Showing posts with label Letter R. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Letter R. Show all posts

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Tot School: Rainbows and Noah's Ark

This week was a whirlwind of activity. Aside from having extra kids every day (not that I mind them at all!), Zak was home Monday-Wednesday and we were just enjoying having him around. So even though I had a plethora of activities planned we only touched a little of what I wanted to do. Fortunately, we will be revisiting the rainbow/Noah's ark theme again in August sometime and now I have a whole bunch of planned activities!

MONDAY
I made kool-aid playdoh. It smelled so nice and had the most vibrant colors I've been able to get thus far making my own dough. It was intended for them to make rainbows, but this mommy made one is the only rainbow that was created. lol The kids had their own ideas, but they really enjoyed themselves.

I didn't put too many trays together this week because, well, I just didn't have much time too. Plus, the kids didn't have as much of a need for them this week with Zak being home. They would much rather play with him. These are little letters that I got at the Dollar Tree. Asa worked on these for quite a while at the beginning of the week.
He found the letter K. He was pretty excited about it. :)
TUESDAY
I believe that I got this idea from Meet the Dubiens, but it may have been somewhere else. lol So many good ideas out there it is hard to keep track of them all! All this is is bath 'paints' made with shaving cream and food coloring. The kids had a good time with them.
Painting away. The boys honestly thought it was much more cool to dump the paints in the water and change the water color. lol
WEDNESDAY
Working hard coloring his ark and rainbow.
When he was finished I cut out the windows and he pasted animals under them. So it was a lift-a-flap type project. Asa's is the top picture.
These are a couple other activities that I had set up for the kiddos in the school room (which we didn't spend much time in this week due to it being messy and I didn't feel like cleaning it). These color charts are easily recognizable as Jolanthe's. I printed them off from Homeschool Creations and Asa had a great time sorting the colors (because anything done in a pocket chart makes it way cooler than if it wasn't done with a pocket chart...according to Asa).
I found this really cute Noah's ark shelf at Goodwill. I gathered all of our little stuffed animals. I was envisioning a 'toss game', but the holes turned out to be a little small. However, the kids really enjoyed just playing with it and the animals. It turned out to be a great story telling prop.
THURSDAY
We had school time in pajamas on Thursday. :) I got out their animal stamps and they had fun stamping animals into a picture of the ark.
We also did a fun color mixing wheel activity. This was Asa's first time using a dropper and he did a really good job! The color wheel can be printed off from Mama Jenn's.
He really like this activity and we actually did it several more times.
Rainbow Rr for the letter wall.
FRIDAY
We kind of changed themes and we did a lot of rabbit activities on Friday. I was reading a blog that jogged my memory of this book. I really loved it when I was little (this is actually my book!). We used these really cute If/Then cards the second time through the story to help Annabelle and Asa retell the story. They both really love activities like this. You can find these cards at Homeschool Share. This is a phenomenal website with tons of fantastic free printables.
Working on retelling the story.
This cute Rr sort and other rabbit printables can be found at Home Grown Hearts. These are really too easy for Asa now, but I like to do them for review.
Here he is doing a rabbit size sort from the same link mentioned above.
I love floor puzzles, and even more than that my kids love them. lol So whenever I see them at second hand stores and garage sales I buy them. I also really like that it is an activity in where the end result comes about easier when they work together instead of separately. Every time they do a puzzle together it gets easier and easier for them to work together and communicate. I'm hoping that will flow into other areas of their lives. They even worked together and made funny faces for this picture. :)
SILAS
Poor Silas didn't have too many activities planned for him this week. Don't feel too bad for him though because he got lots of cuddling one on one time with daddy. He did join in with us on Monday for some play-doh fun. However, he didn't like it much. I think he was just confused as to what he was supposed to do with it.
Enjoying bath painting time. He will do anything if it involves a bath. :)

This Melissa and Doug Noah's ark toy was a $5 find on Craigslist. I love finding good deals! And Silas likes good deals too.
We also played with his animal magnets. This little boy has such a temper, and it usually stems from frustration. He cannot handle being frustrated or not being able to do things. For instance, he had a complete meltdown shortly after this picture was taken because he could not fit all the animals on the cookie sheet like he wanted. He was so angry! Finally, after he calmed himself down I showed him that we could stick the magnets on the fridge. They are still hanging there today and he has quite enjoyed them there and has had no tantrums since. lol

I am also very impressed that he knows so many animals. He may not be able to say their names, but if I tell him to find the zebra he will find the zebra for me (granted he's in the mood to play that game). I also thought it was really cute that he was trying to have me find the elephant. He kept saying, "Where da Eeee?" I couldn't for the life of me figure out what he was saying until he finally gave up on me figuring it out, picked up the elephant and said, "There is!" What a cutie. :)
That wraps our week up. We had fun. Next week we'll be back to our normal routine. We are doing an Occupations theme. Should be fun! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

I am linking this up to 1+1+1=1. Head on over and see what other cool tots are up to.
Tot School

Friday, April 1, 2011

Week in Review: Noah's Ark, Rainbows.....and Rabbits too

Well, I had great visions and aspirations for this week. I had a gazillion activities planned. We just had so much fun with Zak being home the first three days of the week that we went very light on the activities. Fortunately for Asa's plans in August we will be revisiting this theme so all ideas and preparations weren't in vain.

MONDAY
I found a great recipe for kool-aid playdoh. Not only did it smell fruity, but the colors were the most vibrant I've ever been able to get them. If anyone is interested in the recipe let me know and I can post it. Annabelle spent the whole time making a rainbow sandwich.
The idea was to make rainbows.....so I made one for the activity sake. lol
Annabelle is really struggling with counting past 12 and recognizing numbers past 10.....still. We've been working on this each week and on Monday we had a slight breakthrough. Using this egg carton game (there is a picture of the inside of the egg carton in this post), Annabelle did the best that she has ever done at identifying these numbers. She still only got them right 70% of the time, but it is still an improvement.
TUESDAY
I got the idea for these 'bath paints' from Meet the Dubiens. All this is is shaving cream and food coloring. All three of the kids had fun with them. Annabelle painted with them the longest.
Her rainbow art creation.
Coloring her ark. She worked really hard at coloring it and making it pretty. After it was finished we cut out the windows and glued pictures of animals under them to make a 'lift-a-flap' picture.
Annabelle's picture is the bottom one.
I found this adorable Noah's ark shelf at Goodwill and was really excited about it! I brought down their little beanie babies intending them to toss them into the ark. The holes turned out to be too small, but they really enjoyed playing with it anyway. It was a great tool to help them retell the story.
WEDNESDAY
Annabelle started off the day by using the animal stamps and stamping animals into the ark.
Then because we were talking about rainbows all week we used this color wheel to learn about primary and secondary colors.
The finished product. And despite her 'I'm going to humor my mom and let her take a picture of me smile' she really did enjoy this activity. lol
This is the letter Rr we made for our alphabet wall. (Yes, we did skip Qq, but we are coming back to it this week).
THURSDAY
We worked hard on this awesome rainbow all week and did two colors a day. On Thursday we finished it. I think that it is honestly one of my favorite things that we've done this entire school year. Now I just have to find somewhere to put it. I got the great idea for this from The Princess and the Tot, this is just a fantastic blog. You should stop over there.
Isn't it so pretty!
FRIDAY
We switched gears on Friday and did rabbit activities. Kind of random, but I love this book (this is actually my book from when I was a little girl) and another blog I read recently jogged my memory and had some great ideas to go with it. As you can see I printed off some storytelling cards from Homeschool Share (this site has some absolutely fabulous resources on it all for FREE).
Here is Annabelle working on putting the story in sequence with the cards. She absolutely loves these types of activities that stem off from a book. This really puts my mind at ease considering the curriculum that I chose for her is very literature oriented. It is good to know that she enjoys book based activities.
Lol....Annabelle took this picture unbeknownst to me. She told me several times that this was her favorite page because she loves the mommy's ballerina outfit. She must of thought it needed to be documented. :)
This is a shadow matching game also printed from the same Homeschool Share link.
I found these really cute rabbit printables at Home Grown Hearts. This one is a number matching rabbit (1-20). Annabelle would pick up a number and tell me what it was and then find the matching number on the rabbit. Of course she needed a whole lot of help with this and was only able to identify the numbers 1-10 and the number 14 correctly. :/
I love floor puzzles (actually any jigsaw puzzle is fine with me), so whenever I see them at second hand stores or garage sales I buy them. This Noah's ark floor puzzle I got at Goodwill for $1.50. These two goofballs worked fairly well together to get it assembled. They thought a funny face would be best for this picture.

That wraps up our week. I wanted to do so much more, but I'm feeling good about what we did get accomplished. The letter was learned, the Bible story was talked about a lot, and we worked on our numbers quite a bit. All in all a pretty good week. :) Happy blogging!

jess_hak

I'm linking up to Preschool Corner. Head on over and see what other preschoolers have been up to this week!