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.