Beachy Orange Bean and Label Play

~Bella is 33 months~

~Caiden and Ada are 16 months~

I wanted Bella to start working more on puzzles, but I felt like she didn't understand the concept of puzzles very well yet.  So I downloaded this awesome App that has tons of puzzles in it and she drags and puts it together!  I think after working on this for a little bit, we will be switching to real puzzles soon!

Then we recently went to the Beach, so we did a beach theme week.  Here she worked on patterning.  This is still difficult for her, so we will keep working on it!

Next we worked on color matching...

Waiting patiently :)

Then she did a color by number Starfish...

Then she worked on a which is different sheet...

What to do on a rainy day?  Get some beans out of the cupboard, find some shells and add in some spoons, ice cube trays and other little compartments.

After we finished up with beaches, it was onto more Fall themes.  So we first worked on the color Orange.  Bella had a sheet that she had to pick the pictures that are orange and color them.

I gave the twins a Winnie the Pooh coloring page, where they had to color the carrot.

We also worked on circles.  Bella practiced drawing circles...

The twins "shared" the chalk board and we worked on drawing circles also...

Bella drew circles on her chalkboard also...

We also had a time of painting...

Then another not so nice day for outside, I got some old address labels we can't use and some old papers in fun colors and essentially just let them do whatever they wanted.

The twins were very interested in getting the labels off and trying to stick them to the paper...

Bella liked pretending to make mail...

And we did get a little silly too :)

Resources:

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.net/2011/06/ocean-theme-printables-more/

Disclaimer:

All photos of activities seen are just a moment in time in our day and the activity itself.  Don't be fooled, those happy smiles are not there the entire length of the activity.  We are real people here too, people who struggle with sharing, OCD, being tired, apathy and the like.  These photos are just to show what the activities are and a reminder to self of what we have done and where we have come.

Sensory Fun Week!

~Bella is 30 months~

~Twins are 13 months~

So this was a paper free, worksheet free, all sensory play week :)  And the kids had a blast!!!

So for our first experience we played with those air packs that you get with packages from Amazon.

Then the box that they came in is also very interesting...

Bella enjoyed tearing them apart.

Caiden thought it was fun to fling them around...

And Ada like to stuff a bunch of them underneath her...

These are pictures of Bella trying to pop them :)

The next activity we did was using a muffin tin and cut up toilet paper rolls.  The kids really enjoyed squishing them, putting them in and out of the tins, Bella counted and would stuff them into a wipe box.  Caiden did try to eat a couple, so adult supervision is required with this activity :)

Next, Bella has a color with water book that I thought would be a great way to let the twin paint with their big sister.  So I wet sponge paint brushes for the twins and let them paint that way.  They all really enjoyed this.

Bella worked on the iPad a bit...

We did some reading together...

We got out her Tot Time Notebook.  She hasn't worked on this in a while.  When I first used it, she wasn't too into it.  But this time she was more interested.

So if you are my friend on Facebook, you will remember that picture I posted of those "beads."  Well here is that activity.  They are called water beads are supposed to be used for floral arrangements.  Well who says you have to use everything with the purpose it was initially set out for?  

So the beads start out really tiny (the hand in the pictures is Bella's).  Then you add 4.5 quarts of water and let them grow over 4-6 hours!

So after lunch we put the beads in the water....

Then after nap, we began to explore!!!

Daddy came home and insisted that was a silly investment on my part.  But after Bella convince him to play with her, he couldn't get enough of them :)

The last activity we did, was we had a bin filled with soapy water.  We took it outside and I let the kiddos go at it!

I provided all kinds of utensils, cups, balls, toys for them to explore with...

Caiden was apparently thirsty, because I could NOT get him to stop drinking the soapy water, YUCK!

And eventually he ended up in the bin :)

Abc Review & Letter E

Well we had another adventurous week.  We had doctors appointments, sick kiddos, sick grandparents and little help.  But surprisingly we got quite a bit of learning time in! So we finished some of our letter review that we didn't get to last week. 

One activity we did was she had stamps of all the letters we have learned and she then got to put them in the correct matching line.  She did ok with this.  I think the stamps themselves were a little small for her hands.

Then she had to match picture cards that had the Big and Little letter on each piece.  She did really well with this, but only enjoyed it moderately. lol

Next she used the same cards but had to find the match around the room.  She also had fun jumping on the matching letters.





Next she had to find the matching Little letter and put a play-do dot on it to mark it.  She was able to locate them really quickly!

Then I rolled out the play-do and had her stamp the letters and numbers we have learned and tell me what they were.

Next I had her working with Wikki Stix.  She really enjoyed this.  It is still challenging to her though, so i think we will do this one some more.

She was very particular in how she laid the folded ones down.  The folded ends were always on the same side.  Her face is an expression of  "I have to fold this perfectly!!!!"

So then we went on to some "E" work.

Play-do pre-writing...

Case differentiating with Dot Markers...

Dot art...

Placing pink stickers on our letter...

"E" is for Elephant Pre-writing...

"E" is for Elmo finger painting!!!

For our Colors we used our Bears.

She had to match the bear to the color circle.

Then she matched her bears to the correct egg.  This wasn't a hit so much.

She instead wanted to pretend her eggs were cameras.....

And her bears need to be rocked to sleep...

 Then we got our sensory bin out and played snow ball fight with our styrofoam balls, since we have had the lousiest winter ever here lol.

I am not going to but our Bible theme work on here.  We are doing Easter themes from here on out so I will have special posts for the that.  But here is a sneak peak of one of our projects.  I will put at the bottom under resources some of the easter links I'm using.

 Ada has been trying to figure out how to put the cake back together....

 ...And decided her mouth might be helpful, but found out tasted AWFUL! lol :)

 Caiden has been working on opening and closing anything he can find! Here he is working on the play fridge :)

Best Buds!

Blueberry Madness!!!!

Resources:

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/04/prek-letter-e.html

http://playinghouseinmaryland.blogspot.com/2011/03/lets-play-game-printable-included.html

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/TotSchoolPrintables.html

http://www.dltk-teach.com/alphabuddies/daubers/index.htm

http://www.overthebigmoon.com/alphabet-stamping-sheets/

Here are the Easter sites Ive used so far:

http://hubbardscupboard.org/easter.html

http://tiredneedsleep.blogspot.com/2012/02/jesus-loves-me-lenten-activities-e-book.html