The Magic Of Discovery. Going on a shape hunt.
Monday, July 2, 2012 at 8:30PM Over the weekend, both my kids came down with 'lovely' winter colds. Runny noses, mild high temps & congested chests. A quick visit to the Doctor for a check-up, confirmed it was just a cold, so he recommended , keeping the kids warm, fill them up with good food and lots of water & Nurofen to keep temperatures down. Nurofen works best with my kids - it's fast, effective and gets temperatures back to normal faster then paracetamol so my busy little bees can get back to the magic of discovery and their active little ways.
It's no secret that I'm a big advocate for teaching your kids, interacting with your kids, and making learning fun. The magic of discovery in a little person's world is a wonderful thing to experience.
This afternoon; Ella, Ryder & I explored the concept of SHAPES! Ella had been playing a game on the iPad & I noticed how much she loved matching shapes up. So, we spent an hour or so, playing, learning & discovering.
To involve Ryder, we gathered all of our 'Shapes' board books and read them together.
I made a simple shape hunt sheet for Ella, with just a few basic, common shapes. I also cut out some pictures of shapes & hid them around the house. We discussed the names of the shapes & their attributes & appearance. I told her there was 12 shapes hidden, and she had to find them & tick them off the chart as she went.
She had a blast. She was running around looking for the shape pictures. She was giggling with excitement everytime she found one. And would dash back to the coffee table to sort them, and keep tally of them on her chart. With a squeal of delight, she said "This is so much fun Mummy! I love this shape hunt!" I love how the simple things can make children so happy, and have such innocent fun. I think we forget sometimes that fun & discovery can be had so easily, without money, and without leaving the house. It was nice!
Sorting the shapes......coz she may have some of Mummy's OCD tendencies :)
She showed me how many of each shape she found, and explained to me 'her system' of keeping track of them.
And while I then spent some more time rolling around on the floor with Ryder and enjoying the board books with him, I suggested Ella use my iPhone to take photos of 'things' around our house that had the same shapes in their design.
Her Photos:
A triangle window.
The o in the LOVE sign was a circle.
A cube shaped footrest.
A square cushion.
And her brother's socks had stars on them:
Through the use of books, visuals, exploring & photography, we had a fun time together.
What discovery experiences have you been up to with your kids these holidays? Please share your ideas & inspiration.
You can get some more of my learning ideas HERE so you too can enjoy some discovery activities at home.
And you can download the simple worksheets that I made for today's shape discovery - The shapes to cut sheet from HERE and the sheet to hunt with from HERE.
Have fun :)
And thank you Nurofen for bringing my kid's sparks back again.
Reader Comments (5)
Sorry to hear you've had colds in your household :( One of the things I hate about winter. Your shape hunt activity and accompanying ideas are awesome. Will definitely give this a go with Grace, I'm sure she'll love the searching around the house part and taking photos has become one of her favourite things to do recently too :)
Wintery colds are not nice :(. Hope the kids are feeling much better. The shape hunt looks like so much fun and a great idea. Anything fun while keeping the kids learning is a bonus. You can see how excited Ella is and of course she is like her mumma with her OCD tendencies!! Nothing wrong with that!! xx
What a wonderful experience to share with your children. Thankyou for sharing it with us and especially for the templates to help inspire x bron
Hi Claire, check this out too from Nurofen - http://greataussiecrawl.com.au/
We went on a shape hunt a few weeks ago and were looking at ways to extend on it. Thank you so much for the wonderful idea!!