Learning Activity: Life Skill- making lunch

Shrade is at the stage where he wants to "cook" and "do it by myself."  I remember my mom teaching me early on to make my own lunch.  I want to do the same for my son, although I think I'm doing it at a much earlier age.  He is just thrilled to spread peanut butter and jam on his own bread and cut it.  He is so proud to eat the sandwich he made for himself.  He also helps to put away the ingredients.  I plan to do this more often.  Have you taught your child how to make their own lunch?

Ingredients: bread, pb, jam

spreading jam

spreading pb

cut

All done!  I'm ready for lunch!

What's on our Bookshelf? My First BOB Books Pre-reading skills

I have heard of BOB books, but mostly for readers.  This group of books just hit it right with me for my 3 year old!  There are 12 books and they all center around Sally the Circle and her friends as they teach kids about shapes, sorting and classifying, patterns and sequencing.  The books start off at an easy level and increase in difficulty (but not too much for a preschooler).  I was surprised and pleased at how interactive these books were.  I highly recommend these prereading BOB books.  Check them out at the library!

Brightly Beaming Resources: Week #20 Balloons

We had really fun studying about balloons!  We hung a balloon from the entryway and had fun batting it around.  We worked with orange (collecting orange items) and counting 20 orange triangles.  We made letter T as a painted tree.  We watched a clip of UP where the house lifts out of it's foundation and that's where we talked about helium (our vocabulary word).  We read lots of books and had practiced some fine motor skills by drawing lines between balloons and people.

Match the balloon to a person

Counting 20 orange triangles- mama drew them

Come on, Mom!  Hit the balloon at me!

Look at all the orange things we found!

Building letter T

T is for tree

Books we read:

Learning Activity: Valentine Fun (Candy Heart Math)

I actually took these pictures LAST year, but never posted. I was pregnant at the time and things were just piling up on me. But life still has NOT slowed down, but I found this and decided to show you a few things we did with candy hearts.

Candy Heart Pattern

Matching candy hearts with same colors

Counting colored candy hearts

This year with candy hearts I'm also going to add:
*Matching and then graphing
*Putting numbers in the bottom of  a muffin tin and putting correct numbers of candy hearts in them
*Daily estimation jar for 1 week
*Drawing big hearts and seeing how many candy hearts we can fit inside

What ideas can you add to these?  I would love to try more!

Learning Activity: Unique Animal Puzzle (ImagiPlay)

I just wanted to show you something that I bought about a year ago. It's a puzzle from ImagiPlay with an animal for every letter of the alphabet and they all fit together. Some of the pieces got broken, but I glued them back together. This is fun to do whether standing it up or laying it flat. Eventually we will do research on each of these animals. Always something new to learn!  It's an Animal Alphabet Parade!

What's on our Bookshelf? Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?

Jessna and I had fun reading Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Eric Carle.  It's very similar to Brown Bear, Brown Bear, but this one focuses on animals not quite as well known and their sounds.  One thing I learned going to story time is that this book and others like it can be sung to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  How about that?  Learning with singing is always more fun.  Enjoy!

February Monthly Plan

*Bible Verse:  D verse, Zephaniah 3:17 "He will take great delight in you."      Songs for Saplings 
We are making a little book for these verses and we sing them everyday during our "Bible study" time.

Bible verse activities from Totally Tots

*Brightly Beaming Resources:  We are using the Preparatory Curriculum for 2-4 year olds for Shrade.
I try to blog about what we do for each "weekly" activity.  It takes us about 2 weeks for each theme.  We will be done with the Prep Curric when we reach 26 lessons!  Not many more left.  :)  Then we will start The Letter of the Week Curriculum for preschool age.

Wind: lesson 21

Seasons: lesson 22

*Brightly Beaming Baby:  Jessna is now 9 months old for the Nursery Age lessons.  Each lesson is 2 weeks long and includes literature, poems, nursery rhymes, Bible, speech & vocab, classical music, lullaby, foreign language (I'm going to do some Spanish and sign language), baby game, exercise and baby massage.  I love these lessons because they give me a focus on what I can do to entertain my baby!  It's fun and she loves it.  I hope to do more things with her!  I've been very slack with Jessna, but I do as much as I can.  Keeping up with 2 kids is more than I can handle most days.

Lesson 13

Lesson 14

*Sensory Play:
-water play- loves this!
-playdough 

Everyday Sensory Alphabet Activities by Melitsa Avila

We will be using a lot of these activities when we learn the letters!

*Literature Connection
We are going to do some fun activities with The Gingerbread Man with ideas from Totally Tots!  They featured this all last month, so now that I have the ideas I will run with it.

*Fun With Colors
Every month this year I will pick a different color to focus on for one week.  For February I chose RED!  I will be using ideas from Teach Your Tot and Totline 123 Colors : Color Day Activities for Young Children (1-2-3 Series: Ages 3-6) by Jean Warren.


*Daily Music time: Songs from Music Notes and CD's we get at the library. 

*Pre-Math Activities
 I'll be using this book Totline 123 Math: Pre-Math Activities for Working With Young Children (1-2-3 Series, Math: Ages 3-6) by Jean Warren.  I'll try to blog about some of the activities that we do.
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*Art:
 -watercolor painting

*Field Trips:
Playdates
MOPS
Library story time for Preschool
Childcare- during Bible study

Mall playground


Pretend Play:
-building a fort
-cooking
-dress up with scarves and hats

*Other Activities
I also have found other activities that I have put on my Pinterest boards: Preschool Ideas and Preschool Activities.  Come follow me!





*Skills/Chores:
 What Shrade can do: 3 years of age
-When asking a question to mommy and daddy, begin with "May I please...?"
-wash hands
-taking off clothes and put in laundry basket
-putting clothes on
-drinking from cup
-throw away garbage/recycling
-clean up messes on the floor

-put dishes in the sink

-help put dishes away from the dishwasher

-put clothes in the washer
-Help mama with the baby
-Cooking with mama
-spelling his name
-potty trained!

 What we are working on:
-clean up toys- say "yes, mama" when asked without whining or crying- still working on this

-brushing teeth (we've been working on this for awhile)
-wash face and hands and brush hair