Mmmmmm

Oh wow how time flies when you are having fun!  It sure has been a while since I made time to sit and blog, sorry for that. 

On another note, have you ever realized how many words start with M?  A bunch and for that reason I took a whole week to focus on that letter and we still didn't get to everything I planned!  Here we go:

* I cut out huge M's from HEB paper bags and let the kids glue on different colors and sizes of paper to Make a Mozaic M.  This one took them and while and they really enjoyed it.

* I let the kids cut out shapes from Magazines. I told them to find pictures they liked and to cut them out, this was fun practice on with scissors.  The goal was to Make Magazine flowers but I realized that was more for older children.  But I did end up Making a few on My own.

* I drew a Maze on a paper and explained to them how to get out and they had fun trying to figure it out.

* The kids glued on Maccaroni to a piece of paper spelling out MOM. 

* The next day I decided to step up the Maze a notch and Made a Maze for them to gide a Marble through.  This was easy I just took a box and cut a side off and taped on colorful straws.  Each child took turns tilting the cardboard and getting the Marble to the end.

* Going along with the Marble theme we Made a few different Marble paintings.  The first one was achieved by putting shaving cream onto a cookie sheet, spreading it out evenly, adding drops of different food colorings, swirling it around with a stick, then placing a piece of card stock on top and pushing down to get the imprint of the Marbled creation.  You put it out to dry and it even turns out to be soft and good smelling :)

                The second method was to tape a piece of paper into a box and let the colored Marbles roll around and design a look.  I took left over yogurt cups and put a little bit of paint into each one with different colors, dropped a few marbles in each color and let the kids take turns on grabbing the Marbles with plastic spoons and dropping them into the box and watching where it went with the paint flying everywhere.  This was fun!

* The kids Made Maccaroni necklaces!  I gave each child a string of yarn and a handful of maccaroni and let them lace it on.  To wear the necklaces easier I attached a safety pin to the ends of them.  My son gave me his.

* On the final day we focused on Music!  We Made what we called Music Makers.  To do this you give your child a toilet paper tube and tell them to decorate it anyway they want.  Then cap on end using paper ( I used 2 layers of tissue paper) and then add a handful of rice to the inside and cap the second end.  There you have it your very own Maracas or what we called them, Music Makers!

We listened to different types of music and talked about the instuments that are used to make music in those songs that we heard.  And finally we played Musical chairs!

* As an ending to the week I let them watch a Movie, just so happened How to Train Your Dragon came out and they got to watch it.

L is for Lion, hear me roar!

As some of you may know my youngest son's name is very unique and very based upon a lion, so L happened to be one of my favorite Letters!  It also happens to be the only letter my 3 year old still has a hard time saying, so we love to practice it.  And we also have another girl blessed with an L name also, so she loved it. 

When I think of L I think of laughing and that is what I tried to keep my kiddos doing.  It was easy for the kids to get used to writing the Letter L and coming up with L words so we had fun.  We also made sure and worked on walking in a Line, trying to color inside the Lines, the difference between Large and Little and also how something can be Long.  Along with all that we managed to take our time learning the letter L and doing many fun activities including:

*We made Lion masks.  To achieve this you cut out the hole in the center of a paper plate, have strips of construction paper cute out in brown, yellow and orange, let the kiddos curl the paper using a pencil then glue the strips on.  You can also take this as a teaching moment with patterns and have them stick to a particular color pattern. As we worked on our Lion masks I told them some fun facts of Lions and how they are the King of the jungle.  As an added bonus since they had been so good I allowed them to watch LION KING!  Talk about a roaring good time :)

* We made hand print Lillies.  I took this from a pattern in a parents magazine, it was complicated but fun and the kids enjoyed seeing their hand print used to make something.  You cut out leaves from card stock that you will hole punch in the middle.  Then trace the kids right hand and cut it out.  Now curl them all with a pencil and attach to a green straw with tape.  And to top it all off you can cut a yellow pipe cleaner in half and stick it through the straw to stick up like the pollen.  These were pretty Lillies that they all took home to Mommy :)

* We made Love Ladybugs.  This was another fun template I borrowed from the web.  You cut out all the pieces for the kids before hand and let them count and glue them all together.  You need to cut out a Big Heart, a small heart ( in red), 2 small black hearts, 6 big legs that are L's, 2 small L legs and 2 antenna that are in the shapes of 6's.  This shows there are 6 legs to a ladybug.  I then drew on eyes and along the way we talked about how a lady bug grows and other interesting facts.  Like did you know that when they flap their wings they go at 84 times a second?!  And of course the hearts represent LOVE.  So there you have it, our Love Ladybug!

K is for Kid!

When you get right down to it there are not that many words that really come to mind that start with K that are in our day to day vocabularies.  So I decided to keep it simple and stick to the things that Kids love most, animals!
I learned from the kids that K is a letter that can be a bit tricky to write, but with enough practice they started to get the hang of it.  And don't even get me started on the fact that some K words sound like they could start with the letter C.  In my mind they are still 3 and just getting them to learn the sound that it makes and how to write it is plenty for now.  So when we were working on those basics we:

* Made a Kangaroo puppet.  I used a template from a website and cut out arms, ears, a nose, eyes, a tongue, a pouch and a baby kangaroo to go in the pouch.  The kids then glued on all of the body parts on to a paper bag and had a blast making their Kangaroos hop with their hands.

* We colored a Koala and talked all about them.


* We made Kites on a page and colored a picture where the Kite was flying.  You will notice I cut out a colored kite from construction paper and glued it on the page along with a piece of yearn to show it was flying in the sky.  The Kids loved using their imaginations to show where the Kite was flying.  I wanted to show them an actual Kite in the sky but we just didn't have the wind for it.

H is for Happy!!!

Hooray for H! We Had tons of fun with the letter H! There are some great feelings that start with H and we sure did talk about them. We were always trying to stay Happy and give tons of Hugs! For some reason my kids were also feeling extra Hoppy and preferred to hop everywhere. There were some activited that I didn't get to and it looks like we will just Have to do them next time. But for now this is what we did:

* The kids made a House made of craft sticks and then colored them
on the inside and out. I loved seeing their imagination used for this one.

* I let the kids stencil hearts on a paper and then decorate them by glueing on pieces of colored tissue paper.

* We did a dot to dot Horse and then colored them! I 've never seen such colorful horses;)

* Lastly I seem to love making crafts on craft sticks so we went ahead and painted wooden Hearts and glued them onto colorful craft sticks. This was a 2 part craft since the paint had to dry but they really enjoyed it.

We ended our days Happy with lots of Hugs! Hope you Have a Happy day:)

G is Great!

Last week we took only one day to Go over G! So far it is the letter that the kids have had the hardest time actually writing. We did lots of writing practice, on paper and on the side walk. But we also did a couple of Great activites!

*I paired the words Green, Grass and Goat all into one activity. First we went outside to look at everything Geen and I let them pick a little bit of Grss. Then we came back inside and they cut out a Goat and Glued him onto a piece of construction paper. Then just for fun I let them glue on marshmellows as the Goat's tummy. Then they Glued their Grass on the picture and colored the Goat's collar.

* We colored a Gecko Green and practiced writing the letter G!

* We also played a lot of Green Light Red Light and I spy!

E is for energy!

Sorry it's been a while, I experienced an amazingly busy week last week with doctor's visits and MOPS meetings which meanwhile took a lot of Energy out of my but didn't seem to bother my kid's energy:) We did find time to do a few activites last week but E has been the hardest letter for me to be creative thus far.

For letter E we did:

*Lots of practicing writing the letter E

*Colored some Elmo pictures

*Ate lots of Eggs

*Made an Eyes mask- I drew eyes on construction paper and let the kids color in the pupil their color. Then they helped me cut them out and I made holes in the middle for them to see out of and holes on the edges to carry yarn through to go around their heads.

* Learned all about the Earth and topped it off with making an earth suncatcher! I took a paper plate and cut out a whole in the middle and glued a piece of plastic wrap to cover the hole ( you can also use parchment paper).

Then I copied the earth onto the plastic with a permanant marker.

I gave the kids blue and green paint and they painted the earths and then we attached blue tissue paper strings to the bottom (you can use crepe paper instead). Finally I punched a hole at the top and looped a piece of yarn so they could hang it up.

The picture doesn't really do the kids artwork justice, but they were all so excited to get it home and put it on their windows!

D is for Dinosaur!

Last week we ended the week focusing on the letter D! Boys love all things D, Dinosaurs, Dragons, Dogs, the list could go on and on. So needless to say I focused on a couple of really hands on activites each day and the kids really enjoyed themselves. Plus there sure were plenty of dinosaur books to read along the way!

These are the activites we did:

*We made door hangers- I bought the foam ones that come in a pack of 4 at the Dollar tree and on one side I put there name and on the other side I let them color it however they liked and topped it off with plenty of dinosaur stickers!

* We made drums and drum sticks- I always keep the yogurt containers instead of tossing them and I finally got to use some for this activity. It was a 2 part process where I let the kids paint the "drums" with a dark color to try and mask the container and while it dried we made drum sticks with colorful straws that I taped a colorful popsicle stick on to one side. The kids had a blast using their drums as loud as they could!

* We made dinosaur prints- I had them drawn on a piece of manilla paper and let the kids color them however they wanted and then we added sand to the picture to show where the dinosaurs had left their prints in the sand. The kids had fun dipping their paintbrushes in glue then sprinkling on the sand.

*We made a dog puppet- I used a paper bag and had ear and tongue cutouts ready for them to just glue on.

* And of course we had multiple Dance parties!

C

The last couple of days were spent on the letter C in this house!

Again there are so many works and too many ideas to do all in 2 days. There were some good books that we read from the library as well as these activities:
* Colored a cow and practiced writing the letter C
* Colored a car and practiced writing the letter C
* Cut out a cat and glued it onto a piece of construction paper and colored it :)
* Colored a cookie and glued on beans to decorate it

* Played in Cream (shaving cream that is)- this was the favorite by far! I put a plastic table cloth on the ground and gave each child a serving of shaving cream and asked them to draw c's and they enjoyed the texture of it and slipping around it!

* Made a card for mom and dad!

Clouds would have been fun if it weren't raining the whole time, I would have taken them outside to watch the clouds go by and make up what they saw in the clouds. Who knows maybe tomorrow we will be able to throw this in?!

C you later!

A

This week I started my own version of a curriculum for my son and the two kids I babysit. They are all 3 but one is a new 3 and the other two are almost 4, so it can be hard at times but for the most part they can all do about the same things. I decided that we would start off by focusing our time on letters. Since we have to throw in time to play, nap, snack and lunch we have little pockets of time during the day where I sit the kids down at the "activity table" and we have fun! I also decided that for us we will be working on one letter for two days and Wednesday will be out fieldtrip day or play a little more day;)

Over the weekend I went and gathered all the ideas I could from parenting magazines, to websites and blogs and then I went shopping for craft items! You know me, I am thrifty so for most everything I was able to buy at The Dollar Tree and the dollar bin in Target ( my favorite places to shop ), but for a few items like marbles and tempra paint I had to go to Micheal's.

This past Monday was the first day to start our new "school" as the kids call it and we started with the letter A. All day long I stressed how we say the letter A and everything that starts with the letter A so we could get practice remembering how to say it.

Our activites over the 2 days included:
*A color sheet with a picture of an apple and a place to practice writing A.
* Reading a book on Ants
* An ant that was colored, cut out, glued onto construction paper and of course followed up with more practice of writing A
* An ant made out of egg carton and pipe cleaners
* An alligator color by numbers picture ( for older 3's)
*Not to mention we threw in a game of memory and A blank piece of construction paper where they used their paint and brushes to make their own Art!


This is the finished product! You get the idea;)

Today was brought to you by the letter A!