Tot School-Letters X&Y

M&M is 44 months old

Continuing on with our letter of the week activities, we did two this week. X and Y. I decided to combine these because I didn't have a lot of activities for either one. For the letter Y we did an all out search of the house for everything that was yellow. M&M was totally into this and wanted to get every single little thing that had even a speck of yellow on it. I've seen this color hunt on several blogs.
Then we did yarn art. This activity came from Childcareland. M&M just dipped pieces of yarn into glue on a paper plate then stuck it any which way on the paper. I think it turned out kinda cool looking. 

 

  

For the letter X we did a few worksheets that I printed out. One was about words that ended in X instead of beginning.  M&M traced the words. I left for a second while she was doing this and when I came back she had started writing the words again on her own. This one came from Kidzone.We also did this one and this one from the same website. From DLTK M&M colored this X-ray picture. The interesting thing about this one was when she started coloring the vertebrae she did it in a pattern. She continued doing this when she colored in between the ribs. She did this all on her own as well. She never ceases to amaze me with all that she is learning.

  

  M&M also colored this xylophone picture from ABCTeach.

 

Bubba made up his own fun with spilling the cotton balls out of the bag and pulling them apart. Apparently he needed some sensory work to do.  :) 

 That's it! We are really keeping things simple lately. I've noticed that when I try to do a lot and it stresses me out that we really don't have a lot of fun and that is the whole idea. I'm trying to work up a stash of things for M&M to do because she is asking every day now when she can do "mommy's activities." I just print off a bunch of things for her to color or trace or connect the dots that I can easily pull out when she wants something to do.

Tot School

M&M is currently 44 months old

We didn't do a letter this week, but just some fun Valentine's activities. Our main project was making recycled crayon hearts. These are all over the mommy blogosphere so they aren't a new idea by any means, but they are definitely new to us! I've actually been wanting to do recycled crayons since I first saw them last spring. Yeah, it takes me that long to do stuff sometimes. M&M helped me arrange the crayons in the silicone heart pan that I got in the Target $1 spot. I put them in the oven at 250 degrees for about 8-10 minutes. Then stuck them in the freezer for a little bit. I made these for M&M to give away so I also cut out some hearts out of sandpaper to give with it to do rubbings with. 

 

  

We also made heart flowers out of construction paper. This idea came from Lucky Me. We stuck green pipe cleaners through three hearts, put either a bead or a button through and then folded it over so it wouldn't come off. For the vase M&M put stickers on a piece of paper that I cut to the size of a toilet paper roll then we glued it onto the roll. It is glued onto a square piece of paper to keep the little rocks in the bottom that we put in to keep it from falling over. It turned out really cute.

  

We practiced counting and fine motor skills with this activity from Tired, Need Sleep. M&M clipped a clothespin onto the right number of hearts on the card.  I found two other Valentine counting cards at Confessions of a Homeschooler and Little Did I Know.

  

I've been waiting to get these little tin mailboxes from the Target $1 spot ever since I saw someone post about them last year at about this time. I got four of them to use for an activity. (The decorated one was also used for M&M to take to preschool to exchange Valentine's this week.) I taped a little piece of paper with a shape onto the front of each of them. Then I made 4-5 cards with the same shape on them to put in a bag for her. First I had M&M find a "home" for each shape. She put each in a different room of the house. Then she would take a card out of her bag, see what shape it was and deliver it to the right box. We have a lot of tile in our house so she rode her bike around to each room. She had a lot of fun with this. She was done after delivering about half of the "letters". I probably put too many in her bag to deliver with the hopes of keeping her busy for a longer period of time.  This is a really adaptable activity that can be used for the alphabet, colors, sight words, etc. 

 

I caught M&M and Bubba playing the drums (and the step stool) in the hallway. We use a formula can for our drum. It works great! Bubba is really starting to do lots of stuff and it's exciting to see him grow and learn new things. My house is never clean now because he is always into one cabinet or drawer tearing it apart. *Sigh*

 

M&M started a dance class on Saturday and she loves it. She followed instruction really well and could imitate what the teacher did, better than the other kids who have been there longer than her.  

We had quite the phenomenom where we live this past week. It snowed all day on Thursday. This is from a place where it never snows. My husband put a ruler in it Friday morning and it came up to 10 inches! I grew up in a place where it snowed all winter so this was a fun thing for me to be able to share that part of my childhood with my kids. We built a snowman and went sledding on big tupperware bin lids!

We used the bottom part of the bin to tow Bubba around in the snow so he wouldn't just keep falling down in it and getting frozen.

Tot School - Letter H

M&M is 43 months old

I planned doing the letter H this week so that we could do a lot of stuff with hearts for Valentine's Day.

H is for holes. We started out doing some other activities first though. I gave M&M a hole punch so she could make holes in paper. It ended up being to hard for her so I gave her some scrapbooking scissors to cut the paper with. She absolutely loves cutting right now. This idea came from Delightful Learning.

H is for house. I had printed out this piece of paper a long time ago to use for the letter H, but it doesn't have a website address or anything on it so I don't know where it came from. If it looks familiar let me know. Basically M&M went around the house counting the windows, doors, chairs, etc. and then she came back and reported it to me and I added them up for her.

H is for hammer. I found these foam puzzles at the Dollar Tree and loved that they had the lowercase letters. That's what we need to focus on right now because M&M has her uppercase letters down. She used a hammer to pound them in. We've done this before, but the original idea came from 1+1+1=1. (Can't find the exact post.)

 H is for Hearts.
 I also had this Do-A Dot heart sheet printed out from Childcareland.com.

Since M&M loves cutting so much I knew I had to give her some hearts to cut out on her own. This idea came from Chasing Cheerios.

I found these cute Valentine's Day/Heart worksheets at Super Simple Songs.

I finally found one of these platters at the Dollar Tree. I had been looking in the wrong sections. Anyway we used it to do a simple color sorting activity with conversation hearts.

M&M used tongs to transfer the pom poms to the heart-shaped ice cube tray. 

 

I usually try to do some alphabet, number, and sensory activities as well. This week she worked on her Melissa and Doug See and Spell.

 

I found this great idea on The Shafer Family of how to separate the letters so they are easier to find. These are little wooden shelves from the Dollar Tree which these Melissa and Doug uppercase and lowercase letters fit perfectly into. I want to make some cards with names of people and things so she can start spelling those out and learning them.

  

These magnetic foam letters and numbers were in the $1 section in Target and after I popped them out I just couldn't bear the thought of throwing the other part away. (That is what has happened to me since I started blogging and reading other people's blogs. I'm very conscious of what I am about to throw away and think twice about what I could do with it.)  

So...I decided to use them as stencils. M&M hasn't tried them out yet but she loves to use other stencils we have so these will be a great addition.

  

I've been meaning to get this activity out for a while to add to M&M's sensory tub play. I put black beans in this plastic gumball machine and she played with it for half an hour by herself letting them spill out and then scooping them back in. This idea came from All About the Journey. I got this gumball machine at Walmart for $7.50, but then I saw smaller ones which would work at the Dollar Tree.     

  

This is another thing that I have had printed out and laminated for a while, but just found it again recently and decided that M&M is ready for it. These beginning consonant cards came from Homeschool Creations. There are also a ton of other free printables on the left side of the blog. We didn't finish all of them in one sitting, I didn't want to overwhelm M&M, but this is still a challenge for her which is really good because a lot of the things I give her to do are really easy for her, but she stills love to do them. 

Yet another one that I've had ready for a while, but just needed to bring it out for M&M to do. I got these letter building templates from Tired, Need Sleep. I love these because I've always seen the How to Build an A book and really wanted to get it, but I couldn't get myself to buy it yet. This is free if you already have foam sheets!

 

We used Do-A Dots to do these letter recognition pages, A-F, from PreKinders. Like I said, I'm really into anything right now that helps M&M learn the lowercase letters.  I saw somewhere after we had done these to use transparent colored discs to cover up the letters instead so they can be reusable.

  

I tried a water transfer activity using a dropper with M&M a while back, but she couldn't quite do it yet. I brought it out again and she can do it now.

Whew! We had quite a full week this week which is good because we haven't been able to do that for a while. It felt good.

Find more Tot School ideas at 1+1+1=1.

Tot School

M&M is currently 42 months old & Bubba is 13 months old

We finished up our snow/winter theme this week because I didn't get everything done last week that I wanted to do. We've never made homemade playdough before, but I've been wanting to do it for a while. I'm hoping this year to make it once a month to go along with holidays/seasons. We made "snow dough" this month. I got the recipe from Funny Days with Mommy and Maddie. We added glitter as well, but we added a touch of almond extract instead of vanilla to make it smell good. I got this idea and the idea to use cookie cutter letters to make the word snow from Counting Coconuts. M&M had fun using buttons, beans, ribbon, fake jewels, pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks to decorate her snowman. She made a baby and daddy one. 

I planned on doing the letter A this week, but didn't get all of the things done that I wanted to again. After a year of blogging about these activities with M&M I've figured out that it's okay if I don't get everything done. I don't have to do something just to blog about it. Maybe we'll get to it this week, maybe not. But either way that's okay.

Anyway, what we did do was an activity with animals. We went on a stuffed animal safari. This idea came from Mom's Marbles. (Can't find the exact post.) We started out by making these binoculars out of toilet paper tubes and wrapping them in construction paper. While M&M was decorating it with stickers I took some of her stuffed animals and placed them around the house. When I told her that she needed to hide in my room while the animals came out and hid, her eyes got so big and she said, "We're just pretending, right?" M&M LOVED this activity! We took turns "hiding" the animals and then finding them. She got a real, but really inexpensive, digital camera for Christmas and she had to take pictures of every single animal. (The elephant is hiding in my, new to me, sewing machine that I just got. I'm so excited to start to use it!)

 

Another activity that we did involved the alphabet. I saw this on The Activity Mom. I wrote each letter of the alphabet, upper and lowercase, on a paper towel tube. Then M&M would match them by putting the stickers onto the written letter. I just realized that The Activity Mom and I used the same stickers, haha.

 

I was trying to do some activities with Bubba so I gave M&M a jar of 15 bean soup and told her to

sort the beans. I wanted to just give her a small bowl of them, but she insisted on having the whole jar. Well, this didn't last very long. I'll try it again some other time, some other way.

I introduced Bubba to the sensory tub after seeing it on the early one-year-old page on the Productive Parenting website. He really enjoyed sticking his hands into the beans and putting them back and forth between the jar and the plastic container. Once he did this for a fair amount of time. I stopped him when he started throwing them around the room, though. That was enough fun with the beans for one day.Then I gave him a bag of pom poms to take out of the bag and touch....and then throw. He also helped daddy do the dishes by putting the clean dishes daddy just put away in the cupboard back into the the dishwasher. Then he helped close the dishwasher when daddy was done....well almost. (I realize that beans are a choking hazard for one-year-olds, that is why I was next to him every second, watching his every move.)