I is for I do it!!

We finally moved onto I week activities. (We got stuck on H, learning about Hippos, then talking about hearts and being happy, and then we got on a huge horse kick.  I love it when we are so engaged!)  I is for Icecream at our house! This activity turned out to be very interesting. I gave Kenna some playdoh to form into the letter I. That didn't even hold her interest long enough to take the playdoh out of the bag. Instead- she went for some buttons.

I sat back and watched as she lined up the buttons and carefully chose which ones she wanted to place on the lowercase i.  She picked out a square button for the "dot" on the i, since it was a square shape.  After she did this, she and I made an uppercase I with buttons.  I hadn't pulled out the butons in a while- I'm so glad she thought of it!

The next day, the playdoh tray enticed her, and she rolled out a lower case i with playdoh, but she used the buttons as dots. It was really fun and not what I had planned at all!

Are you strict about your trays? I am starting to feel torn- I want her to do the work I've laid out, but I would have been so sad to stifle this creativty today.  Ah, Montessori, I always need to read and learn more.

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?)

Inchworm alphabet matching

I had mentioned last week that the uppercase and lowercase matching cards we've been using are too easy for Kenna. Soooo, today I provided Kenna with the Uppercase mat, but lowercase letters.  WHOA! I rocked her world. She sat, and stared, and puzzled over it. I had set the tiles out in a jar like usual, so when she pulled them out, she found an upside down w and matched it to the M.  then she found the real m and kinda panicked.

To avoid stress, I stepped in and we talked it out together. I set all the letters out again, and we found the easy ones first. (c, o, and i.) Then we studied the others, and she correctly matched them up.

I haven't seen her this focused on an activity in quite a while. I am glad that it was challenging for her! We will definately work on this activity again this week.

Ice Cream Texture Tub

 
This week we are doing the Letter I. We are knee deep in a celebration of all things Ice Cream. (Good timing, since temps have been in the high 90s!)

I put some rice in our texture tub, along with these nifty ice cream erasers I found in the dollar bin at A.C. Moore. I also collected a few "I"s- a magnet, a foam letter, and later a couple Is from some puzzles.

Tools- I provided a funnel, a scoop from a can of infant formula, and a small metal cup. Let the fun begin! (And the hours of sweeping up rice...!)

Ice Cream Taste Test

Grab your spoons- it's time to decide once and for all- What's Your Favorite Ice Cream?

We did our taste test as a family, and it was really fun. First we scooped some tasting servings- chocolate, vanilla , strawberry, and peanut butter. (yup- our favorite babysitter told Kenna she loved peanut butter... so Daddy whipped some up!) The rest of the flavors were as easy as grabbing a pint of Neopolitan (which means it was really hard, because I forgot to buy it TWICE when I was at the grocery store!!) Just an FYI, tiny servings of ice cream melt incredibly fast- next time I would scoop one flavor at a time out of the freezer.

I made up some voting sheets so we could record our preferences. For each flavor, I drew a happy, sad and ehhh face. Then we colored in how we felt about each flavor. LOVE it, HATE it, or...Ehhhh. :)

Then we got to tasting! Look how seriously she is taking this whole process! We were laughing, joking, and generally having a great time. Miraculously, Quinn was sleeping and Little Man was happily eating some Os, so we could just enjoy some special time with Kenna. (She gets far too little special attention these days. Ah, the woes of being the oldest.)

Kenna didn't quite understand the voting process- she LOVED them all, but liked saying "ehhh"! :) She picked Vanilla as her favorite, and then asked for seconds of Peanut Butter.

We had a really fun evening doing this together. (and Daddy and Mommy ate a lot more ice cream once Kenna went to bed!)

I is for Ice Cubes

I saw this idea online, and thought I'd give it a quick try.

  Fill an ice cube tray with water, add a couple drops of food coloring, and freeze it up. Use aluminum foil to keep toothpicks standing up straight in the middle of each ice cube. (the toothpicks were sharp- if you can think of something less sharp, use that.)

 Out of the freezer, and so pretty! Kenna wanted to eat them- she thought they were popsicles. Oops.

 I started out with them in a glass dish, but quickly realized that as the cubes melted, the colors were getting muddy, so I transfered them to a paper towel (bonus- the melting cubes created a really cool tye-dye effect on the paper towels!)

 Get to work painting! I printed off some free clipart of an ice cream cone, to go with our I Letter of the week.  You could do this with any paper- I bet watercolor paper would be perfect!

 Kenna really liked this. She discovered she could spint the ice cube like a top, and it cracked her up.

 Then she experimented with 4 cubes at one time.  :) 

   We had a good time with this! So easy and fun. Perfect for a hot day like today. The color was more muted when it dried, but it was pastel and pretty.