Tot School – Feb. 14, 2010

M is 41 months old.

Well, M is still feeling camera shy.  For this reason, I took a lot of pics of the activities as they were set up.  I love action shots more, but I’ve realized he really needs my attention to be on him when we are spending this precious time together.  I hope you all don’t mind the boring pictures!!

 

FINE MOTOR SKILLS:

This was a quick, simple activity to put together – I just punched some holes around a heart cut from fun foam and set it out with a lace from some lacing beads.

 

For this activity I set out a jar (filled with glass pebbles to keep it from falling over while M worked with it) and some elastic ponytail holders.  He stretched each one out with his hands, then manipulated it over the top of the jar and slid it down.  He really, really, really enjoyed this and it was definitely a challenge for him.  I got this idea here.

M made these sweet little beaded hearts for the grandmas.  Each one was made with a 3” length of pipecleaner and pony beads.  Once the beads were strung on we formed them into tiny hearts. 

 

This was a great idea found here.  I cut slits in some red and white felt hearts, sewed a button onto a length of ribbon and M made a button snake.  He really enjoyed this once he started it.  Sorry there’s no “after” picture!

 

MATH SKILLS:

 M enjoyed doing his Bob the Builder truck size sorting activity. 

 I turned these little valentines from our most recent  High-Five issue into pom pom counting cards.   M used the tweezers to put the correct number of pom poms on each card.

 

We played a memory game with our shape sorting cards.  This was a little more difficult than a regular game of memory because we weren’t matching pictures, but shapes of items.  M did very well with this and really enjoyed it much more than simply sorting the cards into shape categories.

 

SCIENCE:

We bought some tiny seed starter kits at Target and planted some forget-me-nots and a shamrock plant. :)  M has been checking them every day to see if anything is growing yet.

SENSORY:

 We made a batch of valentine playdough – pretty red with glitter in it and a dash of cinnamon too – yum!  M wanted to make a snowman like we did with our white playdough in December… so that’s what we did!  I called them *Valentine Guys*.  M just called them red snowmen, heh. 

Then he made me the sweetest little playdough valentines (“These are just for you, Mommy!”):

And here was the big hit of the week… a tissue paper sensory bin.We actually used our old baby bathtub for this because our regular bin was being used for something else.   We had fun tearing it up, feeling it, and hearing how crinkly it is.  Then we tossed the pieces in the air and watched them float down.  M thought they float “probably because they aren’t very heavy”.  :) Then we had the best time blowing them up into the air and across the room.  Finally we just took handfuls and threw them at each other.  We both had a LOT of fun with this!  Thank you so much to April, who gave us this idea with her great post.  Visit her blog if you haven’t already, she is full of good ideas and has the sweetest little girl! :)     

CREATIVE PLAY:

Well, there were actually 2 big hits this week and this is part of the second one:Our lovely friend Elise sent us these tumbling goannas in a little package.  They stick to the fridge or window or wall and flip flop their way down, sometimes tangling each other up.  We’ve been having a lot of goanna races lately, they are so much fun!   Thank you, Elise, Savvy, and Blake!!  This was such a treat!  More about what else was in their package in a little while.

We also found out this week that our town has a toy lending library.  What?!?!  This is something I’ve read about on other blogs and I’ve been soooo jealous!  Well, it turns out we have one too and I’ve lived here for 10 years without knowing about it.  Not that I would’ve cared more than 3 years ago, but still.  So of course we went the very day we first heard about it.  M brought home this cool building toy set.  It’s mainly wheels, bolts, nuts, and some yellow connecting pieces.  We’ve made a cart for his pretend grocery shopping and a truck!  It’s really cool and I’ll hate taking it back. 

He also picked out this fun bulldozer floor puzzle.  I’m really looking forward to making the toy library part of our weekly or bi-weekly routine!

MUSIC:

Ok, here’s the other part of what we got in Elise’s package.  Really, she was so generous and she is truly one of the people I’m most thankful for having “met” via blogging… she’s a great mom, full of energy and fun ideas, and just has such a cheerful outlook.  I’m always inspired by her.  I want to move to Australia and be her next door neighbor. :)   Oh wait, would that be weird at all? ;)

She and her sweet children sent M these great Australian animal flashcards and the BEST cd of music.  This is such a good cd; we’ve been listening to it pretty much non-stop since receiving it and, honestly, I’m not tired of it yet.  I’m actually really enjoying it and that says a lot!  It’s fun to dance to and we are just having a great time with it!

 

Speaking of music, here’s what I videotaped one day this week.  Check out M’s bedhead. :)  (But please don’t look at the messy background.)   This cracked me up and I thought you might get a kick out of it too.  I apologize in advance for my obnoxious laugh (sorry!)…  the reason I thought it was so funny is because M normally does not have such a serious frown on his face when he’s singing, and his sweet little voice is not at all like this.  I don’t know what he was thinking, but he was adamant about making a video. :)  Enjoy…

 

For more Tot School posts go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Music and Fingerplays

Do you know about the Little Fingers That Play blog??  Deborah is the author of the blog and she has tons of preschool songs and poems.  They are amazing, even more so because many of them are her original creations!  I’m just crazy about this site and wanted to share it with everyone.  You know I am on this new kick about bringing more music into our home and part of this is learning new songs and rhymes (action rhymes are especially fun, and it would be easy to add actions to many of these).  There are so many great ones to choose from on Deborah’s site, and I can’t wait to show some of them to M.  They have the cutest graphics and little videos to go along with them.  It’s such an awesome resource and I know many of you love to learn new songs with your kids too!  Go check it out!!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Book of the Week – Dec. 26, 2009

 
The hit of the week is, without doubt, GO!, by Daniel Kirk.  We made a quick run to the library on Monday and this was one that M picked out on his own. 
I had my doubts.  My husband had his doubts.  That night at bedtime M picked this to read… and we doubted some more. :)
However, M never doubted it; he knew it was a keeper.  And the next day when I pulled the CD out and we listened to it, I realized just how right he was.  This book is awesome!  Don’t try to read it as poetry, it just doesn’t work.  It’s songs – songs with some really weird lyrics and totally kid-friendly melodies.  The songs have super-catchy tunes, the book has amazingly interesting illustrations, and we are absolutely loving it.  M has listened to it no less than 5 times in the past 2 days – he sits on his bed with his nose in the book and listens to all 23 songs.  This equals 45 minutes of freedom for me, which is not the least of the reasons why I love it. ;)
There’s a song about a boy who wants to be an airplane when he grows up.  There’s a song about rollerblading to school.  There’s even a couple you might already know, but with new fun tunes.  It’s great, great, great – I think everyone I know with kids should go out and buy it.  It’s really that great! :)  Hee hee.
If you don’t buy it, at least see if your library has it.  It’s well worth the time!  And give it a chance, with the music, before you judge it!
Check out more book reviews here!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Music Time – Printable Christmas Song Pages!

I am making an effort to bring more music into our days. Several months ago I made a songbook for M using a simple 3-ring binder:
I found clipart to represent each song, which I put at the top of each page. I printed out about 25 songs to start with and since then I’ve added many more.


M has a small stash of instruments:
Some are homemade… we don’t claim to be very fancy here. :) He has a harmonica, jingle bells, tambourine, a shaker I made for him from a soda bottle with beads and buttons etc., a triangle, and a metal bowl with a wooden spoon that he uses for a drum. You can just imagine the music we make. ;) He loves to sit with the song book in front of him and hand out the instruments. He has become very good at knowing which song goes with which picture.
We sit around and play “music” (I use that word very, very loosely) and sing our songs every once in a while. However, it’s usually put away and we really don’t think of it very often. Of course when the songbook was brand new it was a different story, but now… well, it’s been neglected of late.

Christmas seems like the perfect time to bring it back out and make sure our home is music-filled! I’ve typed up some of our favorite Christmas carols, and will have the song book along with the instruments set out on M’s activity shelves for the rest of Advent and the Christmas season. They may well stay there permanently. :)

Click on the image below to download our Christmas pages and make your own song book!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

For flowers that bloom about our feet,
Father, we thank Thee.
For tender grass so fresh, so sweet,
Father, we thank Thee.
For the song of bird and hum of bee,
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

For blue of stream and blue of sky,
Father, we thank Thee.
For pleasant shade of branches high,
Father, we thank Thee.
For fragrant air and cooling breeze,
For beauty of the blooming trees,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

For this new morning with its light,
Father, we thank Thee.
For rest and shelter of the night,
Father, we thank Thee
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tot School – Nov. 15, 2009

M is 38 months old

We have had an odd couple of weeks.  Two weeks ago I suddenly felt burned out and apparently M was too – we were both kind of blah all week and did almost no tot school.  It was a rough week, so I didn’t bother to post even the few things we did manage to do. 

This past week M has had a pretty bad cold and we were home every. single. day. all. day. long.  On top of cabin fever I also had 3 very short nights in a row because M would start coughing so badly, and I’d get up to try to help, but mostly just held him and comforted him.  It’s sweet, isn’t it, how big boys turn back into cuddly babies in the middle of the night? :)  But 4 hours of sleep a night had me beat.  Thankfully I’ve had some free time this weekend and I’m feeling human again. :)

Not that this is about me… but just to forewarn you that this post may be, I don’t know, a bit nutty. :)

We did our ABC train in the pocket chart: 

We matched fur to animals with this file folder game:

 

Played with this bear dress up puzzle from the Target dollar spot:

 

He did some Bob the Builder truck name puzzles with flat glass marbles (definitely the hit of the week):

 

M worked with his build-a-letter homemade set, and was much more into it this time than he was originally.  It may have helped that I only set out a few letters.

 

We pulled out our counting mats and he counted with some skittles that were left over from his Halloween stash:

 

I found some very inexpensive plastic canvas stars at Walmart and M “sewed” it with a length of yarn and a plastic needle.  He really liked this activity!  It seems fine motor skill activities are always favorites around here. :)

 

I gave him a cardboard tube with numbers written on it randomly and some number stickers and he matched them up.  We did this once before with letters; for some reason he loved doing it with letters, but wasn’t that interested in the number tube.

 

The Target dollar spot also had these enormous blocks.  M is totally into blocks lately and I knew he would love these!

(See the t-shirt on the floor there?  They make awesome soft hankies for sore little noses that won’t stop running!)

 

We have been talking about animals in autumn, mainly raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, owls, and bats.  We checked out several good books from the library, and I found a Your Big Backyard magazine on the sale cart there for 10 cents, from October of 2008.  It was full of great information about animals.  On top of talking about squirrels and owls, it had a section that talked about how some animals have fur and skin that helps them hide.  M was totally interested in that part: It also had a cute mini-book to make that had M decide what animal would be on the next page by looking at a small part of the animal on the page before: It also had mazes, games, great fact pages… I could go on and on.  I have heard of Your Big Backyard, but I had no idea it was such an awesome magazine.  We loved it! 

 

M also did a raccoon craft using shapes: He did a great job with it and had a lot of fun sorting the shapes out first.  Anything with googley eyes and/or glue is sure to be fun. :)

Last year, pre-blog, I made these stick puppets for M: I brought them out again and he had fun learning this cute rhyme:

One little owl when the moon was new,

Along came another owl and then there were two!

Two little owls perched high in a tree,

Along came another owl and then there were three!

Three little owls flew to the barn door,

Along came another owl and then there were four!

Four little owls lined up side by side,

Along came another owl and then there were five!

Five little owls called “Hoo, hoo, hoo”, then they

flapped their wings and away they flew!

I can’t remember where I first found this poem, sorry!  M loves it and we did this several times.

He really liked it so much (he’s very into poems lately, and loves having visuals for them), I made some squirrel stick puppets and we learned another poem.  The clip art for the squirrels was taken from classroomclipart.com, a new site for me.  I love free clipart!

5 Little Squirrels

The first little squirrel said, “I want to play!”

The second little squirrel said, “Let’s find nuts today!”

The third little squirrel said, “Yes, nuts are good!”

The fourth little squirrel said, “They’re my favorite food!”

The fifth little squirrel said, “Let’s climb this tree,

and crack our nuts… one, two three!”  (CLAP 3 TIMES)

 

We played our autumn matching game several times:

 

We also played a fun game that was came in our High Five magazine October issue.  It’s called Gathering Nuts and I turned it into a file folder game (just laminated it onto a file folder).  It’s a basic counting game, and M had a lot of fun with this one.  He and Daddy played it every chance they got.

 

I also pulled out another game I made last year (also pre-blog) with squirrels and acorns.  M matched the acorn numbers to the  squirrels.  I’m sure there are other things we could do with these; I need to think about that some more.  Suggestions?

 

M played a pinecone race game.  I intended to set a timer for this, but forgot, so it wasn’t much of a race really, but M enjoyed it enough that he did it on his own several other times throughout the week.  First I had him carry pinecones in a ladle from one end of the living room to the other and dump them in a basket.  This was much too easy, so we switched to a large spoon:

Lots of fun was had! :) 

And, this is super-duper late, but I have to show you him in his Halloween costume: Complete with winter hat and winter coat on underneath everything.

Is it just me, or is he really cute? ;)  Maybe it’s just that mustache, hee hee. :)

Sorry I was all over the place in this post!  I’m going to try organizing our activities by skills for our tot school posts.  Obviously I’m not starting that today, but I do plan to start doing it soon! :)

For more tot school posts go here!

Have a beautiful week! :)

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! :)