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!

Jack-O-Lantern paper plate craft

Cute craft, super easy, and great for both my big kids! (33 months and 13 months)

Kenna painting her jack-o-lantern face with orange paint. (Little Man painted his when he woke up from nap, with his hands.)

I simply took a paper plate and drew a face on it. I asked for Kenna's input on what shape to make the eyes, nose and mouth.

I only give a little paint at a time, thank goodness! She decided the scrape and pour method was the way to go...

While her paint was drying, I gave her a piece of black construction paper to cut up into big squares. She is really good with scissors, so that was all the direction she needed. I painted with Little Man while she did this. I asked her to put her squares into the clear container.

Once the paint was dry, I cut out the facial features.

Kenna glued the black paper onto the back of the plates, completely covering up the cut-outs.  I added a stem, and then in a last minute creative moment, Kenna added some yellow dot stickers. 

Cute, cheap, easy.  Who could ask for anything more?!

Linking up to:

Montessori Monday

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?)

Name Puzzle

Cutting and pasting is one of Kenna's favorite activities. I created this fun game quickly- I wrote her first and last name out, leaving a little space between each letter. She diced it up with her scissors, and I scrambled the letters.

Then one by one, she picked out the letters and glued them down in the correct order.

She purposefully glued the 'e' down wonky- she said it was "silly".  I am really proud of how well she did her first name- we definately need to keep working on her last name! (and also on glue restraint...)

Easy cutting, spelling, gluing, and fun!

When the baby won't stop crying...

...we turn to Kumon. If you haven't used these awesome workbooks yet, you are missing out! These are awesome activity books that Kenna is able to complete on her own now (after a year of my working with her each day on them). There's cutting.And gluing.

And fun mazes! (Well, this is supposed to be a maze activity where you draw a line through all of the pictures, starting at the dot and ending at the star. Kenna chose to circle every object, and then draw a big circle around all the objects. )

We put our mazes in sheet protectors and complete them with dry erase markers, so that we can redo mazes over and over, and also so that Little Man and Quinn can use them when they are older! ( I store them all in a three-ring binder). I can hand a bunch of these activities to Kenna and she can be working and learning even when I have a fussy newborn to deal with. :) Kumon workbooks are great additions to our Tot School even when I have plenty of time to work with her. I have all of the books geared for 2s, 3s and 4s. I plan to invest in the rest of the books in a year or two. We also have some of the flashcards- I just remembered! I need to pull those out... Kenna would love them!

Toddler Christmas- tearing paper

So, I have a 22 month old who wants to cut with scissors and use a hot glue gun. Of course, she can't actually do those things (scissors in particular frustrate her to no end) which means I have had to be very creative in thinking up Christmas crafts that she can actually do and enjoy. My goal was to do one craft a day each day of December, but let's be real... I'll be happy to do one craft a week!

Today's craft started with the fine art of tearing paper- something that my 1.5 year old thrives on! I gave her a sheet of green construction paper and told her to go at it. That lasted about five minutes (a lifetime in toddlerland) and then she was ready for step two.


Step two was to dip each piece in some glue and cover a tree quickly drawn onto a piece of paper. Unfortunately, dipping flat scraps of paper was way too hard, so I changed gears and smeared glue all over the tree. Ahh- as easy as playing with stickers! She happily poked pieces of paper all over the tree, andI was amazed that she didn't place any outside the tree outline. My little OCD baby...

For the last step I whipped out some little red and yellow pom poms. "HOORAY!" she shouted, (pompoms are very exciting around here) and she lovingly stuck each little ball onto her tree as "christmas lights". Be aware, pom poms won't actually stick to paper with a light coating of glue, so while she napped, I securely glued each pom pom down with a big dollop of glue.

Not too shabby for the first toddler art project of the month! Next time, I'd let her color the white outline of the tree green first, or possibly paint it (silly me, I thought we'd cover the whole drawing with green paper! ha!) . I also forgot to let her decorate the star before we started- I'm thinking glitter!