C is for Carrots

Carrot Sensory Bin: Planting and harvesting carrots with play gardening tools and using a little tong to pick them up to practice fine motor muscles! Carrots are also imprinted with words for an exposure to sight words. I included little carrot canisters from last Easter.

I've had everything prepared the night before so the morning we were scheduled to do our carrot activity, I was relaxing in the couch talking to my mom. Suddenly, Lia pulled my arm and said, "school, school!" I couldn't believe she actually said that...I quickly realized that she is beginning to associate the word "school" as to something fun and entertaining! So we said our goodbyes to grandma and started right off with the Carrot Twist Song. Unfortunately, the song was for sale to download, so we sang in our own version!

After the song, Lia was already too excited to play with the carrot garden-themed bin. She was already taking a peek time to time. She quickly opened the carrot canisters and filled them with black beans. She shook them and was delighted to hear the sound it made! 

Sounds fun!

Where do I begin? Let's start with this canister...

...or how about I mix them altogether?! Sounds better!

Meanwhile...

I then taught her that we were going to harvest the carrots and put them in the pot to make some carrot soup. While 'harvesting', I read each word that was on the carrot just to give her an exposure to sight words. 

I encouraged her to use the smaller tongs, but she wanted her way!

Carrots with sight words! My goal is just to keep exposing my little girl to a lot of things at this point.

After around 30 minutes, we finished off slicing a wooden carrot and made our cute little carrot footprints!

 We got this toy from Melissa and Doug. Great practice for those muscles!

I'm actually surprised at how pretty this turned out!

We took a nap after the activity...though fun, it was exhausting too. We read the book together when Lia woke up. I originally wanted to read our theme books firsthand before starting the activities, but this toddler just couldn't wait to have fun and ALWAYS wanted me to close the book while I'm at it. So I figured it's best to read when we are settled in a chair and without all these materials at reach. We finished our carrot-themed activity reading John Segal's The Carrot Soup.