Slow Down, Gym Shoe!

Tot School Studies The Works Of Laura Numeroff!

Welcome to yet another week of Tot School! This week was a pretty good week, I have to admit... even though I never did scrape together the money to actually bake the cookies I was hoping to bake with Pufferfish! Plus, it was kind of a light week again, since I was still feeling sick myself, from having  a sinus infection and having run out of my narcies!

We still did plenty of learning and had plenty of fun!

We first read the book, If You Give A Pig A Pancake. I whipped together some pancake themed activities!
I cut out pancakes from tan Fun Foam (the company who makes that stuff should be sponsoring this blog, because of all the things I use it for, don't you think?) and Pufferfish played with them in her play kitchen. She served them up to everyone. I also gave her a real pancake flipper to play with, and we tried carrying the pancakes on it, and tried flipping them up in the air and catching them. (They were a little too light though and would float away from us like paper!)

Then, I cut out more pancakes from brown construction paper, and we marble painted them... in a frying pan! We pretended that the paint was butter and different flavors of syrup, and as Pufferfish wiggled the frying pan around to cook the pancakes, the marbles rolled around and made designs on the paper! They turned out very cute.

That day happened to be Free Pancakes Day At IHOP, so after school I took Pufferfish and Rafael out for pancakes. (Little Bear was sick and stayed home with Jimmy.) Pufferfish got to decorate her pancakes with actual different colors of syrup (maple, strawberry and blueberry) just like she had in our art project!

Another day, we read If You Give A Cat A Cupcake. Pufferfish made a cupcake out of Fun Foam! She used paint as frosting, but I let her glue on actual sprinkles. She also got to eat a whole lot of the sprinkles, which tickled her little sugar-addicted funny bone!

But the most learning of all took place around If You Give A Mouse A Cookie! I made a magnet board set to go with the book, which meant Pufferfish wanted to read the story about fifty million times!

Because the letter M was our letter of the week (which we've totally been slacking off on lately) we made an M mouse. This mouse is totally freaky, isn't he? He's some sort of alien mouse with tons of eyes all over his body!

 

We did a cookie counting activity using some small, round sticky magnets I found at Wal-Mart. I printed out a sheet with six circles on it, with a number on each circle.  glued the magnet circles to pieces of brown construction paper. We put the paper on a cookie sheet, and Pufferfish's job was to count out the correct number of "chocolate chips" to put on each cookie! (She also did manage to score some real cookies, even though they weren't chocolate chip!)

Finally, I put together a letter M coloring book for Pufferfish, using clip art images that went with "M" words from the books we had read. I didn't take pictures of the book, but it had pictures of things like a mouse, milk, a mailbox, music, etc. Reading all of the "M" words helped Pufferfish get the idea that the letter M makes an "mmmmm" sound. I think I am going to print out similar coloring books for each of our letters of the week, using words from our theme of the week!

Anyway, that was our Tot School week! Stay tuned for next week... we'll be celebrating Dr. Seuss!

By the way, I scanned some pictures from Hop On Pop to make a rhyming book with Pufferfish. If you'd like to use the pics, feel free! You can download the document I made here.

I also made a sheet of pictures to make an I Will Eat It/I Will Not Eat It chart with Pufferfish, after we read Green Eggs And Ham. I included a few pictures of foods I know she likes (Mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, kim) and a few things I don't know if she'd eat (cooked carrots, green eggs and ham) as well as a few non-food items I am curious about where she'd put them (she has definitely eaten playdough before and she likes to suck on pennies for soem reason) You could easily make your owns sheet like this, but if you want to use my pics you can download it here! Just cut out the pics and paste them on paper with your munchkin!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tot School Celebrates Chinese New Year!

Hello and welcome to another week of Tot School! I hope you enjoy my hastily thrown together version of Chinese New Year week! It wasn't my best week, due to low energy and low cash... but it woked for us!

Chinese New Year is also Korean New Year! Since our family is Korean (some by blood and some just by association) I wanted to do something specifically Korean. So I made a simplified Yut Nori game. Yut Nori is a game often played at family gatherings, such as at the Lunar New Year!

This is a fun counting game too I used a file folder to make the game board. You just need some circles around a board of some sort. You also need four popsicle sticks, with one side of each stick decorated. Players take turns tossing the sticks up into the air, and counting how many land with the decorated side up Then, whatever the number is, is the number of steps you take on the board. So simple, right? But the tossing of the sticks also makes it lots of fun! (I used polished pebbles, which we also use as math counters, for game pieces.)

Pufferfish takes her turn at Yut Nori

Next, we made a Chinese dragon puppet. This one uses popsicle sticks for handles (The popsicle sticks from the Dollar Store came in very handy this week!) and can stretch back and forth like an accordion!

Finally, Pufferfish made a tiger mask, in honor of the Year Of The Tiger.

Little Bear, who was learning about Chinese New Year in her school, also made a dragon mask!

We also made a Chinese fan and colored some Zodiac pictures, which I didn't get pictures of. And, unrelated to Chinese New Year, we counted out marbles in the brand new counting box I found at the Dollar Tree! (Its really a tiny display shelf, but it works much better as a counting box, I think!)

I just noticed the "eight" box only has four marbles in it! You'll have to trust me that it eventually did hold eight!

Stay tuned for next week... we're going to do a whole week about the Laura Numeroff books!
 
  

Tot School Learns The Alphabet!

If you are reading these posts backwards, then you may not have read the conclusion of my emotional turmoil the other day. So, if you want to know what all happened with that, go here!

Also, be sure to check out my giveaway for a chance to win something from Creativity For Kids!

In the mean time, Tot School is back in full swing, and here is what we did last week for our ABC Theme!

First of all, we read a lot of Alphabet books. Of course, Chikka Chikka Boom Boom was on our list! I used our magnetic letters and our magnet board to make the story interactive for Pufferfish. (Little Bear and Rafael listened to it too, once, after school!) I made a coconut tree out of construction paper, and gave Pufferfish the letters. As I read the story, she had to help me find the right letters and put them up in the tree! The only bad part was that our magnet letters were all capital letters, and the letters in the story are lowercase letters. But I doubt Pufferfish noticed!

Here is the magnet board game I made...

 

And here is Pufferfish, actually demonstrating that she can play independently when she really wants to... but she'd rather us not know that!

 

We did some fingerpainting one of the days. We used some alphabet stamps that I found at Hobby Lobby... but Pufferfish preferred to use her fingers! Look at this messy baby!

Afterwards, the easiest way to clean Pufferfish up was just to throw her into the bath tub! I had found a set of alphabet sponges at Wal-Mart, and Pufferfish loved playing with them and washing herself with them!

 

I made an alphabet tracing book for Pufferfish out of a small photo album I got from the dollar store. I just wrote each letter of the alphabet on a piece of paper, and inserted each letter into a page of the book. Pufferfish can take a dry erase marker and trace the letters! (She also likes to scribble on the blank pages, but she does do a pretty good job of tracing the letters when she concentrates!) Little Bear liked this idea, so I made another one for her, using her spelling words.

 

We also tried playing a game, using this Alphabet poster, where we matched magnet letters to the letter on the poster... but Pufferfish got bored of it after a few minutes.

 

I think our ABC theme did a good job of cementing the letters into Pufferfish's mind... she can now definitely name most of the letters! (She mixes up O and Q because they look alike, and I and J because they look alike, and U and Q because their names sound alike, but in general she does very well with her alphabet recognition now!)

This coming week we're going to do Valentine's things, so stay tuned!

Tot School Learns About Snow!

Welcome to another addition of Tot School! This week was one of our favorite weeks. It snowed heavily, and we learned plenty about snow and ice! (In fact, our snow week is going to continue into next week, with some penguins thrown in!)

Check this out!

We learned about the properties of ice and water. The first thing we did was make some frozen letters. I have a bunch of alphabet-shaped cookie cutters I found at Goodwill not long ago. I picked out the letters that spell Pufferfish's real name, put them in a metal baking tray, and filled the tray with water. I also looped a pipe cleaner through each cookie cutter. We left the tray outside to freeze. Every time we went outside, I reminded Pufferfish to look at the tray and see what was going on with the water. She was excited to see that it had turned into ice! After a day or so, when the letters were frozen solid, we ran the tray under hot water to loosen the frozen letters from the cookie cutters. I then hung the letters on a bush outside, so Pufferfish can see her name, spelled out in ice letters, whenever we leave the house!

The first letter "A" broke off of it's string, though, so we used it for another experiment. I gave the A to Pufferfish, in a bowl of warm water, and let her play with it, She was amused to see that it got smaller and smaller, until it completely disappeared! She learned that ice melts in warm water!

Our next experiment was to get a bowl of snow from outside. I let Pufferfish play with the snow a little, and asked her what she thought would happen if we put the snow in the hot microwave. Pufferfish hypothesized that it would turn into ice, the way the water we put outside had!

 

Of course she was surprised when I took the bowl out of the microwave, and she saw that it had turned into water! She learned that heat melts snow, and that when snow melts it turns into water!

For our next experiment, I got some small toys and trinkets, put them in storage boxes, added water, and left them outside to freeze. When they were frozen, I gave Pufferfish a spoon, a cup of salt, and a cup of hot water. She had to chisel away at the ice to get to the prizes!

After school, Little Bear and Rafael got in on this experiment, too!

For some physical activity, we put paper plates on the floor, and "ice skated" around!

For art, Pufferfish made a snowman...

 
  

... and a snowflake!

For an afterschool snack one day, we made snowman pancakes! (You take regular pancakes, cover them with powdered sugar, and use chocolate chips to make the eyes, mouth, buttons, etc.)

Outside of our snow theme, we spent some time practicing identifying letters on this giant chalkboard that Diana found at Goodwill! I would write a bunch of letters on the chalkboard, and Pufferfish would erase the letters I told her to. Later, I gave her a cup of water and a paint brush, and she had fun "painting" the chalkboard!

 
 

Pufferfish also learned how to make the number "two" with her fingers, so when someone asks how old she is, she can show them, "Two!" (In this picture she sort of looks like she's flashing a gang sign, though, doesn't she?)

 
 

Besides teaching Pufferfish at home, I supervise Little Bear and Rafael with their homework. I am strict with homework... I am a meanie! I got these dividers (Actually they are unfolded cardboard boxes) to put up between them while they do homework, to cut down on them making fun of each other about what each other is doing or how quickly they work. (If we get a bigger table in the playroom, I'll probably completely separate them at homework time, because Rafael has a terrible time trying to concentrate during homework and Little Bear distracts him to no end! It can take him up to an hour to do one math worksheet!) They have to do homework right after their snacks. I have a basket of homework materials, that includes counting stones, magnetic letters, pencils, file folder games, etc. The kids have to do their homework, and Little Bear also has to practice her spelling and theme words. (I try to find creative ways for her to practice her spelling. She can spell the words out with magnet letters, write them on the white erase board, write them on the chalkboard, write them with gel pens, etc.) Whoever gets done first can either sit down and read a book, or do some file folder games. They think I am totally mean, but... for one thing, it kills about an hour of afterschool time and keeps them from bouncing around and screaming like banshee. For another thing, it shows them that homework is important! Even Pufferfish gets in on the act for homework. I give her "baby homework" such as circling certain letters on a piece of paper, or doing a file folder game, or sorting shapes.

 

Well, I guess thats it for this week! Stay tuned for more Snowy tot school next week!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Next,

Tot School (and the big kids) Learn About Christmas!

Hi everyone, and welcome to the "What we did on our winter break" version of Tot School! We didn't get a whole lot done, mostly because the big kids were home from school and I had to focus on behavior management more than on teaching Pufferfish stuff. But we did do some cool things! Wanna see?

The first week, we did a mini theme on gingerbread.We read the story of the Gingerbread Man, and then we made and decorated our own gingerbread men! I used a kid-friendly recipe that uses butterscotch pudding mix and cinnamon, instead of ginger, because I had a feeling Little Bear and Rafael would turn up their noses at the taste of real gingerbread.

 
 
 Then we decorated a gingerbread house from a kit I picked up at Target. We do this every year, and every year we run out of candy to decorate it with because the kit comes with just a few pieces. So this year I got smart and bought extra M&M's and Lifesavers, and let the kids go crazy!

 

I always have to do something with Fun Foam, so I cut out Christmas tree shapes and let the kids decorate them with beads and glitter glue, I put magnet tape on the backs so they could stick to the refrigerator!

Other than that, I tried to keep the kids away from the house as much as possible. One day, we went tothe Jelly Belly Factory in Wisconsin. We got to go on a factory tour, and get lots of free samples!

(The kids pose in front of the Jelly Belly car, which I think would be an awesome car to travel around in!)

Little Bear and Rafael thoughtfully contemplate the taste of the Jelly Bellies they are sampling. There were some crazy flavors, including pencil shavings flavor, booger flavor, baby wipes flavor, etc!

I think in this picture Little Bear was yelling that her Jelly Belly was gross!

We stopped at the Oasis on the way home, to eat our lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, granola bars, carrots, and chocolate milk!

 

Other trips included Monkey Joe's, an open gym at a gymnastics place, playdates at people's houses from our Meetup group, and of course, McDonalds Land!

It seems like we did very little actual Tot School stuff, but I think Pufferfish did lots of learning. Besides the activities described already, she also did things like help me wrap Christmas presents (she'd choose a present to wrap, help tear the Scotch tape off and stick it onto the wrapping paper, chose the name tag and stick it onto the wrapping paper, etc) and she got to spend a lot of time with her Mommy and Daddy while they were both around the house!

On Monday the older kids go back to school, and things wull go back to normal! I can hardly wait!

Tot School's First Week of Christmas!

Hi everyone! Its time for another Tot School update! Truth be told, we've been kind of slacking off on Tot School lately. Diana is home from work until after Christmas, and with both her and Jimmy around the house, Pufferfish hasn't been particularly interested in doing things! But we have managed to squeeze in a few Christmas-y activities.

We were in a Christmas card exchange with families from Pufferfish's playgroup, so we spent one day making lots of Christmas cards! I found gift tags at the Dollar Store, and we glued those onto the cards as decorations!

 

With the rest of the unused gift tags, I made a Christmas-themed Go Fish/Memory game. I glued the tags onto index cards, wrote Merry Christmas on the back of each card, and laminated them with clear contact paper. I taught Pufferfish how to play (somewhat simplified versions of) Go Fish and Memory. She is actually very good at them! For Go Fish, I let her keep her cards laid out in plain sight, so I can help her out a little. She loves it! The other night we played for about an hour, while Diana and Jimmy were taking Little Bear to the doctor! Little Bear later played it with us too.

 

 

The cards are kind of hard to shuffle because they're so thick, so the girls invented a new method of shuffling!

We checked out the book, The Mitten, from the library. I found a printable activity that involved being able to put the animals into a paper mitten as you tell the story. I changed it a little by making a mitten out of fun foam (because, as you know, I use that stuff for everything!) and laced two mitten shapes together. I cut out the animals and laminated them with clear contact paper (yep, another item I use for everything!) Pufferfish and Little Bear divided up the animals between them. As I read the story, they put the animals into the mitten! At the very end, when the bear sneezes, we dumped all of the animals from the mitten, and I threw it in the air and let the girls catch it, the way the boy in the story catches it! Pufferfish was particularly amused by this story because the little boy's name is NIcki (She kept pointing to the boy and saying, "That's you?" and I had to keep trying to explain, no, its a little boy whose name is also Nicki!) and because the grandmother is called Baba, which is Pufferfish's word for bottle. ("Boy has a baba? Where is baba?")

We played a game called the Present Game, which I read about in a magazine somewhere. The idea is to practice choosing and receiving presents graciously. To play the game, you need a gift bag or gift box. (I got a fancy gift box from CVS, because it was only three bucks and I figured I can store stuff in it later!)To play the game, everyone takes turns being the giver and the receiver. The giver has to go "shopping" around the house, and pick out a present for the receiver. He then puts it in the bag or box, and gives it to the receiver. The receiver is supposed to say, "Thank you!" and say something nice about the gift. Little Bear and Rafael played this for a little while, but Pufferfish is the one who enjoys it the most! Plus, it kills a lot of time when you play it with her, if you choose good presents. I try to pick out toys that she hasn't played with for a while, because then she gets interested in the toy and plays with it for a few minutes, and when she starts to get bored I can just get the Present Game going again!

 

I bought a package of Christmas erasers from the Dollar Store, and Pufferfish and I practiced sorting them into different cups of a muffin tin. She was very good at this! She also liked stacking the erasers up like blocks and then knocking them down again!

 

Finally, I had to petsit for my mom last night, so in my hours of boredom and lonesomeness, I made some file folder games for Little Bear and Pufferfish! I've become obsessed with the file folder game concept, because there is so much you can do with them... I am already envisioning how i can take Little Bear's reading theme words from school and turn them into file folder games for her to practice with! In the mean time, I made about six last night. Here are a few...

Little Bear is learning simple addition and subtraction in school. I made this game that involves solving the problem on the butterfly, and finding the flower with the right answer on it. The flowers have velcro on them and can be stuck right onto the butterflies!

Little Bear also mixes up her d's and b's a lot, so I made this Christmas-themed file folder for her. The "ornaments" all start with either a d or a b. Little Bear will have to stick the "d" ornaments on the "d" tree, and the "b" ornaments on the "b" tree!

I also made a few for Pufferfish, but for some reason I can't find the pictures of them! One is acolor matching game where Pufferfish will have to match a colored candy cane to the same color of stocking. Another is a counting game, where she'll have to put the correct number of snowflakes next to a snowman with a number on it's stomach.

So... that does seem like a lot, when I look back on it! I guess I don't feel too bad after all. But, lest you think I am too nice of an auntie, here is an incriminating photo for you...

 

Oh well, nobody's perfect, right?

Tot School Learns About The Five Senses!

Welcome to another episode of Tot School! I've been making my Tot School posts every other week lately, so I hope you don't mind another sort of long post!

Way back when Little Bear was only four and I was doing preschool things with her, we did a five senses theme... but back then I was only doing daily themes, so we didn't really do much! This time, our five senses theme lasted for five days (but actually spanned over two weeks since we didn't do something every single day.) I think the five senses is definitely one of my favorite themes!

Here's what we did!

We started out with our magnet board and a song. I found this little five senses theme online that is sung to the tune of "Farmer And The Dell." It goes:

I use my eyes to see, I use my eyes to see, and when I want to see a star I use my eyes to see!
I use my ears to hear, I use my ears to hear, and when I want to hear a bird, I use my ears to hear!
I use my nose to smell, I use my nose to smell, and when I want to smell a flower I use my nose to smell!
I use my tongue to taste, I use my tongue to taste, and when I want to taste a peach, I use my tongue to taste!
I use my hands to touch, I use my hands to touch, and when I want to pet a dog, I use my hands to touch!

I used my trusty Fun Foam to make magnet board pieces to illustrate this song. I would sing it, and Pufferfish would pick out the right pieces and put them next to each other on the board! This was one of her favorite things to do, and we did it every morning after our Calendar. We love our magnet board!

 

Another really cool thing we did was play Sound Bingo. I really wanted to find a way to make a file of this game so I could share it with you, but I could not get it ready in time, so I'm just going to tell you how I made it.

1. I went on the Internet and downloaded free mp3's or .wav's of lots of different sounds that I knew the kids would recognize. For instance, several animal sounds, a toilet flushing, laughter, a yawn, a sneeze, a faucet running, a vacuum cleaner, a drum, etc.

2. I made Bingo cards that each showed sixteen of the sounds I had downloaded. (I had to hand-draw the pictures, since I don't have a printer!!!)

3. I wrote down the names of all of the sounds I had downloaded, on scraps of paper, and mixed them up in a bag.

4. I randomly drew names of sounds and played them for the kids. The kids would identify the sound together, and then figure out if they had a picture of that sound on their card! Like regular Bingo, they had to get four in a row to win.

The kids loved this game, and we played it until each kid had won twice! I gave them leftover Halloween candy as a prize!

Isn't that a cool game? It takes a little time to put together, but its worth it. You can also buy similar games at teacher stores for about thirty bucks, but I don't have that many bucks!!!

We did that on Hearing day, of course. Pufferfish also painted a picture with a blindfold on, and with jingle bells tied to her paint brushes, so she could "hear" what she was painting! It was hard to get her to keep the blindfold on, but she did enjoy the sound of the jingle bells on the paint brushes.

 

On Smelling day, Pufferfish and I cooked up some homemade playdough. 

 

I divided it into four parts, and mixed a different scent into each part. I mixed peanut butter into one, Nestle's Quik powder, into another, lemon Kool-Aid powder into another, and cinnamon into the last one. Pufferfish (and the big kids, when they got home) had to smell each one and guess what it was, before they could eat it. The easiest to guess was the peanut butter one. They all thought the chocolate one was cinnamon, until they smelled the actual cinnamon one! 

 
 

 

We also painted pictures using Kool-Aid as paint. It makes the painting smell great! You have to use a whole packet of Kool-Aid powder, mixed up with only a cup or so of water, to make the scent last a while. 

 

For Taste day, we only did one activity... We painted with pudding! I made vanilla pudding and colored it with food coloring, so the kids could paint with different colors and also taste it! (We couldn't really keep the pictures though, because of the risk of ants!)

 
 On Touch day, Pufferfish glued objects with different textures onto a piece of paper, creating a work of art that a person could enjoy with their eyes closed! (We used rice, beans, cotton balls, feathers, beads, and shapes cut from sandpaper.)

  I also had some Play Foam (not to be confused with Fun Foam) that I had been saving for this occasion! It is like tiny foam beads held together with some sort of sticky stuff. It can be used like playdough, and it never dries out! It has an awesome feel to it, and can be kind of addicting. I gave each of the little ones a packet of glow in the dark Play Foam, which kept them occupied for a while!

 

We didn't have a particular Seeing day, since we could see everything we did. For each activity, though, I would ask Pufferfish, "Which sense are you using?" She was great at guessing the primary sense that was being used, such as Touch for the Play Foam. (Strangely, Little Bear was not so good at this. She thought Hands, Feet, Feel, and Touch were all separate senses! I guess I didn't do such a good job on this theme with her when she was four!) I would ask Pufferfish to think of what other senses she was using. "Can you also smell the Play Foam? Can you see it? But you can't taste it, right?"
 
 We also made one final Jack-o-lantern, to illustrate the letter J.

 

That was a pretty good couple of weeks, wasn't it? Stay tuned for the next two weeks, in which we will learn about Thanksgiving, and also do some Character Counts stuff!

 

 

 

Tot School Celebrates Halloween!

I didn't have time to write a Tot School post last week, so here are two weeks of Tot School which sort of go together anyway! The first week, we learned about pumpkins. The second week, we celebrated Halloween!

We went to the pumpkin patch twice, as I wrote about in previous blog entries.

One of my proudest creations this week was this magnet game I made. I got the idea off another blog, I can't remember which. The blogger had a pumpkin cut out, and then cut-outs of different facial features, body parts, etc. You would spin a spinner to see which body part you had to put on the pumpkin.

I adapted it by using fun foam cut outs for the pumpkin and facial features, and putting magnets on the pumpkin and the face pieces. I didn't have any brad pins to make a spinner, so I made cards instead! The way we play it is, you take a card that tells you to choose eyes, ears, a nose, or a mouth for the pumpkin. If you get a nose, for example, and the pumpkin already has a nose, you can switch it's nose. The person who completes the pumpkin (for example, adds a nose when the pumpkin already has eyes, ears and a mouth) is the "winner." But its not really about winning... its more about seeing how many different funny faces you can come up with!

We also made this pumpkin bottle! What you do is take a clear bottle (this one is an empty V-8 bottle), pour some orange paint in there, put a lid on it, and let the little kid shake it and shake it and shake it to cover the inside with paint. Then all you have to do is glue on eyes, nose and a mouth!

We made pumpkin-scented playdough. Basically you just take a regular salt and flour playdough recipe, and add a container of pumpkin pie spice and some red and yellow food coloring!I don't have a picture of this because my camera was dead on that day, so its another thing you'll have to take my word on. I wanted the playdough to be bright orange, but because of all of the pumpkin pie spice, it was more like a burnt ember color. But the kids (including Little Bear and Rafael) loved it! I gave them toothpicks to play with it, and they made pies and birthday cakes with "candles." They played with it for several days in a row, as I kept it in ziplock bags for them!

We also played this game where Pufferfish tried to throw balls into a pumpkin bucket!

 We fingerpainted pumpkins on sandpaper! This is an idea I got from another Tot School blog, but I forget which one. Its a sensory-rich art project that is meant to be enjoyed by kids who have visual impairments, because they can feel the sandpaper as they paint. Little Bear didn't want to do it, but Rafael and Pufferfish enjoyed it!

Of course, we also carved pumpkins! Diana helped Pufferfish make this traditional, grinning Jack-o-lantern.

Jimmy helped Little Bear use a stencil to make this adorable cat!

I tried to use a stencil too, to carve a little girl pumpkin, per Pufferfish's request. But it didn't turn out as well...

 
 
 Our first big activity during Halloween week was to boo our neighbors. (I wrote a separate post about that here!)

Then, I made a spooky sensory box activity with black beans and a bag of Halloween spider rings, skeletons, finger puppets, bugs, etc. Pufferfish played with it for a while, but Little Bear and Rafael liked it even more!

I've been wanting to find some beads for Pufferfish to string together, but larger beads cost a lot. So I came up with the idea to make my own beads out of Fun Foam! (I told you I use that stuff for everything!) I cut out lots of shapes from orange and black Fun Foam, and then punched a hole in each one. Pufferfish strung them on yarn to make a Halloween necklace for her mama!

We went ghost bowling! I saved up my Dr. Pepper bottles (that didn't take me long) and drew ghosty faces on them. I put some craft pebbles into the bottles to give them some weight, and filled the rest of the bottles up with cotton balls to give them a white color. And guess what we used for a ball? A mini pumpkin! We played a simplified game of bowling... we didn't count strikes or spares or anything, but simply counted how many pins we knocked down for each turn. The kids loved it, and they've been pulling the bowling pins back out regularly to play again and again!

Here is a really fun afterschool snack and activity combined! At one of our outings to a pumpkin patch, I bought a couple of cobs of Indian corn. You can turn Indian corn into popcorn very easily. All you need to do is pull off the husk, put the cob into a paper bag (I splashed some water onto the outside of the bag because I was afraid it would catch on fire!), fold the top of the bag down, and microwave it for about two minutes. When you open the bag, it will be full of popcorn! (There will also be popcorn still stuck to the cob, but you should leave the cob and eat it last because it is extremely hot!) Don't forget to add butter or other seasonings!
Here is a bowl of popcorn, fresh off the kernel. You may notice that some of it is yellow and some is white. This was before we added butter! We used different colors of Indian corn. The bright yellow cob created the yellow popcorn, and it also created the most popcorn... it probably would have been enough for all three kids, all by itself! The light yellow cob and the purple cob created white popcorn, and it didn't pop as easily. Don't ask me why!

 Here are the happy popcorn munchers enjoying the freshest popcorn ever!

 
 Finally, this isn't exactly Tot School because it is about Little Bear, but look who is reading! Seemingly overnight she has learned to read surprisingly well. A week or two ago she was showing off how she could read the stories on Starfall.com. Isn't that cool? I'm so proud!

 

Anyway, I'll see you next week for some more Tot School! This coming week, we'll be learning about our five senses!

Tot School Goes To Outer Space!

This has been a pretty involved week of Tot School! Our theme for the week was outer space, and we did a lot of real learning about it!

I made a new magnet board set for the week. Its not exactly to scale, but it was good enough for Pufferfish! I made up a song for it that involved singing the names of the planets to the tune of "Ten Little Indians." As I sang the names, I would put the planets on the board. Pufferfish was in charge of adding the moon. The song went like this, "Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Pluto, the moon, and the sun, all in our solar system!" Pufferfish loved the song and asked for it again and again! Little Bear, on the other hand, loved realigning the planets in order of their sizes!

 

We made a toy telescope. (Well, I basically made it, and let Pufferfish decorate it with outer space stickers.) I took a piece of black construction paper, and taped it over one end of a toilet paper tube. Then I used a pen to poke holes in the tube. I decided to make a "constellation" in the shape of an H, for Pufferfish's real name.

   

When Pufferfish looks into her telescope, this is what she sees!

Pretty cool, right?

We also made this flying saucer... which doesn't fly all that well!

Little Bear, Rafael, Pufferfish and I made glow in the dark paintings, which you can see more of on my We Made It Friday post!

We tasted chocolate Space Food sticks, but we didn't like them very much. (I didn't get a picture of that.)

We made moon cookies (sugar cookies) and dipped them in the milky way (Cool Whip!)

Pufferfish also made a constellation picture! I tried to explain to Pufferfish that, when people look at the stars, they can play "connect the dots" and see pictures. I used chalk to draw a picture on dark paper (she wanted a teddy bear) and then I had her stick foil stars on the lines to make her own constellation!

 

And here is the coolest part! I had planned to make a model rocket ship out of an oatmeal container, but the girls went to visit their grandma on Columbus Day, and she did something much cooler with them! Check out this video!
  

 

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

 

Finally, we learned about the letter H, and decorated an H with HEARTS!

 

I bet you feel a little smarter just having read this post, huh!

By the way, if you're here from Tot School, be sure to check out my current giveaway so you can win a circus playset from Plantoys!

 

 

Two More Weeks Of Tot School!

I really gotta try to post more... I've had so many things I've wanted to post, but not much time to post them! Anyway I did want to do another Tot School post, so here are the past two weeks of our activities!

We Learn About Magnets

I bought a few small magnet kits at a local teacher store. I got some of those magnetic wands, and little magnetic disks and balls, and some regular magnets. Mostly, the kids just played with the magnets. I hid them in a box of dry oatmeal and had them use the magnet wands to find all of the magnets, and we tried the magnets and wands in water.

Pufferfish also made a fridge magnet with fun foam... I just cut out some small shapes and let her glue them onto a larger square, and then we put magnetic tape on the back. Unfortunately, the fun foam was too heavy for the magnetic tape, and it wouldn't stay on the fridge!

Thats about the extent of the magnet week... I had lots more ideas for it, but I was really sick all week and too exhausted to do much, so it was a light week!

WE LEARN ABOUT FALL

We did a lot of art projects for this unit, using fall colors. Our main experience was learning that in the fall, leaves change colors and fall off of the trees.

Here's a colorful fall leafe Pufferfish made, by sticking pieces of tissue paper onto contact paper! I hung it on the front door. Pufferfish loves it, and every time someone comes in the door she announces, "Look, I made something!"

In Pufferfish's drop-in art class, she also made a scarecrow, and some fall trees using her arm as a stamp.

 

Remember that magnetic dry erase board I found at Goodwill last week? I made some leaf magnets using fun foam and magnetic tape, and we did a rhyme using the dry erase board like a felt board. The rhyme basically goes like this:

Five autumn leaves on the tree nextdoor.

One fell off and then there were four!

Four autumn leaves sitting on the tree.

One fell off, and then there were three!

Three autum leaves, where the wind blew and blew.

One fell off, and then there were two!

Two autumn leaves, sitting in the sun.

One fell off, and then there was one!

One autumn leaf, all alone.

One fell off, and then there were none!

Obviously, every time I said the part about a leaf falling off the tree, Pufferfish would take a leaf off the board. She loved this, and played it by herself for a while too!

Still a rather light week, and we didn't do everything I wanted to do... but we did a lot of other, non-theme-related things as well!

We made the letters F and G. We FINGERPAINTED the F, and made a GIRAFFE for G!

We did our Alphabet Board! I made this by gluing library pockets onto a poster board. Each week I draw some pictures of things that start with our letter of the week. We talk about the pictures, and then Pufferfish puts them into the right envelope. Sometimes she likes to take the pictures out of all of the envelopes and try to put them back in the right ones, but I have to help her a lot for that!

We played board games together! Pufferfish likes Don't Wake Daddy and the Elmo Birthday Game. We work a lot on following the rules and waiting our turns. Pufferfish really loves playing games!

We went to a bunch of story times. At one of them, the stories were about airplanes, and the kids did this craft that involved gluing plane diecuts onto paper. Pufferfish's planes look like they crashed!

And here's an extra fun one! All of the review games that got sent to me were packed with tons of bubble wrap. So I spread the bubble wrap out on the floor and told Pufferfish it was our Bubble Bridge! She took her socks and shoes off and walked all over it. She thought this was the coolest thing in the world! 

 

 
 On a side note... Pufferfish has become obsessed with the letter B! One day she came to sit by me while I was using the computer. She saw a B somewhere on the screen and pointed to it, saying, "We learned this letter! Its B!" I was so excited that she'd actually learned one of the letters... because mostly I've been just trying to introduce her to the letters, without really requiring her to remember them. But she definitely knows B! She knows what it looks like and what sound it makes, and every time she sees a B she points it out to me!

Thats pretty good, right? I mean, its a little, but its a lot!

Thanks, Tot School!