Tot School – Letter X and Owl

Alex is almost 4 (46 months), and Max is 26 months.

This week, we worked on RRSP Letter X and we did an owl theme.  The kids were pretty excited!  Max is fascinated with owls, and he spots owls in many random books as we’re reading.  He even finds owls in tractor books! :)

This week we used Raising Rock Star printables from 1+1+1=1 and free Owl printables from my blog.  (I’ve also created a few new printables to meet Alex’s current interests; you can find those here.)

We read several books from the library ~

Wow Said The Owl (great for 2 year olds, teaches colors, Max loved it!)
Berkeley’s Barn Owl Dance (didn’t really care for this one)
White Owl, Barn Owl (great fact/fiction mix, and Alex loved it!)

The nice thing about Alex’s name is that we’ve now covered each letter in his name in the first 6 lessons of RRSP.  I made him a laminated name practice page to use with dry erase.

He is scissors-crazy (in a good way) lately!  He’s finally interested in cutting on the lines, and he’s doing a pretty good job.  It’s still not a smooth cut, but he’s getting there!

 

I made an owl roll & graph, but Alex was annoyed that he was supposed to be recording his results.  He just wanted to roll and roll and roll…so much for that activity!  It’s cute, though, and I’m sure it will benefit somebody’s kiddos! ;)

Max tried, too.  Then he smushed the cube, rendering it useless.  Sigh.

Both boys LOVED this “circle the smallest” page. 
Even Max scribbled on the smallest one in each row! 

    

Alex “made stairs”…or sequenced owls by size…

 

He LOVES using the letter tiles to build words.
After he builds them, I show him how to use the letters to sound out the words.
Alex loves letter sounds right now.
He’s not quite ready to sound out words, but he’s willing to listen to me sound it out.

Max had to try, too…although he’s obviously not ready for this yet!

Number Order Puzzle…it took a little ‘pushing’ on my part to convince Alex to do this activity, but he did a great job once he decided to try!

Dot Painting – a current favorite…
and the reason that the boys are getting the real dot markers for Christmas :)

 

Owl Shape Puzzle…Max did this every day!  Alex tolerated it.

  

Pre-writing for Alex, scribbling practice for Max

 

Five Little Owls poem with manipulatives…Alex LOVED making the owls fly away!

   

Finding and stamping this week’s sight word (little) in the RRSP Mini Book

Stamping for the sake of stamping, because Mommy wouldn’t give him the mini book ;)

Practicing his Xs on the Bible verse page

 

This little boy loves his colors…but has no clue about color names.
We keep trying!  This week, he matched candy heart erasers to the colored dots, matched the velcro colors, and matched the color words to the correct spot.:)

    

Tower Building…although crashing it is the best part for Max!

We’re finished with all of our tot school papers for the week, so Friday is for fun!  Grandma & Papa collected some pine cones for us, so we’re making pine cone owls tomorrow morning!  Wish me luck…glue guns, googly eyes, 3 tots and a baby, and sticky-sappy pine cones should be interesting!  If they actually turn out, I’ll post about them next week :)

I wish life wasn’t crazy with three little ones.  My boys loved the owl theme, and I would LOVE to have gone into more depth with the science-y side of things.  Maybe next year we’ll do this again, but put more emphasis on the factual information.  I hope so!

You can learn more about RRSP, Preschool Corner, or Tot School by clicking on the links below.  You’ll also see what other moms are doing with their tots and preschoolers!

Homemade Foaming Soap

This idea has been floating around the internet for a long time, and I just got around to trying it today.  Money Saving Mom posted on her foam soap about a month ago, and that reminded me to give this a try.  I thought I’d share this here in case anyone had not heard of this idea.  It’s a great money saver!

My sister Deb was kind enough to give me an empty foam soap container the last time we were at her house.  (Thanks, Deb!) It’s been sitting under my bathroom sink for a few weeks now.

We were down to the last few pumps in an old container of soap, so I figured it was time to try making foam soap!

I opened up the almost-empty bottle, propped it on top of the foam soap container, and then let it drain in.  I also added three squirts from another bottle of soap, as there wasn’t quite enough left in the old one.

I added very warm water, very slowly, to keep it from foaming while it filled.  I put on the lid, set it next to the sink, and gave it a try.  (I wish soap could always be nice & warm when it came out of the pump…that was nice!)

Now we have a full container of soap at almost no cost.  I could get used to that!  My boys are going to LOVE that it foams, too!

In Her Own Time…

It would figure that I’d post about Jensyn still not sitting or rolling much, and then days later, she’d have both skills figured out! 

Our little sweetie is now rolling…and getting stuck in funny places. 

She’s also sitting on her own, and she happily plays.  She’s still a bit wobbly once in a while, but she is enjoying this new way to play!  Oh, and I think the bouncy seat might be a thing of the past…since Jensyn is definitely not laying back and relaxing! ;)

Good job, Jensyn!

Thanksgiving Bingo Game

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thanksgiving-Bingo-Set-4-game-cards-spinner

I recently received a helpful comment about the Thanksgiving Bingo game included in the Thanksgiving Preschool Pack.  A reader pointed out that it contained an error on the blue card.  She also mentioned that she and her son were frustrated by the spinner combinations that did not appear on his Bingo card.

The link above will take you to a FREE download for a “redo” of the Thanksgiving Bingo game.  It contains 4 Bingo cards, and the new spinner has less options…which will, I hope, leave your children less frustrated as they play this game.

Thanks for understanding, and THANK YOU to the reader who was kind enough to point out the mistake!  I really do appreciate it! :)

Little Adventures Preschool printables

When someone leaves a comment on Our Little Monkeys, I almost always take a few minutes to visit their blog. 

This past week, Amanda left a comment on my Woodland Friends post.  I ended up spending more than a little time reading her blog after that!  She started a small preschool in her home, and it’s called Little Adventures Preschool.  They do some REALLY neat activities!  She’s one brave mama, as there are even pictures of toddlers and preschoolers body-painting her living room! ;)

She’s made a few free printables that are just ADORABLE.  They’re a little different from the typical tot pack/preschool pack pages that you see on many blogs…and they’re lots of FUN, too! 

She has a Thanksgiving math pack with grid games, geometric solids, and a few other match activities.  She also has an Animals In Winter pack (using the same graphics as my Woodland Friends pack, if it matters to you…) with a few math games, as well.

     

She’s slowly adding new printables to her blog.  When I asked permission to share her blog here, Amanda mentioned that she’s working on a winter themed pack too!

I’m so thankful to the mamas who have shared my blog and helped it grow.  It’s always fun to have a chance to return the favor.  I’d really encourage you to check out the Little Adventures Preschool blog.  Her activities are loads of fun, and her printables are adorable!

Woodland Friends preschool pack

$2 at Teacher's Notebook (Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to receive a 25% discount!)

This pack contains over 25 creative, fun forest themed activities for your 3 to 5 year old to enjoy! You'll find 51 pages, including 3 instructional pages for parents and 46 printable pages for kids.

There are 2 mini-book choices: “I see” and “God made”,
so that you may choose the one that suits your needs.

 

You'll cover skills such as:

~ prewriting

~ beginning handwriting

~ counting

~ beginning letter sounds

~ number order

~ sorting

~ size sequencing

~ graphing

~ shapes

~ memory game

~ introduction to rhyming

~ scissors skills

~ and more!

Graphics: Scrappin Doodles

**This pack is a complete makeover of the Wildlife Pack formerly available for $1. This pack contains the original 12 activities along with 15 *new* activities to enjoy with your child!  If you previously purchased this pack from my blog, you should have received an e-mail from me with a link to re-download the pack for free.

Big Bunch of Pictures

One of our favorite snacks…smoothies!  This was our favorite combination so far ~ blueberry banana.  YUM!

Playing trains with the neighbor boys…you’d hardly know there were 4 boys in the house, as it was nice and peaceful.  (I wasn’t allowed to watch them play; apparently, they can’t pretend and imagine when they’re being supervised…)

Grandma & Grandpa S came for dinner, and they brought souvenirs from their recent vacation.  I had two happy little boys!

Family Movie Night – Toy Story & a “popcorn picnic” on the living room floor

playing with their plastic Thomas track at Grandma & Papa’s house

Alex is playing his favorite board game – Diggity Dog (or “Diggy The Dog”, as Alex calls it…) with Mommy.  Max is in the background playing with some of the extra dogs.  I guess we had an unofficial “hat day”, as even Jensyn is wearing her hood while she watches us play! ;)

My little rock stars…

 

For those who read my Tot School posts and see the mess of toys in the background, I’d like you to see that the room is often tidy.  The boys like to play upstairs in the morning, and we generally start school at 10 AM when the baby goes down for a nap. By then, the boys have strewn toys everywhere.  It really is a fairly organized room :)

(view from the stairs…tot school is off to the right)

(view when standing by the window…tot school is in the left corner behind the slide)

Max was SO cute.  While I was cooking dinner, he drove his 4-wheeler into the kitchen, sat down on the floor with a book, and proceeded to “read” it to himself from memory.  He actually got quite a bit right, which is really impressive since it’s a library book we’d only had for 2 days!

 

I haven’t taught them any rules yet, but we recently opened the Connect 4 game that’s been sitting in the closet for forever.  Boy, did they ever have fun…hours of fun…with this game!