Preschool At Home: Stamping, Stomping, and Silly Sentences

Whoa!! I feel like I just got off a crazy roller coaster ride.  It's been a super busy week.  I mentioned in this post that we celebrated two birthdays, and a sick (possibly teething) baby.  Well, on top of all that we hosted a huge boxing party.  My husband is really into boxing and is a huge Mayweather fan so it was fitting.  We had about 30 people here on Saturday.  It was loud, messy, and down right fantastically fun.  

Even with all the planning and prep work, I still managed to squeeze in some preschool time.  Here are some of our highlights from the last 2 weeks. 

Theme: All About Me

Letter: Gg

Sight Word: is

Focus:  My Feelings/ My Birthday

We continue to follow the Zoomin' Movin Alphabet.  It's perfect for my little guys, whom are obsessed with all things that go.  It's free from Royal Baloo.  While, I don't do everything that comes with each unit, I use it as a guide to help with my planning.

I like to do sensory activities with the boys, so when I saw this grape sensory idea on Play Learn Love, I knew I had to try it.  I started by laying down some plastic to cover the floor, then grabbing an old bin, last, I gave each little one a container of grapes to harvest.  This took a lot of patience for them.  Bear lost interest in it pretty quickly so I took over his container.  Ace, who loves all things messy, moved quickly knowing that he would soon have the time of his life stomping and squishing grapes.

Bear played in the grapes for a bit, but he is not as interested in sensory play as Ace.  I'm trying to get him more and more interested in things like this.  At one point he disappeared and returned with his fire truck and just drove his little truck through the grapes. 

Once upon a time, Ace couldn't stand getting his hands dirty or icky.  Now, He'd swim in messy sticky stuff if I'd let him... hmmm.

CJ had fun exploring in the grapes too.  While the boys played we talked about the sound that g makes, and other words that start with g.

Love these baby feet.

I was really excited to get our new Melissa and Doug letter stamp set.  We have a few stamps the boys like to play with, but I really wanted a full upper and lower case set, and a non-toxic pad.  I gave Ace some of his sight word cards and he practiced stamping them.  Bear is obsessed with the letter B so he did a lot of B and G stamping.

These pictures are really dark, typically my back doors give great light, but not on a dark and stormy afternoon.

By the way, the sight word cards come from the Zoomin' Movin' Alphabet Units.

Using salt on a tray was a great sensory activity for Bear.  He was able to get his hands "messy" then quickly dust them off if he wanted.  I let the boys do what ever they want in their salt, and just allow teachable moments to occur.  Bear typically asks me to write a B, although today he asked for an A.

 Ace was drawing different types of faces (happy, sad) because we had been discussing feelings.

I made a feelings lapbook for the boys to explore.  The printables came from 1+1+1=1, you can download them for free here.  

I was really excited to use the sight words Ace knows in sentences.  He was so proud of himself for reading them.  Of course he had to make some of his own.  It was interesting watching him put the cards down.  He first began just laying the in random order and telling me his own sentence (even if it didn't match what was actually on the table).  I started to rearrange his sentences so they would make sense and I think we both got a little frustrated.  Him, because I was messing up his sentences, and me because I wanted him to make sentences that made sense.  We compromised in the end and I told him he could make "silly" sentences (thanks mom for the good idea!).  He was totally okay with that.  I find that I am constantly struggling with balancing fun, creativity, and learning.  It's helpful to keep reminding myself he is only 4.

We finished out our week by decorating cupcakes.  I had this activity planned for the afternoon of Bears birthday since we weren't having a party or anything.  My hubs decided to take the day off so we spent a great day as a family eating pizza and visiting Chuck E Cheese.  We ended up doing this activity in the evening and Bear was burnt out, so it ended up just being Ace.  In hindsight I should have just saved it for the next day.  Oh well.

As always, thanks for reading!!

Leiah

Tot School - Letter L

Munchkin was 36.5m

Little Bear was 18m when we did these activities.

We had loads of fun with the letter L, we actually did these activities about 2 months ago, just before my break.  I'm so sorry but I forgot where I got this letter search (if you've seen it leave a comment pretty please).  Munchkin did pretty well with it.  He was able to correctly stamp all upper and lower case L's, but wanted no part of tracing them or trying to write his own.  He preferred to scribble.

We used our Tot School Notebook with printables from here.  I love that he is doing more intentional coloring these days, for the longest he just scribbled over the pictures. Of course I did catch him in a good mood and that has a lot to do with how our tot school goes.

This was our first time practicing cutting on a line, I printed these bug cutting strips from here.  Up until now I've been giving him scraps and letting him go to town.  I think he did pretty well. 

 I'm letting him do more and more gluing, but we still worked together to make this L is for Lion.  Check out No Time For Flash Cards for great letter art activities.  This is actually something I really struggle with.  You'd think as a second grade teacher I'd be totally used to messes and backwards feet, but it slightly drives me up the wall.  I know that I need to let him be more independent when it comes to art.  This is something I really need to work on... I don't want to stifle his creativity.

I glued the first foot... and had to hold my hands behind my back so I wouldn't "fix" the other three.

Little Bear is getting in on tot school more as well.  Last week I introduced him to green.  He really loves dot painting.  I don't expect him to identify the colors  yet, I just want to expose him to them.  Plus it's easier having him in his chair and occupied while I work with Munchkin.  I printed the color book from Memorizing the Moments.    

I even let Little Bear get in on the letter art action.  I put dots of glue to the paper after he colored it.  I then guided his hand to place the the pieces on.  Then I had to pry the little pieces from his hand.

This week we are working on Letter M.  Check out some other great tot school post here.

Tot School - Letter K & Bug Theme

Munchin is 37m

Little Bear is 18m

We didn't do much with tot school last week so we extended out letter K week and we are still doing a bug theme.  We did have some fun with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  After reading the story 50 million times (well it seemed like that many). We made caterpillar fruit salad, which does sound gross, but it was pretty good.  We started with strawberries, pears, and mandarin oranges, I didn't have plums in the house so those were left out.  We used a straw to poke "caterpillar" holes and mixed it together.  Munchkin loved it!

We used an egg tray, number cube, and some dollar store plastic bugs to practice our counting.  Munchkin was not interested in this at all.  He (obviously) preferred to just play with the bugs.  It's funny, I feel like I'm learning to teach all over again.  In my class I'd always give my kiddos explore time when we used manipulatives. This way when it was time to use them in the way I intended they'd already gotten to "play" with the manipulatives.  I have forgtten this with Munchkin.  I have twice now takin out something new and immediately tried to get him to follow my lead and use them in a particular way.  I won't make this mistake again.

Munchkin continues to love the bug sensory bin... and he is still very partial to rainbow rice.  A few spoons and old measuring cups will keep him quiet for at least a 1/2 hour.

One of Little Bear's favorite things to do is push small things into small holes.  Here he using colored transportation counters.  I wish I had some bug counters.

We also tried color sorting for the first time.  He watched me closely as I put the pieces in the matching colored section.  Then he dumped them out and added them where ever he liked.

Munchkin used a gel bag this week to trace the letter K.  Each day he humored me and traced a K once (I'll take it!!) then would squish it, squeeze it, and hold it up to face and look through the blue gel.  

We used playdough on a K printable from 1+1+1=1.  Munchkin enjoyed poking his fingers in it.

We also used blocks to build a castle for a king.  He loved this.

We worked on a few printables from different websites.  Don't mind the hearts... these are forgotten Valentine Decorations.  The letter cards in the pocket chart are from 1+1+1=1. There are great printables on this site.  I printed the Color Bug emergent reader from Prekinders.  Munchkin feels so proud when he "reads" this book.  I also printed the beginning sound matching page from here.  The letter K mini-book is from here.

Check out more Tot School Posts here.

Celebrating Dr. Seuss

Munchkin is 36.5m

Little Bear is 17.5

When I was a classroom teacher, I loved Dr. Seuss week.  My team would go crazy.  One year a co-worker and I decided to have the kids make the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (between our two classes)... LOL the kids got bored of coloring and cutting out little hats before we finished and we ended up cutting and coloring most of them.

As March approached I knew I wanted to include Dr. Seuss in our Tot School for the week.  I've been trying out a new schedule for our Tot School.  In the morning we focus on a letter of the week and tot trays.  After lunch we focus on some type of theme and I've been tying in different books.   This ended up working perfectly.  I find when I try to do Tot School all morning, Munchkin looses interest and starts to act out.  Breaking the day up has worked out great... so I think I will continue this way.

On with our week.  In the AM we did letter J.  We start with a mini-book and then some type of letter craft or printable (maybe both if he's up to it).  Then we do some tot trays or intentional play.  

I've been doing capital and lowercase letter crafts for a few months now.  I get great ideas for letter crafts at No Time for Flash Cards, the printable he's working on is from Confessions Of A Homeschooler.

J is for Jewels, we also did j is for jaguar.

He loved playing with the discovery bottles, I can't wait to make more.

He discovered that not only did they roll across the floor, but he could spin them... so he spent most of the time spinning them on his table.

Little Bear loves to scribble with markers, oddly enough he's not really into coloring with crayons though.  I think I'm going to get him those crayola little scribblers and see if he likes those.  Little Bear is still not talking much (his favorite word is still mama).  I'd be lying if I said I'm not starting to get a little concerned.  Hoping one day he'll surprise me with a complete sentence.

Dr. Seuss Week Activities!

We used tissue paper to make a Dr. Seuss hat.  My son is super literal and when I asked him what color the cat's hat was he proudly informed me "Wed, white, and bwack".  I helped him add the tissue paper to the hat in the correct spaces...

 ...then I gave him a blank paper to go crazy with.  He loved it.

I made green eggs with craft foam and had him serve the onto the corresponding plate.  He had fun doing this over and over again, he'd just empty the plates and put them right back on.  After a while he wasn't interested in matching the upper and lowercase letters.. which is fine.

The boys also enjoyed making party hats for Dr. Seuss's birthday party.

Munchkin really got his hands into it!

LB did his first dot painting this week and he loves it.  I don't know why I haven't given them to him sooner.

Once he was done painting I let him use the caps to stack.

I made hats for mommy and daddy to wear also... my husband and I proudly wore our hats during our Dr. Seuss party... I'll spare you the pictures.

Dr. Seuss Snacks

When I was little, and even as a classroom teacher I thought it was so fun to feast on green eggs and ham.  Unfortunately my picky eaters won't touch eggs (even when they're yellow), So I figured I wouldn't waste my eggs on this.  Instead I decided to get a little creative.  

Green Sam Juice.  Simply a banana,1/2 cup coconut milk, 1/2 cup regular milk, and 1/2 cup pineapple juice blended with ice, all dyed green... because Munchkin will drink anything from the blender (thank you Fresh Beat Band and the Groovy Smoothie).

I saw something similar to this with white chocolate covered Oreos and red chocolate dipped marshmallows.  I was tempted, but Munchkin (and everyone one else that came to his party) is still coming down off the sugar high from the candy bar.  This is my attempt to go a tad bit healthier.  Strawberries, bananas, and vanilla Oreos.

He would have eaten them all if I'd let him.

For dinner on Friday we had Cat in the Hat pizza.  This was cute and easy to make.  Munchkin, and my hubs got a kick out of this.

After dinner we had ice cream cake (at the hubs request) and sang happy birthday to Dr. Seuss.  It was awesome.  I really hope to give the boys great childhood memories, something I truly treasure and am thankful for.

Check out more tot school post at 1+1+1=1.