Some of March....

This may be the most random post ever. Beware...no clear thoughts or organization to any of these activities. Sorry. 

There have been several "fly by the seat of your pants" kind of days in our school lately. 

 First, Hollis is doing so great in school! She is usually the first one to ask for it or the first one to the school room when I call for them. It is so fun to watch. But here are two of her little math activities: Pattern Puzzles (Melissa and Doug) and a Shape Clothespin Matching Game. She has mastered them both which boosts this girls confidence so much! 

Both girls love to CUT! So here Marin is doing a cut and glue puzzle. She cut out the pieces, matched the numbers, glued them in place and revealed a picture. An apple. She loved the mystery puzzle. Hollis cut her numbers 1-5 and glued them in order. 

I'm trying to get my alphabet activities organized (which is almost impossible). But I have had these ABC play dough mats for a long time but they showed no interest in them. I pulled them out this past week and they were a hit. They both did a great job filling in their letters! 

While they played, it gave me a chance to assess them a little or it let me play too.
But I just stamped a few letters and numbers into my playdough and asked them to point to certain ones. It gave me a quick idea of what letters and number they know, need to work on, difference between a letter or a number, etc. Quick and easy and NO INK involved. ;o)

 Again....I'm getting my ABC work organized. They found my stash and did some pre-writing practice. 

I'm working on our spring sensory bin right now.
I am pretty excited about it and can't wait to get it all finished! 

 This week we are talking about the Letter Pp. We have really taken a break from letter of  the week curriculum this year. After 2 years, they were done with it. But I'm picking it back up for Hollis. They both seem to be happy with their break from it and happy to start it again. So Pp for St. Patrick's Day. 

Pot of gold counting!
The gold coins were leftover from Hollis' pirate party. But they read the number on the pot and place that amount of coins on it. 

 Marin has become VERY interested in drawing and art lately. So we tried a little directed drawing activity. She loved it and her bunny turned out pretty darn cute! She used pastels for the bunny face, marker for outline, and watercolors for background. 

Well, hello blog.

So I am a weeeee bit behind over here on this blog. Yikes. Although I have not been blogging, we have been doing preschool and it has been so fun. We did move our schoolroom upstairs. Previously, it was in our playroom which was distracting and any play date we had with buddies school stuff got misplaced every single time. So upstairs we went. Our guests have lost their room. We never have guests so it works. But a few pictures of our February....

We have been doing some Reading Lessons from "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons". We go VERY slowly and sometimes I break the lessons up into two parts. But here she is sounding out the words and matching them to the picture. A little heart puzzle....

Hollis mastered her colors and now we have moved on to shapes. We go slow and have been learning and sorting triangles, squares, and circles. 

I have started making some monthly math centers for our preschool. This one is measuring. Here she is measuring the toothbrush with her tooth ruler. In this set, there are Valentine monsters to measure and President Lincoln to measure. We also do Count the Room. It is a favorite. Both are available in my store. 

Sorting the mail with those shapes!!! 

Learning about different presidents from our flashcards found in the Dollar Spot at Target. This surprisingly held their attention for a long time?!?!

Roll and Race.....another monthly math center I have started creating. They love it. Roll the cube, graph the picture rolled, and see which picture wins. It is also found in my store. 

A little Valentine Craft: Love Bugs.
They are so not into crafts anymore. Tear. Tear. But they did want to do this one. 

Reviewing her alphabet. Pointy fingers always help. This chart came from the Dollar Tree and had been torn in a few places. I also didn't like some of the pictures they paired with each letter (giraffe for Gg). So I made a new set. It is a freebie in my store. I will try and post a picture of it in the schoolroom! 

Shape Mazes!
This was hard for her but she loves anything to do with writing, drawing, and pens/markers.
She ended up just finding the shapes without actually doing the mazes. Marin loved the mazes as well!! 

Leaf Frog Letter Factory!
We love this little letters. Hollis just uses whatever letters she wants and plugs them in and listens to the songs. 

 Name Writing practice....Marin hates writing and Hollis loves it. Of course. But we practice writing our names every day. 

I made some little sight word books for Marin to practice reading the sight words she is learning. They aren't up in my store yet but hope to finish them soon. 

Play Doh!!! They were making letter cookies. 

 Our little artist!! 

A little peek at the new alphabet chart. 

Scrolling through Pinterest. Ha!
Not school related...but funny.  

Spot It! is a part of my Rhyme Time pack. But she looks at the big picture and then decides with of the smaller pictures rhymes. She put a heart marker on the correct rhyme. 

Hollis used the number charts from 1+1+1 and counted hearts. 

Her first dot to dot. She made a groundhog and was pretty proud of it! 

 

 We read a groundhog's day book and then make a cute little puppet. This puppet still makes appearances in our puppet shows. 

Are you ready for some football?

In honor of football season beginning, we did some early counting fun with our Football Guys. I found these at a thrift store for nearly nothing. Even though I have girls, I figured they may have some fun with them. And they do.

 

I first game was "Touchdown". Simple, simple. We each had one football guy standing at our end of the field. We took turns rolling the die, counting the dots, then moving our player down the field. Whoever reached the other side first, scored a Touchdown and won. Easy, easy but lots of counting practice.

Our second game was a football counting game. First she lined up her footballs in order from #1-5.

Then she counted out her football men to correspond with each number on the footballs.

Again, very, very simple but great counting practice.

Speaking of football, we met up with Daddy-O for lunch and he and Marin had this conversation.

Marin: Daddy, we played a football game in school today.
Daddy: You did. Do you like football?
Marin: No.
            I like Peppa Pig.

From Head to Toe

From Head to Toe by Eric Carle is a big favorite around our house. Sometimes we read it no less than five times in one sitting and act out every single page, every single time. So I decided to make a few little games to go with this family favorite. 

 Here is our first day of From Head to Toe activities. First we scanned our QR Code Listening Center and listened to the story. This particular reading is a SONG (that's why I didn't read it). The video plays each page of the book but the reading they have made into an adorable song with funny voices for each animal. The girls loved it. 

They raised their shoulders like a buffalo.....

Arched their back like a cat.....

Bend their knees like a camel....

LOVED it. As usual. 

Then we played Roll and Move. A cute, little dice game. Marin rolled the dice and counted the dots. Then she drew an animal card. She had to act out the movement the number of times rolled. For example....

She rolled two. (She counts the dots on the big dice to practice one to one correspondence. I found the die at the Dollar Tree a long time ago but I still see them there some times.)

Then she drew a card.....WIGGLE YOUR HIPS LIKE A CROCODILE! 

So she wiggled her hips two times. And let me tell you, it was some really cute wiggling. 

Today we will do Animal Movement patterns. They will follow the pattern already made on the cards then they will have an opportunity to make their own pattern with a pattern board and animal pieces. Can't wait! 

If you are interested in these games, you can find them {here}.

Math About Me

This week we have been completing our little Math About Me book. By far, this has been the girls favorite thing to do in school this week. Here is a little sneak peek of their hard work. 

 

 Here is the cover of their books. They will get to paint it at the end but Hollis got started with markers. 

 First page was our name! They used stickers to spell out their names and then counted the number of letters in it.

Next, BIRTHDAYS!!! They mixed red and white paint to make pink "icing" for their cupcake. We added some sprinkles and they counted out the number of candles for their cake.

 Mixing the paint was Marin's favorite part. She mixed for a good 15 minutes. We are still working on learning their birthdays.

 There is a cupcake under all that "icing'. Actually, this is how they prefer their real cakes as well.

The next page was the numbers that show their weight and height. I didn't get any good pictures of this one. But they really enjoyed this page. Standing on the scale is always fun for them and using the measuring tape "tickled" so it was a hit. But once we got their measurement, we used yarn to show how tall they were and they glued the yarn onto their page.

FYI, they weigh the exact same (EXACTLY) and are the same height. :o) No, (for the 12th time today) they are not twins. 13 months apart.

 

The family page was next. They named and counted how many members they have in their family. 

Then they drew a picture of each of us. I was pretty impressed with both of their little drawings.

 We apparently turned African American for this page. Love, love it.

Hollis just drew our "faces".......kinda.

We have one more page left to do and they will be completed. You can grab this pack in my shop by clicking {HERE}.