Tot School – Nov. 1, 2009

{M is 38 months old}

I am going to start with some of our activity shelves from this week: 

M loves doing anything with a dry-erase marker and/or a clipboard.  Who knew it would be so easy to get him interested in something?

I found a rhyming match page here.  M drew a line from the items on the left to the rhyming match on the right:Then we used the same card to match beginning sounds.  We talked about the distinction between words that have the same sound at the beginning and words that rhyme.  These are not easy concepts for a 3 year old to understand, and I think I probably should’ve used this page for just one or the other concept, not both.

He did another visual discrimination card where he first circled the tallest item in each row, then circled the shortest item in each row.  These were also found here.

He also did some same / different cards with sports balls and fruit: These were pretty easy for M – he simply circled the “different” object in each group.  He loves doing things like this and I like to include something I know will be easy for him.  A little ego-boost never hurt anyone. ;)  These were also found here.  Also, just a note… I found these mini dry-erase markers at Target; they are a bit shorter than a normal-size crayon and I’ve noticed they really encourage him to use a proper tripod grasp when drawing with them.  We’ll be using these more from now on.

I grabbed the very last “Make Your Own Monster” kit at the Target Dollar Spot, and put it on a shelf for M.  He was not as interested in this as I expected him to be.  He was acting very silly about it, and once he discovered the glitter glue, well, that was it.  All he wanted to do was put glitter glue everywhere. :)He made two monsters (we call them “silly creatures” because monsters are a bit much for him lately): 

Our theme for the week was pumpkins, and our letter was P.   M created the P pages for his ABC book:You can read more about it in this post.

I put 4 cardstock pumpkins in an activity box for him along with a glue stick and some shapes cut from yellow construction paper.  I printed the shapes from Making Learning Fun.  M decided to work on this project without me, and without asking for any directions (it was supposed to be for creating jack-o-lanterns).  I found him like this: Just haphazardly gluing shapes to the pumpkins. :)  So, we talked about the shapes, and we talked about the different sizes of the pumpkins – tall, thin, short, wide, small and large.  I showed him how to use the shapes to make a jack-o-lantern, but he decided to do his own thing.  That’s ok, I’m really trying to make this more fun for him than anything else.  And he learned more this way than he probably would’ve if he’d done it the *planned* way.  Here’s how they turned out:

He did a pumpkin shadow match activity:The inspiration for this idea came from this post at Izzie, Mac & Me.  He really enjoyed this one – it was just challenging enough, but still easy enough for him to do with no help.

We read a fun poem with pictures: I found the poem online and just copied it into a Word document with some pumpkin pictures I created from an online coloring page.  (I know this poem was on someone’s blog; unfortunately I just copied it right then and forgot to save the blog url to my handy dandy idea spreadsheet.  If you had this on your blog, let me know so I can link to it!)

We also did the always fun “Five Little Pumpkins” poem with the flannel board.

We baked yum, yum, yummy pumpkin muffins: They were heavenly.  I wish you could all have one!

More P activities….

M practiced Pouring to a line:

And we played the Penny Drop Game: This was definitely the “hit” of the week.  I posted more about this game here!

We read The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll. and looked through some pumpkin life cycle cards from Montessori for Everyone. (Sorry no pics of ours!)  We put them in order and went through them a couple of times.

We learned some new pumpkin and halloween poems, but most of them were flops, ha.  The one M did like was “Pumpkin, Pumpkin” from childfun.com:

Pumpkin, Pumpkin
Sitting on a wall. (child sits)
Pumpkin, Pumpkin
Tip and fall. (child tips over)
Pumpkin, Pumpkin
Rolling down the street. (child rolls around on floor)
Pumpkin, Pumpkin
Trick or Treat!!!

We also did a couple of pumpkin and Halloween crafts…
M made a pumpkin mosaic:

And we made a tea light holder together, using red and yellow tissue paper:

 

That’s it for us! 

For more Tot School posts go here.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Penny Drop Game – motor skills and just for fun :)

This was one of M’s shelf activities this week since we were talking about the letter P.

I found an old egg carton and grabbed 18 pennies, one for each little section.  We took turns standing straight up over the egg carton and, with our arms bent at our waists, dropped one penny into the carton at a time.  The goal was to get one penny and only one penny in each section.  It is easy at first, but once you are close to the end of the pennies and there aren’t many open sections left it gets a bit more difficult.

You can see M does not have the proper stance in this picture. :)  That’s ok, I let him cheat once in a while. ;)

He had so much fun with this super-simple game and played it several times each day, even getting Daddy in on the action a couple of times.  Sometimes he (M, not Daddy!) even played it by himself.

In a week or two I’ll bring it back out and make it more challenging by putting “X”s and “O”s  in the sections.  Then each player will have to try to hit only his sections. 

Have a fun and beautiful day! :)

Raccoon Shapes Craft – printable :)

So, tonight I had two hours of uninterrupted internet time. I was going to write 3 posts for later this week, comment on all your lovely posts out there, and maybe even play some sudoku.:)


What I ended up doing instead was creating this little guy: Isn’t he cute?

Next week our theme is autumn animals – think owls, squirrels, bats… and raccoons. I found some great raccoon books at the library today, and wanted to make a fun workbox activity for M that went along with them. We haven’t done much with shapes lately, so I came up with this. He’s entirely made of shapes. Well, except for the googley eyes we’ll be putting on him and the whiskers (probably black yarn since that’s what I have on hand).

I looked all over internet-land and couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, so I *had* to make one from scratch (oh, darn!). DLTK has a cute one that is entirely made of hearts, but M, being very manly, is not into hearts so much. ;)

If you are interested in making one, or if you ever do a raccoon theme, you can print out the template and instructions from here. I’ll probably cut the shapes out and then use them for a template on black paper. I’ll let M color the shapes on the second page gray. If you have a kid who is good with scissors, they could do a lot of the cutting too.

Enjoy!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – Oct. 25, 2009

M is 37 months old

We continued with a few apple-themed activities this week that we weren’t able to get to last week…

First Two Little Apples in an Apple Tree poem and mini-flannel board: M has always loved this poem! :)

We read 10 Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss (such a great book!!), and did a cute flannel board activity putting apples on a picture of M! They are numbered 1 to 10 and size sequenced too. I have seen this in a few blogs lately, but I can’t honestly say where I saw it first. It was before I started keeping better track of that sort of thing!

We also read The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree, by Gail Gibbons. With this book we used these apple life-cycle cards from Montessori for Everyone. I made them into a little flip book so there would be no end or beginning to the cycle as we went through them a few times.

We also did a fun activity matching apple patterns on a boy’s head. The cards and patterns are from Making Learning Fun. We made them into magnets and did them on a small pan. I saw this at Izzie, Mac & Me.

Notice that green visor? It was in our “pay it forward” gift package from whisperingwhispers at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn. I put it in one of M’s activity containers this week and he had a lot of fun putting race car stickers on it. He wore it for a long time afterwards too! :)

He did his first dot-to-dot page: an apple! I think he did pretty well! It’s in a page protector and he used a dry-erase marker and a piece of felt for an eraser.

We did an A activity for his new ABC book too! Check it out in this post.

M also used his dry-erase marker on a zoo page from a workbook and tried drawing straight lines.

He got in some more fine-motor-skill practice putting this button board together:

And the big hit of the week was this: I made some 3”x3” cards from construction paper, used a black marker to write a letter on each one, and put it in a box with some toothpicks. M picked a letter and a toothpick and, working on the carpet, poked holes along the letter. This was a lot of fun for him and was good for letter identification, letter formation, and fine motor skills (again!). We held them up to the window and saw the light shine through the little holes. I got this great idea from prekinders – that site is full of good ideas! And so many of them are super simple like this!

We learned a fun new song (tune of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”) from preschooleducation.com:

Once a little appleseed

was planted in the ground.

Down came the raindrops

falling all around.

Out came the bright sun

as bright as bright could be

and the little appleseed

grew up to be an apple tree!

We added motions to it and M wanted to sing it several times. Preschooleducation.com is a great place to find poems and songs!

That’s it for us this week! Next week we will be having some pumpkin fun!! :)

Check here for more tot school posts.

Have a beautiful week! :)

Button Board

I just made this: Isn’t it fun?!  This will be a shelf activity for M this week, but I like how it turned out so much that I’m sharing it early.  I think it will also make a great car trip activity!

I first saw the idea for a button board at Chasing Cheerios (I can’t find the exact link), and have been meaning to make one ever since.  I had a lot of ideas to make it more boyish (hers was flowers) and thought of wheels for cars and trucks.  However, I finally decided to make it easy on myself and just made shapes. 

It will be great for learning this practical life skill and will give those fine motor skills a good workout!

It took me about an hour total to put it together.  Should’ve taken pictures, but I didn’t…. anyway, here’s what I did:

• Cut a piece of corrugated cardboard to desired size and shape.
• Choose fabric from stash to cover board.
• Decide where you want to put buttons, and mark spots with an “X”.
• Sew buttons on.  This is the not-so-fun part, especially if you choose to have 15 buttons.
• Put thin layer of glue over the cardboard and smooth fabric with buttons out on top, centered with extra to overlap onto the back.  I used decoupage glue, you could use regular white glue thinned with water, or spray adhesive.
• flip the board over and wrap edges around to the back.  Secure with duct tape or more glue, or both.
• Cut several shapes of all colors and sizes from felt.
• Cut button hole slits in each shape in the center. Felt is so great for projects like this because there is no sewing involved!
• Button your shapes onto your board! 

You could make this with more room between the buttons, and then outline the shapes on the fabric around the buttons.  Your child could then match the felt shapes to the shape outlines. 

I like it this way, even though it is a little busy looking.  M can rearrange the shapes however he wants, and come up with a new design each time.  It’s great for a shape and color review tool too!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – October 18, 2009

M is 37 months old

Well, this week M was recovering from having a horrible cold (I guess that’s all it was, but it was a bad one) and I was trying to not get sick, and hard at work keeping a migraine at bay for the first half of the week.  We are both feeling better now!  Whew!  But, unfortunately not many pictures were taken.  M did a lot of school on his own, with me lying on the couch, opening one eye now and then to make sure he was ok. :)  I’ve taken pictures of the shelf activities he did, but not many of them were taken when M was actually doing them.  Anyway…. here we go…

First, some apple activities… (excuse M’s half-dressed state, dressing was not a priority this week, sigh).  He sorted small and large apples into baskets with tongs:He loves any activity that includes tongs! 

An apple counting book that I downloaded from Childcareland : He did this on his own one day when I was napping (Daddy was home) – I couldn’t believe it.  He sat and put apples on all the pages from 1 to 10.  I will leave it out for next week so we can do it together and actually count. :)

Same / Different cards from prekinders with apples:I laminated these and put them in a container with a dry erase marker.  M must’ve done these 5 times this week and I didn’t get a single picture.  Some of these were difficult, but he did great!

Some fall-themed lacing cards:

 

An apple file folder game where he had to match up the combination of apples on the front of the pockets, from homeschoolshare:This is a great file folder game – M loved putting the apples in the pockets.

Pockets are apparently a big hit, because he loves this color-sorting file folder game too:I printed this from Homeschool Creations, and made pockets in a file folder with the color name cards.  There are several pictures of objects in various colors that are sorted into the pockets.  I made this a long time ago and M has definitely gotten his use out of it!

We did a fun counting activity with this printout.  I have discovered that adding a clipboard to any activity makes it a ton of fun. ;)  Here’s M taking off with the clipboard in hand to go count the windows in the kitchen:(Still in his jammies at noon, yes he is.)  We had a lot of fun walking around counting items in our home.  M colored over the pictures, then I helped him write the numbers in.  Here he is very seriously making a notation with his little pink crayon, hee hee:

 

I gathered up M’s foam uppercase letters, and some wooden lowercase letters, as well as some clipart from our ABC lapbooks.  M matched the lower and upper case letters, then we sorted the images by beginning sound.  M did great with this; I have to say I was pretty proud of him!  It helped that we only had 3 letters and sounds to work with.  I think he really enjoyed this and I plan to do it in the future as we add more letters to our lapbook collection.

 

M has been making up a lot of rhymes lately, he is really into it.  So we did this rhyming card activity: These can be printed from here.  There are several to choose from and I will be making more of these.  This was  a fun activity for M and he did very well.  I wrote the words on the back (mainly for my reference so I could give M the right words – bug, not beetle for example) and put red stars on one set and blue on the other so he can sort them out first.  The red group rhymes with cards from the blue group.

 

M also helped gather in the last of our carrot crop (goodness, there were a lot): And yes, he needed to be bundled up like that – it’s been snowing on and off all week, and in the 20’s. 

We also saw more of these guys: Gobble Gobble!

Hope you all had a fabulous week and are warmer than we are here!  Go here to see more Tot School posts!

Have a beautiful week! :)