D IS FOR DINOSAUR

~Punkin is 29 months old.~

Theme: Dinosaurs

Letter: Dd

Number: 8

Shape: Triangle

Color: Green

Videos:

The Dinosaur Song

Dora: Baby Dino

Books:

TOT TRAYS

We only got to do Tot Trays one day this week, so you will probably see some of the same trays out next week, too.

Reusable animal sticker book.

4 piece animal puzzles. I had to help her a lot with this, but she had fun putting them away in the box!

Dropping toothpicks through a straw. I got this idea from HERE.

Color Beanbags. We lined them up, named the colors, and threw them in a bucket.

DINO LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Punkin matched up the heads and tails of the dinosaurs from HERE.

We made a dinosaur color book and worked on recognizing the color words. (I can't remember where I got it from, though.)

Punkin dot painted her letter Dd with green paint and the eraser end of a pencil. We really worked this week on the proper way to form a Dd, so I made her dot paint in that order.

She used her Do a Dot paints to find the letter of the sound I told her. I printed the page from HERE.

She sorted capital and lowercase Dd dinosaurs from HERE.

And she "built" the letter Dd out of paper towel tubes and pipe cleaners. I saw this idea HERE.

I printed THIS page for Punkin to dot paint, but it had a T for Trex on it, so I cut that part off and we made it into our own D is for Dinosaur page. She did great tracing her Dd's on the page.

Punkin matched up the shapes with the dinosaurs on THIS page. This was really too easy for her, but she still enjoyed it.

Punkin put together THIS shape dinosaur and then we used leftover green paint to put green dots on him.

We worked on patterns using THIS sheet from COAH.

And we practiced counting using THIS sheet also from COAH.

Punkin "fed" the dinosaur by rolling the dice and feeding the dinosaur that many leaves. I got the idea from HERE.

Punkin has always had a hard time using tongs, clothespins, etc. so I try to bring them back out every few weeks to keep practicing. When I saw THIS idea, I thought we'd try it again. (Although we obviously didn't paint the dinosaur and clothespins as it suggested.) Punkin worked really hard at it, and as long as I held the dino for her, she pretty much could finally do it herself! I was going to number the clothespins to make it a number order activity as well, but the concentration it took for her to use the clips was enough for this activity, I think.

She was so proud of her dinosaur.

ART ACTIVITIES

Punkin has really been into painting lately, so she used her watercolors to paint THIS dinosaur picture. I really worked with her on how to use the watercolors and not make them messy.

Then, when it dried I cut it out and glued it on a green piece of paper to put on our refridgerator.

And we worked on making a paper plate dinosaur. I got the idea from HERE. I realized later that we put the head on wrong. Oh well. She'll never know the difference. She asked to "paint" her dinosaur, so I let her use her Do a Dot paints to decorate it.

MISC. STUFF

Punkin saw this coloring sheet sitting on the counter, so she stood on her tippy toes to reach it, went and got out her crayons, lined them up on the table, and climbed up at the table, saying, "I going to color my dinosaur, Mommy." Well, okay, then!

And we had fun making these dinosaur sandwiches together for lunch one day. I saw this idea HERE.

And randomly, this became Punkin's favorite activity this week for some reason. On her own, she kept getting out her abc flashcards and lining them up in rows across our office. Then, she'd ask me to "find for me," which meant that I'd ask her to find certain pictures or "something that starts with...." or "something you can eat," etc.

Join us next week for D is for Dog! To see what other tots were up to this past week, check out 1+1+1=1.

S IS FOR SPIDER

~Punkin is 29 months old.~

Despite a few setbacks like me deciding to slice open my finger while cutting canteloupe and some unplanned errands, we still got a lot done thanks to Punkin's eagerness to do "schooltime." She is to the point now where she can sit and "do school" for up to 30 minutes at a time sometimes. I just watch and see when she is starting to get bored or distracted.

Theme: Spider

Letter: Ss

Number: 7

Shape: Octagon

Color: Black

Videos:
Animated Itsy Bitsy Spider Song
Itsy Bitsy Spider Song with book pictures
The Very Busy Spider (adapted)
The Letter S (Sesame Street)
The Letter S Song

TOT TRAYS

Sifting spiders out of rice. I got the idea from Counting Coconuts. However, the slots on my spoon weren't quite big enough, so it didn't quite work as I had planned. (I may try salt or sugar next time?) But it was still Punkin's favorite tot tray all week. She just ended up using her hands to get the spiders or using the spoon to scoop rice.

The next day, though, I got smart and put a red towel under her as she did it so it was easier to see and clean up the rice that ended up on the floor!

"Threading" spider rings onto a pipe cleaner to make a bracelet. This was another favorite.

Lacing to make a spider web. Not a big favorite. She only did it once. But I still throw lacing practice in every now and then, even though she's not a huge fan, and she IS getting pretty good at the skill.

Using tweezers to pick up spider rings and put them in her little tin. For the first time she seemed to grasp how to use the tweezers! Yea!

Magnet pages using magnetic pom poms. (I got this one from HERE.)

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Hunting for all the Ss letters on the page. Then I wrote in some S letters in the boxes at the bottom for her to trace.

Our S letter building puzzles. This time she cracked me up because she decided that the top pieces of each letter were the "jammie tops" and the bottom pieces were the "jammie pants." LOL!

She amazed me with how well she wrote her letter Ss. (We practice it in the air and with our fingers tracing the letter every morning during our calendar time, and she is getting much better at transferring that now to actual writing. Also, I think the Kumon books are helping, too.)

Making our S collage page for our ABC binder.

We played "Smack the Spider." I saw the idea HERE at 2 Teaching Mommies, and knew Punkin would enjoy this. I laid out a few of the spider letters and told her a sound. She had to find the matching letter on a spider and "smack" it. She is getting so good at the sound / letter correlation!

Again, working on sounds, I gave Punkin THIS PAGE from Making Learning Fun and some black paint with an unsharpened pencil. I called out a sound and she used the eraser of the pencil dipped in paint to mark the letter that makes that sound.

We did this spelling puzzle / letter matching activity from 2 Teaching Mommies every day. She loved to see the picture come together as she matched the letters and spelled "spider."

We made this book together as we talked about position words. Each page tells where to glue the spider (i.e. above the bat, under the gate, etc.). Then, I had her go back and color each page. We read it together every day, and by the end of the week, she could "read" it herself.

Punkin sorted spider rings by color.

Then, we made patterns with them.

I had her draw a web with chalk onto paper, then we rolled the dice to see how many spiders to count onto the web. Since we do this type of activity almost every week with each new theme, she is getting much better at knowing when to stop adding more objects.

We attempted to play this "Get Me to My Web" dice game from 2 Teaching Mommies. She was NOT into it though, and about halfway through, she ended up just putting her spider on the web and exclaimed, "I done!"

And we made our Number 7 Book that you can download HERE.

CRAFTS / PROJECTS

We made a "Spotty Spider" inspired by No Time For Flashcards.

And we made THIS spider web art project from 2 Teaching Mommies. While Punkin "colored" the fence, I made a web out of hot glue on the paper and when it dried, Punkin painted over it. She kept saying, "It's bumpy." We didn't have finger paints, so I had to use tagboard and regular paint, and I had her just paint it with a brush.

The next day when the blue paint dried, we added the fence posts and the pom pom spider.

MISC. SPIDER ACTIVITIES

I hid her spider rings all over the living room and she had to go hunt for them. She LOVED this!

She stuck her spiders in her playdough.

And had fun hunting for them in soapy water and washing them off.

Coloring a spider page from HERE.

OTHER RANDOM STUFF

Punkin got this Dora water pen / coloring set for Christmas and asks to play with it every day. I love it because it seems like paint to her but is NO mess at all! It's a good thing to keep her occupied while I make lunch or when we are in the car.

She is REALLY into building "big houses" as she calls them.

She helped me bake a cake one day, and for the first time, I let her lick the beaters. (The whole raw egg thing scares me, but every kid has to experience licking the beaters at some point, right?)

Well, that was our week about spiders (even though we are no where near Halloween!) To see what other tots were up to this past week, check out 1+1+1=1.