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.