Getting Warmed Up

We are finishing up our second week of school.  It's going very well.  I didn't mention in my last post that we are also using "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" for Natalie and also Explode the Code.  The curriculum is EXCELLENT!  Here's a picture from this week, not during school hours but still fun nonetheless.

Winter Stuff

We've done a few things this past week having to do with Winter. Nattie loves to cut and trace, and just about anything else... haha. Here are some of the fun things we did this week. The printouts I got were from www.itsybitsyprintables.com and www.thoughtsofme.blogspot.com The second site always has a lot of stuff that is super cute and fun that Natalie loves to do. I highly recommend going to both of these sites and checking them out. Anyways here are the pictures.

These were some cutting sheets. Nattie is learning how to cut so well. I'm so proud of her. Although she's a bit of a perfectionist. If she goes off the line at all she says "oops, sorry Mom". Haha. I think it's funny. I keep reminding her that it's okay to make mistakes. She's such a doll!
Here is some tracers that she did.

Trace the word then write it yourself. I had to write dots for some of the letters for her to trace because she doesn't know how to form all the letters yet. She keeps surprising me at how fast she is learning though.

This is our January sensory bucket. I'm going to find more stuff to add... if anyone has any suggestions I am open to them. Right now it has cotton balls, tongs, a magnifying glass, a couple measuring cups, a play spoon, and a tea canister. She'll have fun with the tongs and spoon putting the cotton balls into the canister. I'm trying to really stick to my budget from now on so my sensory bins will just be what I have around the house. I have a budget for it next month so maybe I'll get to go to the happiest place on earth... (Hobby Lobby)... there are actually a lot of happiest places on earth but that is one of them!

Doing snowman patterns. She's going back through making sure they are all correct.

Putting the hat on the correct snowman.

Nattie wanted to model how she was playing with the patterns. She's such a ham! We are going to have a great time this month! She's already learned so much this year and I can just see her little mind exploring and wanting more!

The girls have Comprehensive Curriculum books that I buy at Sam's Club for about 8 dollars a piece. They are each just about through with the grade level that they are in. Micah went to Sam's today to buy some things and he got them all the next grade level books. I'm super excited but not half as excited as the girls!! They started working in their books so that they could start on their new ones. They are going to have to wait though because it's going to take more than an hour to get their books done.. they are close but not that close.

Samara's Class Christmas Party

Samara had a Christmas party at school so I took Natalie so I could help out.  A class full of Kindergarteners is a LOT of fun.  They decorated two sugar cookies, made a snowman from a sock, and colored a picture and made a "trail mix" of sorts (that's the station I was at).  Natalie got to help Mara out with all of these things.  She looked like one of the crowd... only a little smaller.

Decorating the cookies together.  Samara did a great job in letting Natalie help her out with all of her fun things.

My Mara

My Nattie

Making the sock snowman.



They did a musical chairs book exchange and this is the one Samara got.



All in all it was a great day.  It wasn't as messy as it could've been for a classroom full of kindergarteners.  I'm so glad that I got to go and help out.  Mara was so excited that her mommy got to be there.  Nattie had a great time too!

Ribbon Button Snake

Over at Counting Coconuts (I LOVE her blog... it's so helpful with tons of ideas!) I got the idea to make a Ribbon Button Snake.  It's to help Nattie figure out how to work buttons.  I think that Counting Coconuts is a lot better than mine so if you go here http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/2009/10/button-snake.html you'll be able to see what she did.  All you do is take a piece of ribbon and attach a button to it.  Then I made a loop on one end so that Nattie could carry it around (this too was an idea from Counting Coconuts).... she's amazing.  Then you cut out little squares of felt and cut a hole the size of the button in them so that the child can put the buttons on.  And that's IT!

The finished button snake.  I made a ton of buttons for it which wasn't necessary.

I don't know if you can see it in this picture but I made them different shapes and colors.  We will probably use the felt pieces for color sorting and shape sorting as well.  I like things that are versatile like that.

Our Day

 Today we had a fun day of learning and games.  Here's a few things that we did today.

These are just regular flash cards, I think I got them at Wal Mart.  They matched up the number of crayons on one card to the numeral on the other card.  I was surprised at how many Nattie was getting without the help of Mommy.

The finished product.

After they finished I had them put them in numerical order.  They did this in a snap!

These are printables I got off of Hubbard's Cupboard website.  They were supposed to glue the number of red pom poms to the trees that was shown for apples but I had them glue all colors of pom poms to the trees, mainly because I didn't have enough red pom poms to do all the trees.

The finished product.

Just for those who were curious, this is the Bible I read to Nattie who is 3.  We are learning about Adam and Eve and, of course, the birth of Jesus.

This is a game we played today that I got off of www.thoughtsofme.blogspot.com  She has some great ideas for early learning.  This game was super fun.  It's called Fill the Stable.  You roll two dice and put the item with that number on it in the stable.  The only thing I would suggest is maybe add magnets to the back and do this game on a cookie sheet as the pieces slid around quite a bit.

I had each of them count out the number that was on the dice.  It was such a great counting activity as well as a number recognition activity.

The stable has been filled.  We played where if a number was already taken then the person got to roll again until they got a number that wasn't taken.  This was super fun for the girls.



Linking Math

Nattie loves to play with her links.  She links them together and does some "patterns" with them, she sorts them by color and all that fun stuff.  I decided to add a little something to what she could do with them.  So I printed out these number cards and punched a hole in them.  Now she can look at the number and put that amount of links on the card.  It was a HUGE hit.  When she'd get frustrated she'd want to stop but I kept telling her she could do it and she did all of them!  I'm so proud of her.

The numbers with the hole punched in them.  Oh and I laminated them so maybe they'll stick around for a while.

The bin of links.  You can get these at Lakeshore.

Nattie showing us the number 4.

She was very confused at why the 0 had none on it.  This is something that I'm goign to be working on with her, the idea of 0 or nothing.

I am so glad that I did this project... it was simple to do and Nattie loves it.  I'm sure my 5 and 7 year old would get a kick out of it too.  Maybe for them I can have them do a pattern with the amount of links on each card.  If you have any other suggestions on how to use links, please comment and let me know.

Cutting

She was concentrating so hard.

 I've been asked by my three year old constantly if she can cut something out.  Especially when I'm cutting something out... she just wants to help.  So I decided I'd create a cutting bin.  The things that are in there are scraps of paper left over after I'm done cutting something out, or as you can see something I didn't use such as those Fall leaves in there.  She tried to cut them out and got a little frustrated so I showed her that if she cut out the smaller strips of paper first she could practice enough to do the bigger things.  She LOVED it!
     



Look what I can do Mommy!

Advent Calendar

Nattie and I have been working with this "advent calendar" since the beginning of the month.  It's really more for learning where the numbers go, in what order, and things like "put the number 7 after the number 6".  She's really catching onto number recognition and is starting to really understand cues such as after, before, and between.  I printed this out at http://www.childcareland.com/.  Shelley Lovett has a bunch of printables for free and videos for some to show you how to use them.  This is my idea tagged off of her printable. :-)

Here are the numbers.  I wrote Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve on the ones that were such.

Nattie trying to find the next number.





A close up of the actual calendar. 
I think you can print them in black and white as well.







My good friend at http://ourdayinschool.blogspot.com/ introduced me to the blog http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com and she has a ton of ideas for Sensory Bins. (I think she calls them sensory tubs but I like the word bin better, not that it really matters ;-) I thought it might be fun for Nattie our 3 year old so I decided to put one together. I didn't want to go out and buy anything, I just wanted to use what we had laying around the house so she could use it today. This is what I came up with:


I put plates, forks, and spoons in there because everyone knows that in December we eat. Well, at least at the Jones house that's what we do. I put in some ornaments from the tree and some keychains as well which she liked putting on the plates and then burying them in rice. I put the rice in there as "snow". I put the little stocking in there and then (not in this picture) I also added a pinecone. I thought that would be fun. She loved it! I honestly thought she'd get bored of it after a couple minutes but boy was I wrong. I think she played in it for a good hour and then stopped and cleaned up (she had to vacuum a little bit because she did get some rice on the floor, and yes I have my 3 year old vacuum... she loves it and she knows that if she makes a big mess she's the one that will be cleaning it not me, she has a little vacuum she uses and not the big heavy one Mommy uses.) Anyways...


I put another bin next to her sensory bin so she could measure and scoop rice and whatever else into it and then dump it back. She had a blast. Her favorite thing was to use the spoon to put rice into the dish she has in her hand.


Here she is after she put the rice on the plate with the spoon and now she is dumping into the play pan.


And then she'd dump it out and start again.

When she got the pinecone she had a blast with it. She wouldn't look at me directly for a picture of this however. This picture is one of my favorites though so I'm not complaining.

When my two older girls, Syssa and Mara, got home from school they loved playing with it too. They weren't has happy to clean up after themselves but after a few whines they did it. Thank you to the people who brought this idea into my life... I will be doing a new one every month now!

Hubbard's Cupboard

I just wanted to add that I am using Hubbard's Cupboard this year for Nattie. I'm using the Preschool 3s program. I love it! We don't do it all the time, in fact I just started it and I use it but I need to get better about using it every Mon, Wed, and Fri. It's like my practice for full on homeschooling next year. Enjoy!