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! :)

Books of the Week – November 14, 2009

I want to share two fabulous Thanksgiving books today.
The first is The Thanksgiving Beast Feast by Karen Gray Ruelle.
This is an early reader book,  but I’ve found the simple text of this type of book is perfect for a preschooler too.  It has 3 chapters, but don’t let that scare you – it’s a very quick read. 
Two children (cats actually) are learning about Thanksgiving.  They learn, briefly, the basics about the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving feast.  They see animals that are hunting for food and decide to make a “beast feast” for them so they can have Thanksgiving too.  They make a variety of treats for the squirrels, birds, and chipmunks, and watch as the little animals enjoy their feast. :)  It’s really a cute little book and it has some great ideas for extension activities, like baking cookies and making treats for the animals.  M is really into watching the birds and squirrels lately, and we actually had a chipmunk in our house recently (another story entirely…) so we may do just that!
The only thing that bothered me a tiny bit about this book, was that it was focused on being thankful for our food, and that was given as THE reason for Thanksgiving.  While it’s true that the pilgrims did not have food and were thankful for the bounty they eventually received, I don’t feel that food is the main reason for being thankful.  In our home we try to be thankful for every blessing and thankful *to* God, who is never mentioned in this book.  However, it’s really a sweet book, and I feel comfortable reading it to M because he learns what we believe in many other ways.
The second Thanksgiving Book is Thanksgiving With Me, by Margaret Willey. This book is so moving it brought tears to my eyes the first time I read it.  It is basically the story of a little girl who is asking her mother about the uncles who are coming to visit for Thanksgiving.  It gives an overall warm family feeling… most of us know the anticipation of seeing family whom we haven’t seen in a long while, and how special it is when this happens at holidays.  I love this book; however, if you are looking for an explanation of Thanksgiving, this one doesn’t talk about the pilgrims a single time.  It gives one the feeling of Thanksgiving in a wonderful way though!
For more book reviews, go here.
Have a beautiful day! :)

Bob the Builder Game Cards

M loves Bob the Builder… obsessively. It’s really a great show – very positive about working together. It’s full of encouragement and confidence building and even forgiveness when something goes wrong or a mistake is made.

So, in our house the Bob talk is non-stop lately. I remember someone saying you can use something your child is interested in to help them learn about anything.

Well, I made these for M this week… Name cards for some of the trucks with glass pebbles to match the letters with. I found some flat glass ones at Dollar Tree (um, of course!) and wrote the letters on them with permanent marker. M loves it and gave me a list of names for other trucks that he wants me to make. Hee hee.

I also made these game cards: I printed two sets and we used them for a memory game today. He LOVED them and was so excited. I’m going to use them to teach him how to play “Go Fish” too.

Of course they are printable. :) If you have a Bob the Builder lover just click on the image above and you can download the set. There are 17 cards in all. You’ll need to print 2 sets of course. The names of the trucks are printed on there too because moms can’t always remember important things like that! ;)

I want to make some more activity pack type things with these lovely trucks since he’s responded so well to these two. Any ideas??

Have a beautiful day! :)


**UPDATE** The original version of the game cards had an incorrect name for one of the trucks in it. It's been corrected and the new version is now linked up. 11/13/09

Advent and the Jesse Tree - printable file and ornaments!

 **Please note - this post is from Advent of 2009.  A current  Jesse Tree packet, with schedule, ornaments, and prayers is here.**

A few of our Jesse Tree ornaments and the cards we use to go with them. They are decorated with glitter glue, which isn’t showing up too well in the picture. They’re pretty in real life. :)

We are spending a little bit of time this month Christmas shopping and getting ready for Advent, which begins Nov. 29th… I love having time before Christmas that isn’t hurried and rushed and chaotic… just time for our family to soak in the peacefulness and joy of the season.

One of our little traditions is the Jesse Tree. I use *tradition* in a pretty loose way here, because this is actually only our 2nd year:). But I do hope and plan to make this a tradition for years to come.

The Jesse Tree is a way of telling the story of Jesus’ genealogy and the history of God’s plan of salvation. It goes from creation to the birth of Jesus, hitting the high points like the fall of Adam and Eve, the flood, prophets, and the lineage from Jesse to Jesus. There is an ornament and scripture reading (or Bible story) for each day of Advent.

Because the number of days in Advent can vary a little from year to year (this year there are 26 days) there are a couple of options. You can do the same ornaments and stories every year starting with Dec. 1st and only doing 24 ornaments a year, similar to an advent calendar. Or you can have a couple of *extra* ornaments to slip in here and there, normally on the Sundays of Advent. This is what we will do.

There is no set way of doing a Jesse Tree, if you do a Google search you may find several other ornaments and ideas. It can get a little confusing the first time (or two!).

Some families print ornaments out and let their children decorate them, then hang them on a tree. Many use a bare branch in a garden pot for their Jesse tree. I decided on making a felt tree just for simplicity’s sake so we can do the same thing year after year. I created felt ornaments last year, but when M is older I may print them out, let him decorate the ornaments, and then glue felt to the back of them to hang on the tree. Here’s a picture of the felt tree we’ll use:
I’ve created a file which lists the ornaments and stories for each day. It also has some cards we use that have each day’s scripture reference on them, the special “emphasis point” to talk about, as well as a short prayer to read each evening (suitable for small children). Click on the image to go to the file and see all the elements. The last few pages have printable ornaments to color and decorate.
Last year I checked out a book about the Jesse Tree from the library, but for the life of me I can’t remember the title. I got the ideas for many of our ornaments and prayers from the book, as well as some of the other ideas.

Here’s the specifics of what we’ll do each evening of Advent…

• M will open his special Advent box: Inside the box will be a piece of candy, a sticker, a short length of yarn, the ornament of the day, and the card (for our reference):
• M will eat his piece of candy first (pretty sure of that :) )
• We’ll read the Bible story for the evening from one of our Children’s Bibles or from other religious story books we have. The scripture reference for each day is on each card if you want to read directly from the Bible for older children.
• M will place the ornament on the tree while we talk about the “emphasis point” for the evening (also on the card… things like God’s promises, what makes God sad, etc.).
• M will put the sticker on a tree cutout that we’ll use as an Advent calendar.
• We will read the short prayer written on the card.
• Finally, M will place the piece of yarn in the manger. One piece of yarn per evening to make a soft bed for baby Jesus, while doing this we’ll say something along the lines of “Come Baby Jesus, be born in our hearts”.On Christmas Eve there will be a baby Jesus to place in the manger on top of the “hay”.

Last year he was two and needed quite a bit of guidance, but by the end of Advent he had the routine totally down. Especially the candy part. ;)

If this is something you want to try with your family and you have any questions, please let me know!! Or if you already decorate a Jesse Tree as part of your tradition, I’d love to hear about it!

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box

 (M peering into the art box to see all the *stuff*)

We have a very small house and there just isn’t space enough for M to have his art supplies available to him at any time.  Normally I have something planned each day for him to do – usually some sort of painting or gluing activity.  He does have access to markers, crayons, colored pencils, a glue stick, scissors, and paper, and he does a lot of cutting and drawing, but I just feel there’s a lot more that he could be experimenting with.
Now that he’s three I’ve been thinking about giving him a bit more freedom with art supplies, but I don’t want him digging through my art stash all the time and driving me nuts with the mess.  So I came up with the “art box”.
It’s just a cheap $1.00 dishpan-type tub from Dollar Tree.  I filled it up with some random art supplies (should’ve gotten a good picture of it before he dug through it) – colored paper, newsprint, torn tissue paper, foam stickers, oil pastels, a strip of crayola gel paints, glue, scissors, craft sticks, pipe cleaners, glitter glue, googley eyes… maybe a couple of other things that I’m forgetting.
I put it on the kitchen table and told him, “This is your new art box!  You can make anything you want with any of the things in here.  Come look at all the stuff!”  I pointed out a few things to him and he was definitely interested.  He kept grabbing things and saying, “I want to do this!”, like he thought I must have some sort of project in mind… so I kept telling him, “You have to think of what YOU want to do – you can make anything you want and if you need something that isn’t in the box, let me know and I’ll see if I can get it for you.”
So, he got busy.  First he wanted to make the craft sticks into an airplane.  He showed me where they should be cut and then I helped him glue them together: (Sorry for the huge close-up, not sure what I was thinking.)  It pretty much stayed like this.  I’ll see if he wants to decorate it in a couple of days.  And, can I just say, I was totally impressed that he knew how to make an airplane and knew where I should cut.  Wow.  He sure surprises me sometimes!
Next, he saw the glitter glue and thought he was in heaven.  He grabbed some paper and did a little experimenting: Who doesn’t love glitter glue?!
At this point I was actually able to leave him and get a few things done in another room (yes!), with the understanding that he should not get down until he called for me so I could make sure he didn’t need to be cleaned up.  Sometimes it’s easier to let him create freely if I’m not actually there to watch the process. ;)
He also apparently saw the glue bottle, because when I came back he had made this: Not sure what it is, but that’s an awful lot of glue for a couple of googley eyes. :) 
He asked for some beads to put on the pipe cleaners, so I found our pony bead stash and he strung some on.  He wanted to make shapes, so when he was done he told me the shape and I helped him form it: Later he hung them on the window tie-back. :)  For some reason this is his favorite place to hang things.  
He made a sticker collage with the foam stickers:
And colored a bit with the oil pastels:
He painted with his roll-on painters over some stencils (he asked me for the roll-on painters and the tape to hold the stencil down):
Then he wanted to open the gel paints.  I gave him some paintbrushes that are quite a bit smaller than what he is used to, we pulled a piece of cardstock out of the art box, and he made this:I was stunned when I came back to see this – I think it’s absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite paintings ever.  (I love it so much I turned it into a button for my blog over there on the left!) 
He spent 2 hours with his art box and I was able to get a lot done, even with checking on him and supplying him with the extras he asked for.
He surprised me over and over again with his creative thinking and I was so proud of him.  The art box will come out on a weekly basis, if not a daily one.  I just have to keep it well stocked.  There is such a variety of things to put in it I don’t think I’ll have trouble with that.  I’m excited to see what else he comes up with, and just had to share this with all of you!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Quick Blogging Matters

I’m struggling with being behind in so many things, not having any “me” time this week, and feeling a little burned out.  Sigh.  I haven’t been commenting on posts because I haven’t had time or the energy, but I hope to get to them soon!  And, I received a really awful (obscene) comment on one post that was obviously spam… so just to let you all know, comments will be moderated from now on.  AND, note to self: if you wonder why no one is commenting you should check and see if there are any comments to moderate and publish because you might have 17 waiting for you!  I just realized this morning that this was the case, so sorry if you left a comment and it just wasn’t showing up!!  My mommy-brain needs a jump-start some days!

I hope you all have a  beautiful weekend! :)

Books of the Week – November 7, 2009

We read The Poky Little Puppy, by Janette Sebring Lowrey during our “P” week, and I completely forgot to mention it in any of my posts that week. This is a wonderful book, and I just have to share it with all of you! 5 little puppies go out to explore the “wide, wide world”, full of curiosity and a little bit of naughtiness. ;) This book is good on so many levels… it talks about senses – smelling, hearing, seeing; there is some counting and adding – 4 of the puppies race up a hillside and count themselves then realize one of them is not there (the poky one of course!); there is a lesson about obedience; there’s even talk about caterpillars and grasshoppers and snakes. There are so many great ideas packed into one little book, the wheels in my brain are really spinning thinking of all the great things we could do with this… a lapbook would be awesome!
We’ve also been reading some books about animals in autumn time. Three of our favorites are Owl Babies, by Martin Waddell
Beaver Pond / Moose Pond, by Jim Arnosky
and Raccoons and Ripe Corn, by Jim ArnoskyAll three of these are great, and do a fabulous job of giving a lot of good information about each animal in story-form.
Check out other book reviews here.
Have a beautiful day! :)

The Relationship between Love and Learning

Something about the idea of M sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day for 12 years of his life in order to *learn* has not been sitting well with me. It’s one of many reasons I’m drawn toward all you homeschooling moms. I seriously wonder how it was ever decided that children should learn this way, especially boys.

My boy isn’t a sit still kind of guy. :) And I’m not sure helping him learn to be that kind of guy is what I really want for him.

I’ve been reading The Minds of Boys: Saving our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life, by Michael Gurian. So far it’s fascinating. The book, as a whole, talks about how boys learn and what needs to change in current teaching practices to help boys succeed in school. In chapter 3 he talks about helping boys learn before they begin school, and what we as parents can do to prepare them for learning.

Interestingly, the first thing he touches on is love and attachment. Apparently affection, *good touching*, and love affect the brain’s development, especially the areas of the brain that involve learning.

“Children with secure attachments are more likely to make learning gains for a biological reason : the organic mechanisms in the brain by which the brain learns require secure attachment in order to grow fully.” (p. 71)

Attachment is defined as the “ongoing process of affectionate caregiving that nurtures the [parent-child] bond throughout a lifetime.”

I’m finding so much good information in this book, and I want to share some of it with you – especially those of you with sons! And I want to record some info here for myself too, since this is a library book and I know I’m going to want to remember a lot of what I’m reading!

Gurian lists 10 ways to promote attachment between ourselves and our sons. These are geared specifically towards boys because, believe it or not, boys and girls are different (seriously!). And these ways work with the average boy brain in mind…

(Number 8 especially stood out to me.)

1. Bursts of Attention – 5 long bursts, several minutes, of undivided attention every day (along with smaller bursts too).

2. Lots of affirmation – notice accomplishments and efforts, give praise and hugs

3. Verbal Mirroring – use words to describe what your son is doing; listen carefully to your toddler, then repeat back to him what he says - “You’re right, that is a big car".

4. Physical Play – playtime is organic learning time for body and brain (this is something I definitely need to work on – my husband is so much better with M in this area).

5. Leadership – let your boy take the lead in activities often, imitate him, play follow the leader and take turns being the leader.

6. Enthusiasm – the feeling of joy is often directed through the temporal lobe of the brain, development of it helps with enthusiasm later for learning. Find things to do together that inspire your son’s enthusiasm and joy.

7. Predictability – Provide consistent, predictable structure and clear limits. This promotes secure attachment.

8. Self-management – Gurian says here, “Implement behavior management strategies that are based on your son’s developmental stage rather than a later or earlier stage. Expecting your son at three to ‘use his words’ when he’s angry will, almost every time, be developmentally inappropriate. He may just need to throw a tantrum (in a safe place), hitting the floor with his fists until he releases his energy.”

9. Choice Making – Do as little for him as you can, making sure he does as much for himself as he can; help him make acceptable choices. Making the right choices builds the frontal lobe in the brain.

10. Appropriate Discipline – no frightening him with yelling (at a young age… at an older age it might be called for, occasionally), or any other inappropriate discipline.

There’s so much in this book that is really speaking to me and helping me to understand M, I’m sure I’ll be posting some more tidbits in the days to come.

Have a beautiful day! :)

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! :)