Lowercase A

Today we worked on the lowercase letter 'a'. I used the outline of a lowercase a for us to practice writing. I held her crayon with her and we wrote it about ten times. I put dots to show where to start and stop her crayon, but she wasn't in the mood for that today. We reviewed the uppercase A and looked at our artwork from yesterday.

We colored a lowercase "a"and Kenna showed off her amazing circular coloring skills.

We used a red crayon, but that's only because she was feeling cooperative. Don't feel irritated if your toddler insists on making your "red" apple blue. Kenna lost interest in coloring really quickly (she's really more into painting these days, but I wasn't up for it at 7am!) so we moved on to adding leaves. I had some green tissue paper on hand, so I quick cut out some leaves and she dotted a little glue for me. She recognized the scraps as leaves, and we signed "leaf" and "apple" and "red" and "A". I showed her a picture in our encyclopedia of an apple with a leaf and stem on it so she could see what we had recreated. ooohhhh...

Onto "mail". We made an apple card today, and in honor of the start of summer, I pulled out our NEW markers! I've never let Kenna use markers before, and I'm sure that by the time the summer (or week) is over she'll remind me why, but until then... marker fun has begun! I wrote "apple" on the front of the card with an illustration, and on the back of the card I wrote a capital and lowercase Aa.

Today we read The Apple Tree by Lynley Dodd, and learned how an apple grows. (It has a weird ending, but I really liked how it shows the stages an apple tree goes through.)

We also did sequencing:

I printed off some apples from filefolderfun.com onto cardstock. We spent quite a bit of time scrambling them up and then lining them up big to small. And small to big. And finding which one was bigger. FUN times. We also counted them and pretend cooked them in our kitchen. Two year olds have great imaginations!

The Letter A

A is for APPLE!!

Today is the first day of SUMMER vacation!! Kenna and I are starting off a new round of Letter of the Week, and this time, I've decided to post a few of our ideas. Kenna is 28 mos old now, and I am going to try and keep all activities geared towards 1-2 year olds. We also do themes each month, and I'll try to post some of those activities as well. (All the while keeping in mind that I am 39 weeks 2 days pregnant today, and also have a 9 month old son to keep track of!)

Introduce the letter:
We talked about the letter A and signed it. She's a whiz at signing her letters, so that was easy and confirmed that we both knew what we were talking about.


Writing:Using a letter A outline I printed, we practiced writing an A. Then we traced it a couple more times for fun. Then we traced it again. And again. I used dots to show her where to start and stop the crayon. I held her hand for about 5 attempts, and then it was on to the infamous" DO MYSELF."

Stamping: Next we stamped a capital A stamp all over an A that I drew with a Sharpie. (We also stamped all over the table, and our face, and our little brother...) I love those giant washable ink pads- I got mine for $5 each at Hobby Lobby, and they are perfect for little people! The A stamp is part of an alphabet stamp set I bought a million years ago on clearance.


Cutting: Scissor time! Kenna is a whiz at scissors now, so I let her cut out the A shape. She did a pretty good job, and I tried not to be a control freak about it. (Tape can fix anything, don't forget!)


Lastly, I gave her a bottle of glue and let her squeeeeeze glue all over the back of the A. (first time with this... normally I give her a small bowl with a puddle of watered-down glue to use with a paint brush.) We really glued that A down, smooshing the paper with fingers, hands and elbows. (Great motor skills at work here!)

Other activities:
We read 10 Apples up on Top by Dr. Suess after nap and shared a Red Delicious apple for snack.

We made it through our first Monday! First day of summer school was a success!

I am planning to buy a binder so that we can make an alphabet book this year and save all of our artwork. I'm thinking three ring notebook with clear page protectors. Any other ideas?

Garden Carrots

In April, Kenna and her Daddy planted lots and lots of seeds. They planted lettuce, radish, and carrots in a special raised bed that Kenna could take care of all on her own. She's been watering, weeding, and watching this little patch for many weeks! It has been really sweet to hear her talk about her vegetables growing, and the green leaves, and having to wait. And wait. And wait.
We've been eating lettuce for several weeks, and that has been exciting. She loves knowing we're "eating her garden". But today was super-special- today we picked our carrots!!

We have learned soo much about vegetables this month! How they grow,where they grow, all about seeds. We learned that carrots grow IN the dirt, and that you can only eat the orange part. She ate a carrot right there, out of the ground, and ended up sleeping with the carrot top. So sweet. She loves her garden! We're going to pick radishes this week, as well- but I bet she won't like those nearly as much. :) The rest of our garden went in a the beginning of May, and should be coming up soon- can't wait!

Dying Diapers

For those of you who know me, I am a cloth diaper addict! I love using cloth, shopping for cloth, showing off my cloth, and talking about cloth diapering! Kenna potty-trained soo early (14 months) so my diaper stash had been sitting unused until December 2010. Before Christmas, Bill and I became licensed foster parents, and opened our home to our first set of foster babies! They only stayed 5 weeks, but four days later, we got our second placement, Little Man. He was 12 weeks old when we got him, and we are so in love with him! He rocks cloth diapers, and although he ends up in pink every now and again, he has a nice boyish stash of diapers built up now.

I'm due with my second daughter in June, and so this week I dusted off my newborn stash of cloth diapers. It mostly consists of prefolds, which are usually plain white and kind of boring. Since i can't really justify buying MORE diapers (though I'd LOVE to) I decided to spruce up my stash! I got some Dylon Dye and got to work!

I was able to dye 3 diapers at a time in each color. Then I dyed 3 more in the same dye bath, and although the colors came out lighter with the second batch, they still look great. :) I am soo happy with them! I even dyed some newborn lap tees to match! I can't wait to get my newbie in these cute and tiny diapers! :)

Alphabet Texture Tub

We love playing with our Texture Tub. This week's tub theme is Alphabet. The tub has great northern beans, colored pompoms, alphabet foamies, and alphabet beads. (Kenna added some rocks from our nature table, all the dice from our math center, and some quarters from her purse.)

I started a Texture Tub as soon as Kenna stopped putting EVERYTHING in her mouth- maybe when she was around 13 months? I started with simple tubs themes- just Lima beans, or just black beans and white beans.

At first, when she was littler we used a much larger tub- one of those under-bed rubbermaid tubs. It was big enough for her to sit in, and had shallow sides for her to lean over. We would sift the beans with our fingers, pour them with big cups, and frankly- throw them everywhere. When she was that little, texture tub time was reserved for our deck, where I could sweep everything away when done playing!

These days, Kenna's Texture Tubs are getting a lot more exciting. She is interested in sorting, hide and seek, and using tools. She likes a variety of items in each tub, and she LOVES it when I surprise her with a new tub-full of stuff. :)

These are the tools we are using this week. A pair of tiny tongs I found at Walmart, and a large pair that I got at the dollar store. I also have a mini-muffin pan, a tiny mesh strainer, and a little ladle. Each time I pull out the tub during the week, I provide different tools to make the play new and interesting. ( I had them all out to take pictures, and Kenna took full advantage!)
Kenna loves to pour the beans from one scoop to another. Big mess.
She loves to scoop the beans into piles.
I've been trying to encourage sorting- "let's put all the rocks in one section. Let's put all the pompoms in another." Some days she sorts with zest. Some days, she has her own ideas!

We are picking out letters, sorting hard vs soft, and sorting by color. Just scooping and using tongs are great motor skill activities. I love Texture Tubs!! (be ready with a broom and dustpan- cleaning up is half the fun!)

Easter Squirrels!!

Easter was fun, and we did lots of fun Eastery things, but the highlight of our Easter morning was when we discovered a plastic egg in the front yard that had been nibbled on by a SQUIRREL!!

Kenna asked a bunch of questions, we googled squirrels, looked for them in the trees, and we checked out the cool teeth marks on the egg!! Mr. Squirrel got a Hersheys Kiss and some Easter fame for his efforts.
Happy Easter!

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.