DIY Magnetic Number Board

Addie has been doing her magnetic letter board really well, so I thought I would change things up on her a little bit and make a number one as well. So simple!! Excel- type numbers, one in each cell; you can color coordinate the numbers to the number magnets, then print. Then just add stickers to each box according to the number. A counting and letter identification activity in one. Of course if you want to make it last, I would laminate it then add four little magnets to each corner and you have another great learning activity. The great thing about this is that you can tailor it to your child. Use the stickers that they like most or even better have then make the board with you and add the stickers themselves.

Must Be Santa

We took a little vacation to grandma's house and are now trying to get back into the swing of things. Christmas is now just around the corner and we are excited about doing all kinds of Christmas crafts, books and songs. Below are two of the crafts we've done so far at our Mommy's-R-Us group.

The Christmas Bell: It counts down the days until Christmas. We attached bells at the top and a fun little poem and then added all of the chain links. Addie chose the colored paper and I taped them together.

 Paper Plate Santa: Addie chose a nose (fuzzy ball), two wiggle eyes, rosey cheeks, and a hat. Then we stretched the cotton balls out and glued them on the santa hat and face. Stretching cottonballs is a great fine motor activity for kids; they have to move slowly and need to keep moving their hands to find different places to pull the cotton ball. If they just pull it into little pieces, that okay too.

We also decided that field trips were getting to be a little difficult now that the cold weather is here, so we came up with cooking activities for Fridays. We'll have to come up with a better name but for now it is what it is. This past Friday we made smoothies. We talked about the different kinds of fruit we were putting into the blender. We talked about loud and quiet; the blender was loud. I don't think there was a drop of smoothie left, plus the moms got to enjoy a delicious smoothie drink too.

At home Addie and I have been keeping busy with a song and felt board pieces, "Must Be Santa" by Rafi. Addie puts up the pieces during the song and when she is finished she's created a Santa scene.

Lastly, I found a DIY Christmas book on Pinterest, The Very Hungry Reindeer. Yes, it's very similar to Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but his books are so great that why wouldn't you make all kinds of them. The language is repetitive so many kids can "read" the story. Addie enjoys putting the pieces on and saying, "But he was still hungry." So cute!

Storybook curriculum

Addie and I have started a new schedule in the afternoons or mornings if we're not busy. This past weekend I was looking through my school books and came across a curriculum called, "Happily Ever After; Using Storybooks in Preschool Settings". I remember going to a conference during my first year of teaching and the people who wrote this curriculum we're doing a workshop; I liked their ideas so much that I went out and bought their curriculum and now five years later I am pulling it out to try out the activities with Addie.
The themes are broken down into two weeks per book. Our first book is I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Alison Jackson; very practical for coming up on Thanksgiving. So I found the book at our local library and now we are going to read the story this afternoon with story pieces, thank you to google who easily found them for me. Now for the next two weeks Addie and I will be reading this story and doing activities that relate to the story. I will post the activities we do as we get to them.

Gross Motor

Most of what I have posted so far has dealt with our literacy, math and fine motor activities, but large motor skills are just as important to train and practice. Most kids learn these gross motor skills by simply playing, but when you live in an apartment, a yard is nonexistent, and its fall/winter how do you practice these skills like running, jumping, throwing, catching, etc. So Tuesday our Mommy's-R-Us group decided to take a picnic to the park because the weather called for 70s! However, what none of us realized was that it was going to be ruined with a classic case of fog- heavy, wet, cold, fog. So we took ourselves to the local YMCA to warm up and enjoy the large indoor play area. We rented balls for the kids to play with they all had a blast running, jumping, throwing, rolling and catching. All fabulous gross motor skills! We also attempted a cooperative game of Red light Green Light, which the four year old understood the rules and the two years olds just ran and gave the four year olds a tough time deciding whether to follow the rules of the game or to just run. All in all, it was a successful day of running, playing and learning.

Halloween Ghost

Addie and I were sick earlier this week with the flu, so we missed out on the Mommies-R-Us group activities. By Friday we were in need of some kind of project, so I thought we would make some decorations for the trunk of our car. On Saturday we have a church function with a trunk or treat and we needed to find or make some decoration for the trunk, this worked out perfect. We use a paper plate, two small ovals and one large oval for the face, white paper hands, and white tissue paper for the "body", if you can call it that, to make our ghost. Of course Addie like gluing the best and I did the cutting, but this would be a good cutting activity for older kids.

Turned out pretty cute. We made two of them, one to go on either side of the car and bought some spider webs to put in the middle. It should be fun!

Marshmellow prints

Today I invited two of the mommy group members to my house to first experiment with how Addie did with people at her house and second to see how we fit. We live in an apartment right now and so inviting all of the mommys and kiddos might present a space issue at the house. Anyways, Addie did as expected, cried for the first few minutes of others playing with her toys, but then she got used to the idea a little. Once she started to play, she would watch each child and make sure she knew what they were playing with and that it was her toy, but she didn't attempt to take it and it didn't seem to make her upset anymore, so I guess that was good. By the end of the hour and a half, she was playing and running around with the others; overall I think it was a positive and good learning experience for Addie. Now second, the space issue; three adults and four children seemed tight to me, so I'm still not sure how it will work having the whole group over, but maybe on days where we know that others will not be able to make it, my house would be a possible solution. Enough room to play is important for kids and adults- not enough room and they are all on top of each other having a miserable time and if you're going through the effort to get yourself to a play-date or clean your house to have others over, you want the experience to be positive.
Now on to our small craft we did today; thanks again to Dr. Jean, we use colored water and marshmallows to make circles on paper. The kids like the activity and really liked it after when they got to eat the marshmallow, however, most did not want to eat the sopping wet marshmallow so we gave them another. This would be a great activity to introduce circles or create small and large circle with different sized marshmallows.

Paper plate pumpkins

Yesterday our mommy group met together for our craft day. I also learned our mommy group has a name, "mommys-r-us"; cute right? I was responsible for making the craft so to Dr. Jean's books I went and found a cute paper plate pumpkin. Thank you Dr. Jean! Here is Addie's:

To make the pumpkin I had the kids start out by tearing orange construction paper and believe it or not the two year old did pretty well. Then I had them choose out the shapes they wanted to make the face and helped with the gluing; I had previously cut out triangles and squares from black paper and the green stems. All and all they turned out pretty cute!