If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know I love treats... especially chocolate. This morning my son said that we needed to do a project with our current favorite treats- Cadbury milk chocolate balls. I feel totally OK about eating a bite or two of chocolate at 10am... sometimes I'm even nice and share a bit with my little guy. 🙂
In addition to chocolate, my son has also really been loving our newest set of books (My First BOB Books: Pre-Reading Skills) that were sent to us by our friends at BOB Books. The books focus on identifying shapes, sorting, classifying, and symbol identification, recognizing patterns, and sequencing.
We are in Christmas mode at our house now that Thanksgiving is over, so today my son wanted to make a shape tree to use with our candy and books. I took the idea and ran with it and we had a great time.
Materials Needed: colored cardstock, scissors, glue or tape, My First BOB Books- Pre-Reading Skills, and Cadbury milk chocolate balls (or any other candies). You can use pom poms or other little objects if you don't want to use treats.
Directions:
1. Cut out several triangles in increasingly larger sizes for your tree. Cut a rectangle or square for your trunk. (prep-ahead)
2. Glue or tape the triangles and square onto a piece of paper to form a tree base.
3. Read through Book 1 in the Pre-Reading Set and talk about all of the shapes that you see. Create ornaments for your tree based on the shapes that you find in the book and then cut them out.
4. Read through Book 2 in the Pre-Reading Set and as you see shapes and talk about shapes, have your child add those paper ornaments onto your tree. We didn't glue ours on because we wanted to reuse them again and again.
5. Talk about all of the colors and shapes you see on your tree.
6. Read through more of your books while you grab your candies.
7. Each time you discover a new shape while you are reading, talk about the shape, count the sides of the shape, talk about the colors, and then place a chocolate ball onto the shape on your tree. Be warned... the balls sometimes roll a bit... but it is kinda fun to try and get them to stay put.
8. Last but not least, pop some chocolate balls into your mouth when your tree is completely full! Then grab another book, clear off the shapes, grab more chocolate, and start creating your shape tree all over again.
What other ways could you play with this simple shape tree?
What's the favorite holiday treat at your house?
Once again we'd like to thank our friends at BOB books for providing us a free BOB Books: Pre-Reading Skills set to explore. We have a few more activities that were inspired by these cute and funny little books that we will share with you later this week! Stay tuned for our BOB Books giveaway on Thursday as well!
By the way, if you haven't entered our first Holiday Giveaway yet, head on on over and choose your favorite Neat-Oh! ZipBin playmat to win! There are so many great ones I think I would have a hard time choosing!
learning, fun + chocolate! Now this is my idea of a fabulous activity!
very cute!
clever and interactive!