Preschool- Pumpkins Week 2

More pumpkins in January!  This was our second week of our pumpkin unit.  Be sure to check out week one, too!

For this activity, I wrote out the word pumpkin really big on piece of construction paper.  First, Little Guy had to identify all the letters.  Then, using tweezers, Little Guy had to move the candy pumpkins to the letters, covering the letters up.  This activity took a bit of time, but he really enjoyed doing it, and especially enjoyed getting to eat one pumpkin when he was done!

Another fine motor activity he did was spooning.  I place some orange glass beads in a bowl and he had to use his spoon to transfer them to the pumpkin tray.

An art project we made was a pumpkin pocket. This idea came from Fantastic Fun and Learning.   Little Guy painted one and a half paper plates orange.  Then he laced them together to make a little pocket.  We added a green pipe cleaner to the top as the stem.  I'm sorry I don't have a picture of his completed pocket.

Our next activity was counting and number recognition.  I had some foam pumpkins, on which I wrote one number, from one to six.  Little Guy had to put that many little pumpkin erasers on the foam pumpkin.

Another counting activity we did involved a die.  Little Guy would roll the die, count the dots to see what number he rolled, then put that many pumpkin erasers into the mini ice cube tray.  This was fun, as we could take turns rolling or Little Guy could play all by himself.

Since Little Guy enjoyed this activity so much from last week, we had to bring it out again this week!  We had a fun time singing "Five Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate" and taking the pumpkins off and on!

This next activity was a great patterning activity.  Using the orange and green wooden beads that I painted for last week, Little Guy had to put them on a pipe cleaner.  But instead of simply stringing them, he made an AB pattern.  I helped him to get started with the pattern, but by the end he was putting them on in the correct order by himself.  He was very proud of himself when we has done!

Our last activity was a ring toss from Inner Child Fun.  We picked out some pumpkins that had some tall, straight stems specifically so we could do this.  I took some rings off of canning jars and Little Guy had to toss the rings onto the pumpkin stems.  This actually was a lot harder than I thought it would be!  Little Guy did manage to get a few rings on, but the ring tossing action is much different than the throwing action we usually use, so we gave up after a little while.

So that wraps up our Pumpkin theme!

Check out my Pinterest board for more ideas!

Follow Stacy's board Pumpkins and Halloween on Pinterest.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

I hope you are having a wonderful day!  The Easter Bunny visited our house last night, and left Little Guy a basket.
His basket had:

• a Viewfinder with pictures of animals (I remember having one of these as a kid!)
• a Play-Doh fun factory
• Pip-Squeaks markers
• a sidewalk chalk holder
• the book "Put Me in the Zoo"

He knew exactly how to use the viewfinder!

The Play-Doh fun factory was also a big hit!  New playdough is always fun, and this gave him so many ways to play!  We played for about half an hour before we had to get ready for church.

 Sidewalk chalk, markers, and the new book will be enjoyed later!

 The bunny also left him some eggs, but we haven't had a chance to find them yet.  Instead of candy, they are filled with bouncy balls, bubbles, little porcupine ball animals, and plastic frogs.

In the days leading up to Easter, Little Guy was able to participate in a couple of Easter Egg "Hunts."

He doesn't look as excited as he really was about those eggs!

He was so excited to see the Easter Bunny!

 He was so cute picking up eggs!  He would look at one, pick it up, then run to another one, running past 5 eggs on the way!  We was just excited to be getting eggs, he didn't care how many he got!

After collecting his eggs, he had to go back for a hug!

 Love my boys!

 I hope you enjoyed your day!

Tot School- P is for St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! We worked on P is for St. Patrick's Day last week.  Here is what we did!

The first activity was Little Guy's favorite activity.  It is from Mummy Musings and Mayhem and will help with crossing the mid line.  I drew a large figure 8, then put it in a sheet protector and sealed it closed with packing tape (I don't have a laminator).  I stuck it in a ziplock bag and squeezed some hair gel into the bag.  I closed the bag and sealed it with packing tape (I didn't want Little Guy trying to get it open!) and the activity was ready!  It was fun to squish the gel around.  We tried rolling a toy car and a wooden train, and the train was easier to move around.  I think Little Guy did this activity every day this week!

The next activity was making shamrocks out of hearts.  I got out our heart punch again.  Little Guy could punch 4 hearts, then if we glued them with their points together it made a shamrock.  He experimented with how to make the hearts (like holding the punch up in the air, using one finger to push, pushing with his entire hand, etc.).  Being purposeful about how we are gluing things on is also a learning task for him.  I think his final picture came out great!

We had more printables this week from the St. Patrick's Day pack at Gift of Curiosity and the letter dot page from School Time Snippets.  He seemed to enjoy them this week (his interest in these comes and goes).

A new letter practice idea was lacing the letter from No Time for Flash Cards.  I cut the P out of a cereal box and punched holes all the way around.  Little Guy could lace the P however he wanted.

Another activity from the St. Patrick's Day pack at Gift of Curiosity was a color sort.  Little Guy first had to cut all the items apart, then identify them and if they were green or yellow.  He did a great job cutting them apart, and struggled to identify a few (which is to be expected, since they are not common objects).  We did not glue them on, thinking that we could sort again later in the week, but of course never did.

We tried an activity we had not done for a while from the St. Patrick's Day pack at Gift of Curiosity- Shadow Matching.  Little Guy had to match the leprechaun to his shadow.  I was a bit surprised at how well he did.  He did this activity twice during the week.

The last activity was playdough!  We made new green playdough for this week.  Little Guy even helped to make it.  We used the letter P playdough mat from Homeschool Creations.  It is always fun to get out new playdough!

How are you celebrating St. Patrick's Day?

We linked up to a Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1!

Tot School- V is for Valentine

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!  I hope your day was full of love and hearts and joyful activities with your little ones!

Of course, for the week of Valentine's Day, we had a V is for Valentine's theme.  The week got away from me (more on why later), so we did not do a full week of tot school and reused many of the activities from our H is for Heart week.  Little Guy is 31 months old.

 One new activity was using a heart shaped punch.  Little Guy loved punching out the hearts.  It took him a few tries to figure out how hard to push down the handle, but once he got the hang of it, he punched and punched and punched!

We added a V sheet from Over the Big Moon. I made available the V stamp, heart stamp, red dot marker, stickers, and markers for him to use.  Little Guy used the heart stamp and the dot marker to fill in the circles.

The last activity was a modification of an activity from last week.  It was a sort of H and V, where Little Guy had to differentiate the 2.  It was a simple activity, that went along a little more quickly when I sang "1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Valentines" (sung to the tune of 1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Indians).

What did you do to celebrate Valentine's Day?

We linked up to the Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1!

Tot School- H is for Heart

February is in full swing, and along with that is Valentine's Day and talk of love and hearts!  We did a heart themed Tot School last week, and this week are working on Valentine's themes!  (Sorry this post is late!  The week has just gotten past me!)  Little Guy 31 months old. 

To practice the letter H, I printed a few different sheets.  One is from the Valentine's pack at This Reading Mama and two are from the Valentine's tot pack at 3 Dinosaurs.  I let Little Guy use an H stamp, a heart stamp, a dot marker, and a variety of heart stickers.  He really liked using the stickers, and it was a simple way for him to have a little bit of free play within our work time.

We found some great cutting practice from the Cut It Out Valentine's pack at This Reading Mama.  Her Valentine's cutting pack had many hearts to cut, which was great for our heart theme!  Little Guy wanted to glue what he had cut when he was finished.  On one paper, he made a house and with some triangles and gave it two roofs!  It was neat to see him imagine the shapes into something else.

The next tray was sort.  I had some foam hearts in pink and red, big and little.  Little Guy had to sort them by color and size onto the tray.  I had taped one heart of each color and size in each compartment.  I gave him the option of using the tweezers, but  he chose not to.  He did not seem to enjoy this one, but is is a great skill to be able to sort by two attributes, so we'll probably do more activities like this.

The next activity was a book from This Reading Mama called "My Heart.  Each page had a blank heart on it with words at the bottom, so we filled in the heart with what it said.  For example, the first page said "My heart is filled with circles" so Little Guy used a dot marker to put circles in the heart.  He seemed to enjoy working on it!

It had been a while since we had practiced lacing, so I made a heart out of foam for him to practice.  If I hold it for him, he can get all the way around without missing any holes.  If he holds it, the shoelace gets zig-zagged across the heart!

We had another sort this week.  I punched little red hearts and wrote an "H" on some of them and left the others blank.  Little Guy had to sort them onto the sheet.  Again sorting was not his preferred activity this week.

This next activity was probably the favorite.  To prepare, I cut out 3 white hearts and strips of red construction paper.  Little Guy had to cut the strips into squares.  Then we smeared glue all over the heart, and he decorated the heart with the squares.  We did one each day for three days.  (Some grandparents may or may not be getting these in the mail as Valentine's!)  He kept saying "They are getting pretty" as he worked on them!

Another favorite was the heart poke page from This Reading Mama.  Little Guy enjoyed using a toothpick to poke the holes into the paper.  He actually did a pretty good job of staying on the line.

The last activity this week was Roll and Count Candy Hearts from the Valentine's tot pack at 3 Dinosaurs.  We used a dot marker to mark which candies had been rolled.  Little Guy did the rolling while I was in charge of marking.  He did a good job of counting when we were done.

How are you practicing H?

We linked up to the Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1!

Tot School Gifts!

I want to share some new things that Little Guy received for Christmas that will make some appearances in Tot School.  I had created an Amazon wish list for him and included things that would be helpful!  (We took the last two weeks off from Tot School for traveling and family time.  We started again yesterday, so check back next Tuesday to see what we have been up to!)

Santa Claus left him two tweezers in his stocking.  I am excited to have these, as they will fit his hands and make it possible for us to do some new fine motor activities.

Trying out the tweezers on some pom-poms.

Little Guy got his first set of pattern blocks.  They are wooden with pattern cards to go with them.  I can't wait to try these out with him!

Look how the pattern blocks stack!

I can copy the picture!

A gift he will grow in to is upper case letter stamps.  These will be great as we begin working on letter recognition.  I will start using them to practice his name.  I had a set similar to this in my kindergarten classroom and the students enjoyed using them for a variety of purposes, so I know we will be able to use these for years to come!

I really like my green stamp pad!

He also received stacker pegs and a pegboard.  The pegs come in several colors, so we can use them for sorting, stacking, copying patterns, counting, and the list goes on!

Filling in the holes on the peg board.

Look how tall my tower is!

He also received a set of wooden magnetic numbers.  Since they are magnetic, they will stick to cupcake pans and cookie sheets, which will be helpful when practicing counting and recognizing numbers.

Playing with my new numbers.

I received a silicon ice cube tray with extra large holes.  Since we have an ice machine, I am already picturing how we can use it for one-to-one correspondence (I think the tweezers will come in quite handy with this)! 

What gifts did you receive that will be incorporated into Tot School?