More fun with Letter Mm!

     So, the Back to School countdown for my kids has begun!
     The school clothes have been bought (just need shoes) and almost everything is crossed off the School Supply lists!
     Even with all the Back to School craze, the little munchkin and I still find time for our learning fun with the letter Mm.

     We worked on the letter Mm in different ways. She built M & M shapes using printables from the Letter of the Week curriculum created by Confessions of a Homeschooler, and then she quickly did a graphing activity--- so she could eat the M & Ms!!

      

             

     She gave her little fingers some work as she cut small pieces of tape to secure her Mm stencil onto a paper. To add variety to her painting tools, here she clipped cotton balls onto a clothespin and used it to paint.

           

    And more fine motor work came with cutting and gluing to make a Monkey!

      

      

     Earlier last week, we explored our new Alphabet Soup Cans and drew pictures of the items. Mid week, I created some labels and pulled out letter tiles and she worked on spelling each "M" item on the tray.                                  

                

    And here are a few pics of her Reading Corner. We had a monkey theme going on all week!

         

    We had so much fun creating these Five Little Monkey Props. I made the bed simply by covering a tissue box with felt and added a little blanket... and rolled up the extra felt to make a pillow! 

               

     Lots of letter Mm fun...some Montessori and some not! 

     But all fun and educational either way! Just the way I like it!!

Happy 4th of July...Some Red, White & Blue Fun !

Happy Birthday America!

And a HUGE thanks to all the men and women who have served in the Armed Forces…which includes my husband (USMC),

and all uncles and cousins who have served!

THANK YOU!

    Yesterday, I squeezed in a few Red, White & Blue activities!

 We enjoyed the spray bottle painting last week so this time we decided to use the colors Red & Blue. I love the way the water made the paint drip down, cuz when it was all done, she added some stars and it looked like the American Flag (as seen in the eyes of a 3 year old!)

    Then I made a quick graphing activity for the 4^th. The little munchkin wanted to munch on some star marshmallows I found at walmart, and I thought- let’s graph them and then eat them!  =) I know, I know….always trying to make things into a teaching activity! What can I say??

Click here for your copy of a Star Spangled Graph that you can use! 

(It can be also used with star stickers or any other star things you can find!)

    We also enjoyed a yummy Red, White & Blue snack!

(Strawberry Jello, Blueberry Jello, Whip Cream and blueberries)  

YUMMMY!

    And last night we enjoyed a Bisons baseball game, here in Buffalo. After a small rain delay, Bisons beat the Bulls and it was time for the Concert by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, followed by fireworks!

    Here is the little munchkin having fun and getting ready for the big show with her glow sticks! 

And here she is with big brother, all ready for the Firework show to begin! 

 Her face while watching the Firework Show...priceless!

It was a wonderful night!

Now time to get ready for a fun 4^th of July BBQ at a friend’s place! 

Cc is for Cupcakes !

Well the work week has begun again- after an awesome weekend with my little munchkin!

   She was fascinated with caterpillars a few weekends ago and then we spent last weekend just hanging out for Mother’s Day.  

This past weekend we were back to our learning fun!

 We picked up where we left off, with the letter Cc. We reviewed the letter and she practiced tracing the letter Cc (in her princess dress up clothes), using an Alphabet Flip Chart that I don’t utilize in my classroom.

   I wanted to move away from caterpillars---simply because I was getting a little tired of them, so I decided to focus on my little munchkin’s sweet spot= CUPCAKES!

 I knew we were going to be in for some FUN learning!  =)

   I really enjoy the books by Laura Numeroff and so we began our Cupcake Fun by reading the book, “If You Give A Cat A Cupcake”. I found some extension activities for the book that were appropriate for her to do at Totally Tots blog and I also used printables from Spell Out Loud.

She “fed” the cat different colored cupcakes. I gave her a random number and color and I encouraged her to count each cupcake aloud as she placed them in the can.                                                            (BTW, as you can probably see, the cat was made from a recycled can= I must warn that if you do this activity, please make sure to be careful with the inside of the can. My poor little munchkin got a pretty nasty cut as she tried to play with it after our Counting activity.)

  A lightbulb went off in my head as I saw how well she was sorting the cupcake pieces by color and I quickly made a magnetic graph.  I grabbed a cookie sheet, some green strips of paper and some magnetic strips. I threw some strips on a few cupcakes, made a simple graph and asked her to put the cupcakes where they belonged on the graph. 

  And then when she finished it (without any help from me), I asked her to count each column and did some teaching on the concept of More or Less.  

( I did good thinking on my toes at 8:00 in the morning- on a Saturday, huh??) 

   
   Then I changed the pace a little bit, cuz it was 9 in the morning and I had been up since 6:45…. I pulled out her baking stuff, her cupcake play set by Melissa & Doug, and some cupcake shaped eggs leftover from Easter. She had a blast, making, decorating and even counting cupcakes.

    And when she was done with her baking & decorating, we had a little Cupcake & Coffee party… she must have served me at least 7 cups of coffee within 20 minutes…she must have seen how tired momma was!

   

  On Sunday, I kept with the Letter Cc and Cupcake theme (cuz we both love it so much) and so I put out just a few activities for her to work on her fine motor skills.

 I borrowed an idea I found here at The mOffat Girls Blog to allow my little munchkin to practice her cutting skills. I placed some cupcake stickers on a strip of paper and drew black lines where I asked her to cut. The scissors I used are some I purchased awhile back and I am wondering if she is ready to move up to bigger scissors. Seeing as we haven’t been doing too much with scissors lately, she did a really good job!

    She practiced writing the Letter Cc from Spell Out Loud and well, as you can see, we need to do a little more practice on coloring! =)

    I found some cupcake stickers left over from Valentine’s Day and created  a simple graph. Working with the stickers allowed her to practice those fine motor skills by trying to peel the stickers off the sheet. She did pretty darn good on the whole graphing part. I gave her a huge Smiley Face on her paper when she was done-which she loves!

  And what’s a Cupcake theme without a fun, yummy art project?

I made some Puffy Paint, using some combination of shaving cream and glue… I can’t tell you the exact combo because she was so eager to do the activity, I had to do it all so quick! But if you ever make it, a few swirls of glue should do the trick. I also let her choose which color she wanted her cupcake to be… and BAD idea on my part to use food coloring!! 

What was I thinking? I sure don’t have a clue…especially since I had paint sitting in her art supply crate!

    Anyhow, she swirled the shaving cream and glue together and then I added the food coloring. She painted a cupcake top shape, while I cut out a cupcake liner shape from a cupcake sheet from my scrapbooking stash.

 After putting the two pieces together, she added the main ingredient- SPRINKLES!

     She wanted to make a small blue one right after her pink one, so we did it all over again.

Now, don’t those look delicious enough to take a bite out of?!

    We ran out of fun learning time because we had to get out of the house and enjoy the weather… BUT I have a few more Cupcake activities in mind that I know she will love!

(The ideas involve doing some baking, creating a new sensory bin and some Alphabet Puzzles created by me… Can we say Freebie ??)

    And here is my little Cupcake Princess. in her Cupcake nightgown!

   Thanks for taking a peek into my little munchkin’s world of Learning Fun!

 Stay tuned….. =)

Here Come The Dinosaurs!

Well, now that the spring fever madness is over, I can relax a bit and try to spend some time sprucing up this blog… Yay for Spring Break!

Spring fever was at an all-time high this week! The munchkins were super talkative and just weren’t into really listening very well this past week. I tried my best not to mention spring break too much around them but I think they sensed both the exhaustion and excitement about spring break from me and my aides.

I had my Dinosaur week all planned out but I left room for flexibility because the week before spring break is never easy! Since it was a short week I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do all the dinosaur activities that I had in mind and I admit, I was a bit bummed out about that, but I knew a Dinosaur theme unit would hold their attention long enough to get through the 4 day week!

On Monday we began the week by talking about the letter of the week. We discussed things that begin with the letter Dd, which then led into Dinosaurs and they managed to have a very extensive discussion about dinosaurs and I could see their excitement and I knew they were hooked.

So, I took their enthusiasm and ran with it.

In this post, I will highlight just a few of my dinosaur activities that were a huge hit with my munchkins!

Dinosaur Egg Surprises

I started the unit by making homemade dinosaur eggs. I had done this once before but I only made five the last time… My son and I made 20 little dinosaur eggs and placed tiny dinosaurs toys that I had bought at the Dollar Tree. The recipe is as follows: (I had to double it to make 20 little eggs)

• 1 cup of flour
• ½ cup of salt
• ¼ cup of sand (I used craft sand purchased from Michaels)
• 1 cup of coffee grinds (or dirt)
• ¾ cup of water  

Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Slowly add water and knead with your hands until it has dough like consistency. Take toy (or other item that you wish to put inside the egg) and mold the mixture around it to form an egg shape. 

These can be air dried for a day or two OR you can place them in the oven, (which I did b/c of time constraints). Bake at 150 for about 20 minutes.

                                                        When I brought them in the next morning, the munchkins were very curious about what they were! Some of the guesses I received were that it was a big cookie, a rock, and an egg made from dirt.

The excitement of exploring the egg (touching and some even smelled it!) and using tools to open it up was amazing and I was thrilled that I was able to get some of their facial expressions as they were” in the moment” and as they  were investigating their egg.

The looks on their little faces as they "discovered" what was inside:

ABSOLUTELY  PRICELESS! 

                      

(*I try my best to not photograph the munchkins directly, but for this one time, I had to do so, in order to capture the true excitement in their faces!)

 Paleontologist Play

In our sand table, they had a blast pretending to be paleontologists and used brushes and sand sifters to discover and find the toy dinosaur skeletons that were buried beneath the sand. 

Dino Nest

I turned our water table into a Dino Nest by using paper like hay (I am not sure what it really was, I just found it in the art closet and used it!) and I placed eggs, filled with dinosaur counters, inside the nest.

Math: Spin & Graph Dinosaurs

We worked on our counting and graphing skills by playing a Dinosaur Spin & Graph game, compliments of 2teachingmommies.com

Many of them really enjoyed this and were excited to try to be the first one to reach the number 10. They even asked to play it again the next day, so I am sure I will be making other Spin & Graph types of games for future math units!

                                                

       Math: Dinosaur Patterns

  We also did a patterning activity with dinosaur cutouts that I was very excited to make with my new teacher toy – Cricut Expression 2. 
   As many of them can continue a simple AB pattern, I decided to challenge them a little. Our focus for the patterns was on the shape of the dinosaur cutout (Spikes vs. No Spikes) rather than the just the color and type of dinosaur cutout.

Egg Relay Races

   And to help alleviate the madness caused by Spring Fever, I decided to get the munchkins outside for some fresh air and we had an Egg Relay Race. 

It was an awesome way to promote teamwork and to get outside to release that energy! 

They LOVED it!

 

Dinosaur Books

I have a very extensive library of Dinosaur books. (These are all available on Amazon.)  Some of this week’s favorite books were:

·         Patrick’s Dinosaurs

·         What Happened to Patrick’s Dinosaurs?

·         What Did Dinosaurs Eat? And Other Things You Want to Know About Dinosaurs

·         Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct

·         Danny and the Dinosaur

·         The Magic School Bus: In the Time of the Dinosaurs

·         Oh Say Can You Say Di-no-saur? All About Dinosaurs

 One more thing: 
    When I asked the munchkins “What do you think happened to the dinosaurs?”, one girl answered: “Maybe an asteroid came and only hit one part of the Earth and the dinosaurs who lived there died but the other ones who live far away did not die and they are still alive somewhere!” 

How do you like THAT theory??!!