ABC Book – Letter H

It has taken me more time than I planned to get back to our ABC Book, but I have finally finished the pages for H. I haven’t shown it to M yet, I’m planning on doing it with him during our normal Tot School time this week. So you are getting a sneak peek!
The inside:
M has really been asking for help drawing letters lately, so I’m going to start including some sort of tracing activity for each letter from now on. For H – our letter template, with dashed lines, and laminated so he can use his window markers to trace the letters, then wipe them off and trace them again!
Next, a Tic Tac Toe game using Hammers and Hard Hats:
Two songs about the letter H (sorry only one song is pictured, but both are included in the printable file):

An envelope full of things that begin with H:
Heart pattern strips to match:
And, on the back, a shapes House to color, glue, and build:
I decided to use velcro dots instead of glue for the shapes house, so M can put it together as many times as he wants. I also use velcro dots to keep all the envelopes in the file closed.
Click here for the printable file of all the activities – Letter H.

You can print as many pages as you want and of course use them however you want. You do not have to make an ABC book. :) If you just want the tic tac toe game and the shapes house (or whatever), print only those pages. You could make them into activity bags.
If you use any of them, let me know – I’d love to see what you’ve done!


The instructions for putting the activities together are written on pages of the file, as well as information about where the graphics were found, which sites I used for the letter templates or songs, etc.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Sept. 6, 2009

M is 36 months old.

Tot School is just becoming more and more fun (for both of us) as we go along. This week M kept saying “That was fun!”, “I’m having fun!”, and various similar exclamations at random times. I hope he meant it and wasn’t just trying to talk himself into it!

In winter we were in the routine of doing something with the sensory tub almost every day. I’d let him pick lentils, rice, noodles, or whatever each day and he’d basically play with his little cars or little people in it while I had a little Mama-quiet-time in the mornings. You know, time to pray, read, actually put two thoughts together in a row, or simply sit and stare at the wall. :)

For some reason I never tried hiding things in the tub for him. This post from Jolanthe made me change my mind. So I grabbed his letters from his See and Spell and hid them in some rice. There wasn’t enough rice, so I mixed the lentils and pasta in too. Who says the sensory tub should only have one sensory experience in it at a time?

This is how he started – looking for the letters:
But it quickly turned into this:
I guess old habits die hard. We did get a lot of rice and lentils and noodles on the floor, but it was vacuuming day anyway, so I wasn’t too worried. Plus, it’s always fun to give him the dustbuster and make him vacuum with it. The dustbuster could keep this kid occupied all day if the battery didn’t run out. :)
I made up some new activity bags over the weekend; I was really excited about them. First, sandpaper and yarn (I’ve seen this on a lot of blogs, but first read about it in The Toddler’s Busy Book, by Trish Kufner).
It was not a big hit at all; apparently it was very boring:
So, we did a little scissor practice. I’m still trying to figure out where I first found these pages to print. I need to print out some that are a little more difficult, because M did these perfectly this time! He just loves cutting!
Then we did this little book from the Mailbox (June issue, I believe). It is a book about a seed that gets planted, then sprouts, grows a stem, gets leaves, and finally flowers into a sunflower. On each page M had to pick the correct picture to glue on, depending on the stage of the plant. He did fine with this, but wasn’t really “into” it, and didn’t want to color it.
Next we played checkers. Rather, we tried to play checkers. I know, I know, this is way too advanced for him and I was way too impatient to keep explaining it to him. BUT he has been asking for a checkers game since he saw a picture of one in a magazine.
This is how far we got before we both gave up:
Another activity bag I made up for him was these foam shapes. I cut slits in them and you can fit them together to create… well a bunch of shapes that fit together. :)
He loved this activity, although it didn’t really turn out like I hoped it would. I think the slits should’ve been shorter.
Another activity bag I made him was this “Silly Critter” game from the most recent issue of our High-Five magazine. I put magnets on the back and we used a pan to match up heads, bodies, and legs to make “silly critters”. We both liked this one!

We used our animal flashcards from Target for a matching game with M’s little zoo animals:

He did his name puzzles with milk jug lids (always a favorite!):
This is our newest addition to the flannel board – 10 in the Bed (found here):
He LOVED it and did it several times that evening with Daddy. Again, I have to get a post done about how great the flannel board is and all the things we do with it. Soon, I hope!
We read this GREAT book – Clap Your Hands, by Lorinda Cauley . It has activities on every page that the child (and the mama) can act out. It is a huge hit!
Then, in keeping with the actions theme, we did these movement cards* from Sparklebox. I put them in our pocket chart and M turned each one over, then we did whatever it said. They are fantastic – there are ones for balance that you do standing in one place; some you do while “traveling”, like skipping; and some you do on the floor, like rolling like a pencil or somersaulting. (There were others, but they were a little advanced; I only printed the ones I knew would be fun for M.) I was hot by the time we finished and even a little bit sweaty I am embarrassed to say, hee hee. These will definitely give you your exercise for the day!
Here’s M at the end of his somersault (I did NOT do a somersault), I love the goofy expression on his face!
For more great Tot School ideas, go here.
Have a beautiful day! :)
*I got the idea to do movement cards like this in the pocket chart from somebody’s blog and I wish I could remember who!! If it was you, please let me know and I’ll add your link. I decided to use the movement cards from Sparklebox, but there were some others available too, and they were linked on the other blog, so I’d like to share them!!

Tot School

M is 36 months old

Despite having a crazy-busy week, we were able to slow down enough for an occasional tot school activity. Here’s a little of what we did…

It’s been raining a lot here lately, and M loves to open the windows and feel the rain and talk about it. He actually went out to play in the rain twice, but his silly mama forgot to take any pictures.

He watched Daddy plug a hole in one of the tires of our truck, then pump more air into it. This was fascinating for M.

We found some moon sand at the Dollar Tree. I was really excited about this because I’ve been wanting to get some for M, but it just seemed so expensive for… sand. At the dollar store it’s called Magic Sand. :)

I made a new flannel board set – have you ever heard Raffi’s song about the Little White Duck? That’s what this is based on. I found the pattern here. I’m telling you, Matthew LOVES his flannel board. He is so into it I’m going to have to do a separate post about it.

I printed out this hot air balloon and gave M some m&ms to put on it. He loved this of course. He is such an m&m kid. I got the idea from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

I also printed these “magnet pages” and M practiced one-to-one correspondence by putting glass pebbles on them. I did not think this was the most original idea ever, it was just something we did on the spur of the moment. However, it was one of M’s favorite activities that day.

We used our pocket chart to do some ABC matching:

More matching with this heart matching game, from Childcareland.com:

I used these dog pictures for another game. I put 4 different dogs on the tray (these are magnets, and we used a cookie sheet to stick them on), and we talked about them. Then he would close his eyes and I would take one away. When he opened his eyes he would try to remember which one was missing. I think this was a good idea, but it was a little too difficult for M. I’m going to try the same thing using other items some time soon.

M practiced his fine motor skills with some lacing cards:

And practiced his scissor skills too. Does anyone recognize this scissor practice printable? I can’t recall where I found them. I added the stickers to help guide him.

My favorite activity this week (and M liked it too, but I don’t think it was his *favorite*) was this:

I used foam stickers to make these, and M had to recreate the shape combinations that I had stuck to the bottom portion of the grids. I got the idea here; click to see the full tutorial. He did great with this, and I was so proud! It is not as easy at it looks because he had to determine which shape was on the bottom and then place the second shape on top of it.

I hope you all had a great week of tot school! Go here to get more ideas from other tot schooling moms!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School

M is 35 months old.

I felt really behind all week, nothing was planned (and I am nothing if not a Planner), and both M and I were a little cranky.  Sigh.  Motherhood isn’t always pretty I guess.  Anyway, we did only a few things…

We played with M’s foam bath numbers and he matched the number to the correct pile of erasers that I set up:

He did this pretty well, with only a little guidance from me.  We switched it and he put the number of erasers down next to the appropriate foam number (does that make sense??)

One day he wanted to “do school” when I wasn’t able to, so he got out the little erasers, a pair of tongs, and a bowl from the kitchen and did this all on his own :

 

I found a copy of the Moveable Alphabet here, printed it out and put it in our pocket chart (from Target dollar spot – you knew I’d mention it at least once, didn’t you?!).  Then M matched up his letters from his See and Spell.  I thought he would have fun putting things in the pocket chart, but he really was not all that interested.  I do think I’ll try it again though, it could’ve just been that we had a bad attitude all week. ;)

M matched paper clips to colored pieces of cardstock.  He did great with getting them on this time, something he’s really had a hard time with in the past:

 

He did some scissor practice using the pages I printed from here:

We did a dolphin puzzle, which was a real struggle… I know he can do this puzzle, he just lost interest halfway through.  I made him finish it, but I’m really not sure why.  Normally if he isn’t having fun we just skip something. 

We made a blue, yellow, blue, yellow pattern with his blocks.  I did this with him and kept asking “what comes next?” and he kind of got it eventually, I think.

We finished up with an activity that’s always fun and puts both of us in a good mood.  We got out his songbook and we played his instruments and sang several songs.  You can’t see his box of instruments in this picture; we have a harmonica, a triangle, a shaker bottle (pictured), jingle bells, tambourine, and the bowl and wooden spoon (pictured) that he uses like a drum. 

I’m hoping to make next week a little more fun and interesting!  I hope you all had wonderful weeks with your tots!!

Have a beautiful day! :)