M is for Money

Santa got Kenna a cash register for Christmas. It's like this one, only I paid five bucks at consignment for it Santa made it. Also, it was missing all those fun accessory pieces pictured, but they appear to be in pounds or euros or something, so no loss! I made a new Dry Erase notebook using fun scrapbook paper and the laminator, and a hole punch. Then I tossed in some coins, some old credit cards, and some Bunny Money. It's awesome! I have some really fun number trays planned for this old cash register. Look for them soon! We are heading into a big unit on money, and it's going to be fun.

 Meet Bunny. Kenna's beloved friend. She's good at dancing, singing and snuggling.

What do we have here? Bunny Money!!!   I googled "money template insert face" or something like that, and found this fun free template. Five minutes in Microsoft Publisher, print, and a quick run through the laminator, and we have Bunny Money! This is going to be so much fun!

Meanwhile, here are our M trays for the week. Money, monkeys, and M&Ms (when Daddy wasn't looking!)

:Graphing, 1:1 correspondance:
 Count the M&Ms and put the corresponding number of pom poms on the bar graph.

Since Kenna is doing great with 1-5, I only made cards for 6-9.
Printables here. 

 :Prewriting:
Tracing a laminated M with a dry erase marker.  From COAH.

 :Sequencing:
Put the stinkin' adorable monkeys in order from big to small, or small to big. Use questions like "Which monkey is the smallest?" and "Which monkey is smaller than this monkey?"
Printable here at COAH

:Stamping:
lower case m. (We didn't get to it last week.)

:Spooning:
Using a spoon (or tongs, whatever she prefers) move the m&m candies to the silicone baking tin  (from Ikea). You could probably use opaque gems in place of candy, and I might switch to them once Kenna sneakily eats all 16 of these!  

:Sorting, Coins:
I provided a jar of 20 coins for Kenna to sort. (Darn you, nickels, you are so confusing!) After we sort out the coins, there are two sets of flash cards. One have coin value, and the other set has the coin names written in words. I  think we'll start with coin values, and then try to sound out initial sounds (p, n, d, and q) to find the right word to match the coins.  This is very advanced, but I'm kind of doing it as a "pretest" to see what exactly we need to break apart and work on.

 :CVC Ladders:
(consonant, vowel, consonant) We are using a metal tray and some magnet letters to start forming some small words. We've never done anything like this, and I'm excited to see how she likes it.
Printable here.

 :Patterns:

I love these patterns! I haven't decided whether we are going to use m&ms or just pom poms, but I know Kenna is going to love this. I actually printed two different patterns- one is on the back of this sheet. Awesome! Thanks, COAH!

:money, fine motor, shapes:
 This is part of a whole set of "do-a-dot" shapes that I foiund on kinderland.com.  I laminated a bunch of shapes, not really knowing what I wanted to do with them. Kenna doesn't need to practice shapes, so I was sort of saving them for Little Man. In the meantime, I realized that this mat is perfect for sorting coins. I provided a bowl of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Kenna can fill the circle, make patterns with the coins, or try to put only quarters around the outside, and only pennies in the middle, etc.

:Coin Values:

Simple worksheet where Kenna will match coins to their values. She'll need help, but she'll love drawing the lines and erasing them.

December- What's on the Tray, week 2 and 3

Lots of fun on the trays this week, gearing up to Christmas!

 Same and Different tray- Kenna has been really interested in this concept. She is comparing things, and making amazing connections. I am stunned by some of the things she has been noticing. I found a winter themed same/diff game, and we have played a bunch. I added a control of error with an S or a D on the back of each card. Kenna knows she can flip her pile of "same" and make sure they all have S. 

 PreWriting skills- Dry erase marker and lots of fun Candy Cane prewriting pages. She is more interested in this than she has been in a while.

 She was circling the circle- she didn't understand she had to trace it ON the line!

 Roll the Dice, match the pictures, and decorate the tree.

 Extention- Last week our tray with bows focused on tweezing. This week, Kenna is encouraged to think of two different patterns (ABAB and AABB is what she came up with) and line up the bows. This was a huge hit.

 Count and Clip- This was not really fun for her at all. The snowflakes were too small and kind of mixed up, so she couldn't easily count them.  I deliberately only printed off 11-20 cards, because that is what she needs to work with, but they are really hard still.

 She does love the clipping though! ( I wanted to share that after this tray sat unused, I added a dry erase crayon. I modeled crossing off snowflakes as you count them, and BOOM! She was sucessful and really happy!)

 Skip Counting. Kenna is way beyond 1-10, so these cute ornament cards needed to be extended... I sorted them into two groups and we used our beloved "pointer" to count by twos. She really loved it. We used the terms "odd and even" and then we watched a couple funny youtube songs about even and odd. She totally grasps the concept and has all the even numbers memorized. I taught 3rd grade for 7 years, and this was so hard for those poor kids... I am excited to be starting early with skip counting!

This wasn't a tray, per se, but we did take time to bake sugar cookies for Santa. ( I am not a cook. I don't bake, I barely make edible toast.)  We used Grammie's secret recipe, and the cookies (Shockingly) came out so delicious! (This is despite the fact that we made them vegan and replaced the egg, butter and milk!)

 Quinn, wearing her new apron from Grammie. She helped by being underfoot and getting into the flour Kenna spilled.

 Little Man, watching the cookies bake, and wearing his apron from Grammie like a cape. (His apron is denim, made from recycled jeans, and I am in love with it! I'm going to beg my mom to make a few to sell on my etsy!)

 Kenna, helping wash dishes. This Practical Life activity is one of her favorites at the moment. She loves our scrub brush, she loves the running water, and she really likes squirting soap.  She's also wearing her apron from Grammie... and not much else!

 While the cookies were cooling, we stirred food coloring into the special almond icing.  (Another grammie reicpe)

Kenna iced all the cookies, and carefully cleaned up our spatulas and cups. She has become a great little helper. I love that she loves all aspects of the kitchen- even though I am terrible at cooking.

  We're getting close to the 25th! Please Christmas don't be late!

Spiders and other Halloween fun

 Whenever I get free time, I always find myself at Target or Walmart. Because really those two stores are best tackled alone! Anyhow, I escaped babyland over the weekend and grabbed a couple of necessities at Walmart... ahem...

 What?! These were necessary!!! Cool spider rings and cool color-coordinated bracelets!!

 Right. So when I got home, I was bombarded by babies, my husband, and, when she spotted the spiders, an especially delighted toddler!

 I have big plans for these two "Learning Manipulatives".(heheh, my husband didn't buy it, either...)
 Our first tot tray was a cookie sheet filled with the bracelets, lined up in ABAB pattern.  I asked Kenna to fill each circle with a matching colored spider. Delighted toddler complied. Yay!

 I also found some awesome "learning stamps" :).  I wrote out numbers 0-10, and Kenna chose a stamp and counted as she pressed. She was engrossed. She loves stampers. She loves the caps that snap on, she loves the pictures, and she loves to smooosh them hard on the paper.

 Hilariously, the stamp that was her favorite was the one that said "I heart vampires".  Um, yeah, if only she knew what a vampire was!!

Back to the spiders- they also made their way into the playdoh tot tray- I set out murky purple playdoh (murky thanks to some great color mixing), some ghost cookie cutters, and a few spiders. Kenna made a big rock for them to climb. This is the only time of year that I refrain from screaming when I see a spider in the house- I just assume it's a fake.  Sometimes my assumption is wrong, though... AACCK!!

I may not get a chance to update this post, but here are my other tot tray ideas for the spiders and bracelets:
make an ABAB pattern with the bracelets, across the floor, or on her baby doll's arm.

Thread spiders onto a pole:

Use our Rainbow Sorter base to thread the spider rings onto.  (You could also use a dowel, or a stick from outside.) Encourage threading the spiders in a pattern, or all of one color, or draw a number card to decide how many spiders to put on the stick.

Sort by color into a divided tray.  (Posted HERE)

Make impressions of the spiders in playdoh.

Can you think of more fun things to do with $4 worth of party favors? :) I'll keep a set for myself, and give the rest out with candy on Halloween night. (mostly so I don't have to store it all...)

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H is for Hippo

I am so thrilled to share this picture with you! We have just started working on patterns in earnest, and this was Kenna's first attempt at this game. She matched the pattern with the little hippo cards completely on her own!! WOW! She's 31 months old, and I am certain that all the pre-pattern work we have done helped enormously. We got this matching game from here...

After we matched the hippo cards, I gave her blue and green pop cubes, and asked her to make the same pattern. She got right to work! Here you can see her carefully touching each cube ( I love these, because they have a tactile hole for her to count) and saying "blue, green..."

Her "tower" of blue and green grew and grew! She was talking aloud the entire time, "hmm, which one do I need next..." It was fantastic!

When she used up all the pop cubes, she declared herself, and her tower "AWESOME!"

I agree.

One other activity we did this morning was to spell out HIPPO with our capital letter discs. (Another confessionsofahomeschooler activity.)

This has become waaay too easy for Kenna. She knows all of her letters. I need to make this harder- I think I am going to provide the uppercase printout, and lowercase letter discs. That should be more challenging. We'll find out! She surprises me every day!