R IS FOR RABBIT

~Punkin is 33 months old.~

Letter: Rr

Theme: Rabbits

Shape: Review

Color: Brown

Number: Review of 9-12

Verse: "Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy."

Videos / Books: I was too lazy to find rabbit videos (though we did do some www.starfall.com activities a few days), and I didn't get around to taking pictures of our rabbit books before I switched them out.

I have to admit that being 31 weeks pregnant is taking its toll on me. It's harder to get up the motivation and energy to keep doing our tot school activities and maintaining our routine throughout the day. But I try as best I can because Punkin still loves it, and she thrives on routine just as much as I do. But I tell you, it would be so much easier to just let her watch Dora movies or play in her playroom by herself for hours on end..... Yet we press on!

TOT TRAYS

She once again loved the small Disney puzzle this week. She got this tray out first every day.

I created this table place setting template / placemat for her to practice "setting the table." She loved this, too, though she insisted we needed some food for our table. So, on her own she went and got out the letter r from her nearby Leapfrog set and proclaimed that was "beckfast."

Since she never did get around to finishing putting her lowercase / capital letter eggs together, and since she enjoyed it, I was lazy and kept it out yet again. She got most of them done this time by the end of the week. (And she ended up using some of them as "food" for her table setting tray.)

I had gotten these "sparkly pom poms" at Dollar Tree awhile back but had forgotten about them. I found them while cleaning out the closet, so I just put them in an empty baby wipes container and gave her an ice cube tray and tongs. She spent a LOT of time using her tongs to put them in the tray by color and then transferring them back into the wipes container. I tried to get her to do patterns, but she didn't want to.

LITERACY / LANGUAGE ACTIVITIES

Punkin used purple dot markers to mark all the capital R's and brown to mark all the lowercase r's on this page from Love My Life x4.

Sorting lowercase and capital Rr using these printouts from Love My Life x4.

She did extremely well at this abc dot to dot from Making Learning Fun.

Punkin enjoyed this letter poking activity using a mechanical pencil that had no lead in it. (The end was sharp enough to poke through the page, and it was long enough for her to hold and manipulate easily.)

We reviewed letter sounds using this sheet from Making Learning Fun. I said a sound, and Punkin found the letter that makes that sound.

MATH ACTIVITIES

Punkin used these cute rabbits from Making Learning Fun to match feet with the correct shape to the right rabbit.

She glued pattern block shapes onto this page from Prekinders to make a rabbit. I had her tell me what each shape was as she glued it on.

We used leftover bunny marshmallows from Easter to make rabbit patterns.

Punkin did really well with this addition activity from Love My Life x4. We "read" the math problem each time, as she pointed to the numbers and symbols.

We played this "Roll and Cover" rabbit game that I found in my files from last year (so I don't remember where I got it from). We took turns drawing a number card from the pile and counting that amount of magnetic pom poms on the page. (Punkin was pink, and I was white.) I've noticed this week that we need to be doing more activities / games that reinforce taking turns. :)

ART / CRAFT ACTIVITIES

I saw this cute idea HERE. I didn't have Punkin paint the toilet paper tube....we just left it brown. And I used some brown cardboard I had in my stash for the feet and ears. I drew the areas for her to paint in pencil, and aside from the mouth, she painted over all my lines herself and did a great job! (I had to end up actually gluing the rabbit together, though.)

This cute craft idea came from HERE. Punkin colored the inner ears and nose, and I cut out all the pieces for her to glue on. The best part of the whole project was when I was trying to paint her hands black. She kept giggling and giggling and saying it tickled.

MISC. RABBIT ACTIVITIES

Lacing a rabbit....She's getting so much better at this!

Playing this Build a Bunny game from Homeschool Creations. Once again, it was good practice at taking turns. Punkin's is on the left, mine on the right. As you can see, she won (and I didn't even make a point to let her).

This was part of Punkin's yummy lunch one day. She gobbled it right up! I got the idea from HERE.

OTHER RANDOM THINGS....

Playing with Daddy in her new sand table (that I scored at a garage sale). Daddy was trying to teach her how to "scoop" correctly.

Punkin got this new Melissa and Doug farm animal puzzle in her Easter basket. She has never attempted a puzzle like this (without the predetermined sections already laid out), but we worked on it together for about 20 minutes one day, and she really did most of it herself. She was so proud of herself.

To see what other tots were up to this week, you can visit 1+1+1=1.

J IS FOR JELLYBEANS

~Punkin is 33 months old.~

Punkin had a blast with our J is for Jellybean week, though we had lots of other stuff going on and did not get to a lot of things I had planned. And we really had no tot tray time again this week. I've got to work on doing it at a different time of day again that won't be as easily missed due to things going on in our day. Oh well.

I am in a hurry to get this posted before a busy weekend, so I am not going to give much detail and I'll lump it all together to make it easier on me......

Mini princess puzzle
Cutting apart jellybeans and sorting them by color
Using scrabble tiles to match and spell "jellybeans" on this printout from COAH.

Using jellybeans instead of Dot markers on this Do a Dot printout from COAH to make our letter Jj.

We matched colored "dots" to our lowercase j letters again this week, only this time we used jellybeans!

Sorting capital and lowercase Jj from COAH.

I cut out jellybean shapes from construction paper and wrote her sight words on the yellow ones. Then, she used those as a guide to help her spell the words using her jellybean letters.

Sight word "bingo" using jellybeans. She loved this and did a great job! The key at the bottom told her what color jellybean to put on each word.

Punkin asked to play this jellybean sight word game several times. I set jellybean cutouts with our sight words written on them in a circle in our living room. I played music and she had to run around the circle. When the music stopped, she had to read the word on the jellybean cutout in front of her, and if she got it right, she got to eat the real jellybean that was sitting on it (if there was still one left on it).

Punkin lined up jellybeans by corresponding color according to the number written on the craft stick.

She hunted for jellybeans in her rainbow rice bin and put them in the correct colored egg "cup." She even enjoyed "hiding" the jellybeans again herself and doing it a second time.

She enjoyed making this jellybean graph that I printed from COAH.

For our number recognition practice again, I printed out some j outlines and wrote numbers 9-12 in them. (We are currently reviewing these harder numbers before moving on to 13 and above.) She used the key at the bottom to determine what color "dot" to put on each j.

Punkin also played shape bingo using jellybeans as her game pieces to cover up the shapes. She drew a card, told me the color and shape and searched to see if she had it on her board. If not, she set the card aside. If she had it, she chose a jellybean to put on that shape. When she got a "bingo," she got to eat one jellybean. Of course she wanted to do quite a few rounds of this! (By the way, I used DLTK to create this Bingo board and cards. If you have never used this site before, you need to go check it out. It automatically creates different bingo boards ....found in the printables section....for you! Plus, it has a lot of other neat tools as well! I used it all the time when I was teaching, and just recently remembered it again to use it for tot school.)

And Punkin used her dot markers to "paint" this jellybean page from COAH. (She started off neat with one dot in each jellybean, and then later covered most of the page.)

To see what other tots did this week, go visit 1+1+1=1.