Mix-Up Monday by Elizabeth Dale and Louise Forshaw and published by Maverick Publishing is a fantastic book about a farmer who goes to sort his animals out when he isn't awake properly. The animals realise and pretend to be different animals which gets him all confused. The book is fun to read, has laugh out loud moments and the pictures are so detailed and fun to look at. It became a firm favourite very quickly.
Activities
Days of the week song and train
Calendar
Draw/paint the animals
Topsy-Turvy Tuesday discussion
Make a pairs game
Farm visit
Pretend to be a farmer
Days of the week hopscotch
Mix-up breakfast
Mix-up food guess
Make a cake that doesn't look like a cake
Indoor
The first activity could be to sing the days of the week song and then talk about what different activities family members do on different days. You could then make a train where each wagon is a day of the week. You could make some cargo to go on the train wagon, for example an animal or some coal and then your child/children can put this on the right wagon in the morning on the right day. If they are only just learning the days of the week then you could put the train in the area where your child/children spend most of their day or if they are already a bit familiar then it could go in their bedroom and it could be the first morning activity that they do. For older children you could get them a calendar and then they can fill in all the important things that they do throughout the year. If your child has their own phone then you could teach them to use the calendar on that. Organisation is a brilliant skill to learn. Another fun activity could be to draw or paint some of the animals from the story and then they could write the sound they made to trick the farmer. You could do this as a speech bubble like there is on the cover of the book and then stick it on the drawing/painting. You could have a discussion about what they think the animals do on Topsy-Turvy Tuesday and they could make a drawing/painting of what they think happens. A final activity could be to make a pairs game. Draw the animals and the sounds they make on a piece of card and then when you play the game match up either the correct ones or the sounds that the animals make in the book (although this could get a bit confusing it could be a nice twist to the game).
Outdoor
A really fun activity could be to go and visit a farm. Lots of farms now open for visitors and you can often feed and pet some of the animals. This is one of my son's favourite things to do. If you don't want to visit a farm or there isn't one near you or you don't have the money then you could either go for a drive round the countryside and see what animals you can spot or you could visit a pet shop and see if they have any animals in there. Another fun outdoor activity could be to pretend to be a farmer and look after animals. Your child/children could use stuffed toys as their animals or they could use plastic animals or they could just imagine the animals are there. They could pretend to look after them, go horse riding or milk their herd of cows. A final outdoor activity could be to do days of the week hopscotch. If you draw the hopscotch shape on the floor and then either put the days of the week on it or just the letter they begin with and then your child/children could have a game of hopscotch.
Food/Cooking
The first activity could be to do a mix-up breakfast. We used to do this as kids for fun. Instead of having just one cereal for breakfast we would mix two or three different ones in our bowl. So for example, you could have shreddies, cornflakes and rice crispies all in one bowl for breakfast (or the cheaper versions of these cereals). It makes breakfast time fun and you don't have as bigger a decision to make of what to have. Another mix-up inspired activity could be to put all different flavoured crisps in different bowls and then your child/children need to guess what flavour they are. If you didn't want to use crisps you could do different fruits and veg. You could blend these so they don't look like the food you are doing or you could blindfold your child/children. A final activity could be to make a cake but make it look like it isn't a cake. You could make it look like anything you want (as long as it doesn't look like a cake) and there are lots of ideas online.
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