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!

H is for hearts

SImple and easy way to practice the lower case h.  This tot tray had two simple materials.  I drew an h on paper and gave Kenna a strip of heart stickers. She did this independently.  We hung it on the wall and talked about the people we love!

F is for Fish!!

Go Fish!!

I have a confession- I am scared of fish. They freak me out, and I really don't like walking past fish tanks, or going to aquariums, or knowing that some of them can fly. That said, let us soldier on.

HOORAY for FISH week!! :)

:shudder:

The collage pictured above was a lot of work for Kenna. All that cutting of squares, dipping into glue, and sticking onto paper wears a girl out.

*note* I have no idea how this craft is supposed to be set up(Please someone tell me!) so I winged it. I cut out a black fishy frame and supplied tissue paper and watery glue. It was kind of nightmarish. Here are the gory details:

1. tissue paper is thin and once saturated with glue, gets sloppy fast.

2. Painting glue onto tissue paper just slid it around and mucked up the pieces we already laid down.

3. I put down wax paper to keep the mess at bay, and our tissue paper stuck to it.

He's adorable, as faux-stained glass fish go, but this was a very poorly executed craft (moreso than usual.) Someone please tell me how to do this better!

PICTURE

We drew water on the capital F and stamped orange fish with our handmade fish stamps.

(LINK)

Okay- this was the all-day, keep on going craft! First I drew a lower case f, and we painted it blue to represent water. While the paint was drying, we cut out ovals and triangles. (Kenna cut the triangles herself.)

Then we glued the ovals and triangles together to make little fish! Cute! After they dried, Kenna drew eyes and smileys on them. Cuter!

Finally, we glued the goldfish onto the blue water, and then STOOD at the front door waiting for daddy to come home to show it to him. The kid has endurance...

Fish sorting- We went to the grocery store and bought several kinds of goldfish crackers. The minis, the originals, and the rainbows. We sorted the fish by size, then we sorted the rainbow fish by color. I offered enough fish in the activity to make a nice snack when she was done with her work. She really likes Goldfish now!! :)

Other Tot Trays:

Fish 1:1 goldfish game We used number cards and piled goldfish crackers on each card to corrolate ( three goldfish crackers on the number 3). Easy and fun.

Dry Erase games- this week I pulled out the dry erase markers and some clear sheet protectors. I put Kumon mazes in some, F outlines in others, and a couple of other fun worksheets. The novelty of the dry erase markers, and a special "wiping cloth" made all our learning so much fun. She worked diligently on tracing, mazes, and finding F in a word search.

Do-A-Dot F- Kenna did this fast because she wanted to eat her pretzels. Surprisingly, she was pretty accurate for a toddler in a hurry.

I Dream of an Elephant...

E is for Elephant

Have I mentioned that we go to the Library on Thursdays to pick up thematic books for the following week? Well, we do. We have a great, small-town library, and always find cute books and enjoy reading them all week long.

This week, for the letter E, I focused on fiction and non-fiction books about Elephants. The fiction books were cute, but by far our favorite was I Dream of an Elephant by Ami Rubinger. The subdued pastels are so beautiful, it made me want to frame these images and design a nursery around them! Kenna and I read this book about ten thousand times this week. Each page has a rhyme for a color, so it was the perfectchance for me to introduce kenna to rhyming. bShs still a little young, but this book was a nice and simple anf the rhymws were based on color words, with visual clues. awesome!

The non-fiction books we checked out were mostly used to look at pictures, since a lot of the info was way over kenna's head. It didn't stop my husband and I from learning a ton, though. Here's a few facts you should definately add to your list of "useless facts about elephants".

1. elephants walk on their tippy-toes.

2. Elephant skulls, with a large central "nose" hole, probably started the myths about Cyclops.

3. Elephants can only digest half of what they eat, so they eat ginormous quantities of food each year.

4.And the saddest fact I learned- elephants have no known predators except humans, and yet all species of elephants are endangered.

Kenna and I focused on elephant body parts- trunk, tusk, and ears, and them we talked about how their skin feels (texture), and what they might use their trunk for. She especially liked the images of elephants squirting themselves with water, and of the babies holding their mommy's tail with their trunks.

** my computer won't let me hyperlink at the moment. Elephant skull pic-

source is http://listoffigures.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/reconstruction-of-mythical-creatures/

The Letter D

D is for Dinosaurs!

This week was a lot of fun. Kenna thinks dinosaurs are neat. We liked roaring and stomping around, and pretending we had spikes and horns.

I realized that Kenna is very confused about the difference between D and B, especially when looking at the lowercase letters. (Makes sense... they are the same shape, flipped.) So we spent a whole lot of time trying to convince her "d" said Duh, not Buh. :) I'm still not sure she's convinced, but I'm moving on for my own sanity.

Here are some of the fun things we did with the letter D. We watched our very first episodes of Dinosaur Train this week, and we also attempted to watch Dino Dan, but it didn't hold Kenna's interest. The dinosaur books we checked out from the library were a HUGE hit, and even my husband enjoyed reading them! There are lots and lots of great picture books about dinosaurs- fiction and non-fiction. Check them out at your local library.

Dino Shape ArtLet me first say that I didn't name this guy, Kenna did. "Angar". Hilarious.
Anyhoo, we cut out shapes together, picking different colors, and talking about how many sides each shape has. She helped me decide what shape his body and head should be. (apparently "oval" is her fav. this week!)
Then I gave her the glue and walked away. (screaming baby...) When I came back, this is what I found. Impressive, I think. She's 29 months old.

Dino Shape Art

Lowercase d dinosaur was simple to set up. I drew a d and extended the top and bottom to create a head and tail. Kenna couldn't bear to color it until I added an eye, a mouth and some feet. I let her use colored pencils today, and she reveled in making squiggly lines all down the dino's back. Then she diligently colored in the "hole" in the d with a pen, and finished off with some purple trees for the dino to eat. (she also tried to give him a hat, but it kinda looks like an ear! Love it!) Finally, I provided glue and foam triangles for her to add spikes to the dinosaur. We looked at an illustration in one of our books so that she could see the spikes sticking UP (at first she was gluing them point down, if that makes sense...)


Dinosaur jewels- I printed this off of www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com and we used some green "gems" to cover the blanks. I really like this activity- Kenna, not so much. It was like pulling teeth to accomplish this today. (Forgive my poor printout- my ink was dying and I didn't notice until I had printed everything for the WHOLE week. sigh.) We did some other activities from COAH- dino sequencing and dino clothespin matching. Check em out here!

We had a dino texture tub and a few other fun things, but alas, I didn't get pics!

lowercase b

BLUE starts with b!!!

Lowercase "b" is for blue!!! We painted with blue paint, and talked about our favorite b words. (kenna's are bunny, book, butterfly, and her friend Brenna.) Daddy and Kenna had already "read" her new mail cards and colored on them a bit first thing this morning, so she was excited about more B words when it was time to sit down at the table.

While the blue paint dried, I drew a cute butterfly and let kenna cut it out (Scissors are the highlight of her day!!) Then I pulled out the watercolors and she went to town. She was quite through with blue, though, and this butterfly ended up mostly red.

On to our Tot Trays. Capital Letter matching (worksheet from coah- here's her whole B unit) and our letter tiles. We also did lowercase matching, but those are MUCH harder for Kenna(read: super-frustrating. Therefore, no time for pics- I was busy coaxing her to try and match, instead of throwing the tiles on the floor.)

Tot Tray 2 was sorting B for Buttons. We did this after lunch and before nap. I provided our little sorting tray, cards that spelled out the colors (and were also colored) plus one button on each side. B for Blue and a nice contrasting yellow are the only button choices in her jar. (maybe later in the year I'll have three colors in the jar, but ask that only two colors be sorted... oh the challenge!) I also provided tongs, but she chose not to use them. She diligently sorted the buttons by color, and also found a lot of joy in lining the buttons up around the perimeter of the tray. (Then she wanted to sort by shape like we did yesterday, and I pulled out her muffin tin. I love when she asks for more "learning"!)

Tot tray 3 was sequencing butterflies numbered 1-10. We had a blast with this, and I forgot to grab pictures. We just laid them out in a huge line across the floor. I had planned to let her clip mini-clothespins to each butterfly to represent each number, but just finding the numbers and lining them up was joyful and fun. Isn't it wonderful to be flexible!?

The apple of my eye

Kenna is working on spelling her name, and identifying letters in general. I carried over our Apple theme by writing her name on these cute apple printouts (arg- can't remember where!) and scrambling them up on a mat on the floor. Kenna's job is to reorder them. (As you can see, I actually made two sets of apples- lowercase and uppercase... the lowercase k got mixed in with these. Oops!) We played with these all week. I am going to reprint them on cardstock and laminate them so that we have them to play with during other times of the year in different ways. I made a set of numbers with the apples as well. This activity was easy- pick "apples" (red pony beads) out of a bowl and put them on the cards. One "apple" on the 1, two apples on the 2, etc. I mixed in some white beads to make it more challenging. I could have also given her tongs to make it more fun, but I like watching her use that little pincher grip! I only give her three cards at a time. More than that is too overwhelming and I can guarantee there will be pony beads everywhere.
Today I just gave her all ten apple number cards and we put them in order. We only made it to seven before she lost interest. That's okay!


PomPoms glued to stickyback magnets (idea stolen from www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com), used with this A is for Apple printout from www.homeschoolcreations.com was what I gave Kenna while I fed Little Man. **Both of those websites have enough "letter of the week" activities to keep you busy for a whole month. :)

More pompom magnet fun.
We had a great week playing with, learning about and eating apples!!

A is for Alligator

So we've been focusing on apples and the letter Aa this week, but today we went wild and pulled out some Alligator activities! :) In our Kumon Let's Fold book, I found an alligator.That was super-fun. I love watching her little fingers crease the folds!

Our alligator turned into a frog when we folded it up. Magic!

We made alligator "Mail" and used ASL to sign alligator. We also sang Five Little Monkeys and SNAPPED those monkeys off the tree! We crawled on the ground like an alligator, and then we googled swamp to see where alligators live. While we were on the computer, we did the Letter A activities on www.StarFall.com.

After nap, we worked on the rest of our Kumon books.
We worked on Let's Color (not an alligator page, since we are going in order in that book).

Then we did Let's Cut- cut out a spider web- (Kenna's choice)

We also started Let's Trace- It was Animals at the zoo (hooray for letter A) but she got angry because her green crayon broke so we put it away for another day. Oh, and we would have done
Let's Sticker and Paste but we skipped it because our glue was in "time out" from some misuse earlier...

While I was making lunch, Kenna worked on this Alligator activity. All you need is this printout from www.homeschoolcreations.com (love this site! I borrow/ steal ideas from it all the time.) and some manipulatives. (Pom poms with magnets, glass floral marbles, or Do-A-Dot Markers are our go-to manipulatives.) We could have saved apple seeds for this activity, or cut some out of black foam. I gave her green floral marbles. I only provide enough manipulatives to exactly cover the missing spots, or it gets too overwhelming for my toddler. Sometimes I put them in a little bowl. Sometimes I give her tongs.

I don't have the time/money to laminate most of our activities, so I just put the worksheets in a sheet protector and lay it on a cookie sheet (great when you are need to contain rolling objects, or when you need magnets to stick).


Thursday is usually our Library Day, so we read all of our current books one last time (all focused on apples and gardening this week) and then get books for next week. This serves to keep our book selection fresh, and to allow me to start pre-teaching the next week's theme/letter over the weekend. At 2 years old, we only check out 5 books a week. That gives us lots of time to read each one multiple times. We have gabillions of books here at the house for free reading, so the books we get from the library are always theme based. (unless kenna grips a book tightly and declares "my love it!". :) Today we'll probably also find an Alligator book or two to reinforce our learning.

*I'd love to go to the library on Fridays, but that just doesn't work with our schedule, so Thursday it is!

Apple Activities

Supplies: Red, white, brown black and green paper. Scissors and glue stick.

Today we made an apple craft. We ate an apple, and inspected the core. We explored the color of the stem, the seeds, and the inside of apples.

On to the craft. We cut out a big red apple shape, and I had Kenna rip it in half, horizontally. (YAY! Ripping!)
Then I gave her a white rectangle and told her to riiip each side. (YAY! Ripping!)

We used a glue stick to glue the white core to the apple halves.
Then I let Kenna cut a brown rectangle for a stem, and I cut green leaves while she glued down black seeds. (We counted the seeds and she decided how many she wanted to use. We would have used the seeds from our actual snack apple, but my toddler declared them nasty and threw them in the trash. Sigh.)

Easy and fun craft! The ripping makes the apple look like it's been munched a bit. Plus, it's good for toddlers who aren't using scissors yet. :)

Easter Cards

Kenna and I went on a watercolor painting spree the week before Easter. We made 20 cards for all of our family and friends, and included a little note about the happenings in our life, and a Easter pic of the kids. All I did was print out the cards with the bunny pictures, and the note on the inside, and let Kenna go crazy! I would put a card in front of her, let her paint paint paint, and then whip it away and replace it with another! It was silly and fun, and she got crazier and wilder with the paint as we went. It was simple and fun, and really personalized the cards. :)
I read her the contents of the cards, and she watched me write the greeting on each card so she knew who we were sending them to.

Mail Time!

**MAIL**

Kenna and I have been making "mail" for over a year. It started when I wanted to make some simple flashcards to practice signing. I wrote a word on an index card and drew a small illustration. Then I let her color the card, and we put it in her wallet-an old coupon organizer from the dollar store.
Even at 14 months old, Kenna loved looking at her cards, asking what was on them, and pretending to read them. Then she began requesting words on her own, and I would make new cards all the time for her. We added all the names of the people in our family.

We made cards for each month of the year.

In January we started making letter and number cards. As we added to our sign language vocabulary, I would make a card with the new words so we could practice them.



We love mail! We stack our mail, we paint our mail, we sort it, we recolor it, we take it in and out of our wallet, and we occasionally use them as flashcards! Kenna's newest thing is to quiz me about what the word is, and then tell me "good girl". :)

Chunky Toddler Crayons

Kenna is a scribbling maniac these days! She loves to draw and color and write on anything that holds still. So far, she's decorated my flat screen TV, the mirrors, my wood floors, and the toilet seat. She's truly a budding artist.

Her favorite medium is marker, and I think I've finally figured out why. Markers are thick and easy to grasp. Well, arming a one and a half year old with markers is always a poor idea, so I googled around to see if I could come up with something better for her to color with.

I got inspired by the idea of melting regular crayons down into larger, chunkier crayons. Why not? She has such a hard time gripping those little crayons that she loses interest very quickly, so they're just sitting around taking up space.

First I soaked the crayons in cold water to loosen the paper. It worked like a charm- the paper slid off every crayon with ease (except one really really stubborn one that must have had double glue on it or something... grrr.)

I grabbed my mini-muffin pan and lightly coated with vegetable oil, hoping the crayons wouldn't stick too horribly. (oh, wouldn't those silicone ice cube trays in all different shapes be fun?)

Then Kenna and I sorted the crayons into colors, and broke the crayons into about four pieces each. (You could of course make rainbow crayons or medley crayons, or contrasting color crayons... I'll try those ideas next time!!) Kenna chose which spot to put each color in.


I set the oven for 300 degrees F and let the crayon pieces bake for about 6 minutes until the pieces were completely melted.

Here they are, all gooey and melty in the oven after about 4 minutes:

I took a toothpick to each waxy puddle and gently swirled the colors together. (just to experiment) I then let them set up for about fifteen minutes. I read somewhere that they would set up faster in the freezer, so in they went for about 20 minutes. I checked on them and they were already nice and hard, and pulling away from the sides! They popped right out of the muffin tin- whew! (Hubby would not have been happy...)

This is what they looked like when they came out. I think they look so inspiring! Too bad Kenna is sleeping now.We'll have to wait til she wakes up to start a new masterpiece.
I only did a few colors just in case my recipe needed modifying. (Plus, this was a "hurry and finish before naptime" project.) The next batch is going to be a lot bigger, and I'm going to try some different shapes!
These chunky crayons are super-easy to make and would make great 1st birthday gifts, along with some paper or coloring books. These crayons are great for inspiring the very young to start working on their fine motor skills. Drawing, scribbing and pretend writing are the foundations of future literacy!!

Inspired Fridays- Aug 27 Literacy rocks!

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite ways to be inspired is to google random things and see what pops up! Today I was inspired by this post by a wonderful mama at The Write Start. She is all about literacy and helping her preschooler to love to read and write. I'm a former teacher, and the ideas on her site are just wonderful to see... I hope lots of parents work with their preschoolers to get them ready to embrace literacy!

Since my daughter is only 18 months, I am not able to employ most of her ideas yet. This one struck my fancy, though, I knew I could modify it for my toddler. It's this one here.

I modified it by doing a limited amount of rocks, and opting to spell full words on the rocks, instead of one letter per rock. We spelled Mom, Dad, cat, love - one word on each rock. (Mom rock was commandeered by my toddler during this photo)



Then I made a few single letter rocks- the letters of her name (so we can assemble her name like a puzzle) and the letters I and S. that way we can make sentences:


I love Mom.
Mom loves Dad.
I love cats.

I figure we can expand this idea to the whole alphabet in a year or so when she is ready. Let me tell you- she picked up on this idea quick- when daddy came home for lunch, she ran to him with the "Dad" rock and proudly told him all about it. (in baby babble, with lots of emphasis on dada.) CUTE!

The rubbing took more effort than I thought it would, but basically took me an hour of Project Runway to finish. I bought letters that looked slightly aged, so that if/when they peel off a bit with rough play, it will seem intentional! I bought my rocks (ACK- BOUGHT- I know, I really wanted to travel to a quiet stream and collect them peacefully, one at a time...) but they were like 3 bucks at Michaels, and I am impatient crafter!

OHHH- and I contacted relatives and told them that Kenna has a rock collection now, so hopefully each special person in her life will donate a rock and we can add their name to it! PLus, it'll be a nice easy thing to collect on vacations. :)