Tot Tuesday

I had planned this water sensory bin when we worked through Ducks in Muck a couple of weeks ago. But I never got around to it. Finally, on a quiet afternoon while J was off playing floor ball with her dad, I was able to add water to the bin and let the tot explore.

It was an easy sensory bin to put together. I found some yellow and blue rock from IKEA in the discounted bin and added some plastic animals that we had. Just add water and let them play!

He played with this bin for at least an hour while I took some time to pack a few more items. It was nice - no fighting, no refereeing, just a great time playing with the water.

I think he is happy.

GHI Review Pack

The next installment of my alphabet review packs based on Royal Baloo's Zoomin' Movin' Alphabet Series is now ready. If you haven't checked out the Zoomin' Movin' Alphabet Series, please go to Royal Baloo's site. She has so many wonderful printables available. I am excited about this printable pack as I have included a few more items such as sight word parking lot and I have also created 3 separate game packs for each letter. Stay tuned for the game packs based on G, H, and I.

Inside this printable pack, you will find:

letter play dough mats

2 part puzzles

sight word puzzles

alphabet tracers

magnifying cards

spin and graph activities

roll and graph activities

letter/sight word parking lot game

51 total pages to review the concepts - GHI as well as counting to 9, and the sight words: away, go, and you.

I hope this printable pack is useful to your preschool plans. If there is anything you would like me to add, please let me know. Also, I would love to hear from you if you download the pack. If you use this and blog about it, please share a link. 

Download the GHI Review Pack HERE.

All graphics are from:

and

Stay tuned for the extra game packs for the letters G, H, and I - coming soon!

Sonlight Week 29

Wow, look at that! Only 7 more weeks to go. I can't believe it. I have a ton of stuff to do to get ready for our 'Merica trip and to get the apartment ready. I also have my DD who will graduate and we will have a visitor for her graduation - a family friend. So, it is going to be busy but that's good. I like busy so I don't have to watch the calendar slowly slip by. This week brought us the beginning of The House at Pooh Corner. She has been waiting for that chapter book for awhile. We also read about some big machines such as airplanes, trains, and construction machines.

We are always working on sight words. J is working a a sight word book from Scholastic Books.

As a typical kindergartener, J sometimes mixes up b and d. I found this free graphing exercise from Sprinkles to Kindergarten. Make the b/d cube, roll it, and write the letter that ends up. I had her tell me what letter it was while she was writing it. We practiced this all week.

Y was our mystery letter of the week. J is learning how to draw a yak.

J is working on writing her y's.

It was also time to start learning the poem, Trees by Joyce Kilmer. J worked on the first page of the printable book that I created for it. You can find it here. I created two books for the poem. The first one is for the child to trace the verses and the second is just for illustrating. We read the first page every day and J drew a tree.

Well, one more week down. I can't believe first grade is all most done. Hope you had a week full of sunshine, see you later!

Cocuk Bayram

My DH had a middle of the week-day off from school for Cocuk Bayram. Cocuk Bayram is Children's Day. There are usually activities at various school, parades, and such. We took the day for the family and enjoyed a picnic at the park.

J climbed the ropes with her father.

They played on the slides. This was Kaleb's favorite thing to do.

My DH enjoying his day off from school.

It was too much for Kaleb, he played out in the end :) All in all, it was an awesome day. It was nice to get out of the city and just enjoy being a family.

Senior Pictures

Can there truly only be nine more weeks until my DD graduates? Wow, where did the time go? I wanted to share her Senior pics with you. She's so pretty and I am so proud of her. (She's going to kill me for sharing these.)

This is her favorite - with her hair covering her eyes!

I can't believe she is a Senior! Love you Keke.

Tot Tuesday

Missing Chair & Quiet Child

I was working on the computer the other day and I noticed Kaleb walking out of the office with his little chair. He was very determined to get where he needed to go while carrying the little chair. I began to wonder exactly where was he going and just what did he have his mind on doing? I crept around looking for any indication of his whereabouts and found him in the bathroom!

Hmmm, just what is he getting into?

He was checking out the toothbrushes, all of them, until he found two he liked.

Busy little kid, loves brushing his teeth with anyone's toothbrush. I should be glad he wasn't cleaning the toilet with them!

A Little Bouncing

At one of the yard sales here in country, I found this Dora bouncy ball. I thought it would be perfect for J to jump around with but I never intended for Kaleb to get use from it. I have been Spring cleaning the apartment and packing toys away. Because of the empty shelves and such, the kids are re-discovering toys that we have had. Kaleb found the bouncy ball.

He rolled ...

and bounced...

and balanced. Some fun. 

And finally DH took him to get his haircut. He looks like a little boy and he can finally see without looking through his bangs! Isn't he cute?

Sonlight Week 28

This week has brought us winter-like weather, coughs, runny noses, and colds. Where is my Spring weather? The last few weeks I have sorted through the kids winter clothes and added their spring/summer clothes to the drawers. Now, we are back to winter jackets and long sleeves. Bummer.

I have noticed a change with J in her reading. She asks to read everything now. No longer is she happy to sit back and let me read. She wants to read herself! This is an amazing change. Here, she is reading her Bible story. Even though there are words that she doesn't know, she tries to sound them out. I am so proud of her!

J is still working on subtraction using a ten frame. I like the visual it provides while working on her math problems.

J finished Explode the Code 1 1/2 and began the Explode the Code 2. This book starts with blends which is perfect since that is what we are practicing in reading.

J is still practicing her sight words. Here she is working on rainbow word writing.

J writing her own "guess my animal" clues. She wrote three sentences about an animal and I had to guess what it was. She is using her word wall for help with spelling.

J brought out her handwriting book and worked on a couple of pages. I hope to have this book done by the end of the school year.

We played sight word Candy Land game. I found the free Candy Land game cards from Ironic Adventures. She has several different sets that you can print such as letters, addition, and subtraction. This is a great way to use an existing game for review. I love it.

Kaleb went to town with the salt tray. He basically dumped and poured the salt using his measuring cups and such. This gave J a chance to vacuum, a good life skill. She wanted to help so I let her clean it up. She did a good job. We had a good week, it would have been better if it wasn't so cold and rainy. See you next week.

Zoo Night Tot Pack

Another favorite book here is Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann. It is a cute book with very little words about a precocious monkey who gets the Zookeeper's keys. He unlocks the animals' cages and they all follow the Zookeeper into bed. Kaleb's favorite part is when the wife realizes they are not alone in their room and all you see are eyes. Love it!

This book has been on my tot bag list for awhile. I have plans to add a tot bag later but I am waiting until we are in 'Merica. The reason for this is the availability of items that I would like to include in my tot bag such as locks and keys. This summer, I finally found it in board book form and decided to work on a printable pack. The difficulty of working on a pack for this book was finding the right clipart complete with an armadillo but I finally found it! So I present to you - Zoo Night Tot Pack. 

It is packed full of 53 pages of tot fun learning. It includes puzzles, letter learning, play dough mats, games, color word learning, shadow matching, graphing, plus more! 

Download Zoo Night Tot Pack Here.

Enjoy the tot pack. I would love to hear from you if you download and, as always, if you see a mistake, please let me know so I can correct it. 

Magnets

Lately, I have been Spring cleaning my school room as well as packing the apartment for our trip to 'Merica. With all of the chaos around, the kids have been playing with old favorites which have been rediscovered. Recently, Kaleb found my bin of various magnets and went to town.

This playtime kept him pretty busy but of course, he loves anything magnetic. When working with him, I always try to include some activity that's magnetic.

If you are looking for more ideas on how to use magnets, check out these links:

Fab n Free has a set of alphabet magnetic pom pom sheets for every letter!

The Intentional Momma has a free alphabet page where your child can match the letters.

Fifth and Hazel has a free printable ice cream set to use with magnets. It says it is a chore chart but I think it would just be cute as is.

Sew Fantastic has a cute set of magnet charts - a rainbow, numbers, gum ball machine.

Tot Tuesday

I just had to share a few pics from my week. Kaleb is always in the thick of things while we are doing school and I try to have simple activities for him to do while on my lap. The activities have to be small and unobtrusive to what J and I are doing. Today, I gave him the package of highlighters and some scrap paper.

 On my lap...

loving the blue highlighter...

look how happy a highlighter can make him. Isn't he cute? May you take beauty in the simple things in life today - enjoy.

Sonlight Week 27

We are slowly recovering from our work-cation and trying desperately to avoid Spring Fever. We spent the week weeding through toys and clothes to get ready for our trip to 'Merica. J has been getting somewhat upset with my Spring cleaning, afraid that I am getting rid of all her toys. This week, we continued our work on blends and added -u words to our reading. We finished our Nursery Rhyme book early and have added in a book of Prayers. J is begging for me to read the next book of Oz but I am dragging my feet on that. Here are a few activities that we did this week.

J worked on addition and subtraction problems using this free printable from Love2Teach  KG. She worked through the problems using the ten frame and some counters.

She practiced her skip counting with this Spring printable from Love2Teach KG.

J unscrambled the sentence about Spring and then illustrated it. (Can you sense a theme here - spring, spring, spring...I am thinking of spring...) This printable came from Lori Rosenberg's TPT store.

The letter of the week was W. J practiced writing her W's and learned to draw a whale.

J stil is practicing her sight words. She is using the rainbow word technique. I have her trace the word in different colors and say it.

J worked on her first crossword puzzle using short vowels. It was simple but she liked it. This printable came from Faith Rucker but after a search of her store, I can not find the freebie - sorry:(

This week, we read about several different beliefs and J colored a peacock for the Hindu festival of Diwali. The coloring sheet came from Activity Village.

We read about musical instruments so what better time to break out the instruments! They played several songs for me and then we sorted our instruments by type.

Kaleb joined in the fun and the instruments were a big hit. We had a good week and now, we are onto the next and final nine weeks of our school year. Wow, nine weeks, how is that even possible? Hope your week went well. See you soon.