WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 6 - CHICKA CHICKA BOOM BOOM

~Punkin is 25 months old.~

On the spur of the moment after reading some other blogs, I decided to do a theme on Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom to kinda introduce or "kick off" our new weekly letter units. To say that Punkin enjoyed it would be an understatement. SHE ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! She has the book memorized now, and she always says, "They all fall down" if you ask her about the book. She actually really enjoyed all our activities related to the book, and would do almost anything I asked her to if it involved the "cohanut tree." I had a blast as well watching her enjoying learning so much. I may have to do more "book themes" as part of my letter units if she loves it that much.

TOT TRAYS

I found this really neat Lite Brite set at a garage sale this summer, and immediately was taken back to my childhood days when I had a Lite Brite. Punkin really enjoyed punching the lights into the holes and watching them light up.

Good old Connect Four. She always has fun just putting all the pieces in and then making them all fall out.

We worked some more with clothespins. She was to clip the clothespins to either the right color of cup or clip the right number of clothespins to the playing card. I had to really work with her on this, but at least she wasn't resistant to letting me help her try this time. Now she at least tells me, "Squeeeeeeeze fingers." So she KNOWS what to do, just is having a hard time DOING it.

This one was hard to get a picture of because she was usually sitting on my lap and I was helping her a lot. But I got out the toddler scissors for the first time. I was expecting her to be resistant to me showing her how to do it as she has been with most fine motor work like this, but she was motivated. After a couple days, she was getting pretty good at cutting the little pieces of paper as long as I held the paper for her.

I got this idea from Three Queens and a King. I printed out the set of animal cards and the page with the tiny animal pictures. She was to use the magnifying glass to look at the little picture and match the big animal card to it. When I was cutting out the animals, she was by my side, and named every animal for me and was interested in just playing with the cards. But the actual tray itself wasn't a huge hit, because our magnifying glass is a cheapy one from the Dollar Store and didn't work too well. It was hard for her to see the pictures. Luckily, I had printed them in their large version on the other side, too, by accident, so it became just a simple matching game for her.

TOT SCHOOL ACTIVITIES

I am starting a morning "calendar time" with her as we move into our new routine, so I did a basic start to that this week, and every morning, we'd read the book, then act it out using our magnetic letters on the tree I printed out from HERE.

She loved making all the letters fall down from the tree!

Then, we would make "alphabet soup" from the letters. Sometimes I'd tell her what letters to put in her soup, and other times, she'd pick them up and tell me what letters she was putting in her soup.

The last thing we'd do every morning was watch THIS VIDEO. It is a GREAT musical rendition of the entire book. Punkin asked to watch it over and over each morning. I had to limit her to three times each morning. Just yesterday, I heard her singing the song to her animals.

We used our Do-a-Dot markers to review lowercase letters. I'd give her one color at a time, and call out those letters in that area of the tree for her to find. It was a bit overwhelming for her to try to find the letter with so many on a page, so I started showing her the area to look in each time. I printed the page from HERE.

I cut out the pieces for her to glue on her paper to make a coconut tree. I showed her where to put the pieces. I don't know where I got the printout from, though.

Then, I hid lowercase letters from one of her puzzles in our rice bin and she had a blast finding the letters and putting them on her tree. I had her tell me what the letter was and the sound it made as she did it.

The next day, I got out her tiny foam puzzle letters to paint with on the tree. While I was getting the paint ready, she decided on her own to put her letters on the tree while she waited.

We used those little foam letters as "stamps" and painted them around her tree. Oooh, did she have fun!

Some of the letters got "smeared" a bit, so I wrote what the letter was supposed to be next to it.

We also used our new ABC cookie cutters with our playdough to make letters for the coconut tree.

I had this idea to create a tree with chalk outside on our driveway and write the letters around it for her to hop on as I called them out. (You can't see the pink letters show up very well.)

She humored me for a few.....Then, it was on to other things.

I was blown away by this activity. I decided to try a color by shape page of the coconut tree in the story. I colored in the little shapes next to the color words so she knew what color to color each shape. Okay, let me just say, I thought I'd have to help her quite a bit, being as this is the first time we've done anything like this. But, um, yeah.....she did the WHOLE thing by herself....even the coloring! No, I did not help her AT ALL! I just sat there amazed. She even told me "da hexgon is bown!"

Look at how well she colored in the shapes (the right color, too)! No, she didn't totally stay in the lines, but for a just-turned-two-year-old, I personally think that is pretty good....especially since a few weeks ago she was still in the "scribble" stage. After she colored the tree, I wrote one lowercase letter on the page at a time "going up the coconut tree" like in the book, and had her tell me what letter I wrote. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if this was a fluke or if she will continue to color like this ....

We practiced counting the coconuts on the trees and gluing them in the right box. I printed the pictures from Making Learning Fun.

Then, I cut the boxes apart, and we practiced lining them up in order.

We also made this "Counting Coconuts" math book. Once again, I don't know where I got it from. She had to put the number of coconuts on the tree that it said on that page. By the end, she was "helping" me read the story since it is so repetitive, only the number changing. She did great dotting the correct numbers.

Later, we went back and colored the trees, and stapled the pages into a book that she likes to "read" and practice counting with.

I used our number boxes like last week, only this time, I printed out little coconut tree pictures to use. (I just did a google image search for it.) This is really helping her with her counting.

We made this fun snack one day. I used a piece of bread, apple slices, oyster crackers for the coconuts, and of course, Alphabet cereal. Yum! Yum! (Once again, she recognized and told me that the oyster crackers were "hexgons.")

TOT ART

And this was MY favorite activity this week. I got the idea from Making Learning Fun, but tweaked it a tad bit. I cut out the shapes for her to glue on where I showed her. It's hard to tell in the picture, but she cut "fringe" on the bottom of the leaves. After a week of practicing with the scissors in her tot tray, she did great! I just held the paper and moved it back and forth to show her where to make the cuts. She thought this was so fun.

Then, we used scrapbook letter stickers to spell her name. And I helped her paint dots around the border (to match the book) using the end of a pencil eraser.

It turned out so cute! She was very excited to show Daddy and hang on our refrigerator. This is one that I will keep forever and not throw away.

TOT PLAY AND OTHER STUFF

Punkin wanted to help me make dinner one night again, but she soon became interested in my basket of drink mixes instead. She arranged and rearranged all the items at least ten times while I made dinner.

She practiced pouring skills one day. As you can see by all the water on her tray, she wasn't too good at it, but she had fun. We'll have to practice this skill some more. :)

She loved hunting for her letters so much that I had her do it again one day while I was making lunch. This time, I gave her the puzzle that the letters came from and had her put them back in the puzzle when she found them. Of course, she had to go get her hammer to "pound" them back in. I had to rehide the letters 2 times before she got bored.

And AGAIN, she wanted the puzzle, only this time, we didn't hide them in rice.

Making lines with chalk outside. If you give her chalk, this is her favorite thing to do with it.

Well, that was our fun week. We have our new toyroom / schoolroom done now, and our calendar time is ready to go, so I will look forward to sharing all about that next week! To see what other tots were up to, check out 1+1+1=1.

WEEK OF AUGUST 29 - NO THEME

~Punkin is 25 months old.~

We did a lot this week and had lots of fun, but there was no real theme or focus for our week. I am spending lots of time planning theme units for each letter of the alphabet for us to start in the next few weeks, so our last few weeks have been filled with easy and fun activities that don't take long to plan. I have been putting off starting our official start of our new units for a couple of reasons. We have been working all year on finishing off our basement, and the new play / school room is almost done. I have a few more pieces of furniture to paint and some things to organize, and then we can "move in." Second, I want to start a circle time with Punkin in the morning that will incorporate our letter and number of the week, but I am still working on getting that set up how I want it. So for the meantime, we are taking it easy around here.

TOT TRAYS

I found this idea in one of my old Mailbox teacher magazines for preschoolers. I glued some eyes, a mouth, and some "antennae" onto a 2 liter bottle to make an "alien" ...... well, sorta. Anyway, then Punkin took marbles and "fed" the alien by putting them in the top one by one. She thought this was so fun, especially when she heard the sound it made when she dropped them in. Then, she enjoyed shaking the bottle as well as dumping them out.

She only did this tray once. I had three different sized buttons on the bottom of the tray and I showed her how to sort them in the top by little, medium, and big. She did okay with big and little, but medium threw her a bit. I should have stuck with just the little and big.

I got this idea from The Activity Mom. I gave Punkin some birthday candles and helped her put them on the page to make shapes. She helped me do the page once, and then she decided she just wanted to play with the candles. She actually loved this tray and got it out every day, but just to play with the candles. She tried to use them as crayons to draw with, too, and she actually broke quite a few candles trying to make them draw. LOL!

This was some kind of little game I got at a garage sale. I think it's supposed to be like a little travel checkers or something, but I really have no idea. I just had Punkin take the tiny pieces and put them in the holes on the board. It was good fine motor practice, and she loved it and did it every day.

I got this little foam number / abc puzzle at a the Dollar Tree awhile back. She helped me line them up in order, and then she found the inside pieces and put them in herself.

And she also found that it was quite fun to put the little foam pieces on her fingers and fling them around until the pieces flew off. Silly girl!

I adapted this idea from My Tot Learning Time. It was a huge hit with Punkin. She wanted to do this first every day. Each time I helped her first line up the cups with numbers on them in order, then count the dots on the "flags." She could then match them to the right cup herself.

After doing that once each day, I let her just have fun playing with the cups and flags. The first day, she spent about 20 minutes just stacking and unstacking the cups.....

...and pretending she was drinking from them.

OUR "SCHOOL" ACTIVITIES

I printed this counting box sheet from Counting Coconuts and we used it with our snack one day to practice counting. She loved having an assortment of snacks to use and eat. I am going to use this sheet a lot with my upcoming units to practice counting, because you can adapt it to whatever theme you want. I love it!

We got out our bottle cap letter matching names again. Last time we tried this, she wasn't interested, but this time she did better and at least did two of her cousins' names before she got bored and started trying to stack the caps.

We also did our Melissa and Doug See and Spell again. This was another activity that I brought back out to see how she would do. She loved it this time and did great finding the letters all on her own.

This was such a fun activity! I printed out the body part pictures from 2 Teaching Mommies and laminated them. Then, we put tape on them and taped them to our matching body parts. Punkin wasn't so sure at first if she wanted to do this, so I put them on me first. She thought it was so funny that she said, "Put on me!" Again, she knows a LOT of body parts (even not so common ones like wrist) that she can point to on herself, but it was a bit harder for her to match the cards to herself. But we'll do this again for more practice, especially since it got us both laughing!

We printed out the pages to make a shape tractor from 2 Teaching Mommies because Punkin is so excited when we see tractors (which we see a lot of right now with farmers starting their harvesting). I wrote the color word in its color on the shapes, and she easily found which shapes to color with each crayon. She wanted "Mommy do it" for the first green ones we did, but then, she actually colored in all the others all by herself. I thought she did great!

I cut out the pieces (we still haven't gotten out her tot scissors yet), and then I showed her where to glue on the pieces. She was excited to show Daddy her green tractor.

We made this tambourine that I saw on Sippy Cup Central. I found that markers don't work so well on styrofoam bowls, though. I didn't have paper ones. But anyway, she still have fun decorating them.

She thought they were supposed to be drums at first, and began playing the drums for me.

Then, we filled the bowls with pennies.....

.....and stapled it shut. Then, we shook it as we sang this song from No Time for Flashcards. She still gets it out to "pay music" at least once a day.

I stole this idea, too! (I did that a lot this week, didn't I?) However, I can't remember for the life of me who I stole it from! So, if it is yours, please let me know, so I can give credit where credit is due. Punkin does well with file folder games, and she really did a great job matching up the shapes. We're working on recognizing the signs now when we are in the car.

We worked on our Mr. Potato Head body parts again this week from 2 Teaching Mommies. I didn't help her at all. She did much better!

We made another contact paper collage, only this time, I divided the contact paper into four boxes, and labeled each box with a different color. Punkin picked items out of a cup and put them on the collage where they belonged.

TOT ART

I put 3 colors of paint into the cups of an egg carton and gave Punkin Q-tips, cotton balls, and a regular paint brush and let her go at it. She actually only wanted to use the Q-tips. She worked on this for about 30 minutes. She kept asking for more paper. She is loving the paint, let me tell you!

TOT PLAY AND OTHER STUFF

We used our playdough again using our letter cookie cutters, and a plastic knife to "cut" the playdough. This is still one of her favorite activities each week!

This is the first time Punkin has worked on building a tower with her stacking blocks all by herself. Usually she wants me to make the tower, and she knocks it over.

This girl loves excercising! Instead of playing each day while I do my workout, she insists on having her own mat (her foam number puzzle), and trying to do the excercises with me. She does this EVERY DAY! It cracks me up. She will let me know, too, if we have't done them yet that day! She looks forward to it. I guess she is my own little accountability partner, making sure I do it every day.

I bought this ribbon wand at the Dollar Tree this week, and we had tons of fun dancing with it to music.

Punkin loves helping me in the kitchen, but I don't let her help as often as I should. So one day, we made muffins together. She got to dump in all the ingredients and help me stir. She even "banged" the spoon on the side of bowl like I do to get off the "extras."

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