Color Puzzles

The girls love to paint. They enjoy creating a picture with paint, but if you give them an old fashioned worksheet (cringe) to paint, they get so very excited. To accommodate their love for worksheets and my teacher need for it to be a little more interactive, I made Paint a Puzzle: Color edition. It's simple and really it's still an old fashioned worksheet (cringe), but they can at least do a puzzle afterwards with their art work. That makes me feel a little bit better and hopefully we will learn some colors and color words with them as well! Score! 

I made the pictures to match up with the songs made by Ashley over at The Lovely Commotion {find them here}. We love anything put to a catchy tune. And Marin is definitely learning how to spell color words with these songs!

If you are interested in the Paint a Puzzle:Colors, you can find them {here}.

Beach

We did some beach-y activities to get ready for our trip to the beach. (We just returned...it was a fabulous trip!) 

She put together beach popsicle puzzles.
Marin loves puzzles. 

Our "work baskets"... popsicle puzzles, fish I spy cards, fish measurement, and color  ocean animal match. 

We love castles around here. So I printed out some sand castle pictures.
We talked about them and then built a few with play doh and then later on the beach with sand. Marin loved these cards.
 

Hollis doing her color sort. She was/is HILARIOUS with this. Every once and a while she would do correctly. But most of the time, she would get a real stinker look on her face and put it on the wrong one just to see what I would do. If I corrected her, she would yell very strongly "NO!" and move it back to the wrong spot. Uh, yeah, this one beats to her own drum. 

Measuring with gems.

We used pieces from our  puzzles to put land animals on the land and ocean animals in the water.  The "land" was a little too colorful and Marin really just wanted to match animals to a color. Hey, that'll work. 

We played with seashells. 

Then...

painted seashells...

Letters Uu, Vv, and Ww

So, we are barely and I mean BARELY making it through the alphabet. Honestly, we may do a cute little xylophone craft for Xx but then forget Yy and Zz. Who uses those letters anyways? :o) But here is Uu, Vv, and Ww.... 

Letter Uu...umbrella!
She cut the cupcake holders in half and glued them on her paper.
She loves the glueing part. 

We added the handles and then she painted raindrops with one of her lego blocks.

For letter Vv, she made a vase with "powers" flowers. The girl loves flowers! 

And for the letter Ww, we have been "playing in the wader"! Seriously, it's hot here and we are LOVING going to the pool! We got to go to Schilterbahn (sp?) Water Park this week and the girls had their first swim lesson today. Letter Ww is probably their favorite letter. :o)

And other fun stuff Marin is really enjoying these days are.....

Her car parking lot.
I made this a long time ago but she is just now showing interest in it.
She will park the cars by color and then sometimes I will call out a color and she parks the car in that spot.
Matching the colors is her favorite though. 

And number block cards.
This one she loves way more than I thought she would. Hollis even "plays" too.
She picks a number card and then stacks that number of blocks. 

Letter Ll

Ll week got cut a little short because we went out of town then we all got sick. So we didn't finish everything but here is what we did do for the Letter L. 

She traced the letter L in play doh with straws.
She really liked this one a lot. 

Sharing a straw with little sister so that she can....

eat the play doh out of the bottom of it. :o) 

Hollis was so happy to be at the table with Marin. 

Marin really likes "worksheet" type stuff these days. She here she is doing a little prewriting tracing. Trace the line from the llama to the L. 

This picture makes me laugh. This is her "Mom, I want to eat play doh, not play with these magnets" face.
Don't worry she got to eat some play doh.  

Making a LION.
Roar! 

Coloring in the eyes....

Showing Dad her finished lion.

ROAR! 

Ladybug Math.
We used M&Ms for the ladybug spots. :o)
She, of course, was a fan of this activity. 

Lamb counting.
She practiced cuting the lambs from the strips of paper then she glued them on the number chart. 

More ladybugs (and circles).
She traced the circles then put a ladybug sticker in the center of each circle.

Very proud of her work. 

Llama shapes.
She "traced" the shapes. :o) 

Hollis got a little game....put the paintbrushes in the container hole. She played with this for a few minutes putting them in and out. Then she just threw each of them, one by one, over her shoulder and laughed and laughed. So proud of herself. Wish I had got it in on video. Pretty cute. 

Letter Kk (and a little baby play....)

 After some holiday fun, we started Letter of the Week again with the letter Kk! Marin turned 2 on December 27 and its so strange how big she seems now when we do these little activities. It's like she grew up over night. Yikes. But....Letter Kk is for kisses, keys, kites, kitchen science and kangaroos!

We read "Counting Kisses", traced the letter K with our finger and read (and maybe acted out) the little Kiss poem. :o) 

This was our Kisses game board.
We rolled the die and then added pompoms on the kisses for each number we rolled.

Kk is for keys.
She traced the dotted line from one set of keys to the other.

She did it a few times.
I love the puckered lips. 

Then in true toddler fashion, she scribbled all over the page. :o) 

Do a Dot Paint pens with the letter K....

This isn't K stuff but we have been talking about colors a lot. Mostly in normal conversations,  books,  games, etc.
But this is the color parking lot. She will park her car on the color I call out.
So far she really knows orange, purple, and sometimes blue, green, and yellow. :o) 

K is for Kite. She got to tear and cut some colorful tissue paper and then glue it on her kite. 

This was probably my most favorite activity. Kitchen Science!
She dropped colored vinegar into a pan of baking soda. It fizzled up and was so very neat!
She had a hard time with the dropper though. It was good fine motor skill practice though.

Hollis had her own sensory activity going on during our experiment. :o)

She eventually mixed all the colors together :o) and we put them in a squirt bottle.
 Much easier for her to use. She had so much fun! 

 Scientist Hollis came over for a closer look. 

Marin really likes for us to write her name and shapes on her magna doodle.
She will "say" each letter of her name and point. It is really adorable.
But the other day I did the whole shebang on some paper and then I colored in one of the circles and then let her color in the other one.
This is what she did! What!?!? I think that is pretty darn good for a new little 2 year old. 

And Hollis is definitely much more aware of what is going on and makes it known quite often that she wants to participate. :o) So, we did a little game just for her!
She was so funny. She knew this was for her and she was PROUD.
The game....drop the pegs down the paper towel roll. :o) 

She was much more interested in the tape on the roll at first.
But then she got the hang of it and had a lot of fun.
The clang as the peg hit the floor was a bit hit as well!