1,2,3 MOMMY TEACH ME!

2012-02-24T18:19:00.000-08:00

SHAMROCK MATCHING GAME

Where's the Shamrock?

(Tune: Where is Thumbkin?)

Where's the shamrock?
Where's the shamrock?
Where's the match?
Where's the match?

Which one looks the same?
Which one looks the same?
Where is it?
Where is it?

(copyright: Kimberlee Herbic)

Singing this hit song (ha!) Big Sister worked on finding the matching shamrock to pair with the shamrock on our file folder game. I found some "gold" gum at Michael's while I was there a few weeks ago. When Big Sister finished matching all the shamrocks, we would count all the shamrocks out loud (working on number counting from 1-8) and then she would get a few gold chicklets to put in her gold miners bag! I laminated our game so when Little Sister gets older she can play this game too. Little Sister LOVED my hit song though! Big Sister caught right on and had fun singing with me while she made her matches.

I found my printables at
http://www.preschoolprintables.com/filefolder/shamrock/filefoldershamrockc2.shtml
http://www.preschoolprintables.com/filefolder/shamrock/filefoldershamrockc3.shtml
http://www.preschoolprintables.com/filefolder/shamrock/filefoldershamrockc4.shtml

2012-02-24T12:50:00.000-08:00

FLOATING SHAMROCK 1:1 CORRESPONDENCE

Bath time is always a fun, learning time at our house! As I was showering today I was brainstorming about what we could do fun for bath time today. BAM! haha..it hit me. I would pull out our foam shamrocks and gold coins out of our sensory box and I could make a floating Shamrock 1:1 Correspondence activity. I ran my daughters bath water stuck in the floating shamrocks and stuck the gold coins on the side of the tub. When Big Sister came in for bath time, you would have thought I lined the tub with CANDY! Yes, candy! She was so anxious to hop in and play with the shamrocks and gold! The fun part of this activity is that the shamrocks float and move with the water. So putting the gold coins on, well, challenges this activity up just a little bit. Big Sister LOVED her bath time again! SUCCESS!

2012-02-22T20:23:00.000-08:00

SHAMROCK LIGHT CATCHER

Today we made a shamrock light catcher! Big Sister really enjoyed cutting her green tissue paper with her own scissors! I purchased a child friendly pair through Discount Teaching Supplies and they work GREAT! We used clear contact paper and green tissue paper. I pre-drew a shamrock on the clear contact paper ( I am so not artsy!). I taped the contact paper to the table so that Big Sister didn't have to worry about the paper sticking to her fingers as she put her tissue paper on. It also helped when I got ready to lay the second piece of contact paper on our finished shamrock. This activity took us about 10 minutes from start to finish. Big Sister got to choose where she wanted mommy to hang her beautiful artwork. It looks so pretty on our kitchen slider door!

2012-02-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

PLAYING WITH NATURAL LIGHT

Little Sister gets her own lime light today! I ADORE how babies are drawn to light. God is light and I truly believe that when my daughter stares at a light source, she sees what we don't--Her Savior! Isn't it AMAZING how our children teach us to be more than we ever thought we could be? I am honored to be a mommy.

Okay, so back to light! Today Little Sister was drawn to the sunlight coming in through our living room windows. I brought several of her toys over into the sunlight and let her have fun experimenting with the light in her own way with her own little toys. This was a GREAT time to work on her tummy time too. She smiled and giggled a lot. I'm not sure if she was playing with her toys or her Heavenly Father, but either way, JOY was her complete expression the whole time!

2012-02-22T19:20:00.000-08:00

WASHING ANIMALS

I have been working with Big Sister on self help skills this past week. Today during bathtime she really wanted to do the washing! SOOOOOO, I decided to grab our little water hippoes, frogs, and ducks and dirty them up. I decided the tub would be my Sensory Table for this activity. I took shaving cream and we dirtied up our animals. Can you tell Big Sister LOVED cleaning and washing them? Not only did she get to master the art of washing, BUT mommy also had the opportunity to point out several body parts on the animals. When it gets warmer out, I want to dirty up more animals with chocolate pudding and let her wash them off in our water table outside. FUN!

2012-02-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

PLAYING WITH RAINBOWS DURING BATH TIME!

Today during bath time we decided to make a rainbow! I purchased some LED underwater lights at Michael's a few weeks ago. (Print off your 50% coupon online and you only pay$6.00 for a package of 4..these turn on and off when you aren't using them)

I stuck one light in a plastic food storage container and then filled the container with water. On top of the water I put a layer of shaving cream. Big Sister used food coloring for color. She got to drop 3 dots of food coloring on top of the shaving cream. 3 dots of each color. Once you add the dots it takes about 2-3 seconds before the color starts dripping down into the water...SO NEAT! Big Sister LOVED seeing the colors mix in the water. Pictures don't do this activity justice. I would definitely do this again with her. I do recommend doing this with children 2+. Big Sister had fun using the rainbows to paint with after our experiment. I stuck all four lights in her bath and let her go to town painting with her rainbow of colors. We had a great time..I hope you do too!

2012-02-19T19:53:00.000-08:00

SHAMROCK PAINTING

Today Big Sister had a great time turning green while painting shamrocks! For our shamrock and rainbow stencils, I cut images out of recycled fruit plates! I also cut up a green pepper so she could use that to make shamrocks! After Big Sister had fun with the stencils and green pepper, we just HAD to get our hands in the paint and finger paint! Ningerpaint as Big Sister would say. As you can see, she had so much fun creating her own MASTERPIECES!

2012-02-19T19:37:00.000-08:00

TASTE THE RAINBOW!

Big Sister got to taste the rainbow today for snack! I used a slice of toast and spread strawberry cream cheese on top. Then I used skittles and marshmallows for the rainbow and clouds.

2012-02-18T16:15:00.000-08:00

RAINBOW SNACK

What do you get when you cut up strawberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, honeydew, blueberries, and purple grapes? A RAINBOW! For the clouds at each end I used strawberry cream cheese. For the gold, I used 2 Reese's cups. Needless to say this snack was a HIT!

2012-02-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

FOOTPRINT RAINBOW

Messy. Fun. Teaching about the colors of the rainbow! At first I was going to use Big Sisters handprints to create this rainbow. Then, I got spunky and decided to use her footprint! It probably would have been easier to use her handprint, BUT we really did have a lot of fun using her "stinky" (not really stinky..just used that term to be silly during our project) feet to make our pretty rainbow! We did this project CLOSE to our bathroom so that once we were finished with her foot we could wash it off easily in bathtub and then move on to the next color. This took about 15-20 minutes to do. I hung her art work above our light table! I would ask Big Sister to hand me a certain color of paint when we were ready for it. This was a FUN activity to reinforce colors and to build on her vocabulary. We will add to our rainbow scene a white cloud, a black pot, and yellow gold as we work through our St. Patty's Theme.

2012-02-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

This week we are working on the letter Bb. Bb of course says /b/. I printed off the free letter Bb template (you can find the free templates on my blog homepage). I let Big Sister glue /b/, /b/, balls on her letter Bb's. As simple as this was...she REALLY enjoyed using her little glue stick to glue on her balls. Each time she would glue a ball I would reinforce with the sound /b/.

2012-02-17T14:07:00.000-08:00

LEPRECHAUN, LEPRECHAUN, COME OUT AND PLAY!

This activity is great for developing memory! I printed off 5 leprechauns at this link http://www.activitycoloringpages.com/2010/02/28/leprechaun-coloring-page/

I then colored each leprechaun. I taped one leprechaun on to a transparent green cup. The gold coin is a coin I took from our Sensory box. It is a chocolate coin I bought at the Dollar Store. Big Sister closed her eyes and I stuck the coin inside one of the cups while singing:

Leprechaun, Leprechaun,
come out and play!
Leprechaun, Leprechaun,
where did you hide your gold today?

Big Sister got to guess which color of Leprechaun took the gold. When she guessed she also got to tip the leprechaun to see if the gold fell out. Not only did we work her little memory box, but we also worked on color identification.

2012-02-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

St. Patrick's Day
1 to 1 Correspondence

To set the stage I set up our St. Patrick's Day word wall. I colored

a few pictures I found online and taped them to a file folder so I can easy tear our word wall down and store it when we are not using it. I took an ice tray and stuck one yellow or green felt ball in each square. Big Sister got to strengthen her fine motor skills by using the tweezers to pick up each ball and transfer it into the St. Patty's mug.

2012-02-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

St. Patrick's Day Sensory Box

I have to admit, I was a bit excited to pull out St. Patrick's Day stuff and create a St. Patrick's Day Sensory Box. I used split peas and popcorn kernels. I thought the popcorn would look like some gold. Then I put in pipe cleaners, beads, a paper towel roll, plastic tweezers, gold coins, containers, straws, mugs, a sifter, spoon, St. Patty's necklace, a green tambourine, and adorable shamrock headbands. I am sure I left out some other items. I tried to keep the theme to green, gold, orange, and yellow. Big Sister LOVED filling containers with her peas and gold. She is really into cooking these days...so she had a great time using these items in her play kitchen. Little Sister got to use the tambourine and items that were NOT a choking hazard. Every Sensory box I create I am amazed at how entertaining it is for the girls! The split peas are a bit messy. I remind myself more than once....I can clean the mess up! My children are SO much more to me, than a clean home 24/7. My children are going to remember, or at least my prayer is, my children will remember learning was encouraged in so many ways in our home. SOOO FUN!

2012-02-15T15:08:00.000-08:00

MARBLE PAINTING

Big Sister LOVES to paint! Whether it be paint on a paintbrush, paint on her fingernails/toenails, or paint on her hands! I found a bag of marbles at our thrift store for 99 cents last week. I pulled a few marbles out, grabbed different colored paints and we had a blast working our "tipping" skills to paint Valentine pictures with marbles. I was going to use a foil baking dish for this activity. However, while gathering all our treasures I found this nifty little red art container. It worked perfect for this activity. I plan to do this same activity with shamrocks and St. Patrick's Day images to work on vocabulary here in the next few weeks.

2012-02-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

HEART PIZZA

Can you tell I ADORE my heart shaped baking pans??? I just stopped by Wal-mart again today (the day after Valentine's Day to grab one more set for 50% off. $4.50 makes for some FUN food and good times.

I purchased refrigerator pizza crust, pizza sauce, and our favorite choice of toppings. Big Sister had a great time kneading the dough and topping the heart pizza's with sauce and cheese. Little Sister had fun watching us get creative! Who says Valentine's Day is about getting Valentine's? Our family has a great time focusing on each other on Valentine's Day. Last year we had fun having candlelight cookies with milk as a family. This year, we made homemade heart pizzas. Yep, you guessed it, PERFECT VALENTINE'S DAY!

2012-02-15T14:40:00.000-08:00

HOMEMADE VALENTINE'S!

We wanted to make yummy, sweet, valentine's for the Prince Charming in our lives, so we baked up some chocolate, devils food, heart shaped cakes for our Valentine! Big Sister loved shaking on the sprinkles, adding her special touch.

2012-02-15T14:26:00.001-08:00

VALENTINES DAY BREAKFAST

After a scary stint in the hospital for my 6 month old daughter, we are recovering and persevering forward each day! What better way to start blogging again, than with food, hearts, and LOTS and LOTS of LOVE!

To start off Valentine's Day I made the girls a Valentine's Breakfast. I would have made breakfast for my Prince Charming, but he had to work..BOO! :)

Heart egg inside toast+toast with butter and apple jelly= HIT

PANCAKE SNOWMAN

2012-02-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

PANCAKE SNOWMAN

Freezing temperatures + blizzard outside= Snowman pancakes! Used some miniature chocolate chips for the snowman's eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons.

EXCAVATING FOR BUGS AND GEMS

2012-02-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

EXCAVATING FOR BUGS AND GEMS

Last night I heard on the news it was suppose to get really cold and we were suppose to get a record breaking snow. Perfect time to break out some pie pans. I stuck some Valentine gems I had in a drawer in one pie pan and then some stretchy bugs in the other pie pan. Filled both pie pans with water, put them outside for the night and this morning we were greeted with BIG circles of ice! I had Big Sister use a really dull knife and some tweezers to excavate the bugs out of the ice. This afternoon Big Sister will get to use a variety of different spices and salts to see what happens when they interact with the ice as she excavates for her Valentine gems. This morning we talked about how water freezes when it gets really really cold outside. When we bring the ice into a warm area the ice will start to melt. Heat melts ice. Big Sister got to see the ice melting while she excavated. Of course when the ice melts, it becomes water.

Little Sister got to play with some snow. Talk about a Sensory Box experience. You can see her first reaction in one of the pictures below. Her face shouts, "Mommy this is COLD!" BUT a few seconds of picking it up she was sold on playing with snow and water. I didn't want her hands to get frost bit so I didn't give her a lot of snow. I will definitely let her get her hands wet again with some more snow this afternoon again.

CATCHING BUBBLES WITH HIPPOS

2012-02-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

CATCHING BUBBLES WITH HIPPOS

A few weeks ago I found some really cute little snapper hippos at Michael's. Yesterday after Big Sister woke up from her nap and Little Sister was playing we decided to break out the bubbles and hippos right in our living room. Big Sister did a great job working those Fine Motor skills opening and shutting her hippos mouth to catch the bubbles. Little Sister was working on her tracking...tracking the bubbles coming down with her eyes. Little Sister was also working on her Gross Motor by crawling after the bubbles. So easy, so fun!

OH, and you are probably wondering what is all over her nice, little, white, sweatshirt???? Yep, its chocolate ice cream! haha

2012-02-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

GROUNDHOG DAY

Today we did our own little shadow activities to go along with Groundhog Day. I found a coloring page at http://coloringpageplace.com/animals/animals-gopher.gif that I used to show Big Sister what a Groundhog/Gopher looked like. Big Sister got to use a cotton ball to paint her gopher! Once we painted our gophers we decided to see if we could see its shadow! So we grabbed a flashlight and our gophers and headed off to a dark room in our home. I didn't get a good photo of our gophers, but as you probably guessed, they DID see their shadow! We grabbed a straw, circular lid, heart shaped gem, and other miscellaneous items to see if we could see their shadows! We had a fun time using light to cast shadows inside.

OWL

2012-02-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

OWL

To start off our morning we made Owl waffles! YUMMO...

First, we took two waffles and toasted them. Next we cut one waffle in half for the wings. Then, we decorated the owl with blueberries. Last, we added the Cheerios for the owl's eyes and nose.

2012-02-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

MAGIC MAGNETS

We used a plastic container that our colored sand came in to make our magic magnet container. We filled the container with water and then cut up glittery pipe cleaners and put them in the water. I then duck taped the lid on so that it would not leak if it spilled. Big Sister got to do the honors of using her magnetic want to see if we could move the pipe cleaners. The pipe cleaners moved all over and Big Sister even had the pipe cleaners jumping out of the water. (NOTE: We filled the container only about 3/4 full).

2012-02-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Magnet Mania

Today we broke out all our magnets. Big Sister started out just looking at them commenting on all their shapes. I explained to her that magnets attract to each other. I know the word attract is a BIG word, however, I am exposing her to science vocabulary words and terms. Once she experimented with them and saw how many magnets she could pick up she was won over by Magnets! After she had played with the magnets for probably 45 minutes we decided it would be fun to play magnet ping-pong. We didn't make the magnet bounce like in ping pong. Instead, we rolled the magnet and then caught the magnet with the wand when it rolled our way.

FLUBBER FUN

2012-02-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

FLUBBER FUN

I have to admit I was a little afraid of the mess we might create making this flubber. However, I have to say this was one of the easiest, cleanest, experiments we have done! Grab yourself the following items and follow the directions.

In one bowl mix these ingredients

1 1/2 C warm water
2 C of glue (we used Elmers Glue)
your choice of food coloring (we used red since Valentines Day is in 13 days!)

In a seperate bowl mix
1 C warm water
3tsp of Borax

Once both bowl have been mixed well, combine the bowls. Within seconds the liquid becomes flubbery! Sooooo fun.

I added some alphabet cookie cutters on our leanring board and Big Sister had so much fun pressing in the letters and saying "mommy this is letter...." (substitute different letters here.) I used this opportunity to follow up the letter with the letter sounds. For example: "Good job! You are right that is the letter Aa. Aa makes the sound of a,a,a like in alligator!" Of course, Big Sister made little pancakes and cookies using the flubber too.

MAKING MUSIC

2012-02-01T17:33:00.000-08:00

MAKING MUSIC

Both girls LOVE music! Big Sister dances, sings, and drums every time she hears music. Little Sister is definitely stimulated when she hears music! We made instruments today. For our tambourines we used 2 plastic plates, left over jewels I had, and some valentine heart sequins. I tried hot gluing the plates but that didn't work well for me. The sequins would fall out. Sooo, I broke out my duck tape! Both girls loved banging on them and making music! In fact, they had so much fun I made a shaker for them as well. I took one of our left over sand containers, stuck in some left over candy hearts, and yes, you guessed it...duck taped it! I wanted to make sure Little Sister was safe to play with these instruments.

TARGET PRACTICE

2012-02-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

TARGET PRACTICE

I have several water hippos I got at Wal-mart for $1.00. You stick them down into the water and then when you bring them up out of the water they are full of water. I typically use them with Little Sister whiles she takes her bath. I think of the bathtub as a FANTASTIC sensory table too especially for the little, little ones! Today though, after Little Sister was done with bath I used these hippos with Big Sister! I drew a Target on the bathtub wall (with shaving cream) and she got to work her Fine Motor skills!

Fine motor are the movements of the hands--cutting, painting, writing) Doing fine motor activities helps strengthen the muscles of the hands! Big Sister got to squirt her hippo to try and hit the target!

HERE FISHY FISHY!

2012-02-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

HERE FISHY FISHY!

Well pipe cleaners, magnets, a rod, and sand table made our morning! Poor Big Sister still feels pretty rotten to say the least, but she was up for some fun! We went fishing for fish in the sand table. At first, I had her up on the living room chair leaning over the back of the chair (safe??? heck yeah!). Getting the rod to match up with the magnets got a little frustrating for her so she requested the sand table. At first, I was leaning towards the "Lets just fish for our fishes here!" BUT, then I quickly reminded myself, learning molds and evolves through many different ways. Today, Big Sister wanted to learn using the sand table and I wasn't going to default her that way by a spurt of my laziness. SOOOOOO, in came the sand table and YES, I ADORE MY BISSEL!!!!! hahah....I am glad I jumped at the opportunity, we had fun!

Discovery Bags

2012-01-30T15:49:00.000-08:00

Discovery Bags

Big Sister and I had a GREAT time today working on letters, sounds, numbers, and predicting! You hear of Discovery Bottles (which I am definitely going to create for my girls once I get plastic water bottles!) BUT I thought I would change it up and create Discovery Bags! I took large freezer bags and added tempera washable paint. In one bag I added glitter to the paint. In another bag I only added yellow paint. And in our third Discovery Bag I added two colors, hoping Big Sister would mix the colors together to get a new color! I brought her textured paint brushes and some Q-tips to the painting area as well. OH..and here is the HUGE MUST...I duck taped the tops of the baggies so that little fingers would explore and open them! At first when I showed Big Sister our activity she wasn't feeling up to the fun! Mind you, she has been a FIGHTER fighting off two ear infections and one runny, runny, nose! :( A few hours later, we broke out the sand table with colored sand and from then on, our afternoon was FULL of learning! I want to add, I NEVER force my daughters to do an activity. If for some reason Big Sister or Little Sister isn't up for the activity, we don't do it. I will pull it out again on another day, or like today, I simply left our Discovery Bags out and when she was ready she initiated the learning. We all have our days when we just don't feel good, or want to "PASS" and I respect my daughters wishes when it comes to their learning. Learning should be FUN, right?

So we broke out the water table (without water) and added in our many colors of sand! During Little Sisters nap time, Big Sister and mommy got to use our imaginations! We made "bread" with our sand. Big Sister shared with mommy she was cutting the bread in half with her plastic knife. Big Sister is REALLY in to Little Einstein movies and her favorite episode right now is Anne and the Beanstalk. Giant is a new vocabulary word around here. :) We made Giant his own bread. Giant was instructed to be careful with the knife when he was cutting his bread in half! Hearing my daughters imaginary play was really neat! After about an hour of playing in the sand she found two straws put them together to make a Vv and asked me, "Mommy what letter is this?" Hmmmm...she was totally taking the role of teacher here! I invited her to tell me what letter it was and without skipping a beat told me Vv. She then left our sand and went right over to our Discovery Bags and wanted me to write the letter Vv. While I wrote Vv she drew the story of the giant making bread then the Little Einsteins getting into their rocket ship to go home. She included sincere detail of the gold goose in her illustration as well! Just by providing the tools, a safe environment, and the opportunity, I get to see my daughters learning in action! I hope you enjoy this activity as much as we did!

************************************

By the way, YES we did do this INSIDE! The weather was a little too chilly for my sick daughter! I put down a little tarp I had and brought our activity inside. I have a whole new appreciation for by Little Bissell vacuum! Again, our learning was DEFINITELY worth a few minutes of vacuuming up!

VALENTINE SENSORY BOX

2012-01-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

VALENTINE SENSORY BOX

This was such a FUN box for big Sister! I used Easter grass, valentine heart containers (thank you Dollar Tree) and heart candy! I didn't tell Big Sister that the hearts were candy. I let her "sense of smell" clue her in! She had so much fun filling the containers with candy and opening and closing the hearts. I WISH I could have captured her expression when she realized the hearts were candy! PRICELESS. To change this up...add some different items in the heart containers so it is REALLY a big surprise when your child finds the candy hearts. Big Sister got to problem solve with this sensory box too. She realized if she shook the hearts, she could hear the candy hearts inside. If she didn't hear the rattle she realized there wasn't any candy inside.

Little Sister got to work on her gross motor skills by shaking the hearts! I stuck some of her Gerber puffs (in the shapes of hearts) inside. I was sitting right beside her watching the whole time. THIS COULD BE A CHOKING HAZARD if you are not facilitating appropriately.

REINFORCING COLORS THROUGH MAKING ROCK CANDY

2012-01-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

REINFORCING COLORS THROUGH MAKING ROCK CANDY

Who doesn't love candy??? Today we broke out our aprons and started making ROCK CANDY! It takes a week to complete so you wont see our finished rock candy for another week. I will document how our sugar crystals grow throughout the week. Big Sister helped with MOST of our cooking. Once I transferred the hot syrup made from 1:2 ratio of water and sugar I handled the cups. This is a great activity to work on colors, mixing colors, and even measuring. Yes, Big Sister is only 2, BUT providing her with the opportunity to handle measuring cups and glasses help her learn about the tools we use to measure with. We had a lot of fun and will have even more fun once we test out our rock candy.

tutorial for making Rock Candy can be found at the link below.

http://brandyscrafts.blogspot.com/2011/09/homemade-rock-candy.html

PLAYING WITH THE ALPHABET

2012-01-29T12:57:00.000-08:00

PLAYING WITH THE ALPHABET

Big Sister and I pulled out our black light and overhead transparent letters for this activity. She had a WONDERFUL time playing with the letters (that is how we learn, right??) I would play with the letters too and act our the letter sounds. Big Sister took off "jjj-jumping" into the living room to teach daddy that Jj says /j/. Soooo fun!

**For the older child you could change this up to build sight words or words in general! Get creative

2012-01-29T12:51:00.000-08:00

GLOWING LETTERS

Grab your black light and some glow bracelets and you have the perfect way to make letters! Big Sister and I pulled out our items and created LOTS of letters! Once we created a letter I would ask her what letter it was and then followed my question with making the correct sound. I use the zoo phonics actions when I teach sounds and she picks right up on them! Have fun practicing your alphabet in the dark!

2012-01-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

USING DOT PAINT TO ACT OUT FAST AND SLOW

This activity was so fun and so simple! We pulled out our dot paint and a piece of construction paper. Big Sister got to be the policewoman! She got to yell out "fast" or "slow!" When she said FAST we would make out paint dot go fast! When she said slow, we would slowly paint with our dot paint. Easy...Simple...and FUN! Isn't that the best way to learn???

2012-01-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

DANCING PUDDLES

We had a GREAT time playing in the puddles today! Mommy was in the mood for a rainstorm. Instead of puting the baking soda in the babyfood jar, we put it in the bottom of our art tray. Any flat container would work. We then colored our vinegar water and then we poured the vinegar over the baking soda. Big Sister was so quick to put her hands in the dancing puddles! We even put baking soda all over her hands and then mommy poured the vinegar over her hands and her hands had dancing bubbles all over! We had a great time dancing in puddles today! Hope you have just as much fun.

2012-01-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

VOLCANO FUN

Today Big Sister and I pulled out some baking soda, vinegar, food coloring, a dropper, and a straw! Big Sister was FACINATED with the explosion of bubbles that flooded up out of the baby food jar when we added in our colored vinegar.

2012-01-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

Colors and Imaginary Play

My daughters both love bath time, but add in this painting and reinforce colors and imaginary play and you will have a child that will NOT want to get out of their bath! I used food coloring and shaving cream to make the paint. I used an ice tray for the pallet and the tub as the canvas! Easy to clean up and such a creative way to show your child learning CAN be FUN!

2012-01-27T10:46:00.000-08:00

SECRET VALENTINE PAINTING

Grab a white crayon, some white paper, and watercolors and you have the perfect supplies to work on letter identification, letter sounds, sight words, name spelling, spelling word practice, number recognition, addition, subtraction, etc! I pre cut the hearts from white paper and then wrote letters and numbers on the hearts in white crayon. Big Sister then used a paintbrush and even dipped crayons in water to uncover the secret letter or number!

2012-01-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

WATER BEADS AND LIGHT PANEL

One of my husbands clients gave me a FREE Light Digitizer...Sooooo, I turned it into a light panel! Light panels are expensive through the educational magazines. If you are interested in working with light and want to create your own light box...grab a plastic container with lid at Walmart, some Christmas lights..stick the lights inside the container and there you have your very own Light Table. Simple, easy, and cheap! That is how I made my Black Light table. Instead of Christmas lights I used a black light. I grabbed about every color in Water Beads at Micheals in their floral Department. We started off our learning journey with red and white and then half way through we added green! Big Sister LOVED this activity and after a solid 2 hours I had to "tell her" we HAD to clean up! (haha). This was a guided play activity. I sat with her and guided her play too at times. Little Sister was napping so it was a great time to spend teaching SOOOO many concepts! Below are just a few concepts I was able to teach through play!

Positional words (up, on,over, under, beside, through, etc)

full and empty concepts
colors

textures
The 5 Senses (obviously NOT taste..but we did do..touch, smell, hear, see the Water Beads)

Vocab- pour, stir, tip, bouncy

Shapes-circle(beads), rectangle(container), oval (spoons)

I had just as much fun as Big Sister! Easy...Cheap...and PACKED with a TON of teaching opportunities!

2012-01-25T19:32:00.000-08:00

PLAYING WITH LIGHT

Break out a black light and some miscellaneous items and your children will take their learning to a whole new level! I purchased our black light at Walmart for $10. I put it inside a plastic container I store my wrapping paper in and kaboom there you have a perfect black light table. I purchased squishy neon bugs at Walmart for $1.00 a package and then the throw away baby /toddler spoons and forks, and glow sticks. Needless to say this was a HIT!

2012-01-25T19:26:00.000-08:00

PAINTING

Big Sister fell in love with bath time this morning! Shaving Cream, our homemade water colors, and different textured paint brushes took bath time to a whole new level!

Little Sister got to play with a GREEN cup! Introducing colors at 6 months.

2012-01-25T19:19:00.000-08:00

COLORS

We broke out the waffles, food coloring, and paint brushes today and had a great time making fish waffles for breakfast! Soooo easy to do. Big Sister had a great time painting her fish.

2012-01-24T18:11:00.000-08:00

LACING

Big Sister used simple shapes to string! What a great way to work her Fine Motor skills. PLUS, a huge celebration is she made her very own pattern!

2012-01-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

SENSORY BOX

Sensory boxes are a hit with my daughters. You will notice Big Sister in most of these pictures because Little Sister enjoys watching but I dont allow her to play in the boxes as the items can be a choking hazard.

Some great ideas for Sensory Boxes:

shaving cream

fish rock

sand

cooked noodles or spaghetti
vinegar and baking powder
water
shredded paper
corn kernals
tinsel
colored pasta
edible vegetables and fruit
seeds
rice
popcorn
beads
grass
dirt
dough

Pumpkin Seeds and rice

Gems and Rice-
Big Sister got to mine for her gems using a pie pan. I just poked holes in the pie pan so that the rice would fall through and the gems would be left in pan.

2012-01-24T17:59:00.000-08:00

Magnets

I found a bag of these little balls in our craft drawer and decided to make them magnetic by placing a circle magnet on the back. When Big Sister woke up from her nap she was facinated by these! We used these balls to create letters (with my help) and then Big Sister experimented around the kitchen to see what these balls were attracted to. We found that the magnetic balls stuck to the dish washer, fridge, and the trashcan and that they did not stick to the oven.

2012-01-23T18:29:00.000-08:00

FILE CABINET

Great ideas I want to use with Big Sister and Little Sister! I cant wait....HOW FUN!

St. patricks or Weather Unit- Rainbow (COLORS)

http://preschoolsnacks.blogspot.com/search/label/finger%20paints

SENSORY TABLE IDEAS

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=174620489260444&set=a.227873900601769.58015.174614952594331&type=3&theater#!/pages/Play-at-Home-Mom/174614952594331?sk=photos

MAGNETIC BOARD
http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/search/label/Magnetic%20play

2012-01-23T13:11:00.000-08:00

HOMEMADE WATER COLORS

So today I decided to make some homemade water colors with Big Sister! I thought these would be fun for her to draw and color with in the bathtub and in a Water Sensory Tub. I found these AMAZING ice cube trays at Dollar Tree (a few years back). I put 1/4 c of water in a measuring cup, Big Sister added a few drops of food coloring and did a quick stir. Then, I poured the water into the trays. It took about 4-5 hours of freeze time and our water colors were ready!

2012-01-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

To begin our learning on apples I found these templates at

http://www.makinglearningfun.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.makinglearningfun.com/Activities/Apples/AppleABCmagnetPages/AppleABCmagnet-a.gif

I am going to have Big Sister use dot paint to create the letter a. We will say the short a sound every time we dot our paint!

I made an apple tree using felt! Took me maybe five minutes at the most to create this . My daughter was so in love with this simple hands on activity! We have numbers, letters, and shapes on the apples. I would sing to the tune of "Oh My Darlin'"

Find an apple,

Find an apple,
Put it on our apple tree....

Then once Big Sister put the apple on the apple tree I would follow up with

"What letter is that?" or "What number or shape?" After many rounds, she found a stick and used the stick as a pointer. Big sister would sing this song and then point to the apple she put on and would ask the question, "What letter is that?" soon to follow would be her response, "Yes, that is the letter Hh." My little teacher!

We cut open apples and found the seeds! We talked about how the seeds are black and small. Big Sister LOVED using a magnifying glass (purchased at Dollar Tree) to take a closer look!

After finding the seeds we used the apples to apple stamp!

We found pumpkin seeds at the store and so we compared the apple seeds to the pumpkin seeds. We talked about how the apple seeds are black and the pumpkin seeds are white. The pumpkin seeds are big and the apple seeds are small.

Big Sister LOVED bobbing for apples in her bath! We talked about sink or float! Apples float!

I made my first Sensory Box today! I was AMAZED at how much Big Sister enjoyed this simple, CHEAP, box! I bought two small bags of rice for 89 cents at the store. I dumped those in and stuck in a spoon, funnel, our letter card Aa, and a measuring cup. Big Sister played in this Sensory box for more than an hour. She put rice in her hands and held them up high and let the rice drop slowly from her hands and she shared with me she thought it sounded like rain! How cool is that??? I will admit, this IS messy. I had to remind myself that we learn by DOING! I used my little Bissel vacuum and had our mess cleaned up in no more than 2 minutes! Was it worth the cleanup time??? DEFINITELY!

Animal starts with an Aa! So for breakfast we made an animal waffle! This was a huge hit with Big Sister!

2012-01-22T13:00:00.000-08:00

COLOR SORTING

I purchased these bears at our local Thrift store. Big sister had a great time sorting the color bears into their special group! After we worked on sorting, I let her have her own fun by playing with them.

As you can see, she found her own way of sorting them!

2012-01-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

VALENTINE PATTERNS

Okay, so here is my first attempt to showcase our first learning activity! My oldest daughter and I were shopping at Wal-mart and we came across some adhesive, foam, valentine stickers. She walked ALL around the store with this box of stickers. I wasn't sure they had a purpose in our home. As I brainstormed what we could do with these stickers I realized we could use these to decorate our Valentine boxes! Better yet, once they were purchased and home...creativity got the best of me!

Using two different colors of hearts big sister made her very own AB pattern!

After big sister made her pattern, I taught her to read her pattern

(pink, purple,pink, purple). We talked about the two different shapes we were using to create our pattern. Our rectangle paper and hearts.

Here is our Valentine Memory game! So fun...reinforces color recognition and shapes and of course, memory!

1,2,3 MOMMY TEACH ME!

PANCAKE SNOWMAN﻿

EXCAVATING FOR BUGS AND GEMS

CATCHING BUBBLES WITH HIPPOS

OWL

FLUBBER FUN

MAKING MUSIC

TARGET PRACTICE

HERE FISHY FISHY!

Discovery Bags

VALENTINE SENSORY BOX

REINFORCING COLORS THROUGH MAKING ROCK CANDY

PLAYING WITH THE ALPHABET

PANCAKE SNOWMAN