The Mitten Tot Bag

Finally, I have a new literature based tot bag! This one has been in the works for months.  A new tot bag based on The Mitten by Jan Brett. The Mitten is about a young boy, Nicki, who asks his Grandma to make white mittens. She is hesitant because white mittens can get easily lost in the snow. Nicki does lose one and it becomes a temporary home to several animals. Let me tell you about my tot bag.

First, I made the animal characters in the story. I rarely ever sew without a pattern and I searched high and low for a pattern for the animals. But I could not find anything to make my life easier. So I used the clipart from KPM Doodles as my pattern for our softies. They came out cute and I am happy with them.

Then I had to create a mitten for the animals to fit but when I considered felt, I figured that it would be too unforgiving when the tot tries to fit the animals in. So I made a mitten shaped drawstring bag. This was hastily hand drawn and sewn using knit fabric that I had left-over from another project. All of the animals easily fit into the bag for storage. The animals will be used for retelling the story and such. We will probably do a hide-n-seek game where the tot has to find the animals. Also, a game where the tot has to toss the animal onto the mitten could be played.

Next, I added some mittens that I cut from felt that I had. I used every color of the rainbow and added pink for my girl. This is a two-fold game. Since I am working on colors with the tot, we will play where is the snowball? I will hide the snowball under a mitten and we will use our color words to find it. Secondly, the mittens will be used for a practical life application. Kaleb will hang them on a clothesline with clothespins (fine motor practice). He can also match them as well. The idea for the mitten game came from Kiwi Crate.

Kaleb loves magnetic activities, so I could not disappoint. After much searching, I could not find a simple mitten 2 part puzzle for the tot bag. So I created my own using clip art from My Cute Graphics. Her graphics are so cute and they are free! If you would like the pdf file, click here.

Next, I enlarged mitten clipart and made a sewing card for more fine motor practice. I could not help myself but I had to print and laminate the characters for the book. These are adorable and can be used on our felt board. I will also make some games to go with them. I may add them to our salt tray and have the tot uncover them with a paintbrush.

I added some mittens for practical life - teaching the tot to put on his mittens. They can also be used for matching. I totally love the sparkly white mittens that my mom made for J. We will have fun with these. One game will be to place a small item inside and have the tot guess what it is just by feeling the mitten.

I will be adding sparkle white play dough as soon as I make it. The recipe comes from My Small Potatoes. We will be working on some simple mitten art projects as well as making mitten cookies! I have a fun tot week planned (sprinkled with kindergarten activities), please come back and see my tot bag in action.

Tot Tuesday

I always get that sinking feeling when someone asks, "Where's Kaleb?" First thought, he has gotten into something that I will have to clean up. Is he in the markers or the laundry detergent? Is he unfolding the clothes that I just folded? That question was asked recently and my heart sank. I hadn't seen Kaleb for some time - long enough for some trouble. As I ran around the apartment, looking for him, I was pleasantly surprised when I found this...

He was on my bed, playing with his little matchbox cars. He had dumped every single one that he owned on my bed.

And if you look carefully, my laundry was still folded! Go Kaleb! He wasn't getting into anything, he was just playing quietly, as nice as can be.

Tot School - Orange

Our next color of the week was orange. This was a difficult color to collect items for. It seems everything has the primary colors but orange seems to be left out. Here are a few activities that we worked on this week.

I started him with orange play dough. I gave up play dough after he ate it but that has been awhile, so I brought it back out.

He rolled and squashed it. J asked for a mini break from her school work so she could play as well.

They made orange cookies and such. You'll notice that Kaleb now has a work space of his own. I brought up the IKEA play table that we had so he could have his own space to work. He seems to like this although he still ends up on my lap for part of our school day.

I gave Kaleb red and orange paper as well as red and orange paper clips. The goal was to clip the paper clips onto the color paper. This was a bit too much for him, he wanted to just take them off.

I gave Kaleb some stickers and orange paper. He likes sticking stickers onto things and this is a great fine motor activity.

This is a new addition to our tot school. I taped a piece of orange paper to the bottom of a container and added a layer of salt. I gave Kaleb a paint brush so he could paint away. The idea for the salt tray came from Learning 4 Kids. After we work with the other colors, I will change this to a rainbow color bin. He really liked this. I had to remind him several times to keep the salt in the bin but this is a new activity. I can see later adding pictures to the colored paper to have him uncover them - such as shapes or trucks.

We worked on a color sorting activity with building bricks (like legos). He was really only interested in building with the blocks but it did keep his attention.

Lastly, he "painted" with J and this time he couldn't drink the water! J wouldn't let him. We are moving on to the color yellow and I will have a new tot bag soon. Have a great day.

Sonlight Week 16

We are still working on The Story of Dr. Dolittle this week. We read about inventions such as the tin can and the ice box and we learned about plants. We read about Ida Scudder, a medical missionary to India.

We read about Daniel and his friends in bible.

In Math, I showed J how to use unifix cubes to solve addition problems. She uses one color for the top addend and another color for the bottom, then counts the blocks together. This will be an activity that she will work and check by herself for more math practice. I am trying to put together work items that she can self start so I can work more with the tot. I will create a math sheet for her to record her answers so I can make sure she is understanding.

In her math book, we are learning about perimeter. I showed J how to solve for the perimeter using our blocks. She would add the blocks to each side and then count them together. Using the blocks helps her to add the four digits.

We practiced telling time. One thing I have noticed about Horizons Math is that they tend to forgo reviewing concepts learned earlier. I try to review with her as much as I can remember. We are getting ready to start her new math book and I noticed time was coming up again, so we reviewed what she already knew.

 

J is her mystery letter of the week. That's her favorite letter, of course. She added her name to the letter page.

She worked on drawing a jellyfish for her letter.

This was a new way to review her sight words. It is called Roll, Say and Keep Gingie. I added six of her sight word cards and J would roll a die. If she could read the word in the numbered slot, she could keep the card. We worked through all of her sight words like this. It was much better than just reading the cards. (I just use the game board and not the gingerbread cards.) I love playing learning games to reinforce learning.

J used our new salt bin to practice writing her J's.

J practicing her J's as well as sentence writing.

I printed J's sight words on yellow paper and we added them to our word wall. This is a project that I had been wanting to do for awhile but I was limited on wall space. I took down the map and charts that I had and replaced them with letter. I then added her words that we had been working on from her reading program. I feel that this would be a better use for the wall.

Then I had her write a sentence using any of the words on her wall. I am hoping this will be a good resource for her writing as well as for reviewing her reading. We are moving on...week 17 on its way. I hope that your week went well, see you soon.

Links

Differentiated Kindergarten  Roll, Say, and Keep game, freebie.

Oceans of First Grade Fun has a free Roll and Read Word game based on short A words.

Over the Hills has another free Roll and Read Sight Word Game.

Reading With Dad

Recently, we have been reading small chapter books with J at night. She has truly loved the Nate the Great series. A series of books about a boy detective who solves cases. I have found a few of them in my stash from 'Merica and we have read them more than once. While I was making dinner, I came into the living room to see this...

My DH reading to the kids. I love that Kaleb has joined in the chapter book fun as well. He gets so mad if we take them away. He so wants to be big like J. My heart can't take his treatment of the chapter books yet, though. He is still young and he likes to bend the covers and such. To remedy this, I gave him an old chapter book that was a duplicate so I wouldn't panic when I saw him with a book. I am teaching him how to handle books but he is still practicing. I just don't want him to tear up my books in the process. I hope your day is full of great reads.

Tot Tuesday

This week I caught Kaleb in the food pantry doing something interesting. He was peeling the onions in my bin. He sat there quite awhile, just peeling away. He would carefully peel each layer and place the layers in the potato bin. He wasn't hurting anything, so I left him alone. But I just had to take a few pictures.

He kept himself busy, just peeling the layers, concentrating hard on getting the job done.

He did a pretty good job. I will have to call him when I need an onion peeled.

Tot School - Red

Over the holidays, when we weren't completely sick, I began to plan for the new school year. I truly felt like I wasn't completely able to devote as much time to the tot as I would like without feeling that I wasn't doing enough for my kindergartner. I am making changes in our school day, which is an on going process, hopefully for the better. For the tot, I decided to work on colors for the next few weeks - the first color being red. Here are a few of the activities that we accomplished.

I recently found a marble game at a yard sale here called Wobally. It is full of rainbow colored marbles. I gave Kaleb a bowl full of red marbles, a spoon, and a small plastic bottle. The idea was to work on his fine motor skills by spooning the marbles into the bottle.

He mainly enjoyed pouring them into the bowl and dropping them back into the bottle.

The next activity was also for fine motor practice. I gave my tot tongs, red foam blocks, and a bowl. I showed him how to use the tongs and moved the block from one bowl to another. He practiced this for awhile.

He is so serious. While I was working with Kaleb, I had J working on some things I knew that she wouldn't need a lot of instruction on. She practiced her handwriting and worked on some adding. Seeing all of the activities that I was doing with Kaleb, she asked to do some as well.

The next activity was a water transfer using an eye dropper. I had planned on tinting the water red but I didn't. I showed Kaleb how to use the water dropper. This was somewhat frustrating for him.

He is dropping some water into an ice cube tray.

I turned my back and found this...I guess he was thirsty. Now, I am glad I didn't tint the water red.

A quick mental note - don't play with marbles the day after you have eaten M & M's. The candy was a treat from my parents in 'Merica and we do not normally have them. He thought they were candy. No worries - I stopped him. (always watch your children when playing with small items)

I gave Kaleb scissors and some red paper to cut.

With a little direction, he glued the red paper onto a heart that I cut out. He definitely didn't like getting glue on his fingers though.

Last activity for the week, I gave Kaleb a milk carton and some pick-up sticks - remember those? I used to love that game when I was younger.

Then I let him see what he could do. It didn't take long for him to figure out - he placed all of the sticks inside the carton. He loves things like these. Well, that was our tot week full of the color red.