WEEK OF MAY 17 - LOWERCASE LETTERS

~Punkin is 21 months old~

We had a great week! I decided to focus our week on lowercase letters. I didn't have a set theme really....just anything that exposed her more to her lowercase letters. She learns best by repeated exposure, and I have to say that after just a couple of weeks of doing lots of activities with lowercase letters, she now knows basically all of them. Yea! Once again, we did quite a few of her favorite activities a couple days in a row, so I have lots to carry over to next week. I was going to do a flower theme next week, but I'm thinking I should just repeat a lot of this week's stuff and add on the stuff we didn't get to instead....Yeah, that's probably what I will do.

TOT TRAYS

I found this set of Discovery Toys pattern blocks at a garage sale a few weeks ago. It was a bit expensive in my opinion for a garage sale, but she assured me all the pieces were there, and it WAS Discovery Toys which I know cost a lot, so I got it. Yeah....ummm...there are LOTS of missing pieces. Some puzzles don't even have enough pieces to complete the puzzle. Very disappointing. But I figure Punkin is not really into the pictures so much yet as just playing with the shapes, so I guess it's okay for now. I set out a few of the easier puzzles, and she WAS able to match up the shapes to the spots on the cards, but she got frustrated when they didn't stay in place. So, she spent most of the time just dumping out the shapes and sorting them. She did love this tray, though, and did it numerous times each day.

She had fun again putting her colored rocks into the mini muffin tins. She loves these rocks, so this tray is always a hit. She used her hands, she put them on the ground and spooned them in, she kept them in her bucket and used the spoon..... She has definitely finally mastered the one to one idea. If one of the rocks went into a spot that already had a rock, she'd say, "Oops. Dat two."

This tray is just another take on the hairbands from last week. These Dollar Tree lacing beads have always been hard for her to actually lace, so I had her put them on the straws this week. I also had pipe cleaners in the tray if she wanted to try the lacing idea, but she stuck to doing it this way......and poking her fingers into the flower styrofoam as well. :)

And I kept the good old Melissa and Doug shape sorter in her trays this week....always a favorite. This week she really got into taking each set off separately, lining them up, then counting them by pointing to each one and then putting them all back on. (She didn't always count correctly, but it was cute that she was trying.)

She really got into her Melissa and Doug stacking blocks this week. She'd ask me to make towers for her and then she loved to climb up into my chair and take them all down one by one.

Towards the end of the week, she began to try to put the blocks on herself to make a tower.

LETTERS / ABC'S

Here are just a few of the books I found around our house that focused on lowercase letters. We read these over and over this week.

This farm one was one of Punkin's favorites this week. By the end of the week, if I asked her to point to certain letters for me, she could do it. She wasn't too interested in putting the magnetic letters on the pages, however. I have been looking, though, for lowercase magnetic letters for her to use on her magnetic board, and one day it dawned on me to just use these! So, we no longer have them with the book, but up on her board.

I ordered Punkin some Leapfrog DVD's using Amazon gift cards that I had, and these letter flashcards came with them. She enjoyed pulling them out of the bag one by one and telling me what letters they were.

I gave her the bag of foam lowercase letters that I had cut out, and she climbed up on the couch herself, dumped out the letters, and proceeded to line them up one by one in front of her. I, of course, had her start telling me the letters as she laid them down. She could tell me most of them, and the ones she didn't know, I told her and had her repeat the letter name back to me. I love when she takes the initiative and creates her own learning activity without even knowing it!

I printed these sheets out from Home Grown Hearts. Instead of using the apple cutouts that she had to match upper and lowercase, I just gave Punkin one red sticker at a time, called out a letter for her to find, and she'd put the sticker on the apple tree. There were only 4 letters per page, which was perfect for her, and she did GREAT!

She loved it, too, and really got into it. I'd say, "Where is the (b)?" She'd find it, put the sticker on, and say either, "I found it!" or "Dare it is!" Then, she'd clap for herself each time. I thought we'd get through maybe 2 pages, but she just kept on going! We did 5 out of the 6 pages before she got bored. I noticed that on most pages, if there was a letter she was not familiar with, she typically knew all the others, and it was interesting watching her use the process of elimination to figure out what letter it was.

I printed these letter matching picture puzzles from someone's website....though I can't remember now which one. Sorry! Anyway, I gave her just a few at at time that had pictures I knew she was familiar with. She fought me on this one at first for some reason, pushing everything away, saying, "No pease." (Her version of "No, thank you.") But then, after I did a few to show her, she was suddenly interested, and got really into it.

I did have to help her figure out how the two pieces went together sometimes, though....

And I printed these out on the spur of the moment one day from 1+1+1=1. I decided to go ahead and print them in black and white since I was going to have her use her Do-a-Dot markers and wouldn't be reusing them. I should have still done them in color, though, because some of the pictures didn't turn out well in black and white. Again, with this activity, she said "No pease" at first, but when I showed her what were going to do, she got excited, since she loves her Do-a-Dots. On a few pages, she put dots all over the page after she found the match, but what did I expect when I gave her a Do-a-Dot marker.....one of her favorite things? :) I also found that she wasn't really looking at the capital letter, and would wait for me to tell her what letter to mark (like we did with the apple trees). So, I started folding the page and showing her only the capital letter and picture at first and have her name them for me. Then, I'd open up the page and have her mark the matching letter.

COLORS

To say this was her favorite activity this week would be an understatement. She absolutely LOVED this activity! She loves colors and spelling her color words (by saying her color word chants), so I thought she might enjoy this, but I had no idea it would be such a hit. We will definitely be doing more of this activity next week, since we only had time for 4 colors. I printed out these sheets in color on cardstock from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Then, I put magnets on all of the letter cards. I put out one color card and all the matching letters for that card on her tray at a time, and we first said our color chant as I pointed to all the letters. Then, to my surprise, without me telling her what to do, she started matching the letters herself. She did not put them on in order, but once again, I was amazed with how well she did. And she could even tell me what almost all of the letters were. It was her constant dialogue, though, through the activity that amazed me most. She would say things like, "Dis one go here" or "I see da r."When we did blue, she picked the u up upside down, and thought it was an n. She looked at her page, didn't see an n and said, "Where n?" I told her you have the card upside down. She turned it over and said, "I put uhside down." She then found the matching u and placed it on the page the right way. I asked her, "What IS that letter?" and she said, "Dat's a u."

MATH SKILLS

I gave her a dice with some lowercase letters on it that she doesn't know quite as well. She was to roll the dice, identify the letter (with help if needed), and then put a sticker on one of those letters on the graph page. Just as with the last time we tried to use a dice, she loved rolling it, but she just refused / was not interested in even trying to look at the letter on the top. So, I ended up telling her the letter and she found it on her graph and put a sticker on it. She loved that part. I ended up running out of yellow stickers, so I gave her blue ones next. When I handed her the first blue one, she said, "Oooh! Dis one blue!" She cracks me up.

She also found it extremely funny to put the stickers on her fingers. She'd giggle and say, "Dat funny."

MISC.

For her structured playtime one day, I gave her lowercase abc stickers to play with. She started off putting them on her paper, but soon I heard her giggling, and looked over to find her doing this. She kept them on her arm all the way through lunch.

I found this Melissa and Doug shape puzzle at a garage sale this week, and Punkin has LOVED playing with it. She really enjoys taking each piece off the puzzle (still sitting on the shelf) and lining them up on her toybox. She will usually name the shape, too, as she does it.

And once again, I found her many, many times just surrounded by books and spending lots of time "reading."

We got out the playdough again, as well. This time, she had fun tearing it apart into little pieces and then attempting to count them. (She'd count to 16 every time.)

These balls were another garage sale find that have proved to be a favorite. We have used them for colors, counting, and motor skills.....like throwing them one by one across the room or trying to kick them into her "house."

Punkin spent a good 45 minutes playing with her bowl of soapy water again this week. If I need some time to do a few things in the kitchen, I just set her up on the floor with her bowl and some scoops and cups, and I actually have time to make lunch or get some other things done. She never wants to stop playing with this.

And last, but not least, I have mentioned before, but Punkin is into lining things up. She has also started to get into the "pretend" stage, and she loves using her stuffed animals and dolls as props. I thought this was good one to one correspondence work on her very own! :)

Check out what other tots were up to this week at 1+1+1=1.

WEEK OF MAY 10 - KITES

~Punkin is 21 months old.~

We had a fun week, though I have quite a few activities that we never got to (shapes, numbers/math). I just keep carrying things over to the next week. This week, we ended up repeating some activities a few times instead of introducing something new each day. I am finding that this works well, so I may start planning about half of what I was and doing each activity twice during the week...Hmm... We'll see. Oh, and now after this week, she recognizes a kite....instead of calling all kites diamonds.

TOT TRAYS

Just like with the playdough last week, she went to this first each day, and I ended up having to put it away for the rest of the day after she played with it for a bit or else she wouldn't have wanted to play with any other trays. It was as simple as putting sandpaper textured numbers (from when I taught first grade) under a piece of paper and rub with a crayon. I knew she wouldn't be able to really rub it enough to make out the number, but she did enjoy the texture of it. I did a few rubbings for her and she asked me then every day to "hep" her do more.

I put the pre-pattern / color matching kite activity that we did together last week in her tot trays for this week. She only got it out twice, and she didn't do it for very long, but she had no trouble doing the activity.

Punkin found her new Melissa and Doug stacking blocks in her Tot Trays this week. I showed her this week how to stack them. When I did it for the first time, she was all excited and clapped and said, "Dat's tower!" Then she proceeded to run and knock it over. And that was what we did every day. :)

And she continued to do a good job of nesting them inside each other. I would set them up in size order and then she'd put them inside each other. Today when we did it, I was shocked when she pointed to the last one (the biggest) and said, "Dat big." Then she pointed to one of the blocks towards the end of the line and said, "Dat small."

Punkin sort of made this a Tot Tray this week, and I just went with it. As I've said before, she really has fun playing with her magnetic letters on her little magnetic Melissa & Doug board. This week, she'd put some in her bowl and then take them out one by one and put them through the slits in her "bucket." (This had been part of a Tot School activity around Easter and I just never put the little bucket away.)

I took some ponytail holders that I had used when I taught first grade for patterning activities and had Punkin put them onto straws that I stuck in styrofoam. She really enjoyed this tray!

And of course she loved dumping them all out as well.

I really had to "encourage" Punkin to get this tray out. She wouldn't even play with it long enough for me to get a picture. She has never liked anything like tweezers, clothespins, tongs, etc. But I have been setting them out for her to just "investigate" and play with without expecting her to try to use them correctly. She was intrigued by the mini clothespins, especially when I opened and closed them like a little mouth. She played with them briefly....trying to fit the ends together. Oh well. We'll keep trying.

I threw in her shape sorter / stacker again this week. Once again, she loved it and had fun lining up all the shapes.

LETTERS / ABC'S

Using her Do-a-Dot markers on her Kk page from Confessions of a Homeschooler. She wasn't as careful this week to stay on the dots... But that's okay.

I am beginning to introduce Punkin to beginning sounds of words. I knew she wouldn't get it on her own, but we had fun doing it together. I printed out these two pages from Making Learning Fun. (I added the lowercase letter to them). I chose h and b because she knows these lowercse letters and because they had pictures of things she knows / loves (heart, house, horse, ball, bear, butterfly). She colored the pictures / kites first as we talked about the pictures. Then I cut them out and helped her glue them to the right kite.

I show her the page about once a day and we go over the pictures again.

I made this kite matching activity for Punkin as we continue to work on identifying lowercase letters. I only set out three matches at a time for her.

She usually loves matching acitivites or puzzles, but she wasn't too into this one for some reason.

This was the biggest hit of the week....probably because it centered on her and her name. I printed out the template from Making Learning Fun and used a pipe cleaner for the tail. (I covered up all but one letter so as not to "give away" what Punkin's "real" name is....)

I had her simply match the letters in her name by finding the orange bow with the matching letter and velcro it to the one on the kite.

She did SOOOO well! She didn't match them in order, but she did it without my help. We sang our little song we made up to spell her name as we pointed to each letter when she was done. One night I even found that she had gotten ahold of her kite, taken off the orange bows and was doing it again all by herself.

THEME ACTIVITIES

The girl loves her playdough. She has had fun using playdough mats that I print out for her lately.

For lunch one day we had kite shaped sandwiches!

MISC.

We got out our foam letters that I made and she played with them a couple days. Every once in awhile I'd ask her to find a letter for me. Other times I would point to a letter and ask her what it was. I had to help her with some of them, but it was good exposure for her.

We also spent one evening putting her Melissa and Doug capital/lowercase abc puzzle together. She did it almost all .... 30 minutes or more.... before losing interest. I helped her on some, but I was impressed with how well she did on her own.

And of course, we had to break out the rainbow rice again.....much to Punkin's delight.

This has become Punkin's new favorite activity...lining up anything and everything she can find.

And last but not least, Punkin would rather "read" books than do almost anything else.

Well, that was our week. Check out 1+1+1=1 for more Tot School fun from other moms and tots!