Reformation Day

For Reformation Day this year I'm planning a few simple activities. The little guy is a bit young yet to capture the importance of the day so this year we're going to keep it simple.
Plans:
Luther's Rose - We will talk about the meaning and then color one.
For lunch or supper or both we'll eat some German food.
Our music for the day: A Mighty Fortress.
We'll also take a look at a Luther book.

Martin Luther: A Man Who Changed the World By Paul L. Maier, illustrated by Greg Copeland / Concordia Publishing House

Bilingual Books J/E バイリンガル本 日/英

One thing I'm always searching for is bilingual children's books. In our case Japanese/English is the most common but we do read German/English ones too.

Finding them can be a real challenge. I've learned that when I find one I better get it right away becasue it may not be avalible for long!

So, to start off this new label group here are a few of our favorites:
くまさんくまさんなにみてるの?　Brown Beear, Brown Bear, What do you See? by Eric Carle
はらぺこあおむし The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
メイシーちゃん おたのしみひろばへゆきます Maisy Goes to the Playground by Lucy Cousins
A favorite in our house right now is the bilingual picture dictionaries from this series: こどもずかん　英語つき. This one is perhaps the little guy's favorite - at least for this week... 0さい~4さいこどもずかん 英語つき We are ALL learning new words in both languages!

If you ever come across a great bilingual book please share!

Leaf Matching

I recently discovered a wonderful site called filefolderfun.com. While navagating the site can be a bit tricky due to all the advertising, it is possible to find some fun and easy to prepare activities. The whole concept is that the games and activities are played on a file folder so they are easy to store and take along. I'm adapting them to the Japanese-style clear file and to a the level of my toddler.

Here we have a fall leaves color matching activity. I printed two copies of each of the page: page 1, page 2, page 3. One copy of each is as printed and the other copy has the leaves/helicopters cut out. Since I love to laminate the whole set got laminated.

With a 2 year old it is good to start with one leaf page and the 5 corresponding leaves. You can work your way up to all 10.

Another potential activity is matching the helicopters to the loose leaves by color.

Fine Motor Skills 細かい運動のスキル

Recently the little guy has been showing interest in refining his fine motor skills. Here are a couple of activities that he's been working on.

This is actually a peg game that I've had sitting around. On the activity shelf the pegs are in the green dish with the triangle board next to it.

The point is to place all of the pegs in the holes on the board. Once the board is filled the pegs should go back into the green dish.
Another favorite activity is the wooden ring stacking "light house" from Ikea. In addition to stacking, the pieces can be rolled on their sides or spun in circles.

The little guy has found so many new ways to play with this toy!

Matching Caps

The little guy and I discovered a new activity today - matching pop bottle caps!

It started with practicing putting caps in the can which we haven't done in ages. When we took the caps out it seemed natural to line them up. We practiced counting and placed the caps in the can according to color.
While looking at the designs I noticed that we have a lot of pairs (and way too many Pepsi NEX caps!) so we tried lining them up. The truck was brought in the aid in the "delivery" of the caps to their "home"

It helps that our kotatsu has a grid which matches the cap size.

I also noticed that the newer caps tend to be white with simpler designs. Perhaps a reflection of the state of the economy?

Some of the caps were clearly different, They were different colors or had different designs. Others were harder to tell apart. The two green caps with faces pictured here were a bit of a challenge.

I think this is a good activity to encourage a child to look at the details of an object. Now that I've noticed the details I'll probably start shopping for drinks based on the cap designs! :-)