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

MIA.....

So, I have been completely MIA this month. I haven't been blogging much, but mostly because I haven't felt like we have done enough to do a weekly blog. I thought that I was beginning to feel better in the beginning of January, but apparently I was not. This post consists of some of the pictures of what we've accomplished this month. Usually this would be done in a week (sometimes 2). There are also many other things that I wanted to do, but just didn't feel up to doing it. I will say that I am finally feeling better (almost in my 2nd trimester!)....for real this time, I am feeling better/motivated/'normal'. So I apologize for my lack of posting. Here is what we've been doing this last month.

We've been working on 'rowing' The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. Rowing a book would generally take a week or so....but it took us the whole month. :)
I printed out these shape cards (along with many other printouts) from Homeschool Creations.
Asa looked through the book and would find the shapes in the illustrations.
Drawing icicles on the house. He would pick a number card and then draw that number of icicles.
This printable is from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Asa drew some of the things that he and Peter (little boy from The Snowy Day) like doing in the snow. He drew the snowman, the ground and the hill. He insisted that I draw the sled and the little boy on it. After he drew the picture he used a snowball (cotton ball) to paint snow on the picture.

Counting the snowflakes, counting out beads to put on the snowflakes, then circling the correct number. This printable is also from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Cutting practice. This boy LOVES scissors!
Letter tracing. We also did a little experiment to see what happens to snow when it is brought inside. In the book Peter put a snowball in his pocket and when he went back to get it the snowball was gone. I asked Asa to make a prediction about what happened to the snowball. He said that he thought it melted. We brought snow in the house and I asked him what would happen to this snow....he said it would melt and make water. He didn't let that cup out of his sight for the longest time.

He checked on his cup after naptime and he was pretty excited that his prediction had been accurate. Then I had to convince him not to drink the water. lol
More letter S work. These printables are from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

This is one of the trays that I really wanted to do and got around to making. The idea (and the snowflake printables) are from Making Learning Fun. The idea is to look at the card and build the snowflake using the correct shapes.
After putting so much time into making it I was pretty bummed when it wasn't a huge hit. It wasn't that Asa didn't like it, he was just more interested in other things. Oh well, maybe next year he will like it better.
One of the snowflakes that he finished.
Silas enjoyed creating his own snowflakes.
This was one of Annabelle's favorite activities last year. Asa liked it as well, but was still a bit confused about how to do it. We worked together quite a bit on this.

Play dough took up a good time of our month. I was pretty grateful that it consumed a lot of time. I made it just the normal color and added some vanilla extract (that's why it's a little brown). I had bought a couple Toobs (penguins, polar). The kids had a great time using the play dough as snow. They made tracks as well as little landscapes.
Silas LOVES play dough. This would easily consume 1-2 hours of time with him.

We did happen to have snow for about 2 weeks here in good ol' Michigan (it's pretty much gone now and in the 40s.....bizarre). We took advantage of it while we could. We did some sledding...

....the kids also enjoyed coloring the snow.....
I was pretty grateful for this activity. It was an extremely bad feeling day for me. The kids were insanely loud that morning I knew that they just had so much pent up energy.
I forced myself to get them bundled up and sent them outside to color the snow. I got an hour of peace and quiet in the house and they had a GREAT time outside (and didn't want to come in). I love my fenced in back yard!!!
I hope that everyone else had a fantastic January. I for one am really looking forward to February! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking up to 1+1+1=1 and Preschool Corner

Sneak Peek: David, Jj, and Snowman Game Explanation

I almost forgot about my calendar! Well, it's back. We did start this week off yesterday as the date suggests. We've been having major computer problems this last weekend and they're following us into this week. Fortunately Zak is pretty good with these types of things so hopefully the computer will be up and running and back to normal in no time.

This week we are looking into the life of David. Each day we are learning something new about his life. We start off with his life as a shepherd looking after sheep and how he was chosen to sing to King Saul. The next day (today) we will be talking about his friendship with Jonathan. Wednesday we will talk about how he was chosen to be king over all his brothers. Thursday and Friday we will be discussing David and Goliath. Friday we will be watching the Veggie Tales movie: Dave and the Giant Pickle. So many great things to glean from David's life. In these particular stories I hope to touch on friendship, working hard and doing a good job, praise and worship, and God can use anyone no matter how little and seemingly insignificant that person is.

I found these bowling pins at a garage sale this last summer (they are huge!). I thought it would be fun to tape pictures of Goliath on them and use them to bowl the giants down. I think it will be a big hit.
This week we are also diving into the letter Jj. Still a couple of weeks behind in our letters, but we are catching up quickly and will be back on track soon. We are doing a few different activities for the letter Jj. Mostly with jellybeans and jack in the boxes. These cute jelly bean activities can be found here. The activity on the left is matching the top half of the jelly beans with the numbers on them with the bottom half of the jelly bean with the correct number of dots on it. The activity on the left will be done with real jelly beans....yummmm! Annabelle and Asa will both get a pile of jelly beans and will sort them into colors. Each color will then be counted and placed on the graph. Then we will determine which color had the most and which color had the least.
This is an activity that I made. I painted jars all different colors and then painted the corresponding lids with the same color. The object is to find the lids to put on the jars.


I posted a picture of Asa playing this snowman button game yesterday and said that I would quick post an explanation about it today. So as promised here is the explanation. Remember the snowman and his buttons can be found here.

This is a picture of a card that Asa would draw randomly from a pile. He would then count the dots (he doesn't correctly recognize his numbers quite yet without some help), and find the corresponding amount of shapes from a little bowl that I have them in.....or in this case spread out all over the table because he would dump them all out of the little bowl to rummage through them. :) So the card he drew says 3 hexagons, so the snowman gets three hexagons. Simple enough right?
This is an example of the card sets that I made for each of the buttons. I do not intend to make him go through all of the cards. Asa plays until he gets bored and then moves onto something else. You would also not have to put all the shapes available in the game at one time, or all the numbers available for that matter.
Well, that is our week in a nutshell. Hope the snowman pictures cleared up any questions. I have a tendency to over complicate simple explanations. Happy blogging.

jess_hak