As a teacher I was always trying to come up with fun educational activities without having to spend a lot of money. Now as a stay at home mom I am still trying to come up with fun, educational, and economical activities for my own child. My goal is to share some of these activities with you. Hope you enjoy my blog.


Thursday, September 2, 2010

Tot School Letter "E"


Letter "E"

26 months old

We did lots of egg activities this week for the letter "E."

Color Matching Activity

I colored the bottom of an egg carton.  Little Sweets matched the correct plastic egg with the correct spot in the egg carton. 


Math Activity- Number Matching

I put foam numbers in plastic eggs.  Little Sweets opened the eggs and found the foam number. Then she matched the numbers to the numbers on a number card I made. ( I made the number card by copying the foam numbers on our color copy machine.)




Language Arts Activity-Letter "E" Stencil

I printed a letter "e" stencil from the DLKT website.  Then I had Little Sweets put blocks on the stencil.  I got this idea from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  ( I think she has a stencil you can print out too.



Science- Floating Egg Experiment

I got this idea from the everything preschool website.  We put a hard boiled egg in water and it sank.  Then we put salt into the water and it started to float. 





Science-  Coloring Eggs

Little Sweets helped me color eggs.  This was her first time and she really enjoyed this activity. 






Snack-  Hard boiled Eggs

Little Sweets helped me peel the eggshells off the eggs.  She was fascinated by this.  She kept saying; "oo, wow" as she did it.  We saved the pretty shells for a later art project.  Then she ate some of the egg. 







Art-  Eggshell Collage

We used the broken up eggshells to make a pretty collage.  We got this idea from the Everything Preschool Website. 

Language Arts

We also put up the letter "E" on our wall and read lots of books.  An "E" book we read was An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lioni.


Other Pictures

I thought this was so cute.  Now that Little Sweets is potty trained so are her dollies.
Little Sweets loves hanging out with daddy.  She really likes to help him water the flowers. 


I didn't have any planned Bible Activities this week  though we talk about Jesus daily and read Bible stories adaily.  We also just started praying with Little Sweets for missionaries.  She loves to do this and always reminds us before bed that we have to pray for the missionary families. 

I actually hadn't planned on doing any of the "E" activities this week.  I was going to wait until next week, but Little Sweets randomly pulled out her eggs and asked to play with them so I just went with it and continued with more egg activities the rest of the day and week.  She had fun so I am glad we did tot school this week. 

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Tot School - Letter "D"

Letter "D"
(26 Months Old)

This week we had a lot of errands so we didn't get much tot school in.  Here are some pictures of some of the letter "D" activities we did.


Math Activity

"D" is for Dora Counting Cards.  I made these Dora cards for Little Sweets.  She used foam numbers to match the numbers on the card.  I wanted her to count the characters on the card, but most of the time she just matched the number without counting.  She loves counting, but I think she got distracted by the foam numbers.   





Dramatic Play

"D" is for dollhouse.  Little Sweets loved playing with her Little People doll house.  She likes to mix all her little people together so if you are wondering that is baby Jesus sleeping in the crib. 




File Folder Game

"D" is for dog.  Little Sweets loves dogs.  I found a matching file folder game at the file folder fun website.  Little Sweets loved matching the pictures of the dogs. 


Art

Little Sweets enjoyed making dot pictures using her bingo dot markers.  She also put dots on a letter "D" stencil that I made. 




Language Arts

We read lots of books together this week.  I picked out some Dr. Seuss books and Little Sweets really enjoyed them.  I didn't have any pictures from last week, but here are some pictures of Little Sweets looking and books from a few weeks ago. 



Bible Activity
This week we didn't do an art activity with our Bible stories.  We did continue to read a Bible story before bed and listened to Bible songs. 

Other Activities

I took Little Sweets to the splash pad near our house.  She loves running through the water.  It was really nice because all of the school aged kids are in school now so I don't have to worry about her getting run over.




For more great tot posts go here.


Sunday, August 22, 2010

Tot School Letter "C"

Letter "C"
26 months old


This week we worked on some letter "C" Activities.  We also continued with potty training and Little Sweets has done fantastic.   : )

Language Art Activities


 Letter of the Week Alphabet Cards
Each week we put up the letter of the week on the wall. Little Sweets reviews the letters that on are on the wall throughout the week. Here she is finding the letter "C."


Tracing the Letter "C"
I drew the letter "C" using a highlighter. I helped Little Sweets trace over the letter with a darker colored marker.

Read-alouds and Laptime Reading

We read lots and lots of books together.  Little Sweets loves to sit on mommy and daddy's laps and just listen to stories.  She also likes to get a big pile of books together and lay on the floor reading them.

Math and Fine Motor Skills

Caterpillar Fun

I made caterpillars on the computer and printed out the pictures. Then I glued them to note cards. Each caterpillar is made up of a different number of circles. I wrote the number of circles on the corner of each card. Little Sweets put circle stickers on the circles that made up the caterpillar. Then she counted the stickers afterwards and I showed her the number

The note cards I made.
Little Sweets putting the circle stickers on the caterpillars. (She is working on her fine motor skills.)
Little Sweets showing mommy her caterpillar.  She was very excited.

Little Sweets counting the number of  circles on her caterpillar.

The finished note cards.

More fun with Caterpillars

I pulled out the caterpillar pattern cards that we worked on during our bug unit.  You can print out a copy for yourself by going here.  You may need to enlarge the caterpillars  depending on the size of your pom poms.  Little Sweets matched the pom poms to the colored circles on the caterpillar.  This was a great activity to use to work on her fine motor skills as well as matching.  I also showed her the color patterns on the caterpillars. 

The caterpillar cards.

Little Sweets placing the pom poms on the cards.   
Art/Fine Motor Activity

Cookie Cutters and Playdough
Little Sweets had fun using cookie cutters to cut out playdough cookies.  She also enjoyed just playing with the playdough.  Playdough is great for building children's fine motor skills.


Coloring
Little Sweets loves coloring.  She is coloring a Dora picture in this picture.


Cotton Ball Sheep to go with our Bible Story
One of the stories we read from Little Sweets Children's Bible was The parable of the lost sheep. (Matthew 18: 10-14)  After we read and talked about the story Little Sweets covered a sheep that I had cut out with white cotton balls.  She enjoyed this activity, but wanted to wash her hands every few minutes because the cotton would stick to her fingers.  : )


Other Activities

Language Arts Matching Game

Little Sweets matched the letters from her alphabet puzzle to the letter cards on the wall.  She thought it was so much fun that she asked to get more cards out so she could do more matching.  She loves this game and plays it almost everyday. 

Little Sweets matching a letter to the cards on the wall. 


Other Cards and letters that she matched.

For more tot school posts go here

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Tot School Letter "B" Activities

Letter "B" Activities
(26 months)

Last week we were potty training, but we did manage to do some tot school activities.  Our letter of the week was the letter "B."  Here are some of the activities we did for the letter "B."


Math Activities


Sorting Balls by Color

I know these are actually pom poms but they are shaped like balls and my daughter calls them balls so I decided to use them for our letter "B" activities.  Little Sweets sorted the balls by color.  I also tried to help her identify the colors as she sorted.  She still thinks everything is green, but we will continue to work on colors.


Sorting Balls by Size

This bag of balls had three different shapes.  Little Sweets had no trouble sorting the small balls, but she mixed the medium and large balls together.  They were similar in size which made the task more difficult.  She had fun with this activity, she really enjoys sorting.

Fine Motor Activities 


Placing Balls Inside a Plastic Bottle

Little Sweets loved this activity.  She placed all of her pom pom balls inside the plastic bottle. She had me empty the bottle several times so she could repeat this activity.  (FYI if you do this activity it is difficult to get the balls out and may take some time, especially if you use the larger pom pom balls.)





Building with Blocks

Little Sweets really enjoyed making towers with her blocks and then knocking them over.

Math/Fine Motor Activity

Counting/ Matching Game

I made these sport ball matching cards on my copy machine. Little Sweets matched the sports ball erasers to the number cards.  We also counted the balls on the card.

Dramatic Play with Bugs


Playing with Bugs

Little Sweets enjoyed playing with her bugs.  She did use some baskets and try to sort them, but she also played with them in the kitchen area and cooked them up for dinner.  (I wish I had a picture.)

Language Arts Activities

We put up the letter "B" on our letter wall and added the magnetic letter "B" to our alphabet tree.  Little Sweets found the letter "B" in words as we read.  We also spent time reading alphabet books and other fun books that Little Sweets loves.  I believe reading to your child is one of the best things you can do to prepare your child to learn to read. 

Other Fun Activities


Painting with Water Colors

Playing with Shaving Cream

Trying to Look Like Daddy




For more great tot school posts go here