Purple Water Play Invitation

{P is 21 mos, Tiny Tot is 4.5 mos}

{O is 4y}

The plan this week was a "Doc McStuffins" theme..but I failed on taking good pics! P's color of the week was "purple". The fav activity for the girls was an "Animal Clinic". They had mini clipboards, a "boo-boo" notebook, and all their stuffed animals and pretend play doc gear out. Super cute! I like to do any Sensory/Messy play activities early in the morning (after breakfast and chores/cleaning time). I have more patience when the house is clean and can tolerate the mess the activity creates much better! Here is a Purple Water Play Invitation I set up for the kids. They later played with it in the bathtub with swimsuits.

It included a tray of purple water-safe items, towels, scoops/etc and was set on a plastic Dollar Tree shower curtain.

The other day while trying to clean the kitchen, P was getting into everything..I needed to come up with something to occupy him so I could get stuff done! I spotted my colander, some straws, and an empty soda pop bottle and thought, aha! 

He thought it was pretty awesome! Yay! The girls came running over to see of course. 

The straws were a tight fit but he did surprisingly well. 

The Girls joining in on the fun! M wanted every hole to be filled, then flipped it over to see the "noodles". 

Playing "Restaurant"..a big fav of the kids.It also served as the "Animal Clinic" check-in. :)

P got out the playdough right before bed. He really enjoys it. 

Miss Tiny Tot on her new Boppy Mat. 

Most mornings the kids and I read from their new Preschool Devotions book, it is great. I'll link it next week. I worked with O on her notebook (daily calender stuff, songs for days of the weeks/months of the year, abc's, review of shapes, 1-20, colors, seasons, right/left hand, coin values). We used Carisa's printables from her blog (click the tot school pic at top). 

Christmas 2013

{P is 21 mos, Tiny Tot is 4.5 mos}

P LOVES when I set out sensory play invitations for him. If I don't have something set up and he wants to play, he will drag out the plastic tablecloth (from walmart, under 2$) and find a bag of beans in the pantry to bring me! We did a lentil/split pea bin as one of our advent activities. Our plush Nativity scene and characters went into it. Our favorite "tool" right now with sensory bins are the trays. Works really well.

Of course, P's fav thing to do with the bins is sit inside them...I don't blame him..looks like fun.

I found a great deal on a very small water/sand table and decided to get one for the kids. It is the perfect size for an indoor sensory/discover table for P. A bit small for O (4) but if she and M (6) get on their knees, it works. We dumped our container of letters/numbers and of course added cars! P really enjoyed it. He was able to drag it from the Playroom to the Living Room and back when he was done. (Super helpful for me!)
This is the table we bought

He loved the two little boats that came with it. I filled up the sink and he was delighted to play with them.

The box the table came in was the best part.

Funny pic of Tiny Tot..but wanted to show how much she loves her Exersaucer thing! Growing up so fast...

We said "Goodbye" to our elf, Strawberry Charlie. The girls are able to hug him when he leaves. P isn't interested in him much yet.

The only decent Christmas Eve "by the tree" shot I was able to get! My youngest and oldest.

Linking up with:

 

F is for Fairy Wonderland!

 

 

{Livy is 3y9 months and Preston is 14 months}



 

 Letter of the Week: F

Bible Verse of the Week: John 3:16

Printables: F week, F is for Fairy, F resources

Books for the Week:  Life cycles, frog book. Blue ABC’s book

Bible Story: Fishers of Men

Language:

Activies provided from the EP website, Do-a-dot pages (trying to get more creative with them), Intended to make new Play-doh since the last batch was way too sticky :(, Letter writing with F, Emphasied name recongintion with "fish" name tags, Letter searching on printables page and gathering "F" items for discovery basket. I used a dry erase maker and wrote on the back of a cookie sheet and had her match up magnetic letters with what she saw. Something she really enjoyed this week was playing a Memory Game with letters A-F, upper and lowercase matching. We also dug through the rice/bean/pasta bin for the same letters and when she pulled it out, had to tell me what letter and sound it was.

 

Math & Motor:

We used a printable from the Fairy pack and I had her match up patterns and make ones of her own. She was not interested in coloring, cutting, or doing any other of the things I had ready for her for Math. We made several park trips and palyed outside quite a bit.



 

Pretend Play:

We made a very simiple Fairy Tale tub with white rose petals, a mini purple feather boa, a and sparkly purple fairy wand.

 

We also made a "frog habitat" bin with bluish/green water beads, plastic frogs, a bog of moss/natural looking decorations, and water.

 

Preston enjoyed both of the sensory bins, the pasta/rice/bean tub, the F discovery basket and lots of playing.

 

 

Our Week of Letter "E"

{Livy is 3y8months}

Big sis Makenna is 5.5 and in Kindergarden but

loves to do school with them too :)


 

 

Letter of the week: E

Books of the week: Lifecycles Egg-Chicken, Crayola Blue Book, My Pajama Bible, and His First Bible

Bible Verse of the week: Even a Child is Known by his Deeds. Matt 5:16

Bible Story: Elijah gets fed by the birds 1Kings 17:1-7

 

Since Monday was Earth Day, we did some fun activites with that!

 I saw this neat idea: Earth Day Sensory Bottles but forgot to try it! We made a purple sparkle bottle though (Earth Day part was the recycled water bottle ;) ). I added water, a few tablespoons of cooking oil, green food coloring, and purple glitter in a bottle. Preston loved shaking it up and playing with it. the oil helped the glitter stick to the inside, making it "sparkly". I also saw this fun idea: Create It Box and we have started collecting containers and odds/ends. Grandma came over to play and she and Livy started the Strawberry bag. It was a neat gift my sister sent me! It is a kit to grow strawberries right in the bag. Very neat!

 

 

Livy helping Grandma with the Strawberry bag!

 

We continued with the EP website, it is going great. It has youtube videos and games for the kids to play and resources right at your fingertips. EP all in one homeschooling

 

Language

Book activity: I seem to have a brain block for this...any ideas?

Mini book: We used the printable from one of my favorite websites E is for elephant

Do a dot: Several fun activites were done with the do a dot pages! I saw an idea to place water beads on the circles. We LOVE water beads here...especially squishing them between our fingers to make them explode! Next time we will do this outside ;) Livy also put cereal on the dots and when we were done with it, took out of the page protector and put stickers on each indiviudal space.

Stamping: Not much this week, I need to get a set of abc stamps. We did look through a magazine and Livy put a sticker on all the "Ee"s she found.

Coloring: Not a big coloring week, she prefered I color her pages instead. So I did. :) I find it relaxing.

Vocabulary: Computer work



 

 





 Mathematics
Manipulatives: Not much this week
Numbers: I printed out a traceable number page from the E is for elephant pack but she wasn't interested. We need to work on numbers more.
Shapes: Something she IS interested in. :) I use a printable from the same page. Livy puts a piece of cereal or snack on each shape then eats them as I call it out. She LOVES this and does it many times in a row. We also use a Leapfrog Tag jr. book and matched the shapes from the book to the ones on her page. Her favorite shape right now is the cresent! She loves to look around the house and point out shapes she sees.

 

Example of the printable with cereal on the shapes.

 

Sensory

Playdough: We made this recipe: Squishest Playdough It normally turns out great..but for some reason (I left out the cream of tarter) it ended up WAY too sticky. We did have fun playing with it though. I like to make "color surprise" playdough. I put a few drops of food coloring in the middle of each dough piece, then pinch it closed. When Livy plays kneads and squishes it up, the color magically appears!

Right before squishing them up!




 Beautiful colors!

 

We made a Playdough world with it. I found some various plastic and wooden toys and added them. She had so much fun and spend quite a bit of time with this.

 

Colors: I made a tray of three containers, big/small funnel, little teapot, and rag for cleaning up. I put a drop of food coloring in each of the three containers and water in the teapot. Livy needed to add the water to each container to find out what the color was! She played this for a long time as well.

 

 

 

Sensory Bin: Planned to get our pasta color bin down but forgot. Still want to make a Garden sensory one..perhaps next week :) We did make bubble dough though! Bubble Dough I added purple food coloring since my dishwashing liquid made it tan colored and it didn't mix it very well. Had a pretty marble effect though. I think it would be fun to draw on it with washable markers next time.

 

 





 It was actually really nice playdough consistency. Didn't make much but I think I prefer this recipe over a more traditonal one.
Craft/Painting: Not much this week, Livy didn't want to do any of the cute crafts I had planned!

Working on Letter E

 

Helping Daddy re-plant the seedlings

 

Teeny Tot School

{Preston is 13 months}

 

 

 A very simple "E" sensory bin, plastic eggs to open/close, talk about the different colors, put in/out of the container, and put the smaller ones inside the bigger ones. He also played with the E discovery basket this week (forgot to take pic).

 

Trying out the playdough! He mostly wanted to put the lid on/off and then poke at it with his finger. He had fun walking outside this week, the weather was nice enough finally!

 

 

Don't forgot to check out what others did this week at Tot School!

 

Our week with Letter D

{Livy is 3y8months and Preston is 13 months}



We recently discovered Easy Peasy- All in One Homeschooling (here) and love it!! Their Facebook page for more info is here. We did A, B, C, last week, but decided to slow things down and focus on just "D" this week.  I am also trying out a new Tot School Planning Form which is very helpful. That will be the basis of our blog post.

Letter of the week: D
Book of the week: Anything with Dora :)
Bible Verse of the week: Do all things without complaning or disputing. Phil 2:14
Bible Story: Daniel and the Lions Den



Language
Book Activity: reading Dora books, acting them out with Dora dolls
Mini Book: from Raising Rockstars pre-k program; colored and cut out
Coloring and Vocab: computer work on EP

Mathematics
Manipulatieves and sorting: the girls loved sorting out colors, JELLY BEANS :), and for fine motor practive, itty bitty beans, lentils, and pasta shapes. Tiny scoops, spoons, and funnels made it more fun too. :)



 Numbers and Shapes: done on the computer through various websites (starfall.com and a new curious george site the girls really enjoyed).

Sensory:
Had plans to make playdough but didn't happen. Found an AWESOME etsy store (here) you can BUY a sensory bin from. May sound silly to some, but when the nearest dollar store /walmart is 30+ mins away and you have to drag all the littles....it is much more appealing to buy a couple of the kits and go from there. We have a pasta one the girls play with but it has been around for months and they are itching for something new. I have plans to get the Spring/garden one. We did make Squish Bags though...great idea in theory.. ;) Inspired from these: squish bags galore!

Ingredients (all from Dollar Tree): hair gel or body wash, zip lock bags, glitter, and something to put in them. We used numbers. I was going to make Preston one with snakes but he had so much fun playing with the snakes on their own I left them out. We added everything and I put clear duct tape at the top. The bags felt really thing though....I wondered how long they would last. :(

 Oh and food coloring, we added that too. The kids though they were just "eh". I gave one to Preston and he ripped it from my hands and tried to bite it! :(

Craft/Painting: Lots of printouts from the EP site (using the Getting Ready Level 1). Forget to get pics.

Practical Life
Fine Motor: sorting again and writing practice. We used this site for printouts and ideas: (here) Livy did really well with the handwriting. She would stop midway and say...Take my picture, Mom! :) We used a page protector and dry erase marker and did it several times per day.

 Love her little face!

Gross Motor: Jumping on the indoor trampoline and playing on the slide, swinging, time at the park and outside.

And here are some cute pics of Preston. I didn't get any pictures of it, but we did a "D" discovery basket with ducks, a dump truck, "d" books, a cookie dough tube with various things in it to dump/put back in, a wooden doll, etc.

He is walking everywhere and wants to be Mr. Independent  :)

Makenna is in Kindergarten, but we started today (here) with the Easy Peasy website. We finished 4 days all at once, since the words and reading were just review. She loves the computer time and finding new websites for games and activites!


Linking up with:

Tot Gathering Place and I can Teach my Child