C is for Clothing

* disclaimer: My dear friend, Loretta, is also homeschooling her 4 year old here in Dar. We are coordinating during the weekends a bit and doing the same letter for the week. We are trying to get together once a week to do some activities together. She always has great ideas, and some of the weekly ideas on the blog are hers! Thanks, Loretta!! :)

* another disclaimer: I don't know what I'm doing. I try to incorporate gross motor skills and fine motor skills each week through various activities. I also try to incorporate some music, colors, counting (in English and Swahili) and physical activity each week. I also hope to expose Hope to some basic life skills - not expecting her to DO these things all the time, but showing her, i.e. cooking, laundry, using simple tools, etc.

Finally, onto the letter C...

Bible Story: A New Beginning (Noah's ark, from Genesis 6 - 9)

Activities:
* sorting/folding clothes - I'll give Hope a basket of her own clothes, having her sort them by color. Then, I will help her learn how to fold the various items.

* washing clothes - I'll show Hope the process of how we wash clothes, hang them on the line, take them off the line, and ironing.

* We will visit a few shops and pick out material to buy. We will then design a simple skirt or hand puppet or something. We will learn about how clothes are made. Towards the end of the week, we will have our friend sew our design together!

* Color Scavenger Hunt/matching: have various colors of construction paper on the floor and have Hope hunt for clothes that match the colors.

* Both Loretta and I cloth diaper, so a counting activity we will try is to lay out some cloth diapers, with a number on them. We will have the kids attach the same number of clothes pins to the diaper.

Physical Activity: Loretta came up with a great idea of doing a "dress up relay" of sorts when we get together. It will include dressing in various clothing items, but also racing/running.

Music: "Who Built the Ark", "Arky, Arky", and "Jesus Loves Me"

Craft: I have some paper dolls that my mom sent to me. We will play with the dolls a bit, and also use some scrapbooking paper to design new clothes for our paper dolls!