If You Give A Mouse A Cookie tot bag

My new tot bag is based on the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff. Kaleb's favorite lovey is the mouse from these stories, he carries his mouse everywhere. It seemed only natural to make a tot bag for this book.

Here is a quick view of my tot bag.

First activity is a brown cookie that Kaleb will put magnet chocolate chips on. This can be used with a cookie sheet as the magnet board. He loves magnets so I had to include them. We will count the chips and later, you can use this as a math activity. I also made some felt cookies. There are chips on one side and the number on the other. I made ten cookies. Again, this can be used for math, counting, etc... I plan to first use them for a bean bag game - toss the cookies into the jar or can you find the cookies?

I added some straw activities. In the book, the mouse asks for a straw. Kaleb can thread the straws onto pipe cleaners as a fine motor activity or just drop them into the bottle. He likes these type of activities.

Kaleb loves playing with my mini dust pan and brush. In the book, the mouse cleans up, so why not have Kaleb work on cleaning up the pom poms? (think dust bunnies, ha ha) If Kaleb was a tad older, I would have also added napkin/wash cloth folding as well. Every day skills that he needs to learn.

I made cookie milk caps. These can be used a variety of ways - as counters, as a fine motor activity to drop into a milk jug, for math as I will use with J later this week. I enlarged a picture of the mouse and added it to a paper towel tube. I cut open the mouth and Kaleb will "feed" the mouse cookie beads. I was hoping that the milk caps would fit but I just couldn't get the mouth enlarged enough. I may try again. Please use discretion when handing a child small beads.

On hand, I had these cookie shape matchers that I found at a yard sale this past year and a circle sewing card for more fine motor practice. I am a firm believer of using materials that I have on hand for my tot bags. If I can make it, I will. I try not to buy items to create these. The sewing card could easily be made - a cookie to sew or a mouse.

This tot bag will be used this week for our book of the week activities. Here are some additional links for the book. I hope this encourages you to make your own tot bag to use with your kids. If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them. See this as well as other activities for the book in action - this week.

Links

Preschool Experiment the idea for feeding the mouse came from here. I didn't want to use food so I made the cookie milk caps.

Mom to 2 Posh Divas she did a unit for her girls on this book, she has some cute ideas for older kids which I will be using later this week.

Izzy, Mac, and Me also did a unit on this book with cute ideas. I love the tear and paste cookie.

Erica Bohrer's First Grade  has a cute graph/mouse to make. Have the family try out different cookies and see what they like the best.

Sonlight Week 5

Sonlight week 5 brought us Vikings, mountains, and animal adaptations. We finished reading the dragon series by Ruth Stilles Gannett and we are ready for our new chapter book, 100 Dresses. Here are some of the activities we did this week:

In Math, we practiced tallies some more by using popsicle sticks. J would choose a number and recreate the number using the sticks for tallies.

We played a number guessing game to review our teen numbers. I would choose a number and J would guess a number. If she was wrong, the pirate would close in on the numbers. This was an idea that I got from Sailing Through First Grade. It was a free printable game, only I just printed the pirates since I already had number cards.

We worked with a ten frame. I used 2 different colors of counters and we wrote different ways to make the number ten. I would place counters on the the grid and she would determine the number remaining. We would then write an addition statement.

Still working on number order for the teens, she glued these flowers in order.

J worked on left and right. I found a free iPad game called Left Right Pup. It was cute and helped her to practice.

We practiced letter order. I found some alphabet strips from Confessions of a Homeschooler. She used her magnet letters to label the missing letters.

Our mystery letter was R. She created a letter page using stickers, pictures from Sonlight, and pictures from magazines.

She practiced writing her R's.

In Social Studies, we read about Vikings all week. Here she is making a Viking brooch from card stock and paint.

She wrote her name in Runes - the writing of Vikings. I found this worksheet with the Rune alphabet here.

We then made "stone" tablets (from salt dough) and wrote our names using Runes.

We read about how the Vikings made their clothing and J tried a weaving project that I found at Make It a Wonderful Life. It uses an old cd as the base.

Another fun Viking project J did was to paint a longboat. Here she is painting the ocean using every blue paint that we own.

Here is the end result. I think it turned out great. We used a popsicle stick for the mast and added shields to the boat. The long boat project came from here.

We also read about illuminated manuscripts and J created her own illuminated letter J. One more Viking project that I didn't get to was to make Viking Bread. I didn't have enough whole wheat flour for the recipe but you can find the recipe here if you want to try it. We even watched How to Train Your Dragon, a cute movie based on the books by Cressida Cowell. The movie is good but the books are definitely better. I used to read these to my third graders. I will read them to J at a later time. We also had the chance to read a book about Vikings online from We Give Books.

We had a busy week, we learned a lot. We are looking forward to next week. As you can tell, I love hands-on projects. I will incorporate them into our learning experience any chance I get. I believe they enhance our learning, making it real. I hope you had an awesome week of learning and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Links

The Teacher's Cauldron has free printable ten frames and ways you can use them

First Grade Schoolbox the idea for using popsicle sticks for tally marks came here, hers are pretty though. I didn't mark mine up (I never know when I am going to need a popsicle stick.)

E is for Explore has an idea for a tens frame game.

Make It a Wonderful Life cd weaving idea came from here.

Minibema has the recipe for the Viking bread. I may still try this if we have a chance.

Scholastic UK has a free printable worksheet for writing Runes.

BBC Primary History has several free worksheets and videos for Vikings. Some may not be available to people living in other countries like me :(

We Give Books has an Usborne book about Vikings online. I love We Give Books because they have an array of books that all can be read online AND after you read one, the site gives a book to a good cause. It is a win-win situation. I love any books we can read online because we do not have access to a library here.

Painted Paper  had the project for the Viking Ship.

Sailing Through First Grade has the Pirate Squeeze game for number recognition. This game goes up to 100, great idea.

Confessions of a Homeschooler this is where I found the missing letter cards. I am sorry I couldn't find the exact ones but I found some similar and free as well. These are on apples.

Worldsapart lastly my Pinterest board for Sonlight Core A, the first nine weeks. I am adding to this weekly, it has tons of ideas for the core.

Book of the Week - tot

Our book of the week is The Napping House by Audrey Wood. I made a tot bag to go along with this book and you can read about it here. Here are some of the activities that were included in my tot bag.

Kaleb loved the magnet page. I gave him a cookie sheets, some magnets, and the rainbow page. He played with that for a while.

Here he is checking out the shapes on my mini-quilt. The shapes are easy to come off because of velcro. Each shape has a different texture.

Kaleb taking apart the felt rainbow I created. I still haven't decided how to connect them - by snaps or buttons.

He had no interest in touching the shaving cream with his hands. I gave him a wipe and he was cleaning it up.

Then I gave him the paintbrush - only then did he enjoy the shaving cream.

He went back to the magnets for a second time. This seems to be his favorite, over and over again. That is about as far as we got with the tot bag for The Napping House. Please join us next week for a new tot bag - If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. We are excited about this one because Kaleb's favorite lovey is the mouse from these stories. See you next week.

Happy Birthday, Kaleb!

Today is my son's 2nd birthday. It seems like just yesterday he was a baby and now he is a tot, full of energy, energy, and more energy.

Happy Birthday, sweet boy - our lives wouldn't be complete without you!

Book of the Week - Kindergarten

Our book of the week is The Napping House by Audrey Wood. It is a cute book about the people in a house that are taking a nap but not for long, thanks to a wakeful flea! Here are some of the kindergarten activities we did this week for our book.

This was a great book to practice our sight word the and -ap family words. J is using her wikki sticks to trace the word the.

I added another way to practice our sight word - Rainbow Roll and Write which I found at A Cupcake for the Teacher. J rolls a die and write the word in the color indicated. She liked this.

J practiced her -ap words using tiles for a Junior Scrabble game and the mat from Making Learning Fun.

More -ap word practice with a word slider that I found here. She is working hard at blending her sounds.

She worked a color by number page where we practiced our number words as well.

Our Science experiment was to make a cloud rain. We put shaving cream on top of water and then added some red food coloring.

We watched it rain!

Then I let them paint with shaving cream (clouds).

The last activity we did was a math sheet from Golden Gang Kindergarten (link below). We used the characters from The Napping House to practice addition and subtraction. I loved the idea of using the characters as manipulatives. So, we are done with our book of the week and we are on to another. Join us next week for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie....

The Napping House links

A Cupcake for the Teacher - Rainbow Roll and Write game

Making Learning Fun - tons of stuff here for The Napping House

Make, Take & Teach - word family sliders, free printable

Reading Confetti - the idea for the cloud experiment came from here

Homeschool Share - has a free lapbook for the book

Two Big Two Little - has an idea for a story retelling stick

Chasing the Firefly - has an idea for a calming jar that I thought would be nice with this book.

Totally Tots - has several ideas here for smaller kids

Golden Gang Kindergarten - idea and free printable math sheet for The Napping House

Chipman's Corner - an idea of counting how many feet in your house

Tot Tuesday - Man on Top

One day, after we were done with school work, I let the kids play with some water on the balcony. 

I was working on school stuff (as always) and I didn't notice Kaleb going back into the house and coming back with a step stool. This is what I found next...

Kaleb enjoying his snack on a pile of outdoor chairs. He helped himself up using the step stool. I really must keep a close eye on him!

If mommy won't help me, I will just help myself! My Tot is fearless.