Riley's Rhymes - Itsy Bitsy Spider Activities

For the past two weeks, Riley has been working with the rhymes of Isty Bitsy Spider. We have had some spider fun using the min pack that I posted here. Riley insists that I do "school" with him first, before the other kids because he feels left out. I always keep his activities in a plastic bin, ready to grab and do:) Here are a few of the activities that we completed for our rhyme.

I included a fine motor activity of using the tweezers to pick up the spiders. This was slightly difficult for him as he had trouble squeezing the tweezers. We will revisit this type of activity.

I made a simple sensory bin of black beans, tp tubes, and spiders. He had fun having the spider slip down the water spout.

This activity is included in my printable pack - counting spiders. He used magnetic pom pom spiders to match the spiders on the cards while we practiced counting. He did exactly what I thought he would - he matched each color with the correct color pom pom magnet.

Another printable from my pack - matching the color spiders. I added magnets to the back and he matched the colors of the spiders together.

I found this activity at a consignment sale - magnetic bugs and spiders. He made a tower of the spiders and bugs to see how tall he could go.

He is practicing his shapes with this button activity. Riley is super-dinosaur crazy right now. That was his favorite puzzle to do.

Another printable from my pack - matching the shapes. My goal for this year is to have him learn his shapes and colors. We have been working on the color black and circles so far.

He is singing the rhyme while playing with the pieces from my pack.

Riley is making a simple foam spider with pipe cleaner legs. He is threading the pipe cleaners through the holes on the spider body.

I made a painter's tape spider web and gave Riley some cotton balls. He had to throw the cotton balls onto the spider web. They all had fun doing this. I kept this activity up for a week. They just kept reusing the cotton balls and by the end of the week, the web was all fuzzy.

I added a spider web to my floor and had Riley walk it. He also played cars with it, running on the roads. We left this for several days as well.

He painted a plate black and added google eyes. Then I painted the color circles and a few clothespins. Together, we made a spider match game - he had to match the colors of the pins to the colors on the spider. The hardest thing for him was pinching the clothespins to get them on the plate. We practiced this all week.

We are onto pumpkins for the rest of October. Stay tuned for my pumpkin mini pack. Enjoy your day.


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Nature Journaling - Week 5

Every week, we try to add to our nature journal. Sometimes, I ask them to draw something that we did or something we saw. Other times, they add drawings of animals that they learned about during Science. It varies but I have loved the results. I also love being able to paint together. We nature journal together and we enjoy it.

After our visit to the corn maze, I had the kids sit down and break out their journals. Kaleb decided to draw a stalk of corn.

J decided to draw some of the animals she encountered at the farm - several horses, chickens, and cows.

Here are their journals - J included a horse that she hand fed and a chicken that she pet. Kaleb is more a simple man - He added a corn stalk and an ear of corn. Both were painted with water colors.

My journal included the corn maze but also our simple experiment to see more wildlife in our yard. We added birdseed and Cheerios (we were desperate) to a clay dish and placed it where we saw some squirrels in our yard. We were hoping to be able to observe them. But, they didn't come. It sat in our yard with no visitors. No one came - not even the birds. We were bummed out:( Oh well, you live and learn:) Have an awesome day.

Tot Tuesday

Recently, we had the opportunity to visit a corn maze which was super fun. I had to share these pics of Riley playing in the corn.

This is my favorite pic of all....he is so cute! He ended up with corn everywhere - in his shoes, pockets:)

Aquarium Experience

We are currently working through a Year of Adventures and this adventure came just in time for our Night of the Moonjellies Row. Because of our interest in nature journaling, this was also a great adventure for Science.

Kaleb is hamming it up here - he is "thinking" about his aquarium map. And don't you love my toddler's clothes? He dressed himself and insisted that they matched because they were both red. I tried to talk him out of it but you can see how that worked.

A bird that I can all most reach...In the aquarium, they have birds flying around and my tot all most had bird poop one his head while I was taking this pic. It just missed him!

Riley, my tot, inside a shell.

Love this photo - J is way too big for the shell!

Here's the photo of Kaleb and the moon jellies. Aren't they amazing? We had too much fun learning about jellyfish when ready Night of the Moonjellies. Another fun adventure - see you soon.

Letter X Interactive Notebook with free printable

Letter X is finally here....so close to finishing:) Hope you enjoy the download.

My letter sort game is based on treasure chests. Sort the upper and lower case coins into the correct treasure chest. Add envelopes to the back of the chests so the coins will slip right in the pockets.

I added a letter review game - get to the treasure ...X marks the spot. You play this several different ways. One way - your child chooses an alphabet card and covers the letter that he/she says. When they are all covered, they can get the treasure.

My math game is addition to five. Using colored linking blocks, your child chooses a math card and works through the problem using manipulative. If the answer is a number 3, for example, they find a 3 and cover it with a green block. If you don't have the linking cubes, you could use pom poms. Have fun with the letter X.

Download Letter X Interactive Notebook HERE.

FIAR - How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World

Our Five in the Row book these past few weeks has been How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. It is definitely one of my favorites and I even used this book when I taught third grade overseas.

First, Kaleb made a passport so he could collect stamps for every country that he visited. Each country stamp also included the ingredient that was found there.

He learned about the parts of an apple as well as the life cycle of an apple.

He compared the weights of several items to the weight of an apple. He loved when I pull out the balance! He tried to discover the amount of blocks that would balance out his apple.

He wrote a mini book about how to make an apple pie.

We had a taste test of several types of apples which was fun. This was the first time we tasted Pink Ladies and learned that we liked them.

He mapped out the adventure in the book on a world map. We discussed why she would use certain types of transportation according to the map.

I challenged him to make an apple from Legos. He then made an orange candy corn man as well.

He worked on a mural of a cityscape which unfortunately got super wet when my tot spilled the paint water on it. We were disappointed but we had fun drawing it.

Lastly, we made an apple pie. I peeled the apples and he cut them. I used a store bought crust.

It turned out pretty good and we ate it with ice cream. This book took us a few extra weeks because of the hurricane but we finally finished it. We will be working on How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the USA next. It should only take a week for that book, then on to our next FIAR book. 

Nature Journaling - Week 4

With trying to catch up after Hurricane Irma, we haven't been able to spend the time we wanted to on our nature hikes. But that doesn't mean we haven't had anything to journal about. This week's journals contain animals that we learned about during Science as well as some other cool things we saw:)

This week, we learned about otters and skunks. I love the use of the danger sign!

J also drew a dinosaur that she saw at Dinosaur World. I love the colors. And she drew her bunny Gwin.

Kaleb shared a picture about the moon jellies that we saw at the Aquarium. HE even drew himself in front of the case!

Here is Kaleb's bear - complete with humps on the back because he learned that grizzly bears have humps on their back.

My journal which includes a skunk and a dinosaur. We have been outlining our pictures with sharpie markers and they are bleeding through our pages. Next time, I will buy journals with water color paper instead of all purpose paper. Our journals are becoming a great memory of our learning this school year so far. See you soon.