Love is in the Air!

This post is from February. Ummmm, it never got posted. But I am posting now, 6 months late, just so I don't forget what we did for Valentine's Day. 

Yeah, I gotta do better at keeping up this blog.

More Winter Fun

So way back in January we finished up Ww and Ss themed weeks with winter and Snow activities. Here are some pictures of a few things we did...

I just think they look so cute and so big working their "projects" at their little work tables.
(Garage sale finds...and they have been fun, fun for them.)

 We read books about animals in the winter time and Marin colored and cut out animals to put in an Animal Homes in the Winter poster we made.

She is doing such a great job cutting these days. Love the tongue. Helps concentration, you know.

Hollis had animals to color and cut too. :o)

Glueing her animals in the correct home. She was really cute doing this one! So proud of her work.

This was a cute idea I saw on Pinterest and I thought Marin would love it because it involved Gummy Bears. But she didn't care at all. But the idea...roll the die, count the number of bears out, and place them in the "cave" to hibernate. We really talked about the word hibernate but she would always say "the bear is taking a nappy in the cave."

We miss many things about Chicago but winter is NOT one of them. Since we aren't "playing" in all that snow they are getting up there here in Texas, we made some pretend snow for the sand/water table. It was cornstarch and lotion. Weird combo but it did feel really neat to play with. We even put it in the refrigerator so it would be cold like snow. :o)

Another hibernating activity. Marin did this one all on her own and she was so.very.proud. She cut the brown strips of paper and glued them on the "cave".  Then she colored and glued her bear inside the cave.

So sweet. 

And a non-winter activity but we had to read Where the Wild Things Are for Ww! Fun book. But this was a simple "story mat" math activity. Simple, simple but the girls just cut, counted, and glued the wild things onto the story mats.

Winter Fun

In our little tot school we have been talking about "winter-ish" things. :o) Last week we did Pp is for penguins and polar bears! This week will be Ss is for snowflakes, snowballs, snowmen, etc. Although our weather here is BEAUTIFUL it almost feels like spring (Ss is for spring?!?!). Anywho, we are having fun. 

Both girls love doing handprint/footprint projects. So here is a footprint penguin.
We are really trying to get those letter sounds memorized now. She knows her letters pretty well so now its the sounds we are working on. 

I found an alphabet banner at the Dollar Tree and hung up in our playroom.
Hopefully we can hang up our little alphabet projects under each letter. 

Circling the letters Pp in the collage. Then we talked about all the things that begin with the /p/ sound.

I made a little penguin shape book in my little TpT store. Here the girls are painting a circle penguin. 

Working on the heart penguin...

Here is the heart and square when they are finished.
I tried to flip the photo but it's not happening for some reason.

We started a "salt tray" this week to practice more fine motor skills.
She loved it. Here is her circle.

And her P! 

We pulled out little toys/magnets/objects that began with the letter P and made the /p/ sound (a lot).
We made a little Pp book and chose two objects to add to the book. Marin chose pig and pizza. 

And now for a polar bear craft!! We read a book about playful polar bears and then made a mask out of a paper plate and cotton balls. 

A little Ss week.....

This is our snowman game. We wind up the penguin and let him walk on the snowman numbers. Whichever number the penguin lands on, she counts counts out snowflakes in the ten frame.

Then she counted "snowballs" (marshmallows) on a dice.

This has nothing to do with Pp or Ss or Winter but Hollis made circles on the Magna Doodle. :o) 

Farm

Yeah, so it looks like its been a month since I have updated this blog. Yikes. Honestly, we really haven't done a whole lot of "school" lately. Texas life is very different from Chicago life. And when we don't have to be cooped up inside hiding out from the snow, "school" gets put on hold. We still are enjoying park days, story times, and play dates out the wazoodle. But...I can't believe I am even typing this... its been a little chilly here. Ha! Chicago had snow this week, btw. So we have been indoors, at least in the mornings, and then after nap we head to the park once its warmed up some. But we have a great neighborhood and meet new friends every park visit. Love it. But Tot School has fallen on the wayside and I can't seem to get my groove back. So baby steps back into some sort of routine just in time for the holidays to come and mess up the new routine. Sound about right?!?!?

But in our efforts to get back going we started a farm unit! It has been FUN. The girls are enjoying all the projects and activities. And Hollis has picked up a few new words....cow, moo, oink! Marin has practiced letter recognition with all her farm animal words and color words and is learning the names of mommy animals and baby animals.

Here are a few of the activities we have done...

 Hollis has LOVED this farm puzzle. She does it every time we get together for school. We practice saying the names of each animal and their animal sound as she puts the puzzle piece in.

This was a idea I got online. I made a barn door and taped it to our magnetic board. I would hide one of  our farm animal magnets behind the door and sing..."Who is in the barn? Who is in the barn? Hi Ho the Dairy-O. Who is in the barn?" And then they opened the door to find the animal. So.Very. Simple. And they ask for it all the time. Think its hilarious.

Click here to see A little video of Hollis....


We made a little Farm Collage. Each farm has a barn and a pig with "mud", sheep with cotton ball wool, rooster with feathers, horse with a yarn tale, and a cow with black spots (he's not in the picture but we did a cow too).

 Painting their mud on the pigs...

Instead of a letter of the week, I decided to do a pocket chart word work type activity. I put different farm animal word cards up and gave Marin the letter tiles for each word. She said the letters and then put them in the right order to build a word. I got a cute video of this but, of course, I am having tech trouble and get it to upload. Argh.

This is a Montessori type activity. I found mother/baby farm animal cards online. I made two copies of them and cut one pair up so she could match mom to baby. She will say the correct name for the animals if I say it first but most of the time on her own she says "Momma pig and Baby pig", etc. But she does like the real pictures of the animals.

This one was really for Hollis to help her learn colors but she had ZERO interest in it. Marin, on the other hand, loved it. She matched the color barns to the correct color word.

We read lots of books about farms, farm animals....The Big Red Barn, Farm Life, Pink Wiggly Pig, Barnyard Dance, Bark, George, and more...

We will wrap this little unit up by making a turkey for a farm which will leads us right into Thanksgiving. :o)

Also, another thing that has been keeping me busy is my new little store on Teachers Pay Teachers! I started writing some lessons and units and have been selling them online. I am having a blast doing it all! But the store is called Giggles and Glue Sticks (like this blog...) and you can take a look HERE if you are interested.