It's Finally Fall & The Letter L

This week we have been working on the letter L. Kaitlyn has been using her letter flash cards and puzzles to practice all of the letters we have learned so far. we start each day out with a review.

Letter Play

Today Kaitlyn used her pom poms to trace the letter L, she also used her homemade fundough to make her letters. We practiced her handwriting and trying to stay on the line while tracing her L's.

Another fun way to review letters is by using a paint tracing bag....Fill a ziploc bag with some paint, close it tightly and get all of the air out while sealing it closed. Have your little one use a q-tip to trace the letters onto the bag, the letters disappear quickly and are a great way to practice using some different materials.

Cooking up some patterns in the kitchen

We had fun cooking up some patterns in the kitchen this week. We made some sugar cookies and separated the dough into three bowls. kaitlyn and I read a book about Fall trees so I asked her what colors we see in fall she chose, green, red and yellow so we used some food coloring to dye the dough. Kaitlyn rolled it out and flattened it with her hands. Using some small leaf cookie cutters she cut out three different types of leaves one type for each color.

When the cookies were all done we practiced making patterns using the three colors of leaves....I must say Kaitlyn had fun with this activity....only hazard is the leaves started disappearing mid activity :)

Colorful Circles & Fall Suncatchers

All week we have talked about colors. We have learned about fall leaves and how they change colors. This activity is a lot of fun and illustrates how mixing two colors can make different colors. First you take a large piece of wax paper, then you squirt some hand sanitizer onto it. Then take some food coloring, we used red and yellow, add a few drops of each. Then fold the wax paper over covering the colors. Kaitlyn mixed the colors by practicing her circles. She drew large and small circles with her finger mixing the colors as she went. Tomorrow we will be using this to make some Fall sun catchers.....so check back to see pictures! we set it out flat to dry over night.

Our L Page 

We made our L page for our ABC Book. Kaitlyn made a leaf rubbing using several leaves we found outside. I found it helpful to use double sided tape to stick these onto the table so they wouldn't shift while she was doing her crayon rubbing. I wrote the letter L using a sharpie marker and had Kaitlyn glue her smaller leaves onto the L.

All week we have been getting ready for fall we have enjoyed nature walks and many books about the changing of the seasons. Today we worked on some colorful and very messy art projects to get the house all ready for fall!

Get three large bowl and fill with 1/4 cup of paint we used red, brown and orange. I also mixed some bronze paint in with the brown to give it some shimmer. Then I added some water to dillute the paint. We took our containers outside and Kaitlyn took coffee filters and dipped them into the paint bowls, after she dipped them she wrung them out and then we set them out on the deck to dry. Setting them on wax paper works best for easy removal after drying.

Mommy's naptime craft project

While the kiddos were napping I put my crafting skills to work, I heated up my hot glue gun and got busy!
Step 1: Take a cardboard circle ( I use cake rounds) and cut out the center. Then take the painted coffee filters and bunch them up at the middle. Hot glue them onto the cardboard circle.
Step 2: Go around the whole circle in teh same fashion.
Step 3: Add som ribbon, loop it through the wreath and hot glue together, hang in front of a miror for a dramatic fall look!

I had some left over coffee filters so I added them onto some twigs we collected on our nature walk. They made for great table decorations in the dining room! The house is all decorated, the cinnamon candle is burning in the kitchen, my favorite sweater is hanging in the closet.....now if the cooler temperatures could just arrive!

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the letter C...Continued

Today I was reminded of one of the finer aspects of teaching from home. Callen had been up all night cutting his first tooth (which I was so excited to finally start to see it peek through) so when Kaitlyn walked into my room this morning and said, " Mommy I want to snuggle I don't feel good" I was so glad that my answer could be yes...we had no place we had to be and so she climbed into my bed and we snuggled all morning :) It made me one happy mama! So school started a little late for us today more like lunch time. Today we finished up our lesson on the letter C. We reviewed the letters we have learned previously (A, K and C) and practiced writing on her dry erase board. She is getting much better at tracing the letters.

We started today off with our first activity a Hungry caterpillar necklace. This activity really challenged her fine motor skills and introduced patterning. It also helped her to retell the story of the very hungry Caterpillar which she did so very proudly tonight at bedtime.

First let's start with the prep work. This past weekend we made dyed pasta noodles these are great for counting, sorting and making pattern necklaces. First you get some pasta noodles and shape size will do, then you put them in a ziploc bag with a splash of rubbing alcohol, add a few drops of food coloring and close the bag. Have your little one swirl the coloring and the noodles around till they are all coated. Set them on wax paper to dry over night. The next day they will be ready for patterns :)

 The Very Hungry Caterpillar Story Necklace

So that brings us to this afternoon.....Kaitlyn and I reread the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, she helped me with the counting, we reviewed the days of the week. And we talked about the colors we saw in the story. When we were all done I gave her the Caterpillar coloring page, found in our Printables section I showed her how to stay in the lines and focus on coloring. At one point I was talking to her and she said.."Shh! mommy I am trying to focus on my colors!" Gotta love her :) So she matched each color up to the color in the book before she started coloring on her paper. When she was all done I cut them all out while she played with her color puzzle, and other color games we have been using this week. I also put a small hole punch in each little piece of food and two on the caterpillar. Next we tied her string to the end of a small bucket so her pieces wouldn't fall off. We added one piece of pasta and then 1 piece of food from the story ( we worked backwords starting with the slice of watermelon and eventually ending at the apple) We followed a pattern when adding the noodles, going through each color. the food pieces were to delicate for her to put on so I did those and she did most of the pasta....she worked hard using her fine motor skills to thread each piece onto her pasta, there were quite a few so I helped in between so she wouldn't get burned out. When we finally added all of the food we put the caterpillar on last. Now we were all done with her Very Hungry Caterpillar Story necklace! She could now use the necklace to retell the entire story of The Hungry Caterpillar!

Patternpillars

So our next activity we practiced our pattern making, first with the colored noodles and then with some red and green pom poms, we talked about ABAB patterns and ABBABB patterns. Kaitlyn quickly got the hang of it and was rocking right along. After we were done we use the pom poms to make her very own hungry caterpillar she could keep in her bug collecting jar (mason jar). I much rather prefer the pom pom critters to the live ones :)

Color Games

Kaitlyn put together this puzzle all week naming the colors and practicing her spatial awareness by completing it....It's a lot harder than it looks. I also too some crayon cutouts I had and made a little game you can find items like this at Trend or your local teacher store. I spread out several colors of crayons and I would call out a color and she would have to put it in the crayon box. I introduced the concept of shades ( light, dark and combined colors like red-orange etc.)

The C Page

This is our C page for our ABC book we started it on Monday and just finished it today. I cut out the circles from her salt painting and then drew a letter C onto her tissue paper circles. She aligned the circles onto it and then we added the finishing touches of the eyes and the antennae ( pipe cleaners)

Here is our finished unit on the letter C

 

 

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the letter C

This morning we started with the letter C while we ate our breakfast. We talked about the letter C and Kaitlyn named some words that had the c sound ( caterpillar, ice cream * close enough, cupcake) Then we got out some of our homemade fundough that we made the night before. This is my favorite recipes because it is super easy and doesn't involve cooking....and everyone who knows me knows I am not much of a domestic goddess in the kitchen...but I must say I have improved a bit over the past year. At least I am no longer trying to dice onions with an egg slicer...yes that actually happened. One of my many cooking endeavors that went terribly wrong. Anyway...here is the recipe:

1 Cup Flour

1/2 cup Salt

1/2 Cup Water

1 pkg of kool-aid ( for color and smell)

Mix all ingredients in a  bowl and mix with hands into one large dough ball. Put in an air tight container for the next day. I've found if you make it the night before it is far less sticky.

We used the fun dough to make the letter C on our Letter C Mat (Get your very own mat in the printables section on my blog)

I slid it into a plastic page protector to keep the surface fundough friendly, and so I can reuse the letter mat throughout the week.

I also had Kaitlyn trace the letter with her finger as well as use her pom pom's to outline the letter.

After some letter hunting ( playing I spy the letter C) we read the book

The Very Hungry Caterpillar By: Eric Carle

She helped me name the colors and count the fruit as we read the story.

When we finished we started our Art project for our ABC book

First I had precut several circles out of tissue paper in all colors. Then I had Kaitlyn glue them on to her 10X10 paper, naming the colors and counting as she went.

Then we started our Finger Salt painting, we will let this dry overnight so the salt crystals set with the paint.

I squeezed green and yellow paint onto Kaitlyn's paper. She took a few pinches of salt and Kosher salt onto her paper. Then she spread the paint around with her hands. After she was done with the green one we did a red one in the same way.

We will save both of these till Wednesday and finish our Letter C page for our ABC book then.

Next we read the Book One By:  Kathryn Otoshi

Which we got from the Public Library, a great resource for kids this age. Kaitlyn loves picking and choosing her own books and reading them each night. this story is all about colors and numbers. It is a great book for teaching the color names, what a number looks like and basic counting skills.

To reinforce the book we got started on our Colorful Caterpillar Cupcakes!

Kaitlyn helped me make the cupcakes in our Mixer. I had her count out the muffin wrappers and place them in the muffin tin. Perfect review and helps to teach her one to one number correspondence.

After the cupcake wrappers were filled with batter.  I sprinkled a few drops of food coloring into each cupcake (step 3). I had Kaitlyn stir them with a toothpick (Step 4) and then put them into the oven to bake! 

She was so excited when they came out all colorful!

We separated the cupcakes and sorted them into color groups for two cupcake projects.

The first project was our Very Hungry Caterpillar Cupcake

We took all of the green cupcakes and one red one to make our Very Hungry Caterpillar

We didn't ice these because they were so colorful already. We used some crunchy Chinese noodles for his antennae and his legs. We used some round yellow candy sprinkle dots ( Target Cake dept. ) and some raisins for eyes. Kaitlyn was so proud of her Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Our second project was Sorting and icing all of the colorful cupcakes. Kaitlyn counted them and put them into groups, we reviewed all the skills that she learned today with this fun and yummy activity...Thank goodness we have  playdate this afternoon and we will have some help consuming these yummy cupcakes!

Join us Wednesday as we explore patternpillars, finish our Letter C page and make our very own Very Hungry Caterpillar necklace!

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Week 2: The Letter C and The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Next week we start our new letter. Letter "C" We will be reading the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar and doing activities that go along with the story....Next week we will be in the kitchen cooking up some colorful caterpillar cupcakes, creating our letter "C" page for our ABC book and learning all about patternpillars. I have a lot of great activities in store this week so come along as we learn a few more lessons on the little stuff!

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Buzz on over and check out our newest creation!

Check out the newest line of Kids Birthday Invitations: Bumblebee

Custom Favor tags that compliment the invitation...only $7 and you can print them from home. They make great favor tags, stickers for favor bags or cupcake toppers!

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A is for Apple Part 2

Today we started working on our A page for our Alphabet book (this will be an ongoing activity throughout the year) For each letter studied we will do a 10X10 art project representing each letter. Today Kaitlyn used an apple and some paints to make apple prints on her paper. We reviewed the different parts of the apple and she reviewed her colors by naming the red, green and yellow paint as we went along. When we were all done we practiced her cutting skills by adding fringe ( small tiny cuts along the edge) to the red letter A I cut out previously.

Our second project was designed to help Kaitlyn with following steps in a process and multiple directions as well as work on her fine motor skills. I cut a small paper plate in half and used a piece of white construction paper to make a center for the apple Kaitlyn tore red construction paper into small pieces and then used her glue stick to glue them onto her plate. When she was done I connected the two plates by attaching them to the white construction paper (core) and then she used green torn construction paper to make her leaf. We once again talked about the parts of an apple. Naming them and pointing them out. At the end I drew 4 seeds we counted them and then she traced over them trying to keep her crayon marks inside my lines, it was a little harder than it looked :)

We reviewed our counting skills by playing a little apple tree game. I found all supplies for this at my local Hobby Lobby ( love that place) I would give Kaitlyn a number and she would count out that many apples and place them on her trees. We would compare trees and I would ask which one has more, less etc. She loved playing the game and of course asked if she could keep the trees for her dollhouse when we were done...love her :)

Here is our finished unit, she did a lot of projects that were hands on and fun. She loved getting messy with the paint and using all of the art supplies. But the part she enjoyed the most was the books she wanted to read each of them every night before going to bed, she loves to read her books :)

For the next two days we will have shorter sessions of "school" so w will focus on practicing her writing skills by using her blackboard and crayons to write the letter A, we will also play "learning games" Various puzzles that reinforce, alphabet, spatial relationships, shapes and colors. Most of which I picked up in the dollar section at Target...a teacher's favorite place!

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A is for Apple

This morning went fabulous, we are settling into our new school time schedule and Kaitlyn was so eager to start her first day! We started at 9:20 when she woke up with some apple oatmeal to get us ready to start learning. I know everyone has been at school for at least an hour or two by then, but at my school we value our morning sleepy time. It's awesome I'm actually on time :)
We jumped right in to our activities today, It felt like I was right back in my classroom...just with a much smaller audience!
Working with Kaitlyn reminds me of all the things I love about teaching. The creativity, the hands on activities the light bulb moments when they finally get what you have been repeating 700 times.
Two things I took away from today.....
 I miss the actual purity of teaching.  When you taught what your students needed to know, in a way they could understand because they needed it, not just because it was what came next in your teacher manual. In today's classrooms the purity of teaching is hard to find. It's been buried and hidden amongst the endless to do's, the "essential" data driven programs and the suffocating paperwork. But if you look hard teachers still have that glimmer deep inside that still exists. I just wish as a society we could have enough faith in them to allow them to do what they were born to do....teach.

Today's projects also reminded me of one more thing, the definite separation of primary vs intermediate teachers, I can definitely testify having been both . The separation and difference can be summed up in two words paint and glitter. Primary teachers love getting their hands messy and don't mind a little glitter on the floor, Intermediate teachers on the other hand start twitching when they see projects that list paint and glitter as their two main supplies. You can tell by the following activities, and run on sentences that I am DEFINITELY a Primary teacher!
So roll up your sleeves and get a little messy with your little ones....

Here was our First Day!

While Kaitlyn ate her breakfast she went through her alphabet and color books (I found these in teh dollar section at my local Target) using a pointer. I would ask her to point to objects, colors, letters etc. Great warm up activity to get her started. We talked about the letter A and I pointed it out in her books.

After breakfast was over Kaitlyn started her first activity. We made a sticker book with her name on it. I used some left over scrapbook paper cut to 5X7 had hr choose 4 pieces and then hole punched the sides attaching ribbon through each hole to make it like a book. I had her hunt for the letters on her sticker sheet (another Target find) to make her name on the front. I will use this sticker book as positive behavior reinforcement throughout our lessons. Each time she tries really hard or completes as task correctly or other desired behavior I will let her pick a sticker to put in her sticker book. As the holidays come closer we will make new sticker books and I will get different stickers for her to choose from. I have found in the classroom that this is a great motivational tool for young ones :)

When we started learning about the letter A we talked about the sound it made, I had Kaitlyn first use her finger to trace the letter on her blackboard (Walmart) and then use her special red crayon to trace the letter. Since she is a lefty I am trying to let her figure out how she is comfortable writing without too much influence from me. So the tracing really works for her as she is learning the basics of printing.

We read the Book Apples, Apples, Apples. We talked about different types of apples and the four seasons.

After we finished reading our apple book we worked on our 4 seasons project. 

First (Step 1) I put some blue paint on a piece of white construction paper. Kaitlyn used her hands to spread it around the whole paper. (Step 2) After it dried I painted her hand and forearm brown. I placed it onto the blue paper 4 times making 4 trees. (Step 3)For the first tree we added cotton balls for snow (Winter), for the second tree she used her fingerprints in green paint to make spring leaves. we added small balls of pink tissue paper for apple blossoms (Spring) For the third tree she used two colors of green for the summer leaves and the used red thumbprints for the apples. (Summer) For the last tree she used red, orange and yellow paint to add the fall leaves using her fingerprints  (Fall) When she was all done we reviewed the seasons and I wrote them on her paper.

For our cooking activity today we made Apple Croissants....they were fabulous! Kaitlyn and I cut open the apples and looked inside counting the seeds we found and naming the parts of the apple. I sliced them very thin and added them to some butter (2 TBS) and a few sprinkles of cinnamon sugar and pumpkin pie spices in a sauce pan on the stove. I heated them until they were soft. I unrolled the Pillsbury croissants onto a baking sheet added a few of the apples and then rolled them up...Baked till golden and bubbly about 15 min. when we took them out Kaitlyn drizzled some caramel on them....they were oh so yummy!

I hope everyone had a great first day back at school wherever your classroom might be, and I hope that you find these little lessons that we are learning to be helpful.

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