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!

Sensory- Pumpkin Gut Scooping

Sensory Shaky Bottles

This is an easy way to add some sensorial play to any baby's day.  (My Little Man is 12 months old).  I used some clear containers (breastmilk storage tubes, in this case) and added some things with visual interest, that would also make nice shaky toys. ( I added pony beads, glass "gems" and colored paperclips.) The content possibilities are endless, of course!  I meant to take a closeup picture of the bottles, but apparently I didn't.  Sorry! I think you get the idea!

Little Man loved them!  He studied the contents, rolled them around, and shook them like crazy.  And lucky me, the lids screw on really tightly- so try as she might, Kenna (32mos) couldn't break into them.  Whew! That means I don't have to glue the lids on, which means I can refill these containers and reuse them another day!

For older toddlers, you could add things that are quiet (like cotton balls) and ask them to compare the sounds. Ask them to find the loudest shaker, the quietest shaker, etc.  You could make this a matching game if your containers are opaque- make matching sets- two bottles with the same objects, and let them use their ears to match them up. :)

Purple Puddles

 Our sand/water table has seen a lot of action this summer (Gifted by Grammie and Poppy- an awesome $6 purchase at a yard sale. The table was in like new condition (retails for close to $70- and the accessories were still in their package!!)  Kenna plays with it almost every day. I try and mix it up now and then to keep it interesting.

 The water looks kind of murky- don't worry, it's just purple food coloring! I gave her an empty "puffies" container today, which she really liked playing with.

 See- light purple!  I also provided a bunch of bowls, a bulb syringe, and of course,
lots of purple water.

I also gave her a big bowl of ice. Kenna played happily for over an hour while I fed the littles and prepped dinner.  She was cooking, mixing, stirring, pouring and talking to herself the whole time. It was so sweet. 

Grow a Giraffe

Our Dollar Tree Grow-a-Giraffe actually grew!! He was mailed to us in an awesome care package from Kenna's GG (that's Great Grandma).
We started off by measuring the giraffe from head to foot with a ruler. We recorded his length on paper, and then plunked our friend in a bowl of water. We talked about what might happen to him in the water, and Kenna answered with the incredibly insightful, "He'll get wet and wrinkly." 

Then, every day for a week, we pulled him out, dried him off, and remeasured him.  We used 1 inch "unit blocks" to reinforce the measuring.  He grew from 4 inches to 9 inches in 6 days! WOW! Kenna was really impressed with him and his magical growing.

This was a simple and fun way to introduce measuring to Kenna. We haven't done ANYTHING with a ruler until now, and this was superfun. She inspected the ruler very carefully, noting all of the lines and numbers.  Rulers are cool because they help you measure, of course, but they also help you count, compare size, and show growth. They also help you decide "does it fit?" I can't wait to do more activities with our ruler.

I is for inches:  Inches went along perfectly with our letter of the week, I.  We read the book Inch By Inch, by Leoninni, and measured a bunch of other small things with our unit cubes, and then our ruler. 

I have to say that I am ridiculously surprised that our giraffe grew! One of his legs was a little stunted, but the overall effect was great. Now we are going to take him out of the water and measure him every day for a week as he shrinks! (they have these grow-a-thingys in the A.C.Moore dollar bins right now. I spotted a mermaid and a princess, and a dragon, but I resisted- since, really- how many grow-a-thingys does one family need? :)

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...!)

Babyfood jar lid memory game

I pulled out our fun memory game again this week, and we have had so much fun with it! A few months ago, when we first made it, Kenna was only able to play successfully if there were 3 matches out at a time. Now, at 31 months old, she is able to play with all of the game pieces- 8 matches at a time!

We play by standard Memory rules, and it is great practice taking turns, only flipping TWO at a time, and keeping the lids in place when you flip them back over. Whew- that's a lot of hard rules for a toddler! The only rule of the game we don't follow yet is this: if you make a match, you go again. I think that would screw up all of our practice with taking turns. Plus, I could run the board pretty quickly with only 8 matches! ;)

How I made it: I got the printables from HomemadeByJill,though there are tons of memory game ideas all over the blogosphere these days. Wepainted the jar lids one rainy afternoon. Kenna did most of the painting work. I didn't prime first, and I didn't acryllic seal afterwards (read: lazy). So the paint is scraping off the lids, but it doesn't bother us! I let Kenna glue the pictures down with white school glue, and unfortunately some of the ink ran, so a few pictures are blurred. Again, we don't care! (I ended up making another set to give as a birthday gift, and with spraypaint for the lids, and less glue for the pictures, and a bit more attention to detail- and they came out awesome!)

Small Spaces

A spice jar and some spaghetti held Kenna's attention forEVER today! First she loaded up the jar, and then unloaded it. She was so delicate about this.Then she spotted her button jar, which was still out from an earlier activity. She started experimenting with lacing- seeing how many buttons she could get on one single piece of spaghetti. Her creation morphed into a popsicle (a new favorite treat) and we pretended to eat it up, pulling off one button at a time.

While Kenna was busy with the buttons, I let Little Man explore the open and close aspect of the spice jar. He was fascinated. He also liked shaking the jar, which had a few pieces of broken spaghetti chinking around in it.

Gardening Toddler

Kenna is so proud of her garden! She picked a bunch of okra today- HUGE okra! They were perfect yesterday, and grew giant overnight. I have some other pictures to add to this- on the computer that is currently off the network. Sigh. We've grown tomatoes, carrots, radishes and more. Kenna has learned so much about plants and gardening this year!

We've also seen some awesome bugs. Check out this cool caterpillar, snacking on our tomato. :)

G is for Green, goldfish and glitter

So much fun with G this week. I didn't get a lot of pictures, nor do I have a lot of time to write, but here is a bit of what we did!

Glitter Glue Pens!! My mom found these in her closet, left over from when my youngest siblings( now 19 years old!!) were doing school projects. I pulled them out, since G is for GLITTER, and we had a blast. I have to say that they were a little hard for Kenna to squeeze out, but that just made it challenging, and prevented her from emptying an entire tube in 12 seconds. :)

I do have a picture of the final G art somewhere- I'll look!

Well, a week late- but here it is!

Kenna stamped the G stamp all over the Captial G outline, and then cut it out with scissors. I was very very impressed with how she used her left hand to turn the paper as she cut with her right. Her scissor skills are rockin! Here is the craft- Kenna hung it on the wall herself. :)

Simple activity- provide a lowercase g and every green writing utensil I could find. Tada! G is for green!! (as of this posting, Kenna has scribbled on this for a total of 4 seconds. She is simply not into coloring this week- it is all about the glueing, or the "gloofing" as she calls it.

We also did a bunch of the Gumball activities provided by COAH, but I have no pics to share. We've had a whirlwind week, and it seems like we've done our learning in tiny bursts, with a screaming baby and a teething toddler trying to intervene. Homeschooling with little ones is challenging, but this week has been worse than usual. I know that things will be better next week. I need to breathe. I want to be all things for all of my children, and it is so hard. How do you manage to entertain your littlest ones while you do school? I have a bunch of Tot Tray plans for when my 11month old is a bit older, but until then, I am struggling. I thought I would just take the week off, but Kenna BEGGED to do "learning". How can you say no to that? :)

Baking Bread with Daddy!

I'm still on my Montessori kick, and baking bread is a big thing in that curriculum. There are so many awesome components to bread-making- measuring, spooning, reading recipes, following steps, mixing, kneading, watching it transform from dough to bread, and then finally, cutting and eating it!

That said, Bill and Kenna bake bread together all the time. Since she was very little, he's dragged her pink table into the kitchen and put her to work. Unfortunately for our precise bread recipes, Kenna is not the most precise pouring, measuring or mixing gal. They usually turn out edible, though.

Here's Kenna, scooping flour VEEERRRY carefully. (You should see my floors after these sessions!) Daddy told her to fill to the "2" and she is doing a great job.
Reading the recipe together.

I love that Bill spends this time with Kenna. I love that we have homemade bread every week. (No, I don't bake bread.) And I love that it is educational and fits the Montessori model, even though we didn't know it!

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!