A Slow Wednesday

Today has seemed to be dragging on and on. It is probably because there will be no one over the age of eight home until about 8 o'clock tonight. That is kind of unusual around here, but with a prediction of rain, cold temps, and no naps, I wasn't taking the little kids out to this afternoon's soccer game.

I did make this candy corn puzzle set last night for the littlest learners around here. I saw the idea in a preschool Mailbox magazine.
I made four identical candy corn shapes and then colored them each a solid color. I laminated them for durability. Cut all four candy corn into three very identical pieces. You want them to fit together just as well with mixed up pieces as with solid pieces. It is funny the difference between kids. Luke loved to mix up the colors. He thought he was very funny. Kimberly, on the other hand, wanted them to match. I showed her how to mix the colors and she got very angry, and then "fixed" them.
We got out the colored rice this morning for some pouring and scooping practice. They have seemed to have lost some of these skills, because I had to sweep up a whole lot of rice from the floor today.
Grace and Mark made these very cute Halloween magnets. Becky was at Michael's craft store recently and picked up a kit for the kids. The kit has 40 magnets in it. So, if you happen to receive a surprise gift from one of the kids, act surprised and pretend to have never seen them before. Thanks.....

Author Fiesta-Jim Arnosky for the littlest

While the older kids are enjoying the nature study that Jim Arnosky encourages, my littlest kids have been enjoying the many books written for our youngest students.Here is a list of Jim Arnosky's books that are suitable for the toddlers among us.

We have been enjoying Crinkleroot's Animals That Every Child Should Know books. Sadly, these books are out of print, but many library systems have them available.
To make this book a little more hands on for Luke and Kimberly, I searched through our animal bucket and found most of the animals featured in the book. We were missing a few of the animals, so I searched around the house and found pictures of the missing mammals.
We looked at the page and named the animal in the book and then looked for the matching animal among the pictures and toys I had set out. During this time we also made the animal's sound and crawled around and acted like the creature.
This also served as a good lesson in taking turns. Something that has to be learned, and learned, and learned. There is nothing worse than a 2 and 3 year old diving on top of each other as they moo like a cow!

Toddler School-Stop and Go & Farm Animals

We had some "red light, green light" fun a few days ago. Kim and Luke love it when we are stopped in traffic. They watch for the light to change and yell out "Green--Go!"
So we put red and green construction paper over a state fair paper fan, labeled it STOP and GO and then expected the children to follow the proper "red light green light" rules.

They didn't follow the rules though, so we played....
take turns holding the sign while everyone else ran around and yelled a lot. (Kim and Luke did consistantly get the colors correct-so I guess the colors red and green where reinforced.)
They also learned what to do when Mommy yelled "FREEZE!"
And as you can see, Kimberly is exceptionally good at "freezing."
The barn and farm animal printout proved to be much calmer and also contained a good deal of educational content. I found a great new site called Kizclub, and it contains tons and tons of free, very cute printables for our youngest learners.

You could use it for phonics, and beginning reading. We used it as a prop to accompany the singing of Old MacDonald Had a Farm.
Gracie changed the animal as we sang the song so that Kim and Luke had to name the animal and then make the animal sounds. They loved this, and we have played it over and over (and over) again.

You have got to love free activities to keep the littles busy and learning.

Toddler "School"-- homemade colored rice

It seems to be all about keeping little people busy around here, and today was no exception.

I have seen in Montessori catalogs and websites the value of pouring, scooping, dumping, and getting your toddlers hands into things. Things like rice, for instance.

I wrote a recipe down a while ago for homemade colored rice and today to got to making it.

2 cups rice ( I got a 5 cup bag from the dollar store)

2 tsp. food coloring

3 tsp. rubbing alcohol

a container to shake it all up in.

Mix the food coloring and rubbing alcohol together in a container with a secure lid. Add the rice to this. (I was surprised to find that the food coloring DID NOT stain the plastic Gladware container that I used.)

Make sure the lid is on very tight, and shake, shake, shake. Shake until all the rice is colored.

Place the rice on a cookie sheet to dry. This took a couple hours.

We then mixed up some blue. The colors came out more vibrant than I thought they would.

Daddy even took a few minutes before soccer practice to help Kimberly shake, shake, shake.

We had a lesson in patience, and then we all had fun. I was at the thrift store today and bought this little creamer and two little shot glasses for $1.50. Kim, Luke, and suprisingly, Grace enjoyed pouring the little "teapot" (especially after yesterday's teaparty) into the little shot glasses.
It took quite a bit of practice to pour carefully enough to just fill the shotglass without overflowing it. They had to move slowly not to spill the rice. Kim and Luke achieved this more often than Grace, who is 6 years old, compared to the 2 and 3 year old.

Grace has always been, well lets just say, active. Very active. Impulsive and quite excitable. If I was to label her, she would get an ADHD label. But I will not label her. I will work with her, trying to find the best way to help her control her impulsiveness.

Any and all suggestions to do this would be greatly appreciated.

After about 45 minutes, yes, 45 minutes! I got out some little animals and we had fun having adventures with the animals in the rice. Kimberly, being very motherly, lined her animals up and fed them.

Luke on the other hand, played lets kill the animals by burying them in quicksand. He did later save them, which comforted this mother quite a bit.

There you have it.... Toddler School fun....family style!

Toddler School- Do-A-Dot Markers

I saw these markers on someone's blog a while back and thought they looked real neat. I ordered them and received them a few weeks ago, but we never got around to using them until today. I am very, very happy with them.
They work just like bingo daubers, and Luke could easily use them. (Kimberly was sleeping, so I don't know how she will do) Luke learned the difference between "dotting" gently and "dotting" hard. He consistantly used them gently after a few tries.
One of my favorite craft websites is DLTK-Kids. On this site I found pictures to print out just for these markers. The printables have little circles for the child to "dot" on. The colors are very bright and Luke made no mess at all.
This is a product that we will be using over and over again during "toddler school".

Who Knew?

Montessori Mama knew, that's who!
Montessori Mama knew that styrofoam and any object that can be poked into the styrofoam will keep a bunch of kids busy for an hour.

Toddler School

We had a surprise in the mail today, Melissa and Doug's Lace and Trace Farm. Amazon reviews it to say it "helps promote hand/eye coordination, fine motor, cognitive and visual perception skills". I am just happy that my "tot schoolers" seem to enjoy it.
Luke quickly got the idea of what he was supposed to do. He continued with the four other animals in the set.
It was too hard for Kimberly on her first try. She just didn't seem to understand what she was supposed to do. She did poke the string into the holes a few times and then.....
she lined them all up and told me what each animal is called and what sound they make.

That's good enough for her first try.

Concentration

These Melissa and Doug Beginning Pattern Blocks puzzles are a great hit with both Kim and Luke. You can just see those wheels turning as Kimberly works to solve them.

Toddler "School"

I have organized a little more learning for Luke and Kim this week. I made the BINGO cards above at the DLTK website. At this site you can customize any cards with different subjects. I have printed these on cardstock and then laminated them.(My laminator is one of my favorite "school" tools.)

Both kids are doing very well matching up the shapes and colors. They don't have the names of all the shapes and colors down, but that will come. I have also taken of a few cards at a time for them to sort. Luke, being a year older than Kim, is catching on to this concept quickly and he tells her when she makes a mistake.

Today we were happily surprised by the UPS man, he brought us this Lauri Number Express. I have always been very happy with all the Lauri toys that I have bought over the years, they are Made in America, and offer replacement parts. (This is a wonderful perk for us!)This will provide a great introduction to numbers and counting.

Toddler "School"

Kim and Luke skipped nap today, and began a total melt-down at around dinner time.

I have been trying to find activities that they could begin doing which would fall under the category of "active" learning.

This very simple scooping and pouring activity changed their dispositions immediately,

I plan on trying to see if they can sort the colors into different containers, but today they were very happy to scoop and dump, scoop and dump. In fact, they wouldn't stop to eat dinner, so Amy and I fed them as they continued to scoop and dump.LOL

It actually suprised me how much they enjoyed doing this. I will certainly save this for times when they need to be "contained" in one spot.

Toddler "School"

Kimberly's all-time favorite book right now is Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?

She will listen to this story over and over again.

So, I decided to make a "school" activity to go along with this story for Luke and Kim.
I found these real cute printables at the kidzclub website. They are real big on this site, but my husband knew how to make them a reasonable size. (I, on the other hand, don't not have this amazing knowledge.) I printed the smaller pictures and then laminated them.
Kim and Luke's birthdays are this week, and they are turning 2 and 3, but this activity really got their attention. They enjoyed following the story and putting the pictures in the correct order, and even Kimberly could do it. They are also learning to take turns, this seems to be a bigger challenge than putting the pictures in order.

They did this three times in a row and then I put it away. We will show Daddy when he gets home, and then we will save it for "toddler school time."