The Art Box – Nov. 16

  In the art box last week:  leftover gel paints, watercolors, feathers, glue, scraps of tissue paper, foam, and construction paper, stamps and ink pads, colored pasta, scrapbook pinking scissors, craft sticks, stickers, and glitter glue. :)
This time I left the art box out for M for most of the week.   He was excited to see it again and could hardly believe his good luck when I explained that he could come make something anytime he wanted to.  Seriously, he was very happy about this… I should’ve started this a long time ago!
He did spend a good chunk of time with it when I first put it out, but still came back to it several times during the week.  I replenished his paper supply as needed.
So, here’s what he did:
When he first saw the colored pasta he said, “And are there things buried in it, Mommy?!!”  Apparently the I spy sensory tub needs to come out again soon. :)  After I explained that he could glue the pasta onto paper and make a collage, or think of something else to make with it, he just said, “Can I have some little cars please?”  So I got a couple of cars for him, and this is what he spent the next 10 minutes doing: Not really what I had in mind, but ok.
Soon he moved onto the watercolors:I tried to show him how to get more paint on his brush and not use so much water, but he liked his painting the way it was.
Then he found the glitter glue (again!), and this time he took the tips off and globbed it onto the paper.  :) 
He painted some more with the leftover gel paints from the previous week: These are so pretty, and perfect for putting in his art box.  I’ll have to buy some more, or figure out how to put some of our regular tempera paints in his box without it being an out and out disaster.   Hmmm.
He stamped:

More glitter glue exploring, this time with the tips back on:

There’s not a lot of great art here, mainly because he spent almost all his time, every time, doing this: He was absolutely fascinated with the scrapbook “zig-zag” scissors.   Here’s how much he loved them: And that’s only part of the pile!  I should probably mention here that I tested these scissors on my own fingers before putting them in his art box.  They are pretty dull and he’s very experienced with scissors.  I was around to supervise too, never far away.  We always go over safety rules when scissors are going to be used, and I have never had a problem with him.
I really think he would’ve been happy just cutting paper for hours.  However, we needed to clear the table off and so he quickly made this:

This was all I captured with photos.   There was a very cute sticker collage he made and hung in the window “for the birdies to look at” but it got taken down before I could get a picture, as well as a few other things. 
I have some great ideas for his next art box and I’m excited to see what he does!
Hey, does anyone want to do a little McLinky dance with me on this? :)  It’s turning out to be such a hit with M, and several of you mentioned trying something similar with your little ones… so think about it and if anyone is interested, let me know! 
I’m planning on writing these posts every Monday and they will cover what M did during the previous week.  I’m thinking if others join in we could get a lot of art supplies ideas to provide for our kids, and just have fun admiring all their masterpieces!  Of course they wouldn’t  have to be boxes… if you mix things up for your child and change out their art supplies once in a while, regardless of where they are kept, I’d love to hear about it!
Have a beautiful day! :)

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! :)