P IS FOR PUMPKIN - PART 2

~Punkin is 27 months.~

Well, we did our Pumpkin theme again this week, and had lots more fun! (Therefore, most of the videos, books, etc. stayed the same as last week.)

Theme: Pumpkin
Letter: Pp
Number: 4
Shape: Semicircle
Color: Orange
Verse: "Be patient with everyone" (1 Thes. 5:14)
Videos:
"That's How a Pumpkin Grows" song by Brian Vogan
"Pumpkin Orange, Pumpkin White"
Super Why Alpha Pumpkin Game
Number 4 song by Big Bird
Books:

CALENDAR / CIRCLE TIME

Here Punkin is doing her vocabulary cards for the letter P during our morning calendar/circle time. (She turns each card over in the chart and says, "/p/, /p/, popcorn"... or whatever the picture is.)

Each day I also read "The Ten Little Pumpkins" poem from The Scripture Lady that talks about emotions and facial expressions on each little pumpkin. She LOVED this! I'd hold up the card and read the back, while she looked at the pumpkin's facial expression on the front and tried to imitate it. Here she is imitating "mad" and "surprised."

TOT TRAYS

We had out the same tot trays as last week, so I didn't take pictures again this week. Although this week she DID do the two she wouldn't touch last week, so I did take pictures of those.

She liked these file folder games this week. The one on the left is matching cupcakes to the right "moose chef." It was a bit challenging because you had match a variety of attributes (color of frosting, type of sprinkles, cherries or no cherries, etc.), and each cupcake was different. But she loved it because they were cupcakes! She kept singing "Happy Birthday" as she did it. The folder on the right was matching different sized animals to the correct barn and shape. Again, more than one attribute, but she did better at this one.

She also attempted the lacing animals this week, though the actual lacing didn't last too long. She preferred just wearing them around like necklaces.

And one day, instead of doing her tot trays, she chose to get out her flashcards instead. (I have a basket of books, flashcards, magnets, etc. on her little table that she can choose to do if she wants.) She spent a long time laying them out around the room, then going back and turning them all over and saying the letter or picture.

Then, that same day, she got out all her lowercase foam letters that I made and lined them all standing up in her keyboard, again telling me the letter each time. I love it when she initiates her own learning activities.

LANGUAGE ARTS LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Kumon Tracing Book. We're getting into the curved lines which is a bit harder for her. She still wants to make them all straight. But she's catching on.

For her vocabulary cards this week, I gave her the little hammer and had her hit the card that I called out. She got a kick out of this. Then, I'd tell her to hit all the animals or all the food.

This letter matching / spelling "pumpkin" activity was by far her favorite this week. We had to do it every day! I got the printout from COAH, and made my own bottle cap letters. (I don't have a ton of caps to make a whole lowercase and uppercase set of letters, so whenever we do something like this, I just tape the letters on that I need, so I can take them off and reuse the caps for other things later.) Anyway, each day, she matched the uppercase to uppercase, lowercase to lowercase, then uppercase to lowercase, and finally lowercase to uppercase. It still shocks me how easily she can do upper to lower case letter matching activities (or vice versa) without getting confused.

(Sorry the video is sideways! Anyone know how to fix that in You Tube? I'm new to using You Tube.)

Working on tracing her letter Pp for her ABC binder. As you can see, she was more into "decorating" her entire page with dots and lines.

Gluing on her letter p pictures for her book.

Finding and stamping the letter P (from HERE.)

I made this letter matching sticker activity, which I got the idea for from the Activity Mom. She used little capital ABC stickers we had to match with the lowercase letters on the pumpkin. Again, this was pretty easy peasy for her, but she LOVED working at getting the stickers off by herself.

I printed this "My Pumpkin" book from Making Learning Fun. Instead of tracing or coloring the shapes on each page, though, I had cut the shapes out of foam ahead of time for her to glue on. This was easier for her, and I think it made each shape stand out better on each page. We read this book every day, along with some of her other emergent reader books that she's made and her Number of the Week books. She loves "reading" the books she's made, and it thrills me to see her starting that early reading process!

MATH LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Punkin did this "Pumpkin Quilt" puzzle from Making Learning Fun. I put magnets on the back of the pieces because she gets upset when things "move around" on her.

And she did her first grid activity this week (from Prekinders). She rolled a big foam dice with numbers (not dots), and put that many Cheerios on the grid. (This was the first time we'd used the dice in quite awhile, and I noticed that she did MUCH better at knowing to look at the TOP number. She used to get so confused as to which number to look at.) Notice, though, the two piles of Cheerios....yeah, well, it didn't go over well when I wanted her to use some of HER snack to "feed the pumpkins" (even though I told her she could eat them all when we were done.) So, we had to have a separate pile for the pumpkins. LOL! Anyway, we did this quite a few times. It was great for counting practice and left to right directionality and return sweep between lines. She does great counting objects that are put in front of her, but she still tends to just keep on going and going and going when asked to count out a certain number of objects....she doesn't really know when to stop, even if she gets to that number. (Does that make sense?) So, anyway, I think we'll be doing more grid games to help with this concept.

And we worked some more on patterns using this sheet from COAH.

And these magnet pattern strips from Making Learning Fun. She does pretty well with AB patterns now, so I introduced some ABC and AABB patterns to her.

Punkin practiced counting to number 4 by stamping out 4 of each color of pumpkin.

We sorted a deck of cards into piles of "4" and "not 4." This was a bit more challenging for her than I thought it would be. Again, new skill we'll keep working on.

I printed out the little pumpkin number cards from COAH and Punkin lined them up on a fence that I printed from a google search. (I printed out two and taped them together.)

We did the Trick Or Treat counting cards from 2TeachingMommies again this week, although she wasn't as into it this week as last week. I tried to use little beads this time, though, and they were harder for her to manipulate than the pasta pieces we used last week.

However, she did love just putting one bead into the little pumpkin at a time as she counted them. So, I kept giving her different amounts of beads for her to count into the pumpkin.

And we made our Number 4 Book, of course.

I gave Punkin her pumpkin bucket and she went around the living room looking for the pumpkin number cards (from COAH) that I had hidden. She had to tell me the number she found before she could put it in her bucket.

When she found them all, we spread them out on the floor, and I'd tell her a number to hop to. Then, Punkin lined them up in number order and had fun hopping down the number line, trying to say each one as she went. It was hilarious to watch!

Next, we took all the numbers and spread them out at the bottom of our stairs. She took them one at a time in order and set them on the stairs. (One on each step.)

After that, I gave her a little pumpkin bucket and would call out a number for her to go put the pumpkin on. She is really into climbing the stairs and going down the stairs without holding on to anything right now, but I don't like her to do it when I'm not around. So, I like to give her some time when I'm right there to practice this skill to her heart's content.

CRAFT TIME

I had strips of orange, white, and yellow cut ahead of time that I held while she practiced using her scissors to cut apart. (She would have kept cutting all night if I had let her!)

Then, we took the small pieces she had cut, and glued them onto a piece of tagboard to make a candy corn. (Not pumpkin related, but it fits with the season!)

INDEPENDENT ACTIVITIES

Cutting her orange playdough "bread" into slices. I showed her how to do this this week, and she just kept doing it over and over.

Playing with her fall sensory bin once again. Still a favorite.

Coloring some pumpkin pictures.

Do a Dots. (I printed this page from Making Learning Fun.)

Doing her push pin letter Pp's again while I made lunch close by.

And after we did our pumpkin patterns, she just wanted to play with her magnetic pom poms. (She hasn't ever shown too much interest in these before, so I was glad that she wanted to play with them.) She made lots of lines, and tried to fill the whole tray. In this picture, she said she was making a rainbow.

MISC. STUFF

I attempted to make a "fort" for Punkin this week. It kept falling down, but she had fun taking all her animals inside, as well as her play food, and feeding them in there.

Punkin climbed up into my chair one day when I got up to get something. I had the Collage and Trace document from Tired, Need Sleep up on the screen. To my amazement, she somehow figured out how to use the scroll ball on my mouse to scroll through all the letters! She thought she was big stuff! LOL!

Well, that about wraps it up for our pumpkin theme. To see what others did this week, check out 1+1+1=1!