Tot Trays: Goodnight Moon

In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon, and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon.  We are gearing up to start our Goodnight Moon unit.  All printables for this can be found at 2 Teaching Mommies (Space unit), Homeschool Creations, and Homeschool Share .  There are lots of GREAT space ideas out there in blog land so it was hard to narrow it down.  I decided to do more of a focus on Goodnight Moon and then throw in a couple books on space, and the fun Hey Diddle, Diddle rhyme.

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The boys enjoyed the clothesline so much during our laundry theme I thought I would continue it with this theme only using mittens and socks (Goodnight kittens, goodnight mittens.  Goodnight clocks, goodnight socks).

Counting moon craters number cards.

Counting the stars in the sky (Goodnight stars, goodnight air....goodnight noises everywhere.)

Letter Mm sort.  Things that start with Mm and things that don't start with Mm.  This picture reminds me that I haven't posted on my letter box that I was finally able to put together!  I'll have to do that soon. :)

How many spots on the cow (you know, the one that jumped over the moon).  This is from the 2 Teaching Mommies farm unit.

This is a fun little activity that I threw together. I typed out a bunch of phrases (on the moon, beside the moon, over, below etc.).  I will read the phrase and the boys will move the cow to where it is supposed to be. The activity was inspired by a post that I saw at Train Up a Child , but I think the post has been removed.  Hers was inspired by the book Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss.

Finding words in the Hey Diddle, Diddle rhyme.

Roll and Graph.  We haven't done one of these in a while.  Asa really enjoys them so I think he will be pleased to see it.  He calls it 'A race to the top.'  He even picks out who he thinks should win....because of this the results are a little skewed....I wouldn't place any bets. :)

Happy blogging!
jess_hak

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

Tot School: The Mitten

Slowly easing back into things here in our house. This week we concentrated on the book The Mitten (we also read the counterpart The Hat). We worked on letters M and H. We had a lot of fun even though we didn't have a gazillion activities planned.....imagine that! I tend to WAY over plan. lol
This is a Read & Write the room activity from 1+1+1=1. According to Carisa it is a print awareness activity that gets a child comfortable with the idea of putting pictures and words together.
I hung up these pictures around the room of the animals in The Mitten. Asa went on a 'scavenger hunt' to find all the pictures.
When he found a picture he got to 'record' it on his clipboard. He really enjoyed this work. It was something new and fun for him (and it kept him busy for quite a while!).
This is also a printout from 1+1+1=1. I really love the real animal pictures that are used. This is just a beginning sounds match. This is the first time Asa has really done something like this. It took him a minute to understand, but it clicked with him quicker than I thought it would.

Once again these print outs from 1+1+1=1. These are story telling elements. After a couple days of reading the story I had Asa tape them to the window in order while I read the story.
We left them taped to the window and I would have Asa narrate the story to me. He did a great job. So fun to see comprehension of the story come through. It's not just going in one ear and out the other. lol
This is a whole bunch of felt mittens cut out. The object.....find the matching pair. I don't know why I insist on cutting so many things out of felt. I always remember what a chore it is after I'm half way done....too far in to turn back.

Silas actually enjoyed this tray the most. He diligently worked on this several times throughout the week.
We did one craft this week. I saw this on Luvin' my Bug and thought that it was just all around cute.
Finished mittens.

I hope that everyone else had a great week! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking up to 1+1+1=1

Tot School: Love and the letter M

What a great week we had! We had so much fun with our Valentine's activities and with the letter Mm. Our week actually started on Sunday instead of Monday. Asa and Annabelle really wanted something to do on Sunday afternoon while I was preparing for the week. I set them up with their art easel and some paints and they got to work on phase one of their valentine making.

Before I cut up the papers that they painted into little hearts I had to capture a picture of Asa's E and A that he painted. He just amazes me!

Phase two of valentine making included putting 3 stickers on the hearts. Asa really likes stickers so he had a hard time of understanding the concept of putting only 3 stickers on the hearts. So some of them slid by with 7 stickers. :)
The finished masterpieces. I thought that they turned out pretty cute.
MONDAY
Before I even get started I need to state a disclaimer. Asa is really working very hard on potty training. Because of that we haven't been wearing pants this week. So if a little boy in Diego or Yo Gabba Gabba unders offends you please skip to Silas' portion of this post. (This was meant to be humorous) :)

This is a little number wheel that I made up for the kids. I also made clothespins that matched each number. Asa had no problem with the matching part. He had a very difficult time with maneuvering the clothespins. He sat there for a good 20 minutes and finally completed the activity. He was so proud of himself.

We ended the day on Monday with hanging up the Valentine window clings.
TUESDAY
Learning about the letter Mm was so fun! Especially when you get to use M&Ms. Thanks to Confessions of a Homeschooler we had a blast! Asa having a good time sorting M&Ms by color.
All done, now he's excited to get to eat them!
This is a little Monster Matching Game that I made up of monster valentines that I got last year for .10 cents a box! I wrote Mm on all the cards and stuck one set of them in the pocket chart on the wall.
Then Asa would pick one out of the pile.....
....and put it with the corresponding card in the pocket chart.
I was disappointed with how this activity turned out. I drew a whole bunch of pictures with a pink crayon on pink construction paper. Then I watered down some white tempura paint and let Asa paint over the paper while the pictures mysteriously appear. I don't know if it was the type of paper, the paint was too watered down, I didn't make the crayon markings hard enough, or a combination of all three, but the water just soaked into the paper just making a big wet mess. I think I will try this activity again sometime, but I will try it with fingerpainting paper and white crayon. Oh well, lesson learned.
I was inspired by all the cute lunches I've been seeing posted as of late. I was feeling extra creative on Tuesday must be because the kids got a love themed lunch. Heart shaped grilled cheese and strawberries, pretzel and cheese arrows (with a little dab of peanut butter to hold them together), and vanilla pudding with a couple drops of red food coloring. They all enjoyed it a lot! I may have to do this again sometime.
After lunch we finished up the day by playing in the sensory bin that I put together. Here Asa just found an item on one of the I Spy cards I made to go with the bin.
WEDNESDAY
This day started off with some pajama snuggling time with Annabelle while watching Word World. What a sweet start to the day.
And I know we did much more than this on Wednesday, but I only captured Asa baking some Valentine cupcakes for the kiddos that I teach on Wednesday night at church.

Pouring very carefully......
Mixing, and doing a very good job at keeping it all in the bowl I might add.
The finished product. They look yummy and most of the kids enjoyed them so they must have tasted pretty decent too.
THURSDAY
I must say this was my kids favorite game of the week. I really had fun watching them too. I made up a whole bunch of envelopes with clipart images of things that start with the letter Mm on them. I then made a posterboard with corresponding mailboxes to match the letters. So my kids had fun delivering mail to the correct mailbox. Plus they LOVE this cute little mailbox (Melissa & Doug via Craigslist).
Getting into the box and finding a piece of mail.
Delivering the moose his letter. So fun!

FRIDAY
We didn't get a whole lot done on Friday because I was getting ready to go on an overnight with my aunts, grandma, mom, and girl cousins (sans kids!). I did set the kiddos up with shaving cream with a couple drops of red food coloring in it to make it pink. This kept them busy for quite a while so I could pack.
He loved the squishy feeling it made.
MONDAY
Time to move onto my little man, Silas.

He had a lot of fun with his sensory bin this week. He loved to pull out the items in it and sort them into the containers as he went.
He had a lot of fun with this shape stacker. It is hard to get him to focus on anything but what he sets his mind on doing. However, this day I was able to ask him to find the star and he would find one and pick it up and say, "STA" with a big huge smile on his face (which is what this picture is). The rest of the time he played with this he was very interested in knowing what the names of the other shapes were.
Silas did a lot of coloring on Monday. At the table.....
at the art easel with markers! (hey kid is your mommy crazy?!) He really loved coloring with these markers.
The finished product.
The hands of an artist. :)

Well, I tried to get him to match the colors on this M&M building sheet .
He was much more happy grabbing them off the sheet and eating them though.
Maybe a little too happy? lol
He had so much fun with the pocket chart Monster Match. He didn't match them of course, but loved putting them in and taking them out.
Annabelle was nice to Silas and let him use her Tag Jr. Yes, he is reading about princesses....learning how to treat them right most likely. ;)

THURSDAY
The duck says, CACK.....well, according to Silas anyway. These last couple weeks I've been impressed with Silas' animal imitation show.
Toy Story 3 dominoes that I bought for Asa. Silas likes to carry them around, look at the pictures on them, hand them to me, point to the pictures, and tell me who is on the domino. We may watch a little too much Toy Story around here if he can identify all of the characters. lol
Stamping at the art easel. Always fun!
FRIDAY
This is Silas' first experience with shaving cream. He did really good not putting it in his mouth. However, there was one small incident. He must have had an itch on his face which he scratched, which led to eye rubbing and kind him kind of freaking out for a brief moment because his face was covered with shaving cream. lol I cleaned him up and he was back at the shaving cream, but this time he didn't scratch if he had any more itches.
Looking forward to next week, another great week of memory making. Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Visit 1+1+1=1 to see what other Tot's have been up to this week.