My mom was encouraging me to take our toddler to the Children's Museum, because they have a "noon" celebration for kids to learn about New Years, and even though we weren't up for going out, she did give me the idea that I could do a project at home, and what would be better than a New Years hat he could wear all day?!
Before getting started, we talked about what a year is. I don't expect a toddler to be able to understand everything about a calendar, but make it a practice to include him in everything I can in life, and New Years is a big part of life and is about ending a year and starting a new one, so that's what we talked about. We also talked about it being a celebration and saying "Happy New Year," which he caught on to really fast, especially coming off the tail feathers of saying "Happy Halloween" and "Merry Christmas." He thought it was great to have another exciting saying!
To make a top hat, you can look up instructions on the Internet. You can look up how to make almost anything on the Internet. Here are the instructions I referenced: http://childrensart.info/paper-top-hats/. You basically cut out the pieces and let your toddler decorate them; the options are endless.
We had some numbers and letters that my brother and sister-in-law got him for Christmas, that we used as a learning opportunity by asking our toddler to find the numbers 2-0-1-4 and the letters of his name in the pile of letters, which you can see made it on to the hat.
My mother-in-law did this activity with my little one, and we both cut our shapes he could glue on the hat. Again, you get to be very involved in doing crafts with toddlers, so have fun! We also used glitter paint, and I added some of the tensile embellishment myself to the top.
The only challenge we ran into is that he was so excited to put a hat on, that he kept putting the pieces of it on, before I had constructed it, so in the end, I raced to finished some of the parts and put it together so that he could enjoy wearing it as soon as possible. There are worse problems!
Happy New Year!
stacy those are such good ideas. you're right, they won't fully grasp the concepts, but including them in conversations about it will only help. i wish we had gone to the museum thing, i forgot all about it :(
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