Alphabet Eggs

Now that Nathan is older, there is no way that he wants to miss out on the fun when Naomi and I do "school". I put school in quotes because really, with as much fun as we have, it seems almost wrong to call it school! :-) I DO call it school though, especially the fun stuff, because I want the kids to have a very positive attitude towards school, and who doesn't love doing hands on things and having fun? Anyways, I digress!

Since Nathan wants to do school with us, I make a big effort to always have something ready for him to do as well. One of my very favorite sites, No Time For Flashcards, is starting a new series called "Alphabet for Starters". I am THRILLED because I know the type of activities they come up with will be tons of fun, and perfect for where Nathan is at. Here is the first post in the series, and as soon as I saw it, I knew we had to do it! Here is what we did.

First I got some of our larger Easter eggs, and filled 8 of them with the magnetic letters from our Leapfrog fridge set. Then I put them in this cute bucket, and put it on a cookie sheet so they would stick to the tray. Since letters are pretty new to Nathan I added the device the letters go into so he could hear the names of the letters from it and from me.

I added in one sweet boy, and he got right to work opening up the eggs. Opening up the eggs is a great workout for their little fingers too!

 

As soon as he opened up an egg, he put the letter in the box to  hear what it was. He could get them in but as you can see by his frown, it took a little concentration!

 

He liked hearing what letter it was, but then he quickly wanted to move to hearing the ABC song again, as you can see by him pushing that button.

 

Nathan enjoyed this so much that we're going to do it again, only I'm going to put some of our different shapes in it. I want to end this by saying in no way did I drill Nathan on his letters, or do I think that is appropriate for a 22 month old! This was a fun activity that gave he and I something special to do together, and was a great way to expose him to some letters. We talked about the letters as he opened the eggs, and moved them around on the tray, but that was it. Fun and exposure it what I think it's all about at this stage!

Karla

Valentine's Theme

Well I am posting this much later than I had planned, but here are some of the fun things we did for our Valentine's theme this year! I have officially had my little blog for a year now, and I so enjoy going back over my old posts, and remembering the fun stuff that we've done together. This blog has been a neat way to share what we're up to with my family and friends who are far away, but mostly it's become an online scrapbook for me. I loved seeing the types of things I did with the kids last year at this time. They have grown, and learned so much in just a year! Things that would have been impossible for both of them last year, they do with such ease now. Anyway, enough reminiscing, and on with the post!

One weekend in early February, we were having yucky weather, and Daddy wanted something fun he could do with the kids that didn't involve him getting jumped on. Thanks to Pinterest, I had a fun craft ready for them in under 5 minutes!

Daddy and the kids made Valentine's Day wreaths. They had fun, it wasn't TOO messy for Daddy, and they turned out super cute!

Although not related to Valentine's Day, Naomi has been in a writing craze and wanting to write everything! Here she is showing off where she had written her name.

This is a Valentines addition tray that I put together for her. I had gotten several packages of foam hearts at the Dollar Tree, and we used them for tons of things! These purple hearts were joined together. I cut them apart, wrote the addition fact on one heart, and the answer on the other. Then I put them in these cute little jars, along with some candy hearts for her to use as counting manipulates.

Naomi would pull an addition problem out of the first jar, use the candy hearts to help her count, and then find the answer on the matching heart in the next jar. You can see to her left where she made the matching pairs of problem/solution. We are working on our addition facts to ten, and she is doing fantastic! She was even able to do some of the easier facts in her head, which tells me she's really mastered the concept. I made another set of hearts of subtraction and we did the same thing with them.

Here the kids had their buckets, and were ready to go on a Valentine's Day Heart Hunt (think same idea as an Easter egg hunt)!

I hid red hearts for Nathan, and pink hearts for Naomi. They were only allowed to put their own colored hearts in their bucket. This worked perfectly as there was no fights about who got more, etc.

I made Naomi's hearts a little harder to find than Nathan's.

After they found all their hearts I had an activity for both of them to do. Nathan stuffed his hearts in this wipes container. We practiced counting. It's harder for him than you would think to shove things into those containers. It's a good strengthening activity for those little fingers!

I had numbered Naomi's hearts 10 to 30 ahead of time. Once she found them she had to match the hearts to the numbers on the chart I made her, and put the numbers in order. It was a good way to help solidify those numbers for her.

Nathan playing with our sorting and counting bears. I love these! We talked about the colors and tried putting the bears in their matching color container.

The heart penguin Naomi made for her Daddy's Valentine.

The heart pig Nathan made for Daddy. 

Nathan scooping up the giant buttons while I was working with Naomi.

Naomi has been doing really well with writing her numbers!

Nathan needed a turn to write his numbers too! ;)

Here Nathan was stringing our giant buttons to make a necklace. I always have a few little activities planned for him, so he has something fun to do while I'm working with Naomi. Once I get Naomi started on something (she prefers to work independently now) I just bounce back to Nathan. Sometimes I feel like a ping-pong ball, but it works!

Here Naomi was working in her Kindergarten math book. She sets the pace as to how many pages (if any) that she does. Some day we do none, one day she did 18!

Nathan likes to sit at our little art desk and do his "work" when Naomi is doing hers. He colors, plays with stickers, does stamps, cuts paper, glues things, etc. It always makes a mess but he has fun!

We made Valentine Love Bugs! They turned out super cute and the kids played with them a ton!

We made these special Valentine birthday cards for Grandpa Canon. First they dot painted the paper, then I cut out the hearts for them, and they glued them down on colored paper.

Then they both wrote in their cards. I'm so proud of Naomi's writing!

We couldn't visit Jim's parents without taking Valentines for Grandma Canon too. We used the kids hands as a background on the paper plates, and then they decorated them. I thought they turned out so pretty!

Naomi needed to work on counting by 10s so we came up with this! I didn't get any pictures of the process, but this is what we ended up with. We counted out, and glued down, 10 lima beans on to each craft stick. We talked about how it would take a long time to count 100 lima beans. Then I introduced skip counting, and talked about how it was a faster way to count to 100. Naomi was thrilled! We glued down 100 lima beans, and then used the hearts to help us practice counting by 10. It was fun, and a good way for Naomi to really understand the concept of skip counting.

Check out my Valentine's Day Board on Pinterest for links, and step by step instructions of everything we did. Also, I have to give credit to another blog I found, Mom to 2 Posh Lil' Divas. Lots of the ideas above I got from their site! Links to the exact posts are on my Pinterest board. We had fun with our little activities, and I think the kids learned lots. It's hard to believe how much they have learned since just last year. My babies are getting so big!

Karla

The Mitten

In January one of our theme weeks focused on "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. I don't get the chance to post on here as often as I would like, but I got some cute pictures from that week, and wanted to share what we did. This little blog has become almost like an online scrapbook for me, and I really enjoy going back, and remembering all the different things we do together. To find where we read this book online, and links to all the activities and printables we did, check out my Mitten Board on Pinterest. If you haven't signed up for Pinterest yet, be sure it check it out! I am TOTALLY in love with it, and use it as a great organizational tool to save all the fun ideas I find online to do with the kiddos.

We read "The Mitten" online, and both kids thought that was really neat. Following the Before Five In A Row model, we read the book every day, and sometimes more than once a day. I was actually surprised that the kids wanted to hear it that many times! I was impressed how much they both got out of the book by repeated readings, and how each time we read it, they found something new in the illustrations. The fact that they got to take turns pushing the button on my keyboard to change the page, may have also been a selling point. Oh the simple things in life! ;)

We kicked off our week by making mitten sun catchers to hang in the window. We cut up pieces of tissue paper.

Then we sprinkled the tissue paper into the mitten outline I had cut out. Nathan was able to cut with my help, and got really into sprinkling the paper.

Once they were filled with tissue paper I laminated the mittens and cut them out. They turned out really pretty and the kids were proud!

We talked about left and right, and practiced finding which was which. I put different tattoos on each kids hands to help them remember which left and right.

We practiced sorting our mittens into left and right piles.

We did many of "The Mitten" printables from Homeschool Creations on my iPad. We did math and counting skills, letter recognition, alphabetical order, and pre-reading skills.

Here is a close up of one of the worksheets on the iPad that Naomi did. Don't know how to save a PDF on your iPad and draw on/edit it? Check out this link! This has been a lifesaver when it comes to our ink costs. Plus, Naomi LOVES using the iPad, so it's been a fun way for her to approach some of these pages in a different way.

Here Naomi was sorting the animals from the story, and learning the names of the ones she wasn't familiar with.

Using the animal cards I had printed off from Homeschool Creations, Naomi put the animals in the mitten as I read the story. She did this activity on her own many times after I finished reading as well. She had fun and it was a great way to practice sequencing.

We talked about real and make-believe, and discussed whether all of those animals could actually fit in a mitten. Then we counted how many of the kids little stuffies we really could fit in a one of my (super cool, Canadian!) mittens.

Nathan LOVED doing this, and we practiced counting as he stuffed the animals in.

We also discussed how some objects could stretch, and how others couldn't, since the mitten in the story had to stretch out a bunch to accommodate all the animals. We made a list of things that stretched and ones that did not. Naomi had a blast running around the house testing to see if she could stretch things. We determined this piece of cardboard did NOT stretch, despite her best efforts!

She found that an elastic was one of the best stretchy items. We measured it before she stretched it, and after. If you look closely you will see the elastic on the ruler. Naomi was impressed with the results!

I printed off realistic pictures of the animals in the story from 1+1+1=1 (remember, go to my Pinterest link at the top of this post for ALL links). It was neat for Naomi to see actual pictures of the animals, and requested to see more online. I was happy to oblige! Here she was labeling all the animals.

We put the other animal cards I had in order, and then practiced using ordinal numbers (first, second, ect.). Naomi got really good at it!

Here Naomi was sorting objects that started with the letter M. I caught her saying mole. :)

Meanwhile, I would tell Nathan the name of an animal, and he would find it. We also practiced saying the animal sounds.

Naomi cut, then sorted left and right mittens, and glued them down.

Naomi found some stick on nails, and I put them on her. This picture was too cute not to share!

Here she sorted words from the story by syllables (1 or 2).

Naomi painted the cover for our lapbook, and was decorating her mitten for the book.

A glimpse of her work board. She is always so proud of what she had done, and drags Jim down to see her new work from the day the second he gets home. I have to say, displaying the work of one child is much easier than doing a whole class like I did back in my teaching days!!

The cover of our mitten lapbook. I got all the printables for our lapbook from Homeschool Share (again, see my Pinterest board).

The inside of our lapbook. On the outside flaps is clues about each animal. When you lift the flap, there is a picture of the animal. Where it says "My Mitten" is a little pocket. In the pocket we put in our animal sequence cards, animal labels, and the animal cards that went with the ordinal numbers. Naomi wanted to decorate the mitten on the pocket with the animal stickers I had.

On the back of our lapbook I put Naomi's story summary, and favorite part of the book. She dictated to me, and I wrote it down. I was AMAZED at how detailed her summary was! She even told me the correct order all 8 animals got in the mitten.

We had a great week and all really enjoyed this mini unit!

Karla