J IS FOR JESUS

~Punkin is 32 months.~

We did a loose J is for Jesus theme with some more egg activities thrown in as well. We read the Easter story in her Children's Bible every day and even though it is a long book, Punkin asked to read Benjamin's Box quite a few times as well. (This is a book that goes along with the Resurrection Eggs.) Our Bible verse was, "Jesus is risen, just as he said." By the end of the week, she really seemed to understand the basics.

TOT TRAYS

Punkin had a lot of fun with our tot trays this week that we didn't have time to do last week. The first two pictures are ones I took last week. However, I included them again, because she did them a few times again this week, but I didn't take any new pictures.

Egg Tonging

Mixed up Egg Matching

I had put capital letter stickers on the top parts of eggs and matching lowercase stickers on the bottom parts. Then, I separated them all and had Punkin try to match them back up. She did a great job! She picked out an egg part and told me the letter and whether it was capital or lowercase. Then, I gave her some guidance (so as not to be so overwhelming with all those parts in there) and we determined what color to look for with that letter on it. She loved it!

Punkin used her bottle cap letters to spell the names of family members.

This activity was similar to our egg counting activity last week, so she understood how to do it without my help. And this was easily her favorite tot tray this week. She had to look at the number on the little "shot glass" and fill it with that many beads. Then, she put the filled cup into the matching numbered spot in the egg carton.

Punkin "laced" cut apart egg carton sections onto a piece of yarn to make a necklace.

And I had gotten some of this purple "stuff" (I don't even know what it is called) at Dollar Tree awhile back. It can be molded like playdough, but is not as messy, and it doesn't dry out. If you look closely, it is actually made up of tiny little "balls" that stick together. She loved playing with it every day during tot tray time.

LITERACY LEARNING ACTIVITIES

We worked some more with our vocabulary cards. This week, I set out 3-4 cards that could all be grouped in a certain category (like food or animals or people). Then, I would also set out one card with them that did not belong in that category and she had to figure out which one did not belong. We had never done anything like this, so I was super surprised when she didn't have any trouble at all figuring out which one didn't belong.She built the letter J and j with her letter puzzle pieces.

And she did a GREAT job tracing her letter Jj on this handwriting page from COAH.

Dot painting this letter Jj page also from COAH.

I got this idea from Fun Frugal Mommy. Punkin started out poking colored push pins into the matching colored circles I had drawn on the page (that was taped to the top of a shoe box lid). Then, she used these lacing beads from Dollar Tree (that actually have bigger than usual holes) to match and set on top of the push pins.

Then, we noticed the color pattern that we made along with what letter it turned out to be.

I cut out some letter j's from different colored construction paper and had her add the "dot" by using her magnetic pom poms.

Punkin used letter stickers to spell JESUS on her letter J, and then decorated it with her dot paints.

I had Punkin try a couple of these word family Easter Egg baskets from Making Learning Fun. I only had her do the -at basket and the -og basket since she knows the words "cat" and "dog." I guided her a lot, but she did pretty well.

MATH LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Once again, I printed out an egg page and this time added numbers 9-12 on the bottom of the eggs. Punkin picked which Easter foam sticker she wanted for each number. For instance, she put pink egg stickers on all the number 9's that she found and purple bunnies on all the number 12's she found.

We did this Roll and Cover egg page from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Punkin is getting very good at doing graphs. This week, I whipped up a quick egg graph and put some of her small plastic eggs in a bag for her to pick out and graph by color. She was getting frustrated, however, that the eggs kept rolling around, so I stuck a little roll of tape on each box, and on her own, she began setting the eggs up on end on top of the tape, so they looked like they were standing up! She even counted each "tower" and was able to tell me which had the most and which had the least.

We also did a little addition again this week. I had her roll a dice and count the dots and find an egg with that number on it to put first on her template card. Then, she did the same with the second dice. Finally, she counted all the dots together and found an egg with the answer on it to complete her math problem. I even went as far this week as to have her "read" the math problem back to me, including the "plus" and "equals."

ARTS / CRAFTS

Punkin kinda initiated this activity all by herself. My mom was over one day helping me with something, and Punkin found these Easter foam stickers on my desk and brought them to me to open for her while we were working. I quickly grabbed an egg template that I had printed out but we hadn't used and gave it to her to put her stickers on (thinking she'd just fill the egg with stickers). She sat and worked quietly, and when I went to check on her, she was working hard to pull the backing off and was putting the stickers around the outside edge of the egg. So, when she was done with that, I let her use her dot paints to fill in the middle of the egg.

We made this "He is Risen" project from Making Learning Fun. It actually turned into a math patterning activity, too, as Punkin had to find the next square in the pattern to glue on.

One day while Punkin was napping, I drew an egg and a cross on cardstock with a white crayon. Then, when she woke up, we got out the watercolor paints. She started painting, and suddenly exclaimed, "Mommy, look!" It was so fun to watch her try to figure out what the "surprise" was. When she finished the cross picture, she said, "Look. Jesus is risen!"

MISC. FUN

One day while I made lunch, I had Punkin sit and hunt for her small plastic eggs that I had "hidden" in Easter grass. Each one had a colored "rock" in it. She would open each egg, put the rock in the empty parmesan container, and close the egg back up and put it in the egg carton.(One of her J vocabulary picture cards this week was of a jewel. She didn't know what it was the first day, so I explained that it was like a pretty sparkling rock. So, when she opened the first egg and found the little "rock" inside, she declared, "Mommy! I found a jewel!" I love it when she makes connections from one thing to the next.)

We had a fun week with Daddy home as well, and Punkin spent a lot of time playing in her "new" playroom in the basement while I helped him with a few things he was working on in the basement bathroom that he is putting in. One day when I went to check on her, she was playing "store." (I REALLY wish I had had my camera handy to get a picture.....or even a video!) She pushed around her little toy grocery cart (with her baby in the front and a purse on her shoulder) and put different things in it. Then, she went to her little table, unloaded the things from her cart, and pretended to pay. Then, she said, "Okay. Thank you. Have nice day." She loaded the stuff in her cart again and pretended to go out to the "car". She didn't know I was watching, and it was so hard to keep from laughing. I guess the poor girl has made too many CVS and Walgreens runs with me! :)

To see what other tots were up to this past week, check out 1+1+1=1.

E IS FOR EGG

~Punkin is 32 months old.~

Theme: Eggs

Shape: Review

Number: 12

Color: Purple

Videos: We started watching the Resurrection Eggs videos one each day. Here is the link to the first one, and you can access the other days from here.

TOT TRAYS

We do our tot trays in the mornings after breakfast. But this week, we happened to have something going on in the mornings on all but 2 days, and one of those days I had to work on something for my husband and we never got around to it. So, we only did tot trays one day this week. Therefore, I will keep out the Easter / Egg trays for next week, too. I typically set the timer for about 15 minutes and she can choose whatever she wants to do in those 15 minutes. Some days she does 3 or 4 trays, some days she chooses to stick with just one. This day she spent her whole time doing just 2 trays.

This was such a great idea that I saw HERE. I mixed up the tops and bottoms of our plastic eggs and made little egg templates that matched and placed them in the egg carton. Punkin had to find the matching "mixed up egg" and put it in the right spot in the egg carton. She loved it! Punkin used tongs to transfer mini eggs from the baby wipe container to the egg tray that I found at Dollar Tree. (It has little egg indentations to hold the eggs.) Then, she put them back in the container by pushing them through the top slot on the lid.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

I made an egg sound shake game for Punkin. I had 6 sets of matching eggs, but I only gave her 3 at a time. We did a couple different things with them. First, I set out a set of open eggs in the top row so she could see what was in the eggs. Then, she had to shake each egg and try to decide by looking at the open ones and listening to the sound what was in each one. This was hard for her, though she got better each round. Then, I gave her 4 closed eggs and had her shake them to try to find the 2 matching sets. (I started with 6 eggs - 3 sets - but that was too hard for her.) This was a favorite of my first graders when I taught. I put stickers with different numbers, letters, and shapes on them in each section of the egg carton. I added a bright pink button and had her shake the carton. Then, she'd open up the carton and tell me what the button landed on. We used this as a fun way to review our numbers 10-12, our newer shapes (trapezoid, hexagon), and a few letters. (I had her tell me not only the letter name, but it's sound.) With my first graders, I used two jellybeans and had them add the two numbers that the jellybeans landed on.

Punkin sorted capital and lowercase Ee eggs into her egg carton. (Capital E eggs in the top row, lowercase e eggs in the bottom row.) We have always called them the "big letters" and "little letters" but this week we worked on calling them capital and lowercase.

I saw this fun idea at No Time For Flashcards. We glued an egg carton that I cut apart into the shape of an E. I took it a step further, though, and we added our capital and lowercase Ee eggs into each section.

To work on our sight words this week, I cut apart egg cartons into sections and added a sticker to each cup to spell the word. Then, she had to find the matching eggs and tell me what word she made.

We did a rather simple color sorting activity, but the main focus was on the fine motor skill of using the tweezers to pick up the pom poms and putting them into the right colored egg. For someone who used to hate tweezers, tongs, clothespins, etc. she sure does love them now! This was definitely a favorite this week!

Since Punkin loves to color these days, she enjoyed coloring this page from the Letter E printables at 1+1+1=1. Since the color words were typed in color, she could find and color the correct eggs all by herself.

Punkin also attempted this egg color by number page from Making Learning Fun. However, she only did one egg of the three and then lost interest. I found her later in the week coloring the eggs on her own.....but not necessarily coloring them by number.

Punkin LOVED this activity and even though it took awhile to do, she stuck with it enthusiastically the whole time. I simply put numbers in the bottoms of the eggs carton sections in order, then put numbers as well (1-12) on plastic eggs. Punkin then had to pick an egg from the basket, fill it with that many little beads, close it (and of course shake each one), and then put it in the matching section of the egg carton.

I printed out a page of eggs and wrote numbers 10-12 on the eggs. Punkin then used some leftover ring circle stickers to find and put a sticker in the bottom section of all the number 12 eggs.

ART / CRAFTS

Punkin obviously enjoyed the marshmallow egg craft that we did (found over at No Time For Flashcards) because she got to eat marshmallows while she worked. First, I had her sort all the colors into an egg carton, and then, she meticulously set them on the glue outlines that I made for her.

The pretty final outcome. (The colors are actually much more vibrant in person than in the picture, so it really does look very pretty hanging on the fridge....up high of course where she can't rip off the marshmallows to eat!)

This "suncatcher egg" also looks very pretty hanging in our window. I will have to do more contact paper / tissue paper suncatcher projects since they are so easy and turn out so pretty. (I save ALL tissue paper from presents and packages that enter our house, so I have lots of every color at my disposal.)

Punkin painted egg outline prints using an egg shaped cookie cutter. She wanted to keep making more, but I stopped her after two pages since it was getting close to nap time.

Then, I let her free paint with the leftover paint.

OTHER EGG RELATED ACTIVITIES

I made Punkin an "egg carton meal" instead of a muffin tin meal this week. She loved it, of course, and it was easy and fun. The stuff that went IN the eggs had no theme really, it was just fun to eat food out of her beloved plastic eggs. (She had Cheez It crackers, blueberries, baby carrots, cheese, a hard boiled egg, and M&Ms.)

She played with plastic eggs in her sink of bubbles.

We did an egg on a spoon "race" this week that was a hit. (I got the idea from A Mommy Montage.) I put her plastic eggs in a bowl and she had to scoop one up with her spoon and carry it carefully across the room to dump in her basket. (It wasn't really a "race" but we called it that.)

Then, after awhile, she decided it would just be faster to carry the whole bowl of eggs to the basket and transfer them with her spoon sitting down. Okay, whatever works, I guess! :)

Of course we had to have some fun hiding Easter eggs. One day during her nap I put a small snack in each of her eggs and hid them around the living room. When she woke up, she got to go hunting for them which she always loves doing.

But then when she was done and I told her there was a snack in each one that she could have, she said, "Dis is da best day eber!" :)

During her playdough time this week, I just set out her basket of eggs with the playdough. She ended up using them as "cookie cutters" to cut out circle cookies and put them in her tray to "bake." She also asked me to make a nest for her to put them in, and she made some eggs of her own out of playdough for the nest. And of course, it didn't take long to figure out how fun it was to stuff playdough into the eggs, too.

I tried to teach Punkin how to play hopscotch this week using her eggs. I would toss one or two of her eggs into the hopscotch boxes and try to teach her how to "hop like a bunny" to the squares to get them. She didn't quite get the concept, but she had fun pretending to be a bunny. Later in the day, she got out her pom poms on her own and started throwing them into the boxes as well.

And what's an E is for Egg unit without dying Easter eggs? We did this at Grandma's house the day that we visited this week. They turned out so pretty!

MISC. FUN

There were a couple really nice days this week, so despite the fact that the allergy index was at its highest (and Punkin suffers greatly from seasonal allergies), we just HAD to take advantage of the warm weather by going to the park.....

....and having a picnic!

Punkin still loves to help me make cookies, too. Probably because she can "sneetch" chocolate chips and gets to lick the beaters!

The day we visited Grandma and Grandpa this week was also very nice weather, so Punkin enjoyed some time outside blowing bubbles with Grandpa.....

.....and going on wagon rides!

Next week, we will probably do a combination of finishing up some egg activities and doing some J is for Jesus activities as well as we discuss what Easter is actually REALLY about. But then again, Daddy is home all week on Spring Break, so we may just spend time enjoying having him home and not do too much Tot School per se. We'll see. In the meantime, you can see what other tots were up to this week during Tot School by visiting 1+1+1=1.