It's World Book Day and we're reading The Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson.  It's our favourite book, and we read it today with Ethan dressed in his Gruffalo dressing gown :)



I focused on the description of The Gruffalo and we identified all of his body parts on Ethan.  He's able to point at a few things when I ask (where's your head?) but I would like him to be able to locate a few more, so this was a fun way to learn body parts (even if they are on a Gruffalo!)  I also found loads of great activity sheets on The Gruffalo website, including one to match his features to the words.  We didn't use it in that way as Ethan can't read yet, but I cut out the pictures and we made our own Gruffalo bookmark :)  We've had such fun reading and exploring books in the lead up to World Book Day, all to develop Ethan's Communication, Language and Literacy.

For more fun, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Play & Learn Everyday - Crafts and Activities from the Blog on Pinterest.

* This post contains affiliate links*

Today we had a doctor's appointment (sore throat, nothing serious) and while in the waiting room we picked up Supermarket Zoo to read.  Oh how we love a new book!  And in continuing with our week of World Book Day activities it's perfect that we found a new book that we loved and that inspired us to play.



So, after reading Supermarket Zoo we came home and went shopping for animals!  We wrote a list of all the animals that we had to buy, and then picked them all up and put them in our basket.  Ethan loved choosing the animals, I read the list and pointed to the animal and then he picked it up and put it in the basket.  He especially liked dumping them out at the end, and then doing it all over again!  Another great story led activity for his Communication, Language and Literacy development.

For more fun, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Play & Learn Everyday - Crafts and Activities from the Blog on Pinterest.

* This post contains affiliate links.*

Continuing with our lead up to World Book Day we read The Tiger Who Came to Tea today and I got to have a tea party with a very cute tiger :)



Ethan was dressed in his tiger pyjamas, we got out our tea set and he sat in my lap while I read the book to him.  He happily listened and stirred the tea in the cups.  When it came to the tiger eating all the food we pretended to eat, but Ethan's favourite part had to be 'drinking all the tea from the teapot'.  We are loving making our favourite books come to life, all a part of Communication, Language and Literacy as we read and enjoy reading.


For more fun, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Play & Learn Everyday - Crafts and Activities from the Blog on Pinterest.

* This post contains affiliate links.*

As it's World Book Day on Thursday, I decided that we should do bookish activities all week (any excuse really, we love books!)  So today we read two of our favourite fishy books; Tiddler and Sharing a Shell, both by Julia Donaldson, and then we played with fishy finger puppets to act them out.  Then we even played with fish in the bath tonight and pretended they were Tiddler getting caught and brought on the boat.



For more fun, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Play & Learn Everyday - Crafts and Activities from the Blog on Pinterest.

* This post contains affiliate links.*

Today we continued our play with nursery rhymes by doing The Grand Old Duke of York (over and over again!)

This is something that we've done at Gymboree before, and Ethan absolutely loves it.  I'm hoping that this will help to develop Ethan's language if we continue to repeat some of his favourite nursery rhymes, especially those with actions that go along with the words.  This will help his Communication, Language and Literacy development.

I sit Ethan in my lap and move my knees up and down as the rhyme goes (and then hold him upside down at the end, which he really loves!)

And when they were only half-way up,

They were neither up nor down.

Today we played dress up with our box of hats!  We have a viking hat (a gift from a friend who went to Norway) and I bought him a cowboy hat, fireman's hat and construction hat today.  



Ethan loves playing with hats, so it's no surprise that he loved his new hats!  He puts the hat on himself, then takes it off and gives it to me to wear (and then thinks that is absolutely hilarious!)  So we had a lot of fun today playing with his new hats, as I made up stories about what the different people would do while wearing their hats.  A fun introduction to imaginative play as part of Ethan's Creative Development.

For more fun, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Play & Learn Everyday - Crafts and Activities from the Blog on Pinterest.

Today we played with colours!  I picked up some paint cards at a big home shop the other day, which of course we can use to choose colours to paint our house, but we can also play with them!  There are loads of great ideas on Pinterest for creative ways to use paint chips, but today we started by just exploring them.



Ethan loved dumping out the whole box of colours and putting them back in.  I said the names of the colours as he put them in the box, and modelled how to sort the colours into piles.  It was a nice introduction to sorting colours, part of his Mathematics development.  I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of these paint chips!

For more fun, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

Follow Play & Learn Everyday's board Play & Learn Everyday - Crafts and Activities from the Blog on Pinterest.