Tot School –10-10-10

PLAY TIME

Alligator and I had fun at our local park. This park is fabulous!
He drove the fire truck.

Colored on the chalkboard (which I didn’t even realize they had).
  
And rode the horse. (OK, you aren’t supposed to climb on this thing, but I thought it would make a cute picture.)

ART

Alligator played with some play-dough from our Alex Busy Box. He enjoyed breaking it into tiny pieces.

Alligator had fun using the Do-a-Dot marker on these pages from Homechool Creations, to see my post on these click here.
As always we did a lot of coloring. Alligator can make a dot, circle or line when you ask him to. He also has started saying those words.

TRAYS

This tray had rough things and smooth things. It is made so eventually he can sort them. But right now, we are just talking about each thing and feeling it. This was from the Early Toddler Kit from Time for Tots.

The kit also included 4 color “wands” (for lack of a better term). We looked through them, and he really thought that was cool.

This was a spooning activity from a Halloween themed kit. He really enjoyed putting the fuzzies in and out of the pumpkin shaped ice cube tray.

This activity was a Gatorade bottle and 2 giant popsicle sticks. He wasn’t that interested in putting then in the bottle. But he loved carrying them around and using them as drumsticks.
 
As you can see, we had a busy week. To see what others did this week for Tot School click the button at the top of the page. (I will link it as soon as the link is up on 1+1+1=1.)

Also, check out my give-away!

My first Give-away

I am doing a give-away.

I will send the winner the “And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon!”.

All you have to do to win is to enter a comment in the box below. Please sure I can contact you if you win.

To place an entry all you have to do is follow or subscribe to my blog. You can earn a second entry if you help spread the word on your blog or twitter. Today is October 8th, and this giveaway will be open until October 12 at midnight!

do a dot fun

Yesterday afternoon I downloaded and printed these printables from Homeschool Creations. Both boys loved them as you can see.
The only problem was Monkey went through all the letters in less than 5 minutes, and then asked for more. So I drew a letter J and had him go over that with the dotter. He enjoyed that. So then I drew him a train, and he did the same with that. He was having a ball.
Then it occurred to me, that he would probably like a coloring book type activity with these. I know they sell them, but it isn’t Christmas yet, and I don’t want to spend the money know. So after a search online I couldn’t find anything similar  so I made my own…..I know, shocking that I actually made my own of something.


That turned out so well, that I thought I would try a race car. My first attempts did not go so well. So I went to Making Learning Fun and found their bingo marker pages. But the only problem was there were no circles, and knowing Monkey, he would want the circles. Without the circles envision he would put one dot on the page and be done, he is very literal, and likes art with a very specific goal in mind. His favorite word is “perfect”. So I used Making Learning Fun’s page as a template to make the following race car.


I am sure my kids will like it but they haven’t had a chance to try them out yet. I am going to load them on scribd if you want to try them out.Train Car

Preschool Corner

Monkey is 4 years 6 months.
This week has been sort of crazy. We have been sort of busy doing “life”. So there hasn’t been much Monkey/mommy time.
I did order the alphabet sensory tub from Time for Tots (this picture is from TfT’s site).

He loved that a lot.
Games we played with it:
1. He freely explored it.
2. He picked out letters with the tongs and matched them to the letter mat.
3. He pulled out letters and lined them up then wanted me to say what word it made. ( which normally went something like “NBXQT, and I had to try to say it like a word).
4. He likes to bury certain letters.
5. He uses a small car and buries it in the rice


6. He uses the magnifying glass to study the letters and the rice.

Monkey found this in our garage. We hadn’t used it in over a year. He was so excited to find it that we had to dig it out.
He had a great time making a collage with the stickers. I don’t have a picture but he also made animals out of the playdough. It really is a great kit. As you can see, Alligator liked it too!

To see what others are doing please click the button at the top of the page.

All I want for Christmas…

So I have been thinking that I really want a sewing machine for Christmas. There are all these great blogs out there that have tutorials for some fantastic projects and I really want to try them out. However there is one small problem: I DON”T KNOW HOW TO SEW!

My grandmother worked for Singer. She was a career woman before anyone knew what a career woman was. I don’t know exactly what her job was, but she traveled all over the world for Singer. Needless to say, she was a fantastic sewer. Even after retiring from Singer, she worked at the local community college teaching sewing classes. She continued to teach pretty much up until she passed away. I had the luxury of going with her to her classes a few times, and we made a skirt. In some way, I think she would love to see me sew. And who knows, maybe the sewing gene has been passed onto me.

So when I go see Santa in a few weeks, I will be asking for a Sewing Machine. I am using up all of my self control to not buy one for myself and allow Santa to bring me one. Assuming I am on the nice list! (He-he-he)

To help me with my self-control, I thought it would be fun to post occasionally some of the projects I want to make once I have my sewing machine and actually figure it out.

Here is one of them:

This is a fold up car caddy from Homemade by Jill. It probably won’t be my first project, cause it looks a little hard, but my boys would definitely like it!

 

This is a dinosaur play-mat, from the folks at Serving Pink Lemonade. This is probably a little more my speed since the only real sewing is the edging. I am thinking I could make one for farm animals, as well as roads (there is a tutorial for the roads there too)

When I stumble upon more I will be sure to post!

Creative Thursdays

Thursday’s post will be something creative. Normally it will be something I created myself for the kids to play with. But it might be something I developed to help my house run better, or something I made to decorate with.
But I just got my hair cut and I am loving it, so I am going to share my new hair cut!


If you want to share something you have created, it can be just about anything feel free to share!

What’s in the box Wednesday—10-6-10

I am going to start joining Confessions of a homeschooler’s blog carnival, called What’s in the Box Wednesday. To see what others have in their boxes click here.

 

I don’t really do boxes, but I do trays for my 4.5 year old, and I do occasional trays for my 20 month old as well.

 

This week’s “boxes” include:

A rebus Reader from Mother Goose Time.

A math game where he places stones on the dots of the pumpkins, and then matches the number of spots to the numerals (this is from Time For Tots)

Bead Sorting and stringing activity (TfT)

Initial sound bingo. You pull and item from the cup and decide what letter it starts with. If it matches your card you put it on the card. (TfT)

 

Roll a pumpkin game (TfT)