Tuesday, December 27, 2011

CHRISTMAS TOT SCHOOL 2011


Well, I can see that I will most likely be doing monthly wrap up posts from now on instead of weekly ones. Life is just too busy...... We have been doing lots of fun stuff for Christmas, but blogging about it just hasn't been on the top of my priority list.

I heard about "Truth in the Tinsel" about halfway through December. We did a modified version of the 12 day plan, but I still feel like we were able to hit the most important aspects of the Christmas story, and Punkin really enjoyed reading from Daddy's Bible and making the crafts. I will definitely do this again next year....from the beginning. We hung our ornaments on our banister instead of on a tree.


Misc.

Same or Different Activity (I can't remember where I got this from)

Playing "Heavenly Host" game from Musings of Me. Punkin rolled a dice that had only numbers 1,2,3 on it and put that many "angels" in the sky. When she covered all the spaces, she traded her angels in for an “A” card. The next time she filled her board, she traded her angels in for an “N” card, etc. until she spelled “Angel.”

Gingerbread / Cookies

She played a lot with her Candy Land Gingerbread game.

We continue to do Starfall almost every day. Her favorite activity this month was the Gingerbread making one.

Matching Christmas cookie shapes (from Musings of Me)with pictures on them to the jar that had the correct begining sound. She is getting so good at this skill, it amazes me!

Gingerbread Memory Game (Matching shapes) - She FINALLY caught on to the concept of "Memory."

Christmas Trees / Ornaments

Ornament Addition
(From the Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree Pack at Homeschool Creations)

I printed these from Prekinders. First I had Punkin put like ornaments on the tree, such as all the yellow, then all the red, then all the ones with stripes, then all the ones with dots, then all the ones with LITTLE dots, etc.

After that, I started to tell her to find certain ornaments on the tree. For instance, "Find the yellow ornament with the skinny stripes." Then, she wanted to tell ME which ornaments to find. Punkin counted the ornaments on the trees and put the star on top that had the matching number. This came from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Punkin had to dot the numbers red and the letters blue. It was a good way to tell if she knew the difference between a number and a letter. She did this with ease. I printed this also from the Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree Pack. Gluing shapes onto the correct spot on the tree. This was way too easy for Punkin, but I needed something to keep her occupied one day, and since she loves glue..... Punkin enjoyed getting messy to make her handprint tree.







Do Dot Tree from Confessions of a Homeschooler This idea was all over blogland / Pinterest. I actually saw the idea for a felt tree first HERE. I saw this idea for an Ornament I Spy game over at The Activity Mom and I knew I had to try it with Punkin. I took pictures of individual ornaments on the tree and put them into a table format in Word.Then, Punkin searched the tree to "spy" each ornament. She crossed each one off as she found it. Boy did she have a blast with this! Color By Shape page from 1+1+1=1 (Punkin added some of our letter ornaments for more "sparkle" I guess!) Punkin spent a long time working at lining up Christmas lights in ABC order. I realized that though she knows her ABC's, we need to work more on ABC order.
Stockings We did this candy cane / stocking matching activity last year, but she understood the concept a lot better this year and did it with ease....matching two colors at a time. I can't remember where I printed it from. She attempted to do a stocking lacing but stopped after one side and declared it a necklace instead! :) I printed this from the Christmas Pack at Creative Learning Fun. (But when I tried to find it I got a message saying the blog has been removed.)


Santa I love making handprint crafts with Punkin. I got this idea from Meet the Dubiens. Punkin counted white magnetic pom poms onto "Santa hats" and then we did some addition practice with them as well. I got this idea from HERE. We made Santa Hat treats out of Nilla Wafers, strawberries, and whipped cream. Yum! This idea came from Reading Confetti.

Reindeer Reindeer Grid Game from Prekinders When I taught first grade, we always made these hand and foot reindeer, so of course, I had to make one with Punkin, too! (Actually, Grandma helped her mostly with this one!) She had a reindeer sandwich for lunch one day.And Rudolph Pancakes for breakfast on Chrismas Eve. I was going to have her do some reindeer graphing, but as I was tending to Firecracker, she took the dot markers and just began dotting each column the matching color. Oh well. She made her own activity out of it!

Candy Canes Button Candy Cane Magnets (got the idea from HERE)
We made candy canes from pipe cleaners and pony beads.One day while eating what we call "fruit tape" (Fruit Roll Ups?) I had this idea to use it to make a candy cane. So, that's what we did!

OTHER STUFF We made birthday cakes for Jesus! Punkin had fun painting with Christmas colors. She asked for her magnetic pom poms one evening and spent a long time arranging them.Punkin got on a kick of drawing on her Aquadoodle mat. One afternoon, Punkin asked me for some cotton balls and some glue. She had gotten a coffee filter out of our craft cupboard and declared she was going to make a cloud....and she did! She came up with this innovation all by herself. She was putting her game piece shapes through a paper towel tube so they landed in the bumbo seat below.And she has been drawing lots of snowmen lately. Practicing her letters in her writing binder. After making our ornaments out of salt dough one day, I let her play with the rest of the dough. She made lots of "snowballs." I ordered most of our Christmas presents online this year, and Punkin always had fun playing with the boxes they were shipped in.

Whew! What a fun month. We will focus on snow and snowman stuff in January.

I have linked up to Tot School and Preschool Corner.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

GIFT WRAPPING

All the wrapping is DONE! Yea! (I hate wrapping gifts!) Even Morgan "pitched in" to help. :)







Saturday, December 3, 2011

FALL TOT SCHOOL

While most people are probably posting about the Christmas things they are doing, I am just now getting around to posting about some of the fall things we did from like September to November. Yep. It's been awhile since I've posted. It's not that we haven't been doing anything, it's just that I don't always have my camera handy, and I just don't have as much time anymore with a new baby to keep up on the blogging! But here is a peek at a few things we did this fall. (Oh, and I did a terrible job this time documenting where I got ideas from...Sorry! Next time I will do better because I just found Pinterest!) Oh, and I decided that maybe I should start linking up to Preschool Corner now, too, since Punkin is doing more preschool type stuff now rather than tot school stuff. So, hello to all you Preschool Corner folks!

APPLES

Punkin went "apple picking" around the house, using her favorite little basket to put her apples in.

Then, she lined up all the apples, and I said a sound and had her find the apple that had the correct letter.

Apple Seed Addition - I gave her some black pom poms and had her stand and drop them on the apple. We added how many "seeds" landed ON the apple plus how many landed OFF the apple to find the total.

Roll an apple game.

Sight word apple graphing.

Finding which apple is different in each row.

Apple Number Maze

Apple Tree Addition

Apple Patterns

Apple Flip Book

Apple Thumb Printing Book

Reading her book.

Learning how to draw an apple.

Making a "Stained Glass" Apple

The finished product

Paper Plate Apple Craft - She LOVED painting!

Her finished "Apple Bite" hanging on the refridgerator.

A fun apple tree lunch.

HALLOWEEN

Punkin spent a LONG time doing this activity. I had her start off making patterns. Then, I let her just play!

We made Candy Corn Cookies! So fun!

They turned out so cute, and they were yummy, too!

LEAVES

Finding which leaf is different in each row.

Counting the dots on each leaf and then matching it to the correct number on the tree.

Beginning Sound Match


Leaf Counting









Punkin's Fall Tree craft turned out so cute!


THANKSGIVING

Harvest Corn Counting

Another Beginning Sound Match, this time with turkeys. She is getting so good at this concept!

Turkey Feather Addition

She wasn't quite so sure about this art activity at first!

But it sure turned out cute!

We do www.starfall.com almost every day. She loved the turkey building game.

A fun turkey lunch.

MISC.


To start off our school time every day, Punkin writes in her letter writing binder. She has to do the letter of the week, and then she can pick another letter to do. Each day she also does a page from her Kumon tracing and cutting books, writes in her name book, and picks one of her sight word readers to read to me.

She still loves to bake with me. I love that she can actually do a lot of the jobs herself now, like spooning muffin batter into the muffin tins.

I don't know when I'll post again....Probably not until after Christmas to recap all our holiday activities. But in the meantime, I've linked up to Tot School and PreSchool Corner, where you can go get other great ideas from some very creative moms!