Sensory Treasure Mailbox

So I saw this idea on Passionate Homemaking and it's apparently a Montessori idea (which I take some ideas from)  But I thought this would be a great thing for the twins especially because they are very curious these days.  So I had this mailbox that I thought would be a good box to use and then I went around the house to find fun items that the twins would not normally play with, but would enjoy exploring. 

So in my first Sensory Treasure Mailbox I have the following items:

-Wisk

-Metal Cookie Cutter

-Cork Board

-Spoon

-Wooden Fan wand

-Gift Wrap Streamer

-Craft foam sheet

The first peak...

ooooooo what's this?

The girls loved it!

The streamer was a huge hit.  This was a sharing opportunity :)

 When picking items for the Box, make sure they are baby safe! As they will inevitably be exploring with their mouths!

All had great fun and I'm glad I came across this idea! It saved my afternoon.

Always ready to pose <3

Tot School- we're all sick version!

So you all may be wondering, "you did tot school while you were all sick?!" Well of course! A mommy's job doesn't stop just because I'm sick!  So what did we do this week?  Well it was more of a review week, but we worked on our letters, numbers, shapes, colors and our easter story.

So  for our numbers and letters, we worked with these puzzles...

 Then we did a supplementing with our easter story and read this book a lot.....

 We worked on our gross motor skills by dancing with Laurie Berkner, Character building with Veggie tales, Sign language with Baby Signing Time, and our Letter with Leap Frog Letter Factory....

 And we did LOTS of review work - matching, letters, reading, shapes, colors, numbers, writing, and much more on our iPad...

So I would say overall this was a great work week! We got a lot done....

...HAHAHA so ya I layed around a lot and bounced two sick babies and this is how I kept Bella occupied lol :) But proof that learning happens even in the unstructured play times!  Comfort to a sick momma.

Tot school

We finished up our F work and I didn't get to as much as I was hoping because we were out a lot this week.  So here is what we did get to. 

She had to count the goldfish for the correct number on the card.  She was a little distracted on this one as all she could think about was eating the gold fish lol.

 She also worked on her counting and numbers by placing magnetic pom poms on the paper and counted as she did it.

 This next activity, I had her look at picture cards that were a predominant color and then she had to put them in the correct color box.  She is only ok with her colors still.  So matching she did ok with (not perfect yet) but color naming she still struggled.

I forget what the picture was on the card, but I love this expression.

The one day, I knew we would have no time for assisted learning so I needed her to be able to do stuff on her own.  So she worked on letter tracing.  I print out the worksheets and laminate them so we can use them over and over again.

Then this is what is a Tot Time Notebook. I have printed out papers that have a letter on it that she can trace, color in and pictures that start with that letter. She isn't as into this yet as I would like. lol  For some reason she likes the other sheets better.

So this is all we got to this week. If I'm remembering correctly we did some other things like play do and coloring but I did not get pictures of that.  Also we did more easter work, but thats for another post!

Resources:

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/11/letter-f-for-fish.html

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/05/prek-numbers-shapes-colors-review.html

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/phonics-printables

Letter F - part 1

We did lots of Letter F work this week.  She worked on writing the letter and did very well! This was her first time writing the letter, or so I thought.  I started to notice that she has been using an app on the iPad called the ABC's of God and she has been working on random letters, ALOT! She loves this app!

She sorted out Big and Little "F" fishes...

Next she counted fish and found the correct number.  She did much better at this than I thought!

Then we did some Dot art...

Then she worked a long time on lacing.  She really liked this.

But sometimes we liked to use our learning toys for other things, like swimming our fish in the rug city...

Then I had her glue on patterns.  SHe actually did really well and was excited to be aloud to do the glue all by herself :)

Then she had to match Big and little letters for Fish.

And she enjoyed some free art time.

Resources:

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/11/letter-f-for-fish.html

Easter - Part 3

For Part 3 of our Easter focus, we talked about Jesus praying is Gethsemane and asking to do God's will (obey) even if its really hard.  

This craft we used aluminum foil that she glued onto construction paper...

Then she painted thin glue on the aluminum foil...

Placed torn pieces of tissue paper down....

Then put some more thinned glue down....

Then put our frame and symbol (praying hands) on her work.

Next we went to the park and I had her find two rocks that she could paint later.  We did the rock as a follow up because Jesus prayed on a rock.

Here's the blog I got my ideas from:

Tired, Need sleep

And just in case you missed it

Easter - Part 1

Easter - Part 2

A week in Tot school

So I have had this post done for a while but did not have use of my comp for a while, so there will be quite a few posts here hehe....

We finished up our "E" work this week by doing some "E" is for Elmo coloring pages.

 Then we did a lot of Dot Art.  She did letters A-E...

 And her shapes...

 Then I used our number cards and had her put play-do dots on the dots and count the numbers.  She really enjoyed this one!

Then we did a color matching game.  She had to find the two matching pieces and then put them together on their correct color mat.

Ada was working on opening and closing this week with the wipe box.  She also got to explore putting rings inside.

 Bella loved helping her with this activity :)

Easter - Part 2

For our second story, we learned about "The Last Supper" and talked a little about Jesus washing the disciples feet.  As I read the story from her Bible, she colored a piece of paper for her project.  

I must admit, this was a tough one for me to explain to her.  But then I decided the main thing I wanted her to walk away with was that Jesus was having his last dinner with his friends because he was going to die for our sins soon.  I figure as she gets older and her understanding grows, we will make the connections of the breaking of the bread and drinking of the cup.

So next she got to rub Baby Oil on the back of the paper to make it more translucent.

The she helped me glue the frame and a picture of a cup on.

Talking about the two sun catchers we have made.

Later that night, her daddy and her read from her Bible the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet.  They talked about how Jesus was a servant and like washing feet clean, he washed away our sin by dying on the cross.  They then took turn washing each others feet.  I don't have any pictures tho :(

Here is the Blog I got my ideas from:
Tired, Need Sleep

And Just in case you missed it:
Easter - Part 1