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.

Letter K and Painting

~Bella is 32 months~

~Caiden and Ada are 16 months~

So for our letter work, we are now on K.  Because of our break from letters because of the move, Bella had a refreshed desire to work!

So excited about the progress on this activity.  Before this was difficult for her and now she is doing well and enjoys doing it.

Then she did her letter poke work.  She used a thumb tack to poke her letter...

Then we did Big and Small sorting.  This was hard for her and Big and Little K look very similar...

She worked on some prewriting skills.  I worked very closely on this with her to help her understand and focus on doing it correctly...

And since K is for Kite, she color matched the kite with the string...

Then she worked on a puzzle.  She looked at the computer to see what the puzzle looked like completed.  We started to focus more on doing puzzles.

Then one day she went to Nanna's house to play.  Nanna is a kindergarten teacher and she got all these fun things for learning for Bella.  They worked on it together.  It was all Bella could talk about when she came home!

Then we played a farm animal memory match game a couple days.

After getting these awesome foam blocks from Nanna, we worked with them at home.  She used them to count...

And eventually went to building with them...

Then we did some Wikki Stick work.  She has definitely gotten better at this since that last time we played with them.

For our art project with the twins, we did Dot art again...  No eating of the dot paint this time tho!

After Dot Paints got boring we went to finger painting...

The twins were a little shocked that I was letting them make such messes! hehe

Once they got over the initial "Can you believe momma is letting us get all messy like this!!!!"  

They started to paint the paper...

The we played with popsicle sticks and cans again with holes in the lids...

And while the twins were busy Bella was allowed to play with her Melissa and Doug magnetic dolls.  She is really loving these lately but the twins are too little for them, so she loves every opportunity she gets to play with them!

Resources:

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/03/prek-letter-k.html

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.

Letter J and Teeny Tots

~Bella is 31 months~

~Twins are 13 months~

So we managed to get in some letter work this week.  Not as much as I would have liked, but it will do.  It is the summer time right?  So we are on letter J now.  We did "J" for Jelly Bean.

Here she did her little and big "J" sorting...

Then we did some Dot art...

Patterns with Jelly Beans...

Then she matched colors and shapes...

For numbers, the jelly beans had dots on one side that she had to count and find the matching number...

Then we did some of the beloved Play dough!

TEENY TOT SCHOOL

For the twins we first worked with counting bears and cut up toilet paper tubes.  They really liked this activity.  They would stack the tubes, put the bears in the tubes, watch the bears fall out of the tubes...

Next we used popsicle sticks.  My original idea was to have them put them into an ice cube tray I have that are cylindrical.  This was NOT interesting to them...

So I revamped the activity and gave them old formula cans with holes pocked in the lids.  They LOVED this activity.  They in fact could not get enough of it!

Bella even enjoyed doing this activity with her brother and sister...

However, Bella thought the pretzels from her snack would be a better choice to put in the ice cube trays :)

We also did some pre-writing work (really its just drawing lol)

For the first time, I taped a huge piece of paper to the table and gave everyone some crayons to work with.  This was an O.K. activity.  The twins just always wanna eat the crayons! lol

So the next way we tried drawing was with dry erase markers.  "SHE GAVE THEM MARKERS?!?!?!"  lol yes I did :) 

And you know what they did MUCH better with the markers then the crayons!  I have no clue why.  But they hardly every put them in their mouths!

Then we got out the dollhouse.  We haven't played with this for a while, as the twins were always frustrating Bella with it.  But this time they all played very nicely.

And the girls played like typical girls.....

And Caiden???

Well he was typical boy :)

And a little Fourth of July cuteness for you :)

Resources:

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/05/j-is-for-jelly-bean-alternative.html