WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 6 - CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM

~Punkin is 25 months old.~

On the spur of the moment after reading some other blogs, I decided to do a theme on Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom to kinda introduce or "kick off" our new weekly letter units. To say that Punkin enjoyed it would be an understatement. SHE ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! She has the book memorized now, and she always says, "They all fall down" if you ask her about the book. She actually really enjoyed all our activities related to the book, and would do almost anything I asked her to if it involved the "cohanut tree." I had a blast as well watching her enjoying learning so much. I may have to do more "book themes" as part of my letter units if she loves it that much.

TOT TRAYS

I found this really neat Lite Brite set at a garage sale this summer, and immediately was taken back to my childhood days when I had a Lite Brite. Punkin really enjoyed punching the lights into the holes and watching them light up.

Good old Connect Four. She always has fun just putting all the pieces in and then making them all fall out.

We worked some more with clothespins. She was to clip the clothespins to either the right color of cup or clip the right number of clothespins to the playing card. I had to really work with her on this, but at least she wasn't resistant to letting me help her try this time. Now she at least tells me, "Squeeeeeeeze fingers." So she KNOWS what to do, just is having a hard time DOING it.

This one was hard to get a picture of because she was usually sitting on my lap and I was helping her a lot. But I got out the toddler scissors for the first time. I was expecting her to be resistant to me showing her how to do it as she has been with most fine motor work like this, but she was motivated. After a couple days, she was getting pretty good at cutting the little pieces of paper as long as I held the paper for her.

I got this idea from Three Queens and a King. I printed out the set of animal cards and the page with the tiny animal pictures. She was to use the magnifying glass to look at the little picture and match the big animal card to it. When I was cutting out the animals, she was by my side, and named every animal for me and was interested in just playing with the cards. But the actual tray itself wasn't a huge hit, because our magnifying glass is a cheapy one from the Dollar Store and didn't work too well. It was hard for her to see the pictures. Luckily, I had printed them in their large version on the other side, too, by accident, so it became just a simple matching game for her.

TOT SCHOOL ACTIVITIES

I am starting a morning "calendar time" with her as we move into our new routine, so I did a basic start to that this week, and every morning, we'd read the book, then act it out using our magnetic letters on the tree I printed out from HERE.

She loved making all the letters fall down from the tree!

Then, we would make "alphabet soup" from the letters. Sometimes I'd tell her what letters to put in her soup, and other times, she'd pick them up and tell me what letters she was putting in her soup.

The last thing we'd do every morning was watch THIS VIDEO. It is a GREAT musical rendition of the entire book. Punkin asked to watch it over and over each morning. I had to limit her to three times each morning. Just yesterday, I heard her singing the song to her animals.

We used our Do-a-Dot markers to review lowercase letters. I'd give her one color at a time, and call out those letters in that area of the tree for her to find. It was a bit overwhelming for her to try to find the letter with so many on a page, so I started showing her the area to look in each time. I printed the page from HERE.

I cut out the pieces for her to glue on her paper to make a coconut tree. I showed her where to put the pieces. I don't know where I got the printout from, though.

Then, I hid lowercase letters from one of her puzzles in our rice bin and she had a blast finding the letters and putting them on her tree. I had her tell me what the letter was and the sound it made as she did it.

The next day, I got out her tiny foam puzzle letters to paint with on the tree. While I was getting the paint ready, she decided on her own to put her letters on the tree while she waited.

We used those little foam letters as "stamps" and painted them around her tree. Oooh, did she have fun!

Some of the letters got "smeared" a bit, so I wrote what the letter was supposed to be next to it.

We also used our new ABC cookie cutters with our playdough to make letters for the coconut tree.

I had this idea to create a tree with chalk outside on our driveway and write the letters around it for her to hop on as I called them out. (You can't see the pink letters show up very well.)

She humored me for a few.....Then, it was on to other things.

I was blown away by this activity. I decided to try a color by shape page of the coconut tree in the story. I colored in the little shapes next to the color words so she knew what color to color each shape. Okay, let me just say, I thought I'd have to help her quite a bit, being as this is the first time we've done anything like this. But, um, yeah.....she did the WHOLE thing by herself....even the coloring! No, I did not help her AT ALL! I just sat there amazed. She even told me "da hexgon is bown!"

Look at how well she colored in the shapes (the right color, too)! No, she didn't totally stay in the lines, but for a just-turned-two-year-old, I personally think that is pretty good....especially since a few weeks ago she was still in the "scribble" stage. After she colored the tree, I wrote one lowercase letter on the page at a time "going up the coconut tree" like in the book, and had her tell me what letter I wrote. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if this was a fluke or if she will continue to color like this ....

We practiced counting the coconuts on the trees and gluing them in the right box. I printed the pictures from Making Learning Fun.

Then, I cut the boxes apart, and we practiced lining them up in order.

We also made this "Counting Coconuts" math book. Once again, I don't know where I got it from. She had to put the number of coconuts on the tree that it said on that page. By the end, she was "helping" me read the story since it is so repetitive, only the number changing. She did great dotting the correct numbers.

Later, we went back and colored the trees, and stapled the pages into a book that she likes to "read" and practice counting with.

I used our number boxes like last week, only this time, I printed out little coconut tree pictures to use. (I just did a google image search for it.) This is really helping her with her counting.

We made this fun snack one day. I used a piece of bread, apple slices, oyster crackers for the coconuts, and of course, Alphabet cereal. Yum! Yum! (Once again, she recognized and told me that the oyster crackers were "hexgons.")

TOT ART

And this was MY favorite activity this week. I got the idea from Making Learning Fun, but tweaked it a tad bit. I cut out the shapes for her to glue on where I showed her. It's hard to tell in the picture, but she cut "fringe" on the bottom of the leaves. After a week of practicing with the scissors in her tot tray, she did great! I just held the paper and moved it back and forth to show her where to make the cuts. She thought this was so fun.

Then, we used scrapbook letter stickers to spell her name. And I helped her paint dots around the border (to match the book) using the end of a pencil eraser.

It turned out so cute! She was very excited to show Daddy and hang on our refrigerator. This is one that I will keep forever and not throw away.

TOT PLAY AND OTHER STUFF

Punkin wanted to help me make dinner one night again, but she soon became interested in my basket of drink mixes instead. She arranged and rearranged all the items at least ten times while I made dinner.

She practiced pouring skills one day. As you can see by all the water on her tray, she wasn't too good at it, but she had fun. We'll have to practice this skill some more. :)

She loved hunting for her letters so much that I had her do it again one day while I was making lunch. This time, I gave her the puzzle that the letters came from and had her put them back in the puzzle when she found them. Of course, she had to go get her hammer to "pound" them back in. I had to rehide the letters 2 times before she got bored.

And AGAIN, she wanted the puzzle, only this time, we didn't hide them in rice.

Making lines with chalk outside. If you give her chalk, this is her favorite thing to do with it.

Well, that was our fun week. We have our new toyroom / schoolroom done now, and our calendar time is ready to go, so I will look forward to sharing all about that next week! To see what other tots were up to, check out 1+1+1=1.