Christmas Tot Trays

Well, I guess I'm having a lot of trouble blogging consistently this month. lol I think that it will probably be like that until January. I may even take a little break until then....however, I do have several posts that I'd like to get done before then.

These are some of our Christmas trays for this year. If you want to see what we did last year go here...these posts will have some younger ideas too. We got our printouts from 2 Teaching Mommies, Musings of Me (I do not think these are available anymore, but she has other great printables to check out!), and 1+1+1=1.

Asa has been asking for a roll and graph tray for the last couple of weeks. This is from the 2 Teaching Mommies link.
Counting ornaments and finding the correct numbered star to go with it.
This was a favorite last year....I think that Asa will enjoy it too.
These are some file folder games I put together last year. You can find them at Christian Preschool Printables (a site you could get lost in forever... there are so many great things on it!).
Christmas tree matching from 1+1+1=1.
Stringing jingle bells.
Hammering golf tees. This is a favorite. I glued jewels onto the top of the golf tees to make them look more like ornaments. :)
These little sticker sheets are left over from our church's Sunday School curriculum. It is just sticker matching and could easily be done with any theme related sticker sheets.

Transferring. Silas has really enjoyed this one.
I found these little fabric lights at a garage sale I think. I used them last year with Asa. This year Silas will be using them.
Christmas card mailing station. The Christmas cards match the envelopes. They have to find the matching envelope, stuff them, and then mail them. This is a favorite! :)

We also have our play dough that we've been really enjoying. Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Linking up to 1+1+1=1 and Montessori Monday

Christmas Countdown

I know that the book countdown has been seen out there in blog world a lot this year. I actually have wanted to do this since last year when I first saw it on Counting Coconuts. So during garage sale season I geared up to find some fantastic Christmas books. I did fairly well. I found a few that are really above their level so I put those aside for later years. I only ordered 5 off amazon and ebay. So I had 20 decent ones! I threw in a couple of snow ones that aren't necessarily about Christmas....I really couldn't justify buying more than 5 books at once. I'll have to wait until next garage sale season to see if I can find more. :)
I wanted to give you my book list in case any of you are interested....I'm a nerd (or maybe just nosy) and always like knowing what other people are reading. I also provided the link in case you want to see them. :)

1) Counting to Christmas 2) The Story of Christmas 3) The Tale of Three Trees 4) Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star 5) Christmas in the Barn 6) Merry Christmas Big Hungry Bear 7) Come and See 8) The First Night (can't find a link) 9) Christmas in the Big Woods 10) Legend of the Candy Cane 11) The Snowy Day 12) How the Grinch Stole Christmas 13) White Snow, Bright Snow
14) One Baby Jesus 15) The Polar Express 16) The Little Drummer Boy 17) God Gave Us Christmas 18) Room for a Little One 19) Over the River and Through the Woods (didn't find a link) 20) Humphrey's First Christmas (pretty excited about this one) 21) Look Who is Coming to our House 22) A Star for Jesus 23) The Animals Christmas Eve 24) The Night Before Christmas (this is not the exact one we have, but I'm sure they are all the same). 25) The First Christmas According to Luke (for some reason the link is not showing up...sorry)

Sidenote #1: We don't really 'do' Santa. Not that I have anything against him...we treat him like a fun fictional character (like fairies, Cinderella, and talking toys)

Sidenote #2: I had no idea that Over the River and Through the Woods was a Thanksgiving song! I always related it to Christmas. lol

This is our other advent calendar. Each day a box is opened and we hang the character on the hook and read a little bit of the part they played in the first Christmas. :)
Happy blogging!

Way to long of a break: Christmas Play dough

So, it has been WAY to long since my last post. Sorry to all of my friends who missed me. :) We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and I hope that all of you did as well. Getting back into the swing of things here. Working on Dec. tot trays and quickly finishing up what we need to for Annabelle so that we can have a lovely Christmas break.....at least from Animal Worlds...we'll probably do math, reading, phonics (things that need to be more repetitive so that she doesn't forget them).

We've had a couple mishaps the last week and a half. One includes an entire bottle of syrup, and the other includes a broken TV. Zak has decided not to replace the TV at the moment as a lesson/punishment to the kids to stop throwing things. So needless to say I've been really busy keeping the kids busy these last few days. I always said I wanted to watch less TV, so I guess now is the perfect opportunity to enforce that and start new habits.

One thing I did manage to make was our Christmas play dough. Isn't it pretty? I rolled in some glitter, and it smells like peppermint. My go to play dough recipe is from My Montessori Journey.
The kids have been having fun with it. This first day they played with it for almost 2 hours!!


Annabelle showing off her creation.....I have no idea what it is. lol
Asa made a Christmas tree and decorated it with jewels.
Silas thought it was hilarious to try to eat it.
This is his fun creation.
This fun time freed me up to be able to do some shipping work that needed to be done. Thanks play dough!!
Happy blogging!

Linking up to Preschool Corner. :)

Week in Review/Sneak Peek

Yes, yes, another combined post. I was hoping to get back into a regularly scheduled routine for school and blog posting this week, but alas we are going to have to wait yet another week due to something coming up. We will be out of town most of this school week so I have been making preparations for that. So I will quick post our last weeks review, and some of a peek at what little we will be working on this week. I was able to get in a full day yesterday and hoping to get in a full day today as well.

This is a counting activity that I made for the number 6. The object is to count the 'arms' of the snowflake and file them under the correct number.

Here is Annabelle working hard at this activity. It took her a minute or two to understand what exactly she was counting. It finally clicked and she soared through the activity quickly.

Here she is working on a listening activity. There is a picture of a tree and some apples. I tell her what color and how many apples need to be that color, then I tell her how many she needs to cut out and paste to the tree. She is getting good at this, and I'm hoping these listening skills will transfer over and apply to the rest of her little day. Here's to hoping . :)

She did fantastic on this alphabet activity. She was much more confident with her choices the second time we worked on this. Instead of asking me if she was right (bell starts with b?), she was telling me the correct answer (bell starts with b mommy). It was a very surreal moment that I realized that these months of working have paid off, I'm not a horrible teacher and I can do this! It actually almost brought tears to my eyes. I was quite relieved to say the least.

Working on a file folder game. I printed this off from here: http://www.christianpreschoolprintables.com/ChristianFileFolderGames.html

We finished up talking about the Wisemen this week and the gifts they brought to Jesus. This was a camel/wiseman silhouette craft that we did. P.S. In the last couple pictures Annabelle is wearing a ballet leotard....this was worn for exactly 3 days in a row last week. lol

This is the finished camel silhouette craft. Also our H is for hands craft that we did. Annabelle's are on top, Asa's are the bottom ones.

Asa working on the camel craft in his pj's.

Lacing little beads. If you remember I originally had little beads that looked like snowflakes for this activity. The holes in those beads were significantly smaller than normal beads so I switched them out so he could actually lace them.

Due to the lack of pictures of Silas last week I made sure to take an overabundance one day of our time together.

My two older kids love puzzles, and Silas didn't break that trend. He would sit and work on a puzzle for a very, very long time. I love that my kids love puzzles. It will be fun when they are older and we're all able to work on one together. This is one of a couple that he got for Christmas.

Another Christmas present. What kid doesn't like hammering? As a matter of fact Silas is loudly banging away on this as I type. :)

This wasn't a Christmas gift, but Silas discovered it in Annabelle's room the other day. Here I was asking where the puppy's belly was. We did that with most of his features. I was surprised at what Silas could point out considering we haven't worked much on this.

He got this little Sushi set for Christmas as well. He really likes to take everything out and try to put it all back in where it goes (huh....kind of like a puzzle).
This is how I keep Silas occupied while I'm making dinner. Thanks mom for the absolutely innovative, wonderful idea. I'm sure many moms before me have done this, but if it weren't for my mom I probably would've never thought of something so wonderfully simplistic. :)

This is where the snowflake beads went. I originally had pom poms for this activity. They worked fine, but Silas really wanted to be able to pour our what he put in the container. The pom poms just weren't cooperating. No worries, the beads worked great!

Ok onto some of what I've been working on for this week. We are FINALLY starting the letter Ii. We will only be studying it exclusively for a week and a few review activities will show up in the next couple weeks when we're working on Jj and Kk. We have got to get caught up. Anyway, these printables can be found here: http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2010/04/prek-letter.html

These are some winter counting activities. I didn't realize that I made so many different ones. lol Annabelle is doing so well counting from 1-10 that I'm going to be introducing numbers 11-15 with these activities (they go up to 20). The hot cocoa mug we will be using actual marshmallows as the counters. All of these can be found at my new favorite site: http://thoughtsofesme.blogspot.com/2011/01/snow-unit.html

This is a category sorting game. We haven't done much of what belongs to groups, so it will be interesting to see how she does. I think she will do fine, but I've been wrong before. This is from the same site as listed above.

Even though we are working on the letter Ii this week I thought that since she already knows the Ss sound and can identify the letter it wouldn't confuse her or hurt to work on it a little. The activity on the left is more for Asa. He will just sort the s snowflakes from the other letter snowflakes. The one on the right is for Annabelle who will sort the pictures by the sounds they start with. These are also from the same site as the others.

I thought that I would start Asa on some pre-writing skills just to see how he does, and because he is so eager to try. I printed these out from the same said site as above and laminated them. He will use a dry erase marker to trace the lines. I'm excited to see how he does, and I know he will be excited to try.
Snowflake matching (sorry about the dark picture). This and the next print out can be found here: http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/WinterFunTotPack.html

I'm not sure how I'm going to incorporate this guy yet. I really like him. I may just tell Asa to find a specific shape or color and then ask him questions about the shape or color does that make sense? Like if I tell him to find the triangle buttons I would then ask him what color they were. I would like to make it more independent than that. I've been thinking of making up some flashcards that he would pick and then he would do what it said.....I don't know....just thinking out loud.....

That is it for us for the week. I have a lot to clean and pack so I better get back to it. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Weeks in Review/Some Sneak Peek

Happy 2011 everyone! I hope that all of your Christmas' were merry. :) We had a wonderful time here, and it was extra special because daddy (Zak) was home! That hopefully explains the lack of posts as of recently. As stated before I hope to continue with these regularly again. It is difficult for me to balance all of the things that I do, but want to continue to blog this adventure we're having here. It has been fun to look back on them and I'm hoping Annabelle will like to look at them at some point and remember all the things she did for preschool. Anyway, on with the show!

The Little People Nativity was a big hit this season. It was played with almost daily. Annabelle loved to set it up and play with it. As you can see Buzz Lightyear and dinosaurs also wanted to visit our Saviour this particular day....I think that there is a Transformer in there too. :)
Annabelle really likes these building activities. This one is from the Hippo unit that I posted in the previous post.
Here she is working hard on the "How many animals are visiting Jesus" activity. (Link is in previous post as well).

I know this picture is a little dark, but if you can see she is holding her Christmas tree that she created from the play-doh I made and sequins provided. She and Asa had a really good time with this.

She also really liked the horse/legs activity. She asks to play with it some still. She had names for some of the horses, I wish I could remember them now. And yes, we did school in our pajamas this day because we can. :)

Our cute window after they decorated it with their snowman and snowflakes. We also have some snowflakes that we made from q-tips, glue, and silver glitter hanging up there too.

Annabelle was not thrilled at the beginning of this craft. We did a day that we talked about candy canes and the meaning behind them. I was really excited that she recognized that it looks like a letter J since we haven't gotten that far yet in the alphabet. I don't know why she knows that letter, but I'm not complaining it will just make my job easier when we get there!

Asa enjoyed it even though Annabelle didn't. They got new do-a-dot markers in their stockings.

The finished product and the book we read to go along with it: The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg. Annabelle was pleased with the finished product. It just took her a few minutes to get on board. :)

These little angels turned out super cute! The bodies are their footprints, the wings are their hands, the little cheeks are their fingerprints. top it off with some yarn and google eyes and you can't go wrong. We all really like how these turned out.

Here is another craft that we did. Just a little snow scape and we let the glue run to make icicles on the houses.

Asa shaking away....they like it when they get to use glitter.

This was one of Asa's toys from Christmas. It has been used quite a bit since we got it. All three of them really like it.

Making towers is hard work....and notice the lack of pants, and a diaper....we are diving into potty training. It's going alright. lol

Asa loved doing these file folder games. He feels really special when I pull them out.

Just mommy and Asa having a good time. I love his little face! :)

Here is the little Summer Squash playing with some Christmas erasers. I know that I took more pictures of him, but they must be on the other camera and for the life of me I have no idea where it is at the moment. So this is all you get of Silas in this post. Sorry to all of his fans. ;)

Now I'm going to share a couple activities I'll be using this week. I didn't get around to getting pictures of everything, but it's alright. We will be finishing the Christmas story and our activities that we didn't get to. We will be discussing the wisemen this week and the journey they made and the star they followed. I have a fun craft to do along with that.

This is an activity that I've been working on for sometime. I got the idea from here: http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/search/label/Alphabet%20Box The idea is that these items (minus the uppercase letters) will be in a bag. Annabelle will pull out an item and decipher which letter the item is/or starts with and will file it under the correct letter. The point is to get her to start listening to the sounds that the letters make so that she will be able to identify them easier. We have played this once already and she did very well for her first time I think. It took her quite a while, but she really liked it. It challenged her and engaged her mind the entire time. I only have A-H completed, so I have a ways to go before it's done.

This is one of Asa's trays this week. I'm sure that Annabelle will enjoy it too. The object is to lace the beads onto the pipe cleaners. I thought the beads looked like snowflakes, so it is appropriate in that it matches the weather outside the window right now!

Lastly, this is an activity for Silas that I got from here: http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/2009/06/tot-school_28.html Just an old coffee creamer container (thanks Zak!) and some pom poms. Just stick the balls in the container. Silas really loves activities like these....as a matter of fact he's playing with it right now!

Yup, that pretty much sums up our last couple of weeks. I'm going to go spend some time with Silas now...he started his Tot School without me. lol Happy blogging.

jess_hak