Lately, I’ve been having a ball planning some learning activities for Brayden and the two other kids I babysit. Mind you, they are a wee bit young for it, but you can never start too early, right?!? I’ve been babysitting almost full time since October, and I honestly can’t believe that I never did activities like this until a couple of weeks ago-especially through the winter. But one day when the kids were all getting a little restless a couple weeks back, I decided to put my early childhood education degree to some use. . . so I planned a few activities based on Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” book. We colored some ladybug pictures, learned a Bible verse (well, they didn’t really learn it), but I read it to them a few times, read through the book a few times during the day, and then made a giant ladybug with everyone’s handprints on the “dots”. They seemed to enjoy it. The next day we did a Noah’s Ark theme, and since then we’ve done some fun things including a few days learning all about the letter A. One of my favorite things so far though has been the day that we did activities based on “Goodnight Moon”. I spent a lot of time before going to babysitting that morning printing off a bunch of things. During the kids naptime, I put together most of something that I learned is called a “lapbook”. There are a bajillion and one different things that I’ve learned you can make for kids out of manilla folders, and one of these things is called a lapbook. It required a lot of time to make, but I think it’s so darn cute. Also, I have to say that this particular one is still a little too old for Brayden, so I will definitely put it away until he is a little older, but there are so many other varieties of things you can make with the folders that are totally age appropriate for any age. Just google it. Anyways, so here are some pics of the lapbook we made for Goodnight Moon.

It required 1 1/2 file folders, and a whole lot of paper for printing stuff out on. Here are a few of the website where I got the reproducibles (some of the things I had to type up myself on Word though):
Homeschool Share (Lots of different printables that I didn’t use, but that would be great for older kids).
What Color was the Balloon?
Same or Different Shapes?
Let’s Count
Goodnight Moon ABC’s

Sooo, I wanted to share with everyone what my new favorite thing to do is while I’m babysitting. I think it’s really great for the kids, and it gives us something to do 🙂 Even if they sometimes can’t do too many activities because they are still young, I think little things here and there are really beneficial. Today we are doing all sorts of things about Hey! Diddle, Diddle! Yaaay for learning!