WEEK OF APRIL 19 - R IS FOR RAINBOW

~Punkin is 20 months old~

Our theme this week was rainbows, so we did a lot with colors as well. I made up a little song to teach her the order of the colors in the rainbow, and we worked a lot on our color word chants to spell the color words. I was able to catch both of these on video during bathtime one night.....

Punkin has been suffering from allergies, and at the beginning of the week, she was all out of sorts, and Tot School was NOT going well. So, I backed off a bit and didn't do as much "formal" tot school time as usual. I didn't want Tot School to become a negative thing for her since she has always loved it, so I let up a bit and we just did a lot of informal stuff. I began using bathtime, lunchtime, diaper changes, driving times, etc. to sing learning songs with her, practice counting, working on letter sounds, etc. (She actually learns very well this way.) We didn't do as much of the fine motor work and sorting, matching, etc. as usual. But a break is never a bad thing......

TOT TRAYS

I found these at the Dollar Tree. They are funky straws in rainbow colors. She just had fun poking them into the flower arranging styrofoam stuff (I don't know the official name).

I found these water bottle ice cube trays also at Dollar Tree. I taped a small piece of a pipe cleaner in each section in rainbow color order, and I gave her other pieces of pipe cleaner to sort by color. I taped a piece of paper over the empty sections so she wouldn't be confused.

I gave her pony beads and pipe cleaners, and I wanted her to put the beads onto the pipe cleaners. She gave it a valiant effort, but had more fun just playing with the beads. By the end of the week, she'd pick out a color, tell me what it was and then really try on her own to get it on the pipe cleaner, but I helped her a lot with this one.

Just another color sorting activity with colored craft sticks and colored cups. The craft sticks had a red with it, but the red sticks looked more pink up next to the red cup, and I didn't want to confuse her, so I didn't put those out.

She only did this once and didn't quite get it. I had written the letters of her name in order on rainbow colored strips (she has the same amount of letters in her name as colors), and she was to put the letters in order to make a rainbow. (She knows how to "spell" her name verbally, but putting the actual letters in order was more challenging.)

NUMBERS / MATH

I didn't have color ink in my printer, so these rainbows are in black and white :( but oh well. She didn't seem to care. We did our usual activity of spreading out numbers on the floor and having her go get the numbers I call out. I called them out in number order this time.

Then I had her come and line them up on the couch in order. After she had them all lined up, we "hopped" down the length of the couch as we pointed to and counted each one.

Taking a break in her "ouse" before going to get more numbers......

I set out the first number, she had to find the matching one to put on the other side. Not a huge hit with her. She was very distracted that day.

Punkin knows her numbers 0-9, so I am working with her now on double digit numbers a bit. (She can now count up to 20 verbally.) I found this Melissa and Doug sound puzzle on Amazon and just had to buy it .... using gift cards I had. As she puts the numbers on, it says the name of the number. So cool! I love M&D toys.

SHAPES

I found a rainbow matching activity on Confessions of a Homeschooler, but she was having them match capital and lowercase letters. I adapted it and made my own. I had Punkin match her shapes. She loved this activity and did very well. It was actually too easy for her.

ABC's

I used the "Let's Read" portion of http://www.starfall.com/ all the time when I taught first grade, and decided to check out the "ABC" portion the other day. I am starting to teach Punkin her lowercase letters since she knows all her capital letters, and I found that Starfall was a good resource. I let Punkin watch the letter "movies" for b and r (the lowercase letters we have "officially" worked on) and she loved them. I think I will use these each week to review our lowercase letters and the sounds.

I cut out and colored some lowercase r's for Punkin to match by color. I made sure to emphasize that these were little r's every time I asked her to match a color. For instance, I would say, "Find the orange r's" or "Find the red r's" each time, so she was constantly hearing that these were r's.

I printed this sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler as well. She used her magnetic pom poms to make the letters. We have done this before and she was more interested in playing with the pom poms or rubbing them on her face (she is obsessed with "sof" things). But this time she did a great job of actually putting them on the dots.

And of course, we had to get out our Do-a-Dots again this week as well!

I introduced Punkin to a new snack this week in honor of our letter r: raisins. She loved them, and they have quickly surpassed crackers as her favorite snack.

THEME WORK / COLORS

I didn't have too many books about rainbows in my collection, so we read a lot of color books instead. Here are some that we read. Punkin LOVES Paddington books, so she LOVED Paddington's Colors. We read that one a LOT!

I switched up her sensory tub finally. I saw this idea for Rainbow Rice on All About the Journey and knew I HAD to try it. It was definitely a hit, and really quite easy to make. I mostly just let her spoon, scoop, and dig. It is a bit messier than macaroni or beans (I am still finding little rainbow rice) even though she really did a pretty good job of trying to keep it on the tray. Hey, it was fun for her, and at least RAINBOW rice is easier to see to clean up than plain white rice is!

Punkin has big foam flower cutouts that she likes to play with, so during one of her playtimes I spontaneously had her help me line them up in rainbow color order. Then, I called a color for her to pick up and put away.

I was thrilled this week to find these fun lacing beads at a garage sale. For some reason they are easier for her to use than her dollar store ones, and there are all the rainbow colors in this set, too. Without me prodding her to do so, she on her own worked hard one day to try to string the beands onto the shoelace. She only got a couple on by herself before she got frustrated and wanted help, but I was happy with that since she usually doesn't like fine motor work that much.

Of course, she wanted to make it into a "nekas."

I also gave her Fruit Loops one day to sort. (She has never had them, so didn't know they were edible at the time.) Well, the first day I tried was one of the days she broke down and did NOT want to do Tot School. So we tried again another day with a slightly different approach. I gave her a bowl of Fruit Loops and told her they were yummy to eat and that she could eat them as long as she put one in her tray each time she ate one. This worked so well, and she did GREAT! Once she dropped a yellow in the orange accidentally and said, "Oops. Dat orin." Then, she took it out and put it in the yellow section. She did eat a few more than she put in the tray :) but that is to be expected.

Another day we tried gluing the Fruit Loops onto a rainbow. (I got the page from Making Learning Fun.) This did NOT go well as she was in one of her moods again. (Notice the tear-stained face in the picture.) She ended up getting a few on there, but I decided to try again later.

We went to Grandma's one day and I took this project along with us. I glued one section of the rainbow at a time onto her blue paper and gave her a strip of dot stickers with just the color I wanted her to use. She put the stickers on her rainbow.....and on her cheeks as well.

Then Grandma helped her paint the white clouds on with a cotton ball.

I really can't remember where I found this idea .... so if anyone knows where it is from, let me know! I cut out clouds from a cardboard box and then we just slid the pipe cleaners into the corrugated spaces. She thought that was cool. She told me each color as we did it. Then, I had her glue cotton balls on for the clouds.

She really enjoys looking at her stand up rainbow that we set on the counter.

MISC.

As we start working on lowercase letters, I was trying to find some materials and toys that use lowercase instead of capital. It's not as easy as I thought. Anyway, I found this Melissa and Doug puzzle on Amazon that has both lowercase and capital letter pieces for each letter. Did I say how much I love M&D?

I found this adorable train at a garage sale this week. (I LOVE garage sales!) Punkin has really enjoyed it. I think she caught on to the fact that we were doing a lot with colors this week, because the first time she played with the train, she named the color of each block as she took it off.

And we once again took advantage of beautiful weather to play outside...and practice going up and down stairs. (One of her new obsessions.)

I think we will finish up a few rainbow things next week and then start umbrellas. To see what other Tots were up to this week, visit 1+1+1=1.

WEEK OF APRIL 12 - MORE BUTTERFLIES

~Punkin is 20 months old~

Well, we had a very busy week, and between me subbing two days at the school where I used to teach, and making an unexpected trip to the dentist for a chipped tooth, and playing outside a LOT due the gorgeous weather, it didn't seem like we were home very much at all. I didn't think we had done a lot of Tot School to post about, but when I started uploading pictures for this post, I realized we did more than I thought!

My focus this week was to review some concepts from last week (we still used our butterfly theme), work on fine motor skills, and to expose Punkin to some new activities. I also had a revelation...well, it was not so much of a revelation really as it was a DUH! Punkin sometimes gets so caught up in playing with the stickers, using the glue, stacking the manipulatives, rolling the dice, or whatever, that it takes me awhile to get her to sometimes understand what I really want her to be doing. (Not that doing those other things isn't teaching her things as well, but.....) Anyway, one night in bed it dawned on me that I need to do with her the same thing I had to do with my first graders ALL the time.... Give her a few minutes before we actually start the activity to investigate and play with the fun new "stuff" I have for her first on her own. Then, she was much more ready to do our activity after she had time to do what she wanted first.

TOT TRAYS

This week, Punkin REALLY got excited about Tot Trays. She now knows exactly when in our day we do them, and as soon as I mention "trays" she is running to the stairs and climbing up as fast as she can to play with her trays, shouting, "Tays!" She started off at the beginning of the week doing a GREAT job at putting one tray away before getting out another. At the end of the week...not so much. :)

This was by far her favorite tray. She LOVES puzzles. I had gotten these at the dollar store before Easter, and just now got them out for her. She has other number and letter puzzles downstairs, but she was fascinated with these because she could punch out the letters and numbers. She did keep getting the 9 and 6 confused on the number puzzle because they were the same color and looked exactly the same. One time she put the 6 in and then I heard her in a puzzled voice say, "Here's 6, too?" not knowing where to put the 9 she was holding.

I got this little game on clearance after Easter at Kmart. I know it's not Easter time anymore, but I thought she'd enjoy it, and boy did she ever! It was great for her fine motor skills. She loved putting the little bunny pegs in the holes.

This was also a hit. I simply took a clear container with a lid and used a hole punch to punch holes in the lid. Then, I put straws and pipe cleaners in the tray for her. It didn't take her long to figure out how to put them in the holes and take them out. Again, great fine motor skill work. She did this every day.....sometimes more than once. I adapted this from an idea I originally saw on Clarisa's blog.

Again, focusing on fine motor skills (and one to one correspondence), I had her transfer little jewels into the mini muffin tin cups. I've tried this with tweezers and tongs before, which she HATED, but she LOVED doing it with a spoon. She also had tons of fun "stirring" the jewels in the little bowl to hear the noise it made.

I made this contraption from a piece of cardboard and glued on muffin liners. I used foam shapes and glued one into the bottom of each muffin liner. Then, she sorted the shapes into the correct spot. It aggravated her at first that she couldn't get out the shapes I had glued in the liners. :) She is getting much better at sorting items like this since we do it often with different objects and in different ways. However, she still had just as much fun dumping out all the shapes and putting them back in the bowl as she did with the sorting part. :)

I had one more tray for her that she never played with that surprised me. Her Aunt Cali had made a fun matching game for her for Christmas that had real pictures of some of her favorite things around our house. She had taken the pictures and modge podged them onto small flat pieces of wood and put cute pink paper on the other side. Punkin usually loves playing with them, but I guess she was more interested in the other trays since they were "new" to her.

COLORS

We didn't do much with colors this week due to lack of time. Here is the only thing we did:

I adapted an idea from Susan's blog where Punkin had to use her lacing beads to match the colors of the butterflies. I used it as an exposure to AB patterns, though she simply did one to one correspondence with this activity and matched colors. For this first time doing this type of activity, I just set out the exact beads that she'd need for each pattern strip.

SHAPES

This was one activity that we did last week and I had her continue this week. This week, she was over the novelty of it and did MUCH better at concentrating on where the shapes went. Since we had already done it last week, she really did it pretty independently without much help. At one point, it was cute to hear her say, "Where dymin go? Oh here is!" as she put the shapes on. (Her new thing is to ask a question and answer it herself!)

We got out her Do-a-Dot markers again, and she loved painting the dots on her shape worksheet. I was surprised at how careful she was to actually fill in the dots. I thought she'd just make random dots all over the page.....

...Which she did at the end when she ran out of empty dots. She had no more dots left, but she was NOT done painting, so I let her have at it! She had a very colorful page when she was done.

LETTERS

I used this last week with Punkin as a color matching activity. We still matched them by color this week (which she did GREAT on), but we also made note of the capital and lowercase B's and traced the lowercase b's with our fingers as we said the name and sound of the letter.

Then, we also did this sorting activity with capital and lowercase letters on butterfly cutouts.

This was a bit harder for her and I ended up really helping her a lot with this....which I knew I probably would as this was her first real formal exposure to lowercase letters. But that was my intent: exposure.

NUMBERS

I decided to expose Punkin to double digit numbers since she knows 0-9 so well already. I showed her each number and explained that they had two numbers in them and had her repeat the numbers back to me for each butterfly card that I showed her. Then, we played our usual game in the living room: Spread out the cards on the floor and go find the one I call out.

I had her then bring the card that I asked her to find and come put it in the matching bowl. (I have been doing a lot of matching activities like this to force her to focus on the number, shape, color, etc. She's getting better, but still doesn't always pay close enough attention.) I don't think she really grasps the double digit numbers yet visually, but again.....exposure was my goal.

For her structured playtime activity, I once again got out her beloved noodle sensory tub and had her find her magnetic numbers in it. She was supposed to then put the number on the matching butterfly. She did it for the first two she found, and then just wanted to dig in the macaroni.....which she did for quite awhile.

So, I changed it up a bit, and during schooltime, I put her magnetic numbers inside an empty tissue box for her to pull out. She really got into it this way for some reason....and did a remarkable job at matching the numbers. She'd clap for herself each time she matched a number.

She was very intrigued by the fact that her numbers were sticking to the pan and didn't fall off when she lifted it up.

Our next number activity was also a hit. I gave her some stickers and called out a number for her to cover up on the butterfly wings. It was a good combination of number recognition and fine motor skills.

After the last activity, she wanted to see if her stickers would stay on her page like her numbers did. :)

I also set out cups with butterfly numbers on them and had her pick a cup, tell me the number, and count that many butterfly cutouts into each cup. She really got into this as well and did a good job of counting the butterflies. (I gave her the exact number that she'd need each time, though.)

CRAFT

I got the idea for this craft from My Family Life. I had ovals precut for her that we glued together to make our butterfly. When I showed her the ovals, she immediately said, "Geen obals!" I had her count how many ovals there were as well. Her favorite part, of course, was painting on the dots!

MISC.

I had her do this size sort activity again this week. She did much better.

We spent a lot of time outside this week because the weather was just so beautiful. One day we met Grandma at a park for the morning. Her favorite activity was practicing going up and down the little step.

We went to the library this week and checked out a lot of fun books. Punkin spent quite a bit of time one morning exploring all her new books. She has always LOVED to "read."


And this is my favorite picture from this week.......

While she was hunting for her butterfly numbers, she somehow tripped or something and landed like this......don't ask me how she did it.....who knows. Anyway, I thought she'd go ballistic, as she tends to freak out at even the slightest bump, fall, scratch. But although she was stuck, she actually thought it was quite funny looking at Mommy upside down and ended up in a fit of giggles....at least for a little bit until she suddenly realized she was stuck. Then, she started saying, "Mommy! Hep!"

Well, for a week where I thought we didn't do much, this turned out to be quite long..... :) To see what other Tots were up to this week, check out 1+1+1=1 for this week's Tot School link ups.