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Tot School ::14::

Feb82009
February 8, 2009 by 5 Comments

~ Kaleb is 26 months ~

Ninety three pictures this week. 93. Apparently I was a little camera happy this week, but I will not be showing you every single one, so you can relax. :) I will however be sharing a little something fun that I pulled together for Kaleb as a Tot Tool, so hang on ’til the end!

Kaleb love the DK books, especially the Touch and Feel: Animal Colors right now. The pages are all sorted by different colors and show animals that are that color. One of the animals on each 2-page spread is tactile, which he loves!

There are very few “big-kid” games that Kaleb can play along with (without much frustration on the older kids part). Laurianna decided that she wanted to play Old McDonald (a game I recently picked up for $0.25 thank.you.very.much). Kaleb loves hearing the different animal sounds and it’s a great way for us to practice our animal names and sounds.

Another new favorite game in our house is Horton Hears a Who! – You to the Rescue! – one I picked up on clearance after Christmas at Target. The kids have so much fun hiding the little “dust specks” and it’s too fun watching them try to pick them up with the Horton nose. Makes for some fun pictures too!

This week it snowed again and while the older kids went outside to play, I distracted Kaleb with some other table activities. He’s still had a pretty rough cough, so inside seemed a little better for him. During that time we had fun putting beads onto pipe cleaners.

Then I found an activity that kept Kaleb happy for an entire hour. A bottle of glue, colored rice, many beads and complete stickiness later, he had a lovely messy masterpiece.

I have lots of little beads left over from who-knows-what, and I was throwing out a Parmesan cheese container this week I thought it might be a great fine motor activity for Kaleb to drop the beads into the container one at a time. He loved it. He would get between 10-15 in and then I would close the lid, he’d have fun shaking it, and then ask me to open it back up. He’d dump out all the beads and start over again. The most fun was spilling the beads all over the floor!

There were other activities this week too, but I’ll leave you with the Tot Tool that I created this week. I made a Color Matching game for Kaleb (you should be able to print it off from the link below). There are 10 colors/sheets with 6 cards on each sheet. Each color sheet has the ‘base’ color and then 5 picture cards of an item that match that color. I printed them off and laminated them to make them a little sturdier for his hands to hold onto (and also they will survive longer in our house).

I’m only giving him 2-3 colors to use at a time and spread the pictures out on the floor. Then I show him the ‘base’ color and he finds me a picture that matches that color. Click on the sample image from the cards below and it will take you directly to the pdf file.

That’s it for this week! I’m working on some other Tools for (my) Tot too, so be sure to check back later!

Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts.

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Filed Under: Notebook and Worksheets, Tot School, Tot Tools 5 Comments

Color Matching Cards

Feb82009
February 8, 2009 by 22 Comments

This past week I pulled together some Color Matching Cards for Kaleb to practice matching his colors, naming/identifying objects. You can print the cards off using by clicking on the thumbnail image below.

There are 10 pages/colors shown in this set with 6 cards on each page. One of the cards shows a ‘base’ color. The base colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black and white.

Print the sheets, cut and then laminate to make them more sturdy.

Have your child find the five cards that match the base color shown. If your child is just learning his colors, use only one or two sets at a time and then add more colors in as he begins to sort colors correctly.

Click on the thumbnail above to download a copy. Please feel free to print the pdf file for your own personal use. They were created for private and non-profit use. You are more than welcome to link back to this post.

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Filed Under: Early Learning Printables, Notebook and Worksheets, Preschool Corner, Preschool Printables, Tot Tools 22 Comments

The Preschool Corner: Letter H

Feb62009
February 6, 2009 by 2 Comments

This is the last “catch-up” post and then I can move on and continue alphabetically. :) We

ABC Book: Handprints

Simple and quick (but messy maybe) – and now we have his handprints to see years later!

Alphabet Activities: Haystacks

Who doesn’t like helping make food? There was no baking involved in this treat, just a lot of mixing, measuring, sneaking noodles, and stirring.

Chocolate Butterscotch Haystacks

You will need:

~ 1/2 package of chocolate chips
~ 1/2 package of butterscotch chips
~ 1 cup of peanuts, chopped
~ 2 cups of chow mein noodles

  1. Melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips over medium low heat (or in 30 second increments in the microwave).
  2. When completely melted, add in chopped peanuts and chow mein noodles.
  3. Place by spoonful onto waxed paper and let cool.

Fun Activities: Hole Punching

This week Zachary had fun playing with my hole punch to make little confetti circles. And dropping little confetti paper everywhere (those little pieces of paper can travel, I tell you!). He punched and punched to his hearts content. Once I’d had about enough of the paper circles, he practiced his fine motor skills: picking up those tiny things and making them into the letter “H”.

Letter Sheet/Collage

H Worksheet

Math: Hundreds and Hours

Zachary does really well counting from 1-29 (and then forgets what comes next) so we practiced counting 100’s this week: 100, 200, 300, 400….etc…

We’ve also been working on telling time to the hour. We have a great little clock that has movable hands that he loves to play with and since he can identify all the numbers, he is doing great telling the time for us! His only struggle is telling time on our house clock – because it has Roman numerals on it!

Movement: Hula Hoop and Hopping

Those lovely hula hoops are just too much fun. And when he was tired of trying to make that thing go around, he had GREAT fun watching me do the Hula Hoop on the Wii Fit (because I am that good, I am!). Technically it was also a little exercise time for me too. *grins*

During the day, we might as well get a little energy out, so the rule was hop, hop, hop! Everywhere and anywhere.

Stories and Books

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
Harry and the Lady Next Door by Gene Zion
Have You Seen My Cat? by Eric Carle
A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle

Verse

“Honor one another above yourselves.” Romans 12:10 – We did this verse on our own this week to talk about how we treat our friends and family…after a little incident at our house. :) Zachary wasn’t the primary person involved, but we’re still working on treating other people better than we treat ourselves – even if we don’t think it’s always fair.

Writing

This week we continued using Peterson’s Handwriting as our paper work. We also used the confetti holes to make our letters.

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Letter Hh, Preschool Corner 2 Comments

Tot School ::13::

Feb12009
February 1, 2009 by 6 Comments

~ Kaleb is 26 months ~

This week turned out to be quite the pajama week for our kiddos. We had some snow. And by snow, I mean more of a glorified “spit”, but enough to cancel our local schools for a few days. And if the local schools don’t need to meet, it really seems like a waste of clean clothes. And so pajamas seemed to stay on most every day (Kaleb even wore them under his snow suit, if the truth needs to be told).

When I asked Kaleb what he wanted to do, he went straight to the toy shelves and pulled out the nesting buckets that I have from Tupperware, climbed up in Daddy’s chair and started stacking, and nesting … and then just being a general goofball. Because bucket = hat in toddler-world.

The next time he went to the shelf, he pulled out the box that has different puzzle boards in it, so I picked a board that has 5 different shapes that you are supposed to stack in order of size. He isn’t up to stacking by size, but he can get the shapes in the right places. And while they weren’t stacked quite right, he did have fun rearranging them to his specifications. *grins*

And once we were done sorting all those shapes, we played a little game together and Kaleb showed me where different body parts were: nose, toes, chin, back, shoulder, hair… he thought this was hysterically funny and just kept laughing and naming different places he would touch the block too.

We had some friends over this week and Kaleb was nice enough to share his puzzles with a tot-friend of his, Reagan (22 months). I love this Melissa and Doug puzzle and even though he can pop the chunky pieces in quickly, it’s fun for us to practice naming the animals and also the sounds that they make.

The two of them also had fun working on the vehicle matching puzzle (another Melissa & Doug). Kaleb still likes to pretend he doesn’t know which ones match, put the piece in the wrong spot, and then smile and move it to the correct space.

That’s what I have in pictures this week. For some strange reason, I don’t have any pictures of the kid’s playing in our pitiful excuse for snow… otherwise those would be in here too. :)

Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts. Be sure to also check out the new blog Totally Tots (spearheaded by Carissa) for some other great ideas of things to do with your little one!

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Filed Under: Tot School 6 Comments

The Preschool Corner: Letter G

Jan312009
January 31, 2009 by 3 Comments

We’re still moving on with our alphabet theme (even though these letters seem a little sporadic). We actually did a lesson on the letter “Q” this week, but just to thoroughly confuse you (really to help me catch up more), I’m going to post about the letter “G”.

Are you confused yet? :) All the other letters of the alphabet are coming too, but I’m just catching up on these last few and then I’ll be right back on track.

ABC Book: Gingerbread Man

While the letter “F” page was one of my favorites, this gingerbread man just made me hungry. I cut out the gingerbread man shape on a paper bag (remember he is glued to a 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper. Zachary used white paint that had a little bit of cinnamon scent in it to paint “icing” on his hands and feet. He also drew a face on and then we had fun fighting with the glue bottle so that we didn’t have gobs of glue everywhere. Once we had a sufficient LITTLE amount of glue, we sprinkled glitter on for buttons and also a nose.


Alphabet Activities: Gingerbread Baby puppet

Zachary made a gingerbread baby ‘puppet’ also to use when we were reading the book “Gingerbread Baby” by Jan Brett (the book is just too cute) – and I’m guessing now that you realize the letter G was mostly focused on gingerbread.

I cut out a smaller pattern and he added some googly eyes and drew on a face. Zachary decorated it however he wanted (which meant markers everywhere). When he was done we taped a craft stick to the back and he played with it and made it run around everywhere during the story.

For some reason I can’t find pictures of the puppet, but I do have pictures of my son after using white paint again.


Fun Activities: Glitter & Guitars

I’d love to meet a mom that truly enjoys her kids using glitter. And by enjoys, I mean – finding it everywhere for days to come after using it. Despite my aversion to glitter, we used it this week. Because glitter starts with the letter “G”. As does “glue”.


And I really don’t think I need to give you many more specifics other than to say:

Glitter + Glue = Gobs of Gooiness (if that is even a word).

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And before you think I was crazy foolish enough to make a glittery guitar, you may rest assured I had the glitter far, far away when we did this craft!

To make your own guitar you will need:

  • a small box (an oblong tissue box works great!)
  • some rubber bands
  • an empty paper towel roll
  • scissors
  • tape
  • and much patience if dealing with a 3 year old

On one of the ends of the tissue box, trace the end of the paper towel roll and then cut the circle out. Once the circle has been cut out, fit the towel roll into the hole. Depending on how tight the fit is, you may (or may not) have to use tape to secure the roll. Put 4-5 rubber bands around the box long-ways so that they go over the hole in the box. (Listening to your child whine every time a rubber band pops off is optional).

Movement

To get a little energy out we had fun around the house:

  • growling like bears
  • honking like geese
  • thumping our chests like a gorilla
  • sounding like goats
  • stomping like giants
  • jumping like grasshoppers
  • played Daddy’s guitar (shhhhhh)

Letter Sheet/Collage

Click on image to download pdf file

Stories

Even though this house was on gingerbread overload this week, here are some of the books we read:

Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
Just Grandma and Me by Mercer Meyer
Just Grandpa and Me by Mercer Meyer

We also had some fun computer time with two Mercer Meyer cd-roms that we have for both Grandma and Grandpa. :)

Verse

Using My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt we learned Mark 16:15 – “Go into all the world and preach the good news to everyone.”

Writing

This week we continued using Peterson’s Handwriting. We’re doing a lot of gross motor activities right now to learn how letters are formed, so that when we actually sit down with a pencil and paper it will be a lot easier to recall the hand motions needed to make letters.

For example, “Tall down” = top to bottom movement. You can read more about Peterson’s here.

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Letter Gg, Preschool Corner 3 Comments

Tot School ::12::

Jan252009
January 25, 2009 by 2 Comments

~ Kaleb is 26 months ~

There were quite a few things that we did during our Tot School time this week that were repeats of last week’s post, but we did branch out a little bit too. Since Kaleb is no longer taking a morning nap (please allow me to grieve this point *sob*) there was no way that I could avoid having him using the easel along with us.

And he was THRILLED.

And by thrilled I mean of the paint-splashing, scream-your-head-off when Mommy confiscates the paintbrushes kind of thrilled.

But it made for some wonderfully cute pictures of him doing his best to paint a marvelous picture.

Watching him paint was so sweet – he would close his little mouth when he dipped his brushes and then the mouth remained WIDE open when painting. Too.stinkin.cute.

I also received a Noah’s Ark to review this week and he had so much fun pretending with me. Hearing him name some of the animals (umm…the ostrich isn’t too easy, really) and make noises along with them is fun.

We spent time using playdough too – making snakes and trying to make shapes together. Kaleb loved using the molds we have for our playdough to make different designs and creatures.

A few weeks ago I picked up these stacking rings (I have no idea what else to call them) at a yard sale, so all the kids had fun playing with them. Kaleb had trouble actually getting them together, so we also tried sorting them by color and had him hand us the colors that we asked for…we’re still working on learning our colors, even though he is sorting like a pro!

That wraps up our Tot School highlights for the week! Don’t forget to visit Carissa at 1+1+1=1 for some more Tot School posts. She is also working on a new site, so stay tuned to see what she has planned! You are going to LOVE it!!

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Filed Under: Kaleb, Tot School 2 Comments