Tot School: Camping/Bears

We have had a lot of fun over the past couple weeks working on our camping/bear theme. If you are interested in seeing all of our trays please visit this post. It will give you the links to make your own trays too!

Asa loved his bear counting tray. He wanted to do this one daily.
We worked on his pre-writing skills....still needs practice. :) He worked so very hard on these. It made me smile to watch him. He wants to read and write so much!
I love Silas' face. Working hard to get those bears on the top of the pencils.
He liked matching the sleeping bags and the pillows. He still insists that every single color is yellow.
Working on the numerical order puzzle.
Painting logs....
Jude (my sweet nephew) was over helping with this craft.
Asa helped me make a yummy s'more snack......
....did I mention it was yummy?
This is the finished campfire.
We had a 'camping picnic' with our little campfire, s'more snack, and some Bambi.
This game got played a few times during the week too. (It is the dice graphing game).

Asa's squirrel with a bushy tail.
I saw the CUTEST idea ever on a blog a week or so ago (forgot to pin it....let me know if you know whose blog it is so I can give them some link love). We had an indoor bear hunt. I set it up during nap time so it was all ready to go when the littles woke up.

This is the long, wavy, grass....


The river....

The ooey, gooey mud (they had to tiptoe around the tape).

The dark forest....yeah, couldn't think of anything better than this.
They didn't seem to mind.

The whirling snowstorm.
Snowball fight!
The cave with our very, scary bears. lol
What this picture doesn't show you is all the screaming and running back through the story we did when that door was opened. Love my dramatic little girl. :)
Such a fun theme! Linking up to 1+1+1=1 Tot School. Head over there to find other fun ideas to do with your tots. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

More Phonics Fun

I threw together some new phonics trays this week. Just thought that I would share them. Annabelle is going to be venturing into reading starting Monday. She is NOT excited about it. lol We'll see how it goes. I think she thinks it is going to be incredibly hard. Hopefully, my attitude will be very encouraging to her.

This is just a list of some basic words that we are going to begin learning. The cards just have the letters on them and will be used a couple ways. First, I will start with telling her to find the letters in a word and then we'll sound them out together. Second, I will say a word and she will find the letter sounds. She can also use the tray independently with the word sheet and letter cards.
This is just a fun way to practice phonic sounds. The die is from Boggle. I pulled out some of our items that begin with the letters on the die. She will roll the die, find something that begins with that letter and then put it under the correct letter on the tray.
I got this idea for a word board from Hart 2 Hart. I think it will help Annabelle get really excited to see the words she's learning get pinned up there. Kind of an incentive for her to at least TRY! :)
This one is for Asa. Just letter identification with Boggle dice.
These are short a CVC dry erase flashcards (I actually have a giveaway right now for another set of these here).
Here is a more detailed picture of them.
I finally got around to putting together this fabulous Read! Build! Write! mats from Homeschool Creations. I think that Annabelle will really like this.
I am linking up to Preschool Corner, Montessori Monday, and Pinterest Tuesday. These are great link-ups to find some great ideas. Stop by and visit them! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

My First Giveaway!!

I'm pretty excited to be doing my first giveaway! I wanted to make it a little fancier than this, but alas I have no time to dig through all of my stuff right now (maybe in the spring clean-out). Jolanthe hosts a phenomenal Fall Curriculum Clean-Out so be sure to head over there to see what other fantastic giveaways are going on right now.

This is just a little phonics package that I've been wanting to do a giveaway for for a while.
These are called Flip Overs and are great phonics practice. There is a whole stack of them. These are a duplicate (minus one sheet). I have the exact same set and use them quite a bit...and will continue using them for a long time. They are a lot of fun for Annabelle.
This is a close-up of the short-vowel a/e flip over. The student fills in the missing vowel.
These flashcards are dry erasable. The green ones are used for tracing the word and then circling the correct letters in the word. The red ones are for practicing spelling on your own. Annabelle is going to start using these this week (this is another duplicate set that I have). There is also a fun package unopened foam alphabet stickers. I used them to make my Word Board.
That's it! To enter just follow my blog and then leave a comment (and a way to contact you) letting me know you follow me. Sorry, this is only for the US.

For an additional entry leave your favorite family fall activity/tradition (I'm trying to come up with new ones!)

This giveaway will end on October 1. I will pick the winner the next morning. :)

Thanks for stopping in! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Garage Sale Treasures: Week ??

I have been garage saling the past few weeks, just not blogging about it. Truth is I haven't been finding much. Except I did find a fantastic Christmas present for Annabelle.....although I'm going to save that for a special Christmas ala garage sales post. Anyway, onto the finds....

I actually didn't find these cuisenare rods, a good friend did. I think she paid $2. It is almost a complete set....just missing 5 rods total!

I found this Discovery Kids Playful Patterns for $1!
Excellent condition......separated colors make me happy. :)
Fun bag of Zoobs for $1 (there were more than these in the bag....the kids were playing with them when I took the pic).
Bag of play dough cutters .25
Busy Bugs by Discovery Toys.....this is in NEW condition....I was pretty pumped to find this and didn't really mind paying the $4 for it.
This is another find by my friend.....I think she paid $3 for it? It is by Ravensburger....and for some reason I feel like I know this game....like it was in my childhood somewhere and I don't know when or where. lol Boggle Jr. for $1. Yes, I do already own this. I love the dice....what can I say? I'm a little ridiculous. :)
Sorry about this horribly messy pic. This will be part of the special Christmas post and will be set up better. This is two Geo Trax sets; the Airport and some western looking one. I got both of these for $18.
I got 3 great rugs for a total of $6. They are such a great size....and now I won't have cold feet while standing on my basement floor doing laundry (maybe I should invest in slippers).
3 new spiderman coloring books. Always a good thing when you have 3 little boys (one is my nephew) who LOVE him....and have absolutely no idea who he is. lol $1.50
Random selection of books for .50 a piece. $4.50
This is my FAVORITE find of the weekend. These are all BIG books (meaning they're big....) they are so much fun. Annabelle has already enjoyed looking at them. I got all 16 of these for $5!! Love them.

GRAND TOTAL: $42 give or take a couple $$

Happy blogging!

jess_hak