We did a lot this week although it was in small spurts of time. It's funny because I didn't think we did a lot (or that I had taken so many pictures) until putting this post together. Believe it or not there are even more pictures that I didn't post, it was hard choosing which ones to include.
I'm kind of doing tot school with some more challenging activities for my nearly 2 3/4 year old Chloe. Here is a laminated tracing pre-writing page. As well as some other pages with her practicing writing. I didn't realize how much she had been desiring and working on it on her own. Sorry if there are too many pictures of her letters, I am just amazed at how early she is starting to write. **
). I had some leftover strips from sizing the cards. Chloe really wanted to try cutting, I grabbed the leftover strips and tried to give Chloe a short tutorial on how to use scissors but as you can see she just wanted to jump right in. Caitlyn was trying to cut too.
They had SO much fun with discovering the "what happens if I do this with the water?" We were doing this activity for almost an hour!
Caitlyn pouring water onto the patio. Chloe putting out "fires" Caitlyn testing the water
A few weeks ago we worked on fire safety and one of the activities we did was coloring with sidewalk chalk (in yellow or red) to signify fire and then "putting the fire out" with squeezable water bottles. Caitlyn and Chloe finally decided that their dresses were way too full of water. They decided they wanted to get into the tubs without the dresses but I decided not to post for privacy reasons
We sorted by color and by size, they each used half of the muffin tin. Chloe was more interested than Caitlyn. Caitlyn wanted to put them all in the same tin - Can you guess which circle is hers in the first picture? Then after about 10 min or probably closer to 5, all the pom poms were thrown back together.
Starfall
The girls using
Starfall to learn their letters, they LOVE this activity - they call it learning on the computer. They take turns picking a letter. On Friday, my husband brought home a touch screen monitor which will allow this activity to be more hands on with the girls. I will post about how it goes next week with the new touchscreen monitor.
Word World Tot Book
I put together our very first tot book/lap book
Word World tot books for my girls. Chloe helped color the word world friends last week. I laminated everything because I knew that my girls would be pretty rough on the paper. Also truth be told, I LOVE my new laminator! When I was putting the pieces together, I was realizing that I had A LOT of empty space(I didn't realize I missed the part about cutting the file folder in half first). I changed around the way that the Word World Friends was connected to the folder on the right "panel" and made it a flip forward connecting it to the folder with tape. I had some trouble figuring out how to attach the ABC accordion style book together because Elmer's glue didn't seem to work for me. I ended up using tape but if you have any ideas in how to glue laminated paper together please let me know. I had no idea how I was going to staple the laminated pages to the folder but then I saw a post on making a Cars lapbook that instead used a hole puncher and binder rings to attach the oval numbers book piece. I didn't have any binder rings so I just used gift wrap curling ribbon but I think I will replace it with binder rings because it is hard for the kids to turn the pages on their own. Chloe really loves the Memory part of this lap book because there are only 6 pairs to match. We are still working on taking turns because she wants to be the only one who takes a turn. :-) I really want to add a second number book for 6-10 possibly even through 20 but I wasn't able to edit the pdfs I downloaded from Carissa's page. I may add to it later.
This was the first time we used these Counting Mats and they had so much fun they didn't realize that they were using fine motor skills as well as learning how to count higher and discover the different sizes as well as some spatial recognition (top, middle, bottom).
Chloe pretending she's Squish Squish the playdough on the floor
juggling ended our activity. :-)
Capital and Lowercase Letter matching
Caitlyn picked this up really well, she made at least 3 or 4 matches before getting bored and switching to the Dolch cards I found at
Mrs. Perkins very helpful site. I had set up the dolch cards for Chloe but she wasn't interested. Caitlyn picked up a card and said the letters out loud from left to right. R-U-N. I don't think she gets yet that it is a word but who knows. Then she decided to read to herself.
Random - Grape Threading
I was making spaghetti one night and then I saw the grapes on the counter and thought "would the grapes be able to be "thread" onto the raw spaghetti?" Turns out it can. They loved eating the grapes off of the spaghetti.
Paper Tear Art
Lately the girls have really enjoyed ripping paper especially coloring books so I decided to channel that desire into an art project. We ripped up paper (blue for Chloe, Yellow for Caitlyn) and then just glued it on the other piece of paper.
Caitlyn's Masterpiece Chloe's Masterpiece
Homemade Pizza Dough
This past Saturday, we restarted our Pizza Dough Saturday tradition. It is so easy because you just add the ingredients to a bread machine, push the dough button, take it out 1 1/2 hours later, roll it out, add toppings and cook!! It is time-consuming, but way cheaper than pizza delivery.
The girls helped me put in the ingredients and Chloe was given her own pizza ball to roll out and put sauce on before eating it.
Rolling out the dough using a fork to punch holes in dough Yummy pizza dough!
Number Identification game
We were changing the date on our calendar and Chloe just started to play a game by herself by pointing to a number and identifying the number. Then I started to lay them out in order (only 1,2,3) around the edge of the table and I would ask her what comes next. She would say the number that was next and then pick it out and line it up. We started counting our way up to 15. She can count to 20 (30 if prompted but even then she says 20/10 instead of 30) but she always skips 15. We have been spending a little extra time on 15 and the location of where it belongs (between 14 and 16).
Rice Sensory Tubs
I saw this idea on another page (?) and was so encouraged to see a non-sand sensory tub. I put rice in and added measuring spoons and cups, a freezer pop holder, a metal steamer and 2 silicone basting brushes. They had a lot of fun and I had fun watching them even when they started dumping it out on the patio. I'm so glad that we did this activity outside! We also did an experiment with the rice and the metal colander. We tried putting a little bit of rice in and it fell right out but when we put a bunch of rice in, it stayed in. I figured that we would be able to reuse the same rice for at least 5 times of play but nope it ended up on the patio so we are looking into a cheaper alternative. Any ideas?
During the rice sensory tub time, the girls kept wanting to go into this pile of dirt and I kept trying to keep them from it. After all the rice was on the patio, I gave up and they played in the dirt for nearly 30 min! They sorted rocks and Chloe made a dirt cake, with dirt candles and dirt fire. When Robert sprayed off the patio, he washed her cake away too, she was very upset.
Caitlyn rolling on a mostly deflated purple balloon. So much fun!
**Please note that I am NOT pushing my girls in any way for any of the learning, particularly writing and reading. My "education philosophy" has always been to make information/activities available to my girls and if they are interested and want to do it then they can but if they don't then we do something else. I think Carissa says it best in her
Tot School Blog in the FAQ - when talking about her son Krash
"If K becomes uninterested, we stop! When I begin to force my teaching on him, he begins to resent my teaching all together. Eventually he will pick the skills up, it is not important that he learn them early. I believe in exposing him and letting him learn at HIS pace."
