Yummy "Ice Cream" Sensory Fun!

   This weekend, I was browsing Goggle+ posts and Pinterest, as usual and I came across an awesome Sensory activity posted by Crystal Underwood at Growing a Jeweled Rose that I knew my little munchkin would enjoy! Check out her blog, as she has several awesome sensory activities for little ones to enjoy!

   As for the munchkin and I...we created our own 

"Ice Cream" Scented Sensory Dough!

Three SIMPLE ingredients for loads (and hours) of sensory play!!

1: Baking Soda

2: Water

3: Kool Aid Packets

   Add baking soda to your bowl (in whatever amount you wish to make).  Then, slowly add water.  If you add too much water at once, the baking soda will begin to turn into a liquid, so make sure to add the water SLOWLY.  

   We then added the Kool Aid packet and then begin mixing it altogether.

   She observed a fizzing reaction when she started mixing it!!

 Check out the little munchkin’s face when she finally got to touch it! 

   Then I threw in a few snow cone cups and an ice cream scooper! She was busy for a good 20 minutes. I thought it would keep her interested for a bit longer but she “noticed” a tiny cut on her thumb and that was the end of it all… well until later that night when she asked for it again.

   We did some work on Sight Words this weekend too.

   She colored the word "I" and then used dot stickers to decorate the sight word “see”.

   Then she did an Ice Cream Sight Word spelling activity and “scooped” letters to spell the sight words that we have been learning.

She made ice cream cones and ice cream bowls!

So much yummy sensory fun!

Virtual Book Club Summer Camp Fun!

   The 1^st week of my summer vacation has been sweet!! I have already read THREE novels and I added at least 8 more to my Summer Reading List! 

What can I say?

   When I am not cuddled up with my Nook, I am playing and learning with my little munchkin. Along with our Sweet Snack unit, the little munchkin and I joined the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp for some fun themed activities.

   This week was week #1 and it was Bug Week!

   All week long, I was able to squeeze in some activities revolving about Bugs.  This was quite easy, since we have been learning about the letter Ii. Instead of using the word “bug”, we used the word “insect” and talked a little bit about what makes a bug an insect.

   We began our mini unit of Insects by reading the book, “In the Tall, Tall Grass” by Denise Fleming. She learned the names of different insects and what they do.

   I wanted to give her some fine motor practice, so I had her cut slits on a folded green paper so that when she was done, it looked like grass. Then I gave her insect stickers that were left over from my classroom unit on Insects.  She took off each sticker and placed the insect stickers all over the grass paper; some were flying on top of the grass and some were hidden in the grass.

   In total, she counted 20 insects in the tall, tall grass!

   To encourage more counting practice, I created this Insect Counting activity. Click here or on the picture to pick up your own copy!

   One of the recommended activities for the week was an Alphabet Bug Spray activity!

   I simply drew some bugs (yes, my drawing are horrible) with chalk and using some water sprayers I found at the Dollar Tree, she squirted the bugs away! 

 After we got rid of all the bugs, she got a little carried away and decided that mommy’s car needed a car wash! And then came after me as I ran inside!!

   We did another outdoor activity this week… Fly Swatter painting.

    I glued some pictures of insects onto a large sheet of paper and had her use black paint and a fly swatter to SWAT away all the insects!

   Now, let it be noted, she is NOT a fan of anything creepy and crawly, so I think these two activities could have been therapeutic for her! Hahaha!!  Look at that smile of victory!

   I think every day this week, she engaged in Insect Play. Unfortunately, it has been so rainy for the last part of the week,  and she hasn’t had much play time outdoors since Tuesday…so there was no fun insect playing in the sand table this week. But that didn’t matter to her! Today I believe she engaged in insect play for almost 40 minutes…until she got hungry for a snack! Here she is showing off her insect collection (fake of course)

  And one other activity we did was about sight words. I created 2 mini sight word books in an Insect Theme for her to work on the sight words: “The, I, See”.  I showed her the sight word "see" and after reading the book, I had her go back and circle the word "see" on every page.

(I will be putting these mini books in my TPT store this weekend—they need a few tweaks.)

   Anyway, as you can see, we had lots of learning fun going on this week as we joined in on the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp.

  Next week’s theme is a Gardening Theme. The little munchkin and I have exhausted this theme already! So I probably won’t do too much with this theme in the coming week. PLUS my aunt, uncle and cousins will be arriving here on Sunday, with my mom to follow on Wednesday, so I know I will be too busy to squeeze in more than I already have planned for my little munchkin!

Show Me Some Blog Lovin' !

    Ok so I better get on this quick!! 
  July 1st is doomsday for Google Reader!
   I would hate to lose all my wonderful readers, so make sure you follow me on the new takeover: Blog Lovin'.

Follow Teaching Munchkins blog with Bloglovin

  And thanks for the LOVE!

Letter Ii is for Ice Cream!

   As we continue on with our yummy snack unit, the little munchkin learned about the letter Ii. She practiced writing it on her dry erase board (like 6 dozen times) and then practiced writing some Ii words, after we read 2 different books about the Letter Ii..

   Annie over at The Moffat Girls makes some super awesome packets! And I just had to purchase this super cute and fun Ice Cream Beginning Sound Scoops packet!

   Since I am slowly introducing letters and sounds to my little one, to use the sheets as she created them would have been a bit overwhelming for her. So I cut out the letters/sounds that we have already learned. 

And then she worked on it and put it all on one piece of 12x12 paper.

 I am sure she probably could have done a lot more, but I didn’t want to push it.

   Also, as I promised this past weekend… I finally put the finishing touches on her little reading nook in her bedroom!  And here are the pics!

   We LOVE Hello Kitty, so of course, the reading nook was the perfect place to display our obsession!!

   As we head into mid-week, I have lots piling on my plate! My aunt, uncle and cousin from Texas AND my mom are all coming to visit for the 4^th of July!! They should be here by the 1^st. I am so excited! I miss my mom so much and I know that my siblings back at home are always too busy (working)for her, so I am glad she will be here with us for a few days!  It is going to be lots of fun! 

    We should be guest free by the 10^th of July, at which at that point we have to start getting ready for our trip to Disney World!!!!   YAY!! We are all very excited, as we haven’t really had a big vacation since we moved from Chicago to Buffalo!  J

   Lots of fun summer excitement is coming up!

Sweet Sight Word Reading!

   The little munchkin and I have been having a SWEET time with our latest snack unit!

   Since the little one is obsessed with books and in my mind, she is showing some signs of being somewhat ready to read, so I decided to give Sight Words a shot.  First I made VERY simple sight word sentences, using the sight word “the” and had her practice reading each sentence and finding the matching picture.

   I also recently purchased the Read To Read, Level 1 Unit 1 from Annie over at  The Moffat Girls.  It is a great packet that I know I am going to get alot of use out of this summer!

   I pulled out the sheet with “the” on it and she painted it with watercolors.

   Then I decided to create something new and different for my TPT store. So I created fun mini books using the sight words “the” and “a”.  I wanted to create 2 different kinds of sets; one focused on reading the sight word and the other focused on spelling the sight word.

   This is one of my first two attempts to create some kind of mini book and I am pretty satisfied with  the way it came out! Maybe in the future I can go a step further and create some kind of bundle set. Who knows?

   Anyhow, here she is reading the mini book and then working on the Sight Word Cut & Paste mini book.

    They seemed to be a hit with her and she was very excited to “read” the books to daddy when he got home from work!

    Stop by my TPT store today or click on the pictures below to have some SWEET fun learning with these Sight Word Mini Books!

  

    Tomorrow I will share the learning fun that the little munchkin and I began today as we talked about the YUMMY snack that starts with the Letter Ii... Ice Cream!
   And later this week I will also be taking part in the Virtual Book Club Summer Camp (Week #1) as we learn about Insects!

Sweet on Math!

I promised some fun,  SWEET stuff, so here we go!

   It is SUMMER and we want to SNACK on SWEETS all day long!!  Well, we do…don’t you?

   The little one practiced counting and writing numbers with these SWEET Math activities.

   First I looked through her play food and put a bunch of different foods in a basket and asked her to sort them into 2 categories: Snack & Not a Snack...this was much too easy for her as she has become a big snacker!

   Then she made a Sweet Candy Machine and glued on as many different sweets onto a circle shape that she cut out. 

   She added the base of the machine and used a sheet I created to count out how many of each sweet candy she had in her machine. And she did a great jo in attempting to write the numbers.

    Here it is: Naomi’s Sweet Candy Machine!

    And then she practiced counting and matching number to set with these sweet math printables that I created. 

   She isn’t too thrilled with the Count & Clip concept, even though it is a great fine motor skill. She prefers to color in the circles… whatever works, right?

Click on the picture to get this in my TPT store!

   Well, I need to get back to working on the little munchkin’s reading nook that I am creating in her bedroom. There are so many great ideas out there (again, thanks to Pinterest) for little reading nooks, I needed to make one for her! Today I found a very cute silver ottoman/storage thingee at a garage sale for $5 that is perfect for her reading nook!

   I will post pics tomorrow after it is all done… It is gonna look super cute!