WEEK OF MAY 2 - KITES

~Punkin is 21 months~

We finished up some of our umbrella stuff from last week and started to work on a kite theme. Punkin doesn't quite get what a kite is yet....she insists they are diamonds. :)

TOT TRAYS

Punkin went straight for this tray first every day....mainly because she loved opening up the containers and dumping out all the toothpicks. She WOULD work at putting them back into the little holes .... for a few minutes. Then, she'd go on to something else. But she ALWAYS would come back to it a few times before putting it away for good each day.

Punkin is getting much better at putting the pom pom magnets on the dots on the paper instead of just placing them wherever on the page. I had the Rr and Bb pages in her tray for her to do this week.

I was excited to find this foam lowercase letter puzzle at a garage sale last week. She enjoyed punching out the letters, and she'd tell me a few of them that she knows. (Somehow she knows "e" now, too, though we have not formally worked on it.)

These were another garage sale find. Daddy tried to teach her how to link them together, but she didn't manage to link any together by herself. She still had fun playing with them, though.

I had this back in her trays this week. Once again, she was not interested in matching the numbers on the cups to the egg carton or counting the clips, but she once again spent lots of time stacking the cups and dumping out the clips and telling me the colors.

Punkin finally figured out this week how to string these Melissa and Doug beads onto the shoestring all by herself! This was a HUGE accomplishment! (She's always struggled a bit in the fine motor area.)

FINISHING UP UMBRELLAS

I got this craft idea from The Sellers blog. I cut out a U shape and had Punkin use her Do-a-Dot markers to decorate it and then glue it onto blue paper.

She also decorated an umbrella shape I cut out for her, and then I gave her a blue marker and told her to make raindrops. Well, she didn't make rainDROPS, but she had fun making lots of rain anyway...because she got to use a MARKER!

Here's her finished Umbrella.

I saw this idea from The Sellers as well, but it didn't go over that well. She had fun coloring on the paper plate with colored pencils, and then I taped on a straw on the bottom for her and tried to get her to carry it like an umbrella. She didn't really want anything to do with it after she colored it, so I didn't get a picture of what I had intended it to be. Oh well.

We also did some more work with the letter U and counting umbrellas and sorting, but for some reason, I didn't get any pictures of those.

KITES - MATH / NUMBERS
We didn't get to a lot of kite math activities this week since we were finishing up with umbrellas.

We used this idea from Chasing Marcus again to work on introducing patterns, and once again, Punkin did very well.

She also had fun stacking the blocks....


LETTERS / ABC'S

Watching our Starfall "movie."

Matching lowercase and capital letter bows to the right kite.

I had to help her mainly to stay focused and not start throwing the bows on the floor. But since I color coded them as well, it wasn't too difficult for her.

I printed this out from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I had Punkin match the lowercase letters to the uppercase on the sheet to spell the word KITE. She did well. I have been helping her do a lot of things like this to expose her to the lowercase letters. She got all of them correct except the t on this one.

Punkin had fun gluing pictures that start with the k sound onto her kite. I had her tell me each picture as she put them on. Throughout the week we referred to the kite and said the picture names again. Also, throughout the week, we tried to think of lots of things that start with K and we made a big deal when we read things in books or saw things while we were out and about that started with k.

These were printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler as well. I had her first just point to capital letters and pictures for me that I called out. She loved just that part of it.

Then, I got out the foam lowercase letters that I cut out last week and gave her one at a time. If she didn't know it, I told her what the letter was and had her match it to the capital letter. She really enjoyed this and did fairly well. Again, it's the simple things that she likes the best.

I tried my own version of "build a letter" that I have seen many places in the blogosphere. She loved playing with the pieces and telling me what letter we were building.

It was hard for her, though, to match how the pieces were to go, so I had to help her place them on the cards, but she had fun anyway. She has actually asked for them a couple more times after seeing them on my desk.

SHAPES

Like I did with the butterflies a few weeks ago, I gave Punkin shape cut outs and had her find where to put each one on the kite. She loves this kind of thing....I think because I let her use glue...and she did really well, telling me the shapes as she put them on.

I found a whole bunch of hexagon shapes in my stash, so I added that this week. She could say the word really clearly, but obviously doesn't really know what a hexagon is. However, she still matched the hexagon shapes just fine by looking at the color and shape.

This was kind of a dud activity. She told me they were triangles and the color of each shape and had fun playing with them on the easel, but I had to really guide her and basically do it with her hand over hand to create the kite shape using all the triangles. When we were done, however, she immediately noticed we made a diamond!

I then called out a letter for her to find and had her put it on the board to spell kite. This was easy for her. Now, she'll go up to the board where the picture still is and point to the word and say, "Kite!" because I told her that is what we made and spelled. (But if I show her a random picture of a kite in a book or something and ask her what it is, she'll tell me it's a diamond.)

THEME ACTIVITIES

I did the size order activity again this week with kites (from Confessions of a Homeschooler). She did 100% better. I think it was because the sizes were much more distinct than the umbrellas last week, and I only gave her 3-4 at a time.

She actually really got into it this week and clapped every time she put one down!

We also colored a lot of kites this week. Punkin LOVES to color! (Love the concentration on her face!)

For our craft this week, I taped three diamond shapes onto a piece of paper. Then, I had Punking use a bath sponge loofah thing to "sponge paint" the paper blue all over. She wasn't quite so sure about this method of painting. She started off doing it vigorously, but then, got upset when her fingers got all dirty. She kept asking for her "bush" (brush) to use instead. So, I finished the sponge painting part for her.

Then, when it dried, I took off the diamond shapes I had taped onto the paper and added "strings" with a marker and had Punkin color the kites. She liked this part much better.

MISC.

Punkin has always loved her magnetic letters. On her own, she would sit at her table and play with them a lot this week. She enjoys putting as many on as she can fit and then taking them all back off again.

I found these Melissa and Doug stacking blocks at TJ Maxx this week for 4.99. I have seen these on many blogs, and decided to get them for Punkin. She has had so much fun playing with them this week. When it was time for us to clean up each day from her independent playtime in her room, I'd line them up for her in the right order, and then she'd put them inside each other one at a time. She LOVED the last little tiny star block.

I haven't really shown her how to stack them yet, as I wanted to see what she would do on her own first. I am going to put them in her tot trays for next week and show her more specifially how to use them.

Punkin LOVES playing with bubbles, and in fact LOVES washing her hands in the sink because it makes bubbles. So, to keep her occupied one day while I made lunch, I gave her a bowl of soapy water and some of her little cups. She played for quite awhile, and did NOT want to stop to eat lunch...which says a lot, because the girl loves to eat!

I am kinda feeling like I'm in a rut with my activities and ideas. The nicer weather brings more opportunities to get out and do other things, so I have a feeling that Tot School will be more laid back here as summer approaches and we get busy with outside fun and vacations. We'll see.......Anyway, to find out what other tots were up to this week for Tot School, visit 1+1+1=1.