Book of the Week - tot

I have such a long list of books that I want to enjoy/work with this year. But we were not done with our color words (doing one a day), I decided to enjoy another book with colors. The book for our week is I Went Walking by Sue Williams.

It is on the same line as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? I went walking and what did you see? I saw a black cat looking at me. What I love about this book is the the animals are not immediately noticeable in the pictures until you turn the page. The child has to guess what the animals are based on visual clues. 

For the tot version of this book, I went with a farm theme. Most of the animals seen can be found on a farm. So here is what we did.

Here is a picture of my activity bins for the week. All of the activities are from my I Went Walking tot bag. You can find the post for my tot bag here.

Kaleb and I read the book and then used the props to retell the story. We practice animal sounds, which he is very good at.

Kaleb then played with the magnets that I made. He could name most of the animals on the board and we practice (with help) matching each animal.

I let him work with the horse sewing card. I did not add of the sewing cards in his basket, only one or two will do. I did not want him to get overwhelmed.

I added the tonging activity and he surprised me by actually grasping the pom poms with the tongs. This can also be a color sorting activity but I just started him with putting them into the bowls.

He loves magnets, putting them on...taking them off. I gave him the animal sort and he placed the animals on the cookie sheet. Again, we worked with the sounds the animals made instead of the sizes, which will come later.

He loved the puppets. We played with them for awhile.

I then hid all of his farm animals in his shredded paper sensory bin. He had to find them. Instead of moving the paper around to find the animals, he just dumped it out.

Lastly, I gave him some brown play dough and some farm animals to play with. He made tracks in the mud dough. He is still trying to figure out play dough so I don't give him too much to play with. We still have an art project that will involve chocolate pudding, yum! All of these activities will be in his bins all week in the hopes that he will work with them while I teach J. I hope these tot bag posts will encourage you to create your own tot bag. 

I Went Walking Tot Bag

My new tot bag is based on the book, I Went Walking by Sue Williams. This was a simple bag to create since I had most of the items on hand and I didn't have to make much. I based many of the activities on farm animals since most of the animals can be found on a farm. Here is what I included...

I created storytelling props by using some clipart that I had from my Mailbox subscription and I scanned the image of the "walker" from the book. I colored the clipart on my computer and used the colors from the story. I then laminated the character and added velcro so we could use them on our felt board.

The animals can also be used for a sorting activity that includes some fine-motor practice. I will place the animals inside bowls and have my tot use tongs to place pom poms into them. At first, these will be just for the practice of using tongs, then we will use it for a color sorting activity.

I added a farm animal matching activity which I made magnetic from Frogs in my Pocket (link below). I printed two copies of the animals and laminated them. Kaleb can match the animals to the pictures.

Another magnetic activity I made was a size sort game that I found from Creative Preschool Resources (link below). I know Kaleb is too young to sort the sizes of the animals right now but he will be able to do this later. For now, we will use these to practice animal sounds. He just loves to stick the pictures on the magnet board.

I also added farm hand puppets and sewing cards for retelling the story and hand-eye coordination. These were bought from a store so I didn't make them myself. However, if you do not have any puppets or sewing cards, these would be easy to reproduce (links at bottom).

The final activity I added was Little People farm animals. Again, we had these on hand and I didn't have to buy anything. I will use these for the sensory bin. Currently, our sensory bin has shredded paper in it. I will place these animals in the bin and have my tot  find the animals. These would also be good in a rice or bean sensory bin.

To see my tot bag in action, please check here. I hope you enjoyed this addition to my tot bags. To read about my other literature based tot bags, please check here.

Links to Create your Own

Creative Preschool Resources - this is a great free printable pack that I found the size sort. There are other activities that you can print as well.

2 Teaching Mommies - another free printable farm pack. They have some great units!

Lawteedah - another free printable farm pack.

Frogs in my Pockets Blog - this is where I found the farm animal matching game that I laminated and added magnets to.

3 Dinosaurs - has a great farm printable pack with several downloads. I love her stuff.

Zitman Fam - make your own farm puppets, complete with patterns!

Gratefully Growing Grace - if you don't want to make large puppets, you can see her farm animal finger puppets here.

Love and Lollipops - has a great farm sensory bin complete with popsicle stick barn.

Creative Preschool Resources - has a simple pig craft which can be added. We are planning to do this and I may let them paint the pig with chocolate pudding!

Worldsapart (me) - here's a link to my pinterest farm activities for tots. I am still trying to figure out how to add the pinterest button, it just doesn't want to work for me.

Tot Tuesday

Kaleb has found a new favorite toy. This is great news for me since it will give me a little extra time teaching J (everything helps). He has found Mr. Potato Head.

During Math, he brings me the container of Mr. Potato Head and begs me to open it. He then sits on the floor and proceeds to put it together.

Pieces in and pieces out...it keeps him occupied through Math...

and makes us happy.

Monday Memories

It was Sunday morning and I was eating the breakfast my DH made for me (we actually had some bacon). Kaleb wanted me to read a book to him but I was busy, so J stepped in. She read him his favorite book - Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? which just so happened to be our book of the week.

They were having fun practicing the animal sounds of each of the characters in the book. It was so fun to watch. I love moments like these. Hope your week gets off to a good start.

Sonlight Week 2

Our second week is well underway and we are having fun. I have added some activities to the regular schedule, not because I felt that Sonlight was lacking in activities but because literature is my true love. I felt like we should incorporate some activities with books.

In addition to our regular math, we are exploring different ways to represent numbers. I found this great mini number book. Every day we work with two numbers and discuss ways we can represent them. We write tally marks, dot patterns, number words, number sentences, and dots on a ten frame. We use dominoes to see the different number sentences we can create. They are a great visual for our math.

B is the chosen letter of the week for the Sonlight curriculum. She practiced writing upper and lower case "b's" and created a page with pictures we found in magazines.

In Science, we read about light and weather. We learned the correct order of colors for a rainbow. This ties in nicely with learning our color words.

We even created a rainbow with a prism that I had from my teaching days. She thought this was especially cool.

We learned about early settlers. J wove a basket from paper. This was a little difficult for her which surprised me. Last week when she sewed her dress seemed to be an easier task than the basket. But we got through it. Maybe I should have chosen a place mat to weave instead of a basket.

This picture is how are day looks. Kaleb pushes the small kid chair to the table and stands on it to see what we are doing. He insists on coloring or trying to do what J is doing. If he doesn't get results, he will grab what she has and run.

One of our read-alouds for Sonlight is The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. I was concerned because of her age but she has loved this book. She constantly begs for more than one chapter a day. This is a project that we did so she could act out the story. We made our own boxcar from a tissue box and we used items from her toys to create the scene. She has been playing with this all week.

In Social Studies, we are reading about the Egyptians. Here is J's name using hieroglyphics. Discovery Kids has a hieroglyphic page where you can type in your child's name and print out what it would look like in Egyptian. Cool!

I found some Egyptian paper dolls that J colored from Practical Pages.

And here is her Egyptian headband from First Palette. I knew she would love this, her favorite animal is a King Cobra. She wore this headband all through lunch. We completed our week with some Science experiments. We have definitely been busy. Hope your week went well too. Happy Sonlight!

Book of the Week - Kindergarten

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I will use my last dollar to buy a book. I love books, especially books for children. Literature is one of my loves. It is one of the reasons I chose Sonlight for J's curriculum. It is literature based. In addition to keeping up with J's lessons for kindergarten, I plan on focusing on a book a week. For each week,  I will share some of the activities that I planned/found based on the book. The activities I share will be a variety for both tots and older kids.

Our first book of the week is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle. This book is already well loved by my tot. He is constantly bringing me the book, grunting for me to read it. I chose this book to focus on first because I have already made a tot bag with activities for Kaleb and it is the perfect book to teach J her color/sight words. Here are some of the things we did.

We watched a video on You Tube on how to spell red. This was great. The tune was catchy and it offered visual clues and even had a time when you could sing it without the words. J loved this and it definitely helped her to remember how to spell red.

I was surfing on Pinterest and found these great color worksheets from Michelle Griffo. They are 10 free pages of writing color word practice. First, you write the word, then color, find them, and then cut and paste the word together. These are great.

We did a color experiment that I found at PreKinders. It even has a downloadable recording sheet to write what happened. First, we placed 3 different colored Skittles in a bowl. Then, J poured water over them completely. We discussed what might happen and I wrote down what she said. Then we waited.

It didn't take long, the colors started to bleed into the water and then the "S" removed itself from the candy. I took a picture but you really can't see the "S" floating around in the picture but it was fascinating to watch.

Then J recorded what happened on her worksheet. This was a super easy experiment to play with colors!

As J learns her color words, she is stamping them on this Brown Bear color sheet that I found here. I bought these alphabet stampers in America this summer and I absolutely love them. They come in a plastic carrying case and the letters are marked on the case, so you know where to put them back. I only bought the lowercase letters since we are going to work on sight words and such with them.

J painted some paper brown so she can make her own Brown Bear. She used several different objects to make different effects on the paper. She used a fork, sponge, large paintbrush, and a pipe cleaner to paint her brown fur. The templates for this art project can be found at first-grade-garden.blogspot, scroll down. This blog has some great ideas!

Here is her finished bear, pretty cute, huh? That's it for the book activities for Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Stay tuned for our next book of the week for more educationally fun activities.

Book of the Week - Tot

Our first book of the week is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle. This book is already well loved by my tot. He is constantly bringing me the book, grunting for me to read it. I chose this book to focus on first because I have already made a tot bag with activities for Kaleb and it is the perfect book to teach J her color/sight words. Here are some of the things we did.

I have six bins that I have begun to fill with activities for Kaleb each week. These bins are in our school room and I use them to keep Kaleb occupied while I am teaching J. These are our Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? tot bins for the week. (Don't worry, those scissors only cut paper)

I gave Kaleb the bin with the finger puppets that I made for the tot bag. He loved these. He took some time to place them on his finger and then we practiced the animal sounds.

I read the book (again) and left the ending page where all of the animals are located open. I showed him how to match the puppet to the animal.

We practiced the color matching clothespin wheel. I did not push actually matching the colors but we worked on opening and closing the clothespins. This will be an activity we will revisit.

I gave him the bin with the two-part magnetic puzzles. He liked these. I tried to show him how to put the animals together but he just wanted to do it his way. He placed all of the magnets on the board. This kept him occupied so I could teach math to J.

Kaleb tried out his new scissors with the Brown Bear cutting sheets that I included in his tot bag. It may be a long time before he masters this but he had fun trying.

For an art project, and since J was going to paint, I let Kaleb paint with some brown paint and a brush. I first had to clean off the table entirely and cover it with large pieces of craft paper. He loved painting and got upset when I removed him in order to clean up. Well, I can say he loved his Brown Bear, Brown Bear activities for the week. Stay tuned for our next book of the week.