Easter "e" week 2014

We are officially doing FIAR now, so along with our E trays, we also rowed Reshenka's Eggs and did some beautiful artwork and a lapbook. Look for a separate post.

All of these trays were geared for my two and three year olds.


 I made a quick game by taking photos of a bunch of objects that start with E and printing it, and then burying the objects in rice. (I had originally buried them in "easter basket grass" but that was a disastrous mess, and the objects would not really "hide" and that was frustrating for my 2 yr, soooo we swapped it for rice.

 Easter goes nicely with butterflies, and this sweet little matching game was just their speed!

 I FINALLY made the popsicle shapes that I have been wanting to make forever. It took ten minutes once I sat down to do it. sigh.  (also, this is way more advanced than it appears at first- my kids reallllly struggled to make the shapes. After a whole week, they are finally catching on. We have never done an activity like this, and I am so glad I introduced it.)

 E is for elephants- great printable from COAH. My 3 still struggles with this skill, so we have some version of it on our trays every week.

 

 Some sparkly eggs and cute egg tongs made for a simple transferring activity. My 2yr chose this every.single.day.

 This went over much better than I anticipated. I thought that it would be way too difficult- but they totally got the idea of "small, med, large" and ran with it. I need to do more of this type of work!

 Number eggs. Put the correct number of lilies (foam beads) on the egg numbers. I only set out 1-5 eggs, because 1:1 correspondence goes out the window after 5 with my kids. I need to see more mastery of 1-5 before I move them up to bigger numbers.

 Using magnets to fill in E for Elephant.

 Egg tops match to egg bottoms in this fun game. (okay, fine. The kids did NOT think it was fun. The dots were kind of small and there was no control of error, so they just matched up all the halves and called it done.) oops.

 Cutting with easter stickers. Both of them are getting really good with scissors. Quinn likes to cut fast and furious- which makes everyone nervous! Chop, chop, chop!

 Bryce struggled with this puzzle for two days- it was required work and he cried and whined and did it wrong on purpose. Day three- he grabbed it off the shelf, plopped the pieces in place, and screamed, "I did it!" 

This was super-fun. I wrote the letters of their names on eggs- capital letters on one half, and lower case letters on the other half. (colored eggs provided control of error). Then, as a second step, they had to line up the eggs in the order of their name, using the cards I made. they liked this a lot.
E week sort of bled into nest week which bled into bunny week. It was a spring filled month of trays. I will put the rest of the trays in separate posts, but often they were on the shelves together!

Shell Counting

 We found all of these great shells (and shell bits) at the beach last week! I had a few activities that I wanted to do at the beach but didn't get to, and this was one of them.

 I put out some shell-themed number cards, and asked Kenna to do some counting.

One through four was simple. Easy peasy, mama! 5-9 got a little tricky. She counts faster than her finger moves, if that makes sense. (she touches one shell and says, one two)  Anyhow, we got through nine before I ran out of patience. :) 

Check out our other ocean activities, too! Click "ocean" on the sidebar to get you there.

Ocean Tot Trays

 As I have mentioned in my previous Ocean Week posts here, here,  and here, our family went to the beach for a week!   I brought along a bunch of activities for Kenna and her cousins to do during "down time".  This activity was really fun... I brought ocean erasers and our number rocks. I didn't have a real plan in mind, but I figured we could do lots of things with both manipulatives, and I was right.

 This tray had the girls doing 1:1 correspondance. I lined up #1-4 for Kenna and #5-8 for her 4 year old cousin. Simply choose an ocean animal and get counting! They also used the erasers for some made-up game I wasn't privy too, and they used them as throwing stones in hopscotch.

 Stamping fun! I got these stampers from Oriental Trading before we left. I let the girls stamp with them on paper just for fun, and to get it out of their systems.

 Then I set them to work on a 1:1 activity- stamp to represent each number. It was fun!

 Taking a break to count the stamps.

 Our finished work. This was novel for all of the girls and they liked it. After they did the work, I let them do free-play with the stampers.

I printed this cute accordian booklet from an ocean tot pack on ????  I gave the girls crayons and encouraged them to color each ocean animal. They weren't really into boring ole coloring though. We did go through the booklet and ID each animal, so that was something.

Okay, that's all the photos I've found. We did some other things, but unless Kenna and I pull them out to play again at home, I have no photo record of them! :)

Halloween Tot Trays, Week 3

Halloween is getting closer, and Kenna and her Mummy are having so much with spooky themed trays! :)

Found a squirrel coloring sheet in our Kumon workbook for Kenna to color. She loves squirrels, especially after our cat brought in a live one- one that ran like crazy all over our house for a couple of hours before Daddy came home to catch it.  She thought he was sweet, and after he tore around her room, she was so pleased, squealing, "Mommy, he LOVES my room!"  Oh lord. I barely survived the experience, especially after he ran right across Quinn, who was in tummy time.

I gave Kenna some awesome new Halloween crayons to use this week (yes, she broke one instantly...) She really likes them and they are inspiring more coloring than usual. (She's been resisting coloring for the last month or so. I guess it's just a phase.) Each crayon is so spooky and features a mummy, vampire, witch, jack-o-lantern, ghost and bat. I think I got these at Target last year in a clearance bin. 

Each day one of her trays had the Halloween crayons and a coloring sheet from a Halloween themed "jumbo coloring book" . She really liked the different, spoooky sheets!

Sorting with our spiders and bracelets. I put one colored bracelet in each section of a shallow, little wooden box. Kenna sorted the spider rings accordingly.  She liked putting all the spiders in, and then slamming the box shut. 

  Color sorting is really simple for Kenna(33 months) but pulling apart the spiders was a little tricky, and I challenged her to match them up as quickly as she could. 

Another Tot Tray this week featured our pumpkin ice cube tray and some orange pony beads. Kenna tweezed beads into the pumpkins, counting as she went. I found that she lost track of counting really easily because the tweezing took so much concentration. It was a good challenge for her, but she was not able to complete it independently. I made this activity self-correcting by providing only 55 beads, and I tried to explain that if she messed up somewhere, she would have too few or some remaining. Hard concept.  She really just liked tweezing the beads.  :)

Linked up to these great blogs:

Montessori Mondays

Halloween Tot Trays, Week 2

www.theprincessandthetot.blogspot.com has some great printables for Halloween/Fall.  We used our number rocks and these counting pumpkins together.

 Count the pumpkins and cover them with the correctly numbered rock.

 I think I got these from overthebigmoon.blogspot.com. Awesome Halloween themed clippy cards! We have mini-clothespins, and Kenna clips them on the correct number, after counting the pictures.

 Oriental Trading Craft- an awesome Candy Corn project that you could easily replicate at home- glue tissue paper squares to an acetate shape (use wax paper or contact paper instead).  When it dries, add a foam border and a string to hang.  Nice! (I have a picture of the completed project somewhere... ???)

 Tiny Drop Box- made this as a fun way to keep Kenna's cutting work organized. I took a small box, cut a little slot, and decorated it.  When she cuts paper strips into tiny squares, she deposits the slips into the box.

(Wonderful way to keep bits of paper from winding their way into Little Man's mouth) Her cutting strips this month have all been Halloween themed. I guess I need to retake some pictures- I am missing a whole ton of them. Grrrrrr. Go ahead and picture some cutting strips decorated with Halloween stampers.  Lovely.

This week, we did about five other tot trays, but they are mostly printables from Over The Big Moon, so I'll spare you the details. Go check em' out on her website! :)

I is for Ice Cream

 I is for ice cream and inch worms. I set up Kenna's magnet pom poms early in the morning so she could get it done first. She really dislikes it for some reason right now.  She's less cranky in the morning, so this is working for us. 

I gave kenna a melon baller (which was swiped while I was focusing the camera lens...) and told her she could scoop "ice cream into each little "bowl". LOVED it!

Where did I get that fun tray? Why, it was empty, sitting on the shelf at Walmart, so I snagged it and asked the cashier if I could keep it.  (She then decided I was a weirdo and didn't make any further eye contact.)

 I love this little counting game from confessionsofahomeschooler.  Counting, number recognition, and little inchworms.  This was harder for Kenna than I thought. She counts faster than she moves her fingers. We're working on it. She really loved the adorable inchworms! Now that my number rocks are dry, we can use those instead of the cards that we've been using.  It'll spice things up a bit.

This was a simple color, cut and paste activity I created- I used some ice cream clipart to make strips of ice cream. She colored the ice cream, cut them out, and then glued them down.  She really loves doing cutting and pasting right now, so I am embracing it. Look for other fun cut and paste activities coming soon! ( I would totally share the printout, but I don't know how. It's currently a PDF.  Suggestions?)

Numbers Rock!

If you remember my Literacy Rocks, you'll know I have a special place in my heart for rock crafts. :) Last time, I used rub-on stickers. This time- acryllic paint! I went with numbers, since Kenna (31 mos) and I are about to start some basic math skills.

The tools: rainbow of acryllic paint, some brushes, water, a washcloth for messes, a bag of black rocks from the Dollar Tree, and a can of sealer. Oh, and if you have a bored toddler lying around, give her a paint brush and a couple of rocks, too!

I totally stole this idea from about a million rock decorators online. I may continue to embellish these, but my toddler decided that painting time was over for today. ( I am going to spray these with sealant when it isn't pouring down rain outside.) Then we will be ready to count! Note that I went with digits, not "numbers". I prefer 0-9 as opposed to 1-10. Call me crazy, but I think it's easier to build numbers and teach skip counting if a child knows "zero".