experiment! However, James said he had never done it before and our neighbor with all the chickens and eggs had never seen it either. So maybe I am sharing a new experiment with you!

You take an egg and place it in a container of vinegar and leave it over night. You will immediately be able to see a chemical reaction start to take place as the vinegar starts disintegrate the eggshell.

The next day, when you take the egg out of the vinegar, the shell will be completely gone and the egg will fill like a water balloon because the only thing left behind is a semi-permeable membrane! (Yay science!)

If you want to take it a step further you can then place the same egg in a cup of water and leave it over night. The next day the egg will be larger and more “see through” as the egg took on some of that water through a process called osmosis! (Great science lesson for older kiddos)

For Logan, this turned into a sensory experiment for him. He knew the egg was hard when we placed it in the vinegar and it was cool for him to feel it squishy the next day! Every time we would walk by it he would get excited and say, “EGG!” And point.

Magnetic Board

Logan has been very into counting lately, so I wanted to incorporate that into this weeks white board! I found these flashcards on amazon that are Eric Carle themed and put magnets on the back. The card went up to 20 but I only did 1-10.

We used these in multiple different ways- counting, color recognition, object identification, animal sounds, sorting… the list goes on

Erasable “Enjoy” Doodle Board

Logan loves this thing and picked it up so quickly! He takes “attendance” on it every morning and will “write” our names on it…”mama….dada….lolo….Bo…..Lilly!”

Googlie Eyes

Originally this was going to be a craft, but ended up being a super fun activity that focused on his fine motor skills!

The eyes were not glued down so he was able to move them around as he wished. In order to do this, he had to maneuver the little pieces by pinching, pushing and flipping them around. He kept all the eyes on one face or another, it made me laugh when he decided to put all the eyes on one face!

Sensory Activity

sensory bins are my absolute favorite

Theme- E is for Eric Carle

Chose one of our favorite books to focus on this week! I have been seeing films at table inserts floating around the internet but they are not cheap. I wanted to try to make my own! I bought a white poster board (the thick cardboard kind) from the dollar tree and tried to cut out a shape that would fit inside the bin, but rest on the small lip on the inside of the bin so it would sit just on the inside. I cut it with a kitchen knife (note to self- get an exacto knife)

Another nap time project- I drew a “hungry caterpillar” and some of the foods he eats in the book with markers.

Logan LOVED to feed the caterpillar!

Again, if I had more time, I would have painted these and made them look pretty close to the actual pictures. Or even easier…..PRINT THEM OUT! but again, I don’t have a printer. So hand drawn with markers it is.

Most of these projects come together during nap time.

Sensory Bin– IKEA

Sensory bin filler- split peas