M IS FOR MONKEYS

~Punkin is 31 months old.~

I have to say that I wasn't all that motivated to do much this week, so we didn't get too creative. But she asks for "Schooltime" if I don't do it, so I forced myself to get a few things ready for her.

Theme: Monkeys
Letter: Mm

Number: 10

Shape: Square

Color: Brown

Videos:

5 Little Monkeys song

Another 5 Little Monkeys

5 Little Monkeys (with real monkeys)

5 Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree

Veggie Tales Silly Monkey song

Bananas for Lunch online story

Curious George Upside Down song

Books:

I never got to the library to get monkey books this week, so we had to go with what we had here at home. I could have sworn we had some Curious George books, too, but I couldn't find them for anything. Oh well.

We added something to our morning calendar time routine. Punkin uses magnetic letters to spell out her three sight words. She can almost do it without help now.

TOT TRAYS

Colored popsicle sticks in her old baby utensil dishwasher basket. I got the idea from A Hodgepodge Life.

Playing with little monkey erasers from Dollar Tree. She scooped them into an ice tray, tried to pick them up with tweezers, and then insisted they were monkey cookies that needed to go in the "oven" - aka, the shelf.

I printed these Curious George numbers from Creative Learning Fun (though I can't find them on her site now for some reason) and attached them to craft sticks. Punkin had to stick them in the matching section of an upside down egg carton. She had fun with this!

I got back out the good old Counting Pegs. This was her favorite tray this week.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

We practiced spelling "monkey" every day using this sheet from COAH and our bottle cap letters.

Punkin also enjoyed using her magnetic pom poms with this sheet from COAH as well.

With a few prompts, Punkin did pretty well putting this monkey puzzle together...once again from COAH. She is really starting to like "non toddler" type puzzles now.

I printed some monkeys inside squares to see if Punkin could cut out our shape of the week. To my surprise, she could.....all by herself! I am continually impressed with her cutting skills each week.

And we continued to work on our Kumon tracing book. She continues to do well. We usually repeat the pages for a few days before doing a new one.

Since she was doing well with Kumon, I decided to see how she would do with these prewriting sheets from COAH. Well, the dotted lines were harder for her than the "paths" in the Kumon books. She did pretty well, though I did guide her a bit on a few of them.

I was going to print the letter M on her chalkboard and have her "paint" over it with a wet paintbrush, but I could not find any chalk anywhere! (Though, looking back, I should have just used sidewalk chalk. Oh well.) So, we adapted the idea to the whiteboard. I wrote the letter and she traced and erased with a kleenex.

She set out her monkey erasers on the letter Mm using her tweezers. She is getting pretty good with using the tweezers now.

Letter Mm capital / lowercase sort using printouts from Creative Learning Fun. (Once again, I can't find it anymore, though, on her site.)

Punkin matched monkey and banana shapes (that I printed awhile back from Creative Learning Fun) in her pocket chart. She did this easily. She still loves anything involving her pocket chart.

Monkey patterns from COAH.

Monkey size order .... also from COAH.

We tried our first Dot to Dot (from Making Learning Fun). We did it with our fingers first but she still needed me to guide her with the marker. We'll keep trying simple dot to dots every now and then.

CRAFTS / ART

Simple, yet a favorite....water color painting a letter Mm page. She traced the letters first with paint...

Then, went to town painting the whole page.

MISC. FUN

I got out our colored rice again and an egg carton with bowls and scoops. This gave me about 20 minutes to get lunch ready. She still loves this activity!

And again, an oldie, but goodie - shaving cream!

I was inspired by THIS post to get back out our big ABC mat. What a hit! I didn't even have to say anything.....She just saw the box sitting out when she got up, and on her own began to work diligently to connect them into a road. Then, she had hours of fun hopping on the "road," driving her stroller and car and grocery cart along the "road", and asking us to "chase" her along the "road."

The next day, I handed her monkeys with letters on them (printed from HERE) and had her run to put them on the right big mat letter. She loved seeing how fast she could find the letters.

Then, we got out the beanbags, and she practiced throwing them and telling me what letter they landed on. Oh what fun we had with the ABC mat this week! We put them away one night, and the next day while I was getting dinner ready, I realized she had gotten them out and was putting them together again. It kept her busy for quite awhile!

This week, Punkin would often go to the closet and take out her winter gear and work hard at putting everything on. Then, she'd come say, "I going bye bye, Mommy. See you!"

And of course, what is Mm week without an M&M snack each day? (Oh boy. Now she knows what they are, and she can't get enough of them. She's just like her mother!)

We'll continue with M next week as we do M is for Money.....Punkin is SO into money right now, so I think she'll enjoy it! To see what other tots were up to this week, go to 1+1+1=1.

H IS FOR HEARTS - WEEK 2

~Punkin is 30 months old.~

We didn't get done all the heart activities that I had planned, but that's okay. I'll tuck them away in my files. As much as I love doing heart activities, we must move on.....

TOT TRAYS

Once again, we didn't get much time to do tot trays. I may have to rethink our schedule to fit it in more or just make it part of our Tot School time instead of a separate time.....We'll see.

She spent a lot of time using her magnetic foam hearts this week.

And she loved the foam heart stickers.

This one went untouched again this week - More due to the fact that we didn't have time to get to everything.

I was sad she never picked this beading tray up. :( She liked the stickers and magnets too much this week.

She did this once, but I didn't get a picture because my camera was downstairs, and I was just too lazy to go get it.

And our Valentine Sensory Bin - I'll probably leave it out all of February before putting it away and making a new one.

OUR LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Tracing the letter Hh. We did this every day, but I didn't take a picture every day. She was all excited this week to use a RED dry erase marker! Oh the silly things that motivate!

Doing our Hh tracing from our ABC binder book.

Making the Hh collage page for the ABC binder.

I found cute conversation heart stickers at Walmart. She used these to make Hh's.

For our Hh hunt this week, I let her use the conversation heart stickers to cover the Hh's instead of Do-a-Dot markers.

Capital / lowercase letter matching using the printout from 2 Teaching Mommies.

I put her sight words in heart shapes (one letter in each heart). Then, she matched her magnetic letters to spell the word. And finally, she used the hearts as a guide to spell the word by herself on the tray.

Then, she wanted to build towers with the letters. I can't find my picture of it, but she also built different sized towers and I had her tell me which had MORE and which had LESS. (I'm trying to introduce her to those words and concepts right now.)

Heart Swatter - I made this "swatter" and had her "swat" different numbers I called out to continue our work with recognizing numbers 10-12. Then, she wanted to choose which one to swat and I had to tell HER the number. :)

Somehow it turned into a game of "swatting" parts of our body, such as head and nose. She thought that was hilarious.

Practicing her newly developed skill of using a clothespin.....I got out these cute mini colored clothespins for her to use on these heart counting clip cards from Making Learning Fun.

Practicing counting using candy hearts and this 7-10 number dot page that I got from 1+1+1=1 somewhere (I think)...it was so long ago that I printed this out, I honestly forget. We use these dot pages for a lot of things.

I set out the heart picture cards (from COAH) in random order for Punkin to set candy hearts on and count. Then, she had to match the correct number heart card to them, and then I had her put them in order.

Last week, Punkin filled these heart containers with the correct number of candy hearts, but she didn't want to empty them. So this week, she lined them up in order, then opened them up and counted the hearts as she put them back in the bowl.

I set out two heart shapes and had Punkin roll a dice 2 times to determine how many candy hearts went on each heart cutout. Then, I had her show me which heart "cookie" had MORE "heart chips" in it.

Just a little quick patterning from the Valentine Tot Kit at Lawteedah.

Then, an attempt to do patterning later with candy hearts and this printable from PreKinders. However, she was DONE after the first row and refused to do more for some reason.

She made a heart out of shapes using these printouts from Making Learning Fun.

ARTS / CRAFTS

Punkin made a tree using hearts. I traced her arm/hand onto brown (though you can't really see her hand part in the final product) and cut it out for her. Then, she glued it to her paper and added cutout hearts as the leaves. I got the idea from HERE.

And we made a couple animals out of hearts.....like this butterfly from HERE.

And this mouse, which came from an idea at Pocketful of Posies.

MISC. STUFF

Punkin enjoyed eating pink oatmeal this week!

On Valentine's Day, when Punkin woke up from her nap, she noticed arrows outside her room that she had to follow around the house that led her to her Valentine's Day gift. She thought that was fun and carried the arrows around the rest of the evening and would put them on the floor in random array for ME to follow! :)

I had gotten some heart cupcake liners and heart stick toppers at Walmart thinking I'd make some cupcakes, but that never happened, so I gave them to Punkin to use one day while she played with playdough. She made her own "cupcakes" and even insisted I bake them in the oven for her. (Obviously, we never actually turned the oven ON, but she would let me know when she thought they were done. She made about 4 different "batches.")

Punkin is still slightly "obsessed" with Baby Jesus, and every time we get out playdough, she wants me to make her a Baby Jesus in the manger, Mary, Joseph, and an angel. (Don't you just love my playdough "people"?) Anyway, this time, after I made them, she got the rest of the heart sticks that she didn't use on her "cupcakes" and stuck them in the manger. She said she had to give Jesus her hearts. (PRECIOUS!) Then, she even stuck her star cookie cutter on top.

The last couple of weeks, her obsession had been building towers with her big blocks. This week, she figured out she could reach the coloring books and crayons by herself, so I found her MANY times up at the table quietly coloring.

Well, that's the end of our heart activities. Join us next week for M is for Monkey activities. To see what other tots were up to this week, go to 1+1+1=1.