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Tot School ::8::

Dec282008
December 28, 2008 by 1 Comment

**Kaleb is 25 months**

We didn’t have any special time for Tot School set aside this week, since we are just enjoying the fact that Daddy is able to be at home, not working any overtime and just HERE!! Add Christmas into the mix…and it’s all understandable.

But Kaleb is still keeping busy and picking up new things every day! And with Christmas having come and gone there were new toys to play with and fun things to do!

The girls had a lot of fun turning a box into a car for Kaleb and he LOVED the attention and the moving parts. Laurianna planned the whole thing out and even cut out a steering wheel for him and attached it with a brad so he could turn the wheel.

One of Kaleb’s favorite new phrases is “I don’t hab it! (I don’t have it)” and he holds up his chubby little hands ever-so-cutely while saying it. That phrase gets a lot of giggles, so the other three love to ask him questions purposely just to have him answer cutely.

Even though we don’t celebrate Santa (we do have books, etc… about him), Kaleb notices Santa everywhere! When we read “The Night Before Christmas” he kept jumping up and pointing to Santa’s picture. The cutest was Christmas morning when he saw my parent’s stockings that were red and white, ran up to one of the stockings and hugged it yelling, “SANTA!!”

And the favorite gift of everyone this week has been the kid’s digital camera. Even Kaleb is trying to get in on the picture taking and walks around with the camera, saying “cheese” to anything and anyone.
Be sure to head over to Carissa’s for some more Tot School posts.
Have a great New Year!

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The Preschool Corner: Letter M

Dec192008
December 19, 2008 by 6 Comments

Last week we had so much fun with our lapbook, that we decided to another one this week. This week I’ll be sharing about our preschool fun studying the letter “M” and at the end of the post you will find Mr. Linky so that you can participate too in the fun by sharing what you’ve been doing during your preschool time.

I pulled out several books this week that we were going to read and asked Zachary which one he wanted to focus on, and he chose If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I pulled together resources from several different sites and we had fun making another lapbook together based on that book.

We did do a few activities that weren’t related to the book, but it’s all listed below, so enjoy looking around. I’ve provided links to the various activities and sites that we used, whenever possible.

ABC Book: Mouse and a Cookie

The alphabet book page for the letter “M” was a little grey mouse and his cookie. Zachary cut his pieces out after I traced them for him and then added dots to his cookie – because that’s what mice eat, right?

Alphabet Activities: Upper and Lowercase Matching

I found some cards that have upper and lowercase letter matching on them on this site. The cards are a jpeg/gif image so you can make them whatever size you would like. I pulled all the images together from her site and made a document. I would be happy to email you the full document if you would like. Just leave a comment requesting it or email me and I’ll get it to you!

Fun Activities: Shadow Matching and Monster Cookies

I found a fun game that uses similar images to the ones in the book and then has a shadow image of it to put match. I cut apart all the images and we used one side of the lapbook to glue the game pieces and I stapled a baggie to the side to store the game pieces. You can find the shadow match game here (it is also in the document that I put together).

Since we read all about cookies we had to make some to eat too, so we made Monster Cookies.

Lapbook: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

The majority of the lapbook pieces that I printed off were from Homeschool Share and their mini books for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I used a full size folder for this lapbook and glued some of the game pieces directly onto the folder so that we could open it up and play it. On the back of the lapbook I glued our math game (only three sides) so that the pieces to the game can slide down in between the game board and the lapbook cover. You can see in one of the pictures above if you can’t visualize it.

Here are the pieces that we worked on:

I Spy: While we read through the book, we played “I Spy” and tried to find anything that was shaped like a circle in the book and then wrote it down in our mini book.

Mouse Anatomy: Since we’re talking about mice we also did a mini book that shows different parts of a mouse: tail, hairless ears, clawed feet and whiskers.

Shadow Matching: This game wasn’t from Homeschool Share, but I cut the board pieces apart and glued them onto one of the inside pieces of the lapbook. You can find the shadow game here or email me and I’ll send you the document I made that includes it.

If You Give a Boy a Cookie: This was a mini book that gives a story prompt. I asked Zachary to finish the sentence and this was his response:

“If you give a boy a cookie he would just eat it and go outside and play. If he put a magical hat on it to come alive he could take it outside to play.”

Storywheel: This is a wheel that helps retell the story using pictures. I printed it off on cardstock to make it a little more sturdy.

Letter Sheet/Collage
Click thumbnail to download

Math

We used a cookie counting game that tied into If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and glued it to the back of our lapbook so we could keep it handy. The game has numbers from 1-20 and you can fill in the blank that tells you how many cookies to put on the plate.

Stories and Books

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

If You Give a Moose a Muffin

Moosetache

Little Mouse and the Big Red Apple

Mary Had a Little Jam and Other Silly Rhymes

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. Publish a post on your blog and link directly here. Then be sure to link to the blog carnival on this post so other bloggers can stop by to visit you.

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week! (Clementia, can you either email me directly or let me know how to get ahold of you? I can’t find a way to comment on your blog. Thanks!).

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Filed Under: Alphabet Time, Letter Mm, Preschool Corner 6 Comments

The Preschool Corner: Letter L

Dec112008
December 11, 2008 by 2 Comments

This week I’ll be sharing about our preschool fun studying the letter “L” and at the end of the post you will find Mr. Linky so that you can participate too in the fun by sharing what you’ve been doing during your preschool time.

We focused a lot of our letter activities on ladybugs this week, enough that we put together a little lapbook for Zachary, his first, so he was VERY excited! He wanted me to write his name a special title on it, so that I did: Zachary’s little, tiny lapbook.

ABC Page

The alphabet book page for the letter “L” was a Ladybug. I took the easy way out and cut the pieces out of construction paper instead of adding paint to the mix this week. I figured we had enough going on and red paint + Zachary might = a big mess.

Ladybug Thumbprints

These little ladybugs turn out so cute! I used one of my scrapbooking inkpads and let Zachary use his thumb/fingerprint to make the little ladybugs all over the paper. Then we used a pen to put dots on our ladybugs along with antennaes and legs.

Fun Activities: Ladybug Lapbook

We put our ladybug learning onto paper and added the pieces to our lapbook. We made a wheel on the lifecycle of a ladybug, played an alphabet matching game using uppercase and lowercase letters, and learned the parts of a ladybug.

To make the lapbook, I cut a red manila file folder in half and then glued in the mini-books when we were done, just to keep it as simple as possible. Since we didn’t have enough room inside our book for all of the books, we put our “following directions” mini-book on the front cover. Here are the links to the mini-books that we used:

Math: Lollipop patterns, Lines, and More

First we had a little fun drawing lines: curvy, straight, up/down, left/right. Then we worked on following directions and added this part to our ladybug lapbook. We counted how many ladybugs there were, added spots, antennae and colored the ladybugs by following the directions.

Since lollipop also starts with the letter “L”, I made up some little lollipop cards, cut them out and we used them to make different patterns. I would start the pattern and Zachary would finish it until we ran out of cards. He really enjoys figuring out patterns, so this isn’t much of “work” for him. :)

Here are the pattern cards that I made ~ click on the thumbnail to download the pdf file

totally tots

Letter Sheet Collage

L Worksheet

Verse

Matthew 5:16- “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven..” After all the trouble we had learning the 5 words in the verse, wouldn’t it figure that he can almost completely quote this verse? Go figure.

Writing

We practiced our letter writing this week using Peterson Directed handwriting. It’s a handwriting curriculum that we’re trying out with just Zachary right now (stay tuned because I’ll keep you posted on how it’s working for us).

Rhymes

Lazy Mary Will You Get Up?

Little Bo Peep

Little Boy Blue

Little Jack Horner

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

Lollipop Pattern Cards

Dec102008
December 10, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Here are some fun pattern cards to use ~ who doesn’t love lollipops?

{Click on the thumbnail to print off the document}.


We used them this week as an activity for the letter L. See how many patterns you can come up with!

Photobucket

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Filed Under: Early Learning Printables, Notebook and Worksheets, Preschool Corner, Preschool Printables Leave a Comment

Tot School ::7::

Dec72008
December 7, 2008 by 3 Comments

We have a few new toys floating around this house since Kaleb just celebrated his second birthday (and we made sure to have the grandparents get things that could be used in our tot time). I do have to say, that my little bug is blowing me away with the things that he has been learning and doing these last few weeks – things are really beginning to click together in that little brain of his. Speech is growing in leaps and bounds with new words every day.

And hearing that sweet little voice and the pronunciations just melts my heart.

Since the new toys are such a hit, we played with those a LOT – and Kaleb has already mastered one of his new puzzles (sigh). This is a puzzle by Melissa & Doug where the front of the vehicle needs to be matched to the back. Kaleb has been hysterical with it. He puts the puzzle pieces in the wrong spot, looks at me with a silly smile and says, “heeya?” (here?). Then giggles and puts it in the right spot.

He’s naming almost all the animals now and we used our farm puzzle to work on their names and their sounds as well as our Little People barn.

Every vehicle is currently a “tractor” but it’s still fun to play and make the noises together!

Lately, he has also enjoyed sitting for long periods of time to color along with his older siblings. Some days this week it’s been coloring an advent picture for devotions or just having fun scribbling and repeating the color names.

When we decorated our tree this week, Kaleb suprised me when he would hand me an ornament, point up to the top of the tree and say “high!”. It just never ceases to amaze me how quickly kids pick up things and absorb when you don’t even realize it – and you would think with him as my fourth, it wouldn’t be such a shocker!

That’s about it for this week. Be sure to head over to Carissa’s at 1+1+1=1 to view some more Tot School posts.

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Filed Under: Kaleb, Tot School 3 Comments

The Preschool Corner: Letter K

Dec42008
December 4, 2008 by Leave a Comment

This week I’ll be sharing about our preschool fun studying the letter “K” and at the end of the post you will find Mr. Linky so that you can participate too in the fun by sharing what you’ve been doing during your preschool time.

ABC Book: Kite

The alphabet book page for the letter “K” was a Kite (and I won’t be using my scanner anymore to put these in – pictures are much better I think!). The shape of the kite gave us the opportunity to talk about various shapes and have fun piecing shapes together to make different things (see the pictures in Math below).

Art Activity: Tracing Keys

Tracing is always a challenge, but even more so when you’re trying to trace keys! But we did and tried to make it a little more interesting by creating a key pattern: one big key, two small keys, etc..

Fun Activities: Toothpick K’s

We have a bazillion toothpicks in our house and so we put a few of them to good use this week. It was only after we made our little toothpick craft that I realized that perhaps “K” wasn’t the letter we should have chosen.

Should you chose to make maybe 4 K’s (instead of a controversial 3), cut the tips off the full toothpicks (to help detract from any possible injuries) and then cut some other toothpicks in half, cutting the pointy tips off those also. Maybe injuries aren’t an issue at your house, but it’s all fun and games…. :)

First, Zachary sorted the toothpicks by size (short and long) and then had much fun getting sticky with glue. He dipped the toothpicks in glue and then placed them on cardstock to form the letter that we’ve been studying.

And since we still have toothpicks everywhere, I’m sure we’ll do this activity again with future letters of the alphabet.

Math

Spinning off the diamond shape of a kite we used some of our foam pattern blocks from Discovery Toys to put together other shapes and pictures.

Letter Sheet/Collage

Verse

Psalm 34:13- “Keep your tongue from evil.”

We’re still using the book My ABC Bible Verses by Susan Hunt. It has a quick little devotional and a few questions at the end of the story along with review from previous weeks.

This week we’re having a little trouble with Zachary getting the verse straight. He’s preferring two different versions of his own: “Don’t stick your tongue out in evil” and “Don’t keep your tongue from evil” – not quite the versions we’re going for. And so we keep reviewing.

Writing
We practiced our letter writing this week using Peterson Directed handwriting. It’s a handwriting curriculum that we’re trying out with just Zachary right now (stay tuned because I’ll keep you posted on how it’s working for us).

Rhymes and Songs

Old King Cole

Three Little Kittens

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kiddos. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Publish a post on your blog and link directly here. Then be sure to link to the blog carnival on this post so other bloggers can stop by to visit you.

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 Kk, Preschool Corner Leave a Comment