R IS FOR RAINBOW

~Punkin is 34 months old.~

Theme: Rainbow

Letter: R

Shape: Crescent

Color: All

Number: 13

Sight Word: review

Videos: R Song, Rainbow Colors Song, Color Song

These last two weeks SERIOUSLY did this preggo mama in. We were at my parents' house for three days having a garage sale, I had a doctor's appointment, we went with my sister in law to a town wide garage sale nearby, I made a couple meals for people, and throw in odds and ends like trying to buy flowers to plant, going to our usual Mom's group on Thursdays, and a serious nesting urge to do some major spring cleaning and painting......Well, I'm exhausted! I ended up taking two weeks to do our rainbow unit, which ended up being so much fun, though I noticed that most of our activities ended up being "crafty" in nature. Punkin didn't mind one bit! :) I hope to do U is for umbrellas this next week, but we'll see how much energy I have.

TOT TRAYS

I made a rainbow bin for Punkin with just a random assortment of colorful items and colored cups. Boy did she love it. Of course, she started sorting items by color into the cups right away. We'll keep this one out for awhile.

I got out some of these foam "blocks" that have small holes in the middle. Then, I took a sponge and cut it into sections that fit into an ice cube tray. Next, I stuck a toothpick in each sponge. She was supposed to put the blocks on the toothpicks in rainbow color order. Then, she asked for her tongs and started using her tongs to sort them in the empty sections under each stack.

This was another random thrown together activity. I poked holes in a small shoe box and used a marker to color around each hole in rainbow color order. Punkin matched the fun straws with the right color hole and then used colored ponytail holders to put on the fun straws and push them around the curves.

I also had colored strips for her to cut apart and sort, her table setting activity, and a color puzzle out for her to do but she focused on the above three each time we did tot trays.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Practicing making Rr's using THIS sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Gluing on r pictures to her r collage page.

Tracing more letter Rr's that will go in her ABC binder.

I made up these sight word cards for Punkin. I put a picture representing her sight word in the left cloud and she had to find the cloud to put on the right side that had the matching sight word. Then, I had her use Scrabble tiles to spell the word on the rainbow.

She used rainbow color strips to spell her name and make a rainbow in the process.

Punkin used colored pom poms in rainbow color order to count using her number boxes pages from COAH.

She also did some simple shape matching rainbows that I made for her last year.

I drew a crescent, a trapezoid, and a semicircle on the backs of three rainbows. I had her turn over the rainbows and identify the shapes, then we mixed them up and did it a few more times. After that, I would show her where the crescent was and told her to try to watch it as I mixed the rainbows up. She then had to try and find where the crescent ended up.

We started off playing a game where we took turns rolling the dice with colored dots on it and placing a magnetic pom pom on the color we rolled. The person who put on the last pom pom was supposed to be the winner. About half way through, though, Punkin decided she just wanted to put the pom poms on without playing any kind of game.

ARTS / CRAFTS

Punkin made a rainbow lowercase r inspired by The Ramblings and Adventures of a S.A.H.M.

And she painted colorful rainbow R's using a cookie cutter and by mixing paint colors. This idea came from Delightful Learning.

I wrote "rainbow" in lowercase letters at the top of the page and had Punkin use foam letters from her little foam abc puzzle to "stamp" matching capital letters on top of them in rainbow color order. (Most of the letters got smeared as she "stamped," but oh well.) Then, she used a Q-tip to dot paint the rainbow.

We made this marshmallow rainbow one day during snack time. Can you guess what the snack was?

I hid buttons in her rainbow rice (that I made last year when we did rainbows), and as she found them, she glued them onto this rainbow that I printed out. (She still LOVES to dig in rice and find things I hide. It's one of her favorite activities.) I had also put small dots on the rainbow to help her know where to put the buttons (so they weren't all squished together on one side of the rainbow when she was finished). Then, we added cotton ball clouds when she was done.

We finally replaced our egg suncatcher with this pretty rainbow one, made out of contact paper and tissue paper.

I made rainbow shaving cream for her to "paint" with. The food coloring stained her fingers, but she had a blast!

OTHER FUN RAINBOW ACTIVITIES

This was probably our favorite activity during this unit. I colored three little cups of water yellow, blue, and red, and had Punkin use a medicine dropper to mix the colors in the ice cube tray. She got so excited when the water turned different colors. I wasn't going to tell her what colors to do, but rather just let her explore. On her own, she decided to make a pattern in the top row (remembering which colors to mix each time which I thought was pretty good!) and to do rainbow order colors in the bottom row. (I helped her a bit on some of these colors.) Then, she had just as much fun emptying her ice cube tray and making murky colors in the three cups when she was done.

Using R puzzle pieces and cookie cutters while playing with playdough.

We got these colorful puzzle interlocking blocks at a garage sale last week, and Punkin had fun helping me "wash" them and find all the matching parts.

RAINBOW FOOD

We made rainbow pudding pops one day before naptime and had them as a special treat when she woke up. She did all the stirring herself! This yummy idea and recipe came from HERE.

Our rainbow muffin tin meal one day included red pepers, orange carrots, yellow pineapple, green peas, blue blueberries, purple grapes, and a "cloud" sandwich.

And I was going to make rainbow fruit pizza, but 1) my kiwi that I was going to use for the green went bad before I got around to it, and 2) I didn't end up having room on the pizza anyway. But we still enjoyed our fruit pizza even though it was missing green and purple.

MISC.

And Punkin spent three days doing these kinds of things and enjoying playing outside at Grandma's while we had our garage sale. She was a real trooper and had a blast being at Grandma's for three whole days soaking in lots of attention!

To see the fun things other tots were up to this past week, you can visit 1+1+1=1.

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.