Letter and Number Sticker Matching

This is a simple activity to put together that helped Juliette recognize uppercase and lowercase letters.

First, I wrote all the letters of the alphabet in capitals on colored dot stickers. Then I wrote the lowercase letters on a plain piece of paper. I did these in a random order so Juliette really had to hunt for them. Finally, she used the stickers to cover the letter matches.

This was the perfect activity for my sticker loving preschooler!!! After she finished she said "another one, another one!!"

So next we did this with numbers and dots. She practiced counting the dots and covering them with the matching number.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Letter Sort

Juliette loved this letter sort “game.'” 

Find out more by checking out my Little Hands-on ABC’s and 123’s posts on Totally Tots

Open Ended Art ~ Initial Collages

During Art Group the girls made Initial Collages.  We had kids from 14 months to 4 1/2 working on this project.  They were all able to participate in it, some were just more into it than others.

I cut pieces of poster board into the initials of the girls first names.  Then they used markers to color all over them.  Finally, they were able to glue on all the different materials.  I had different types of fabric, ribbons, felt, tin foil, sandpaper, tulle and tissue paper.

E for Emily

Emily did hers all by herself, she even cut the pieces to the size she needed, asking for help only to cut the pieces of fabric that needed the sharp scissors to cut it.

J for Juliette

   Juliette worked on hers for a little bit and then decided we needed to work on it together.  She sat on my lap and we each glued pieces on to her initial.  I showed her how to overlap pieces and had just as much fun as she did working on it!

Emily and Juliette had fun working on these collages!

I am thinking of mounting them on colored paper and framing them in their rooms. 

Duplos + Names = Having Fun with the Alphabet

We play with our Duplos almost every single day.  I am always amazed at the different creations the girls come up with, especially when playing with Grandpa.  But this time I have to say we had so much fun and it was while creating LETTERS!! 

I first made an A and then a N to begin writing my nephews name in Duplos.  Once they saw what I was up to they couldn’t wait to see how I was going to make the rest of the letters.  Of course once it was finished I had to do Emily and then Juliette’s name!

Emily was happy to pose for a picture, unfortunately Juliette was not so cooperative.

I plan on trying this again and having Emily help me make all different words. 

Alphabet Hunt

Emily loves doing mazes and working with the alphabet, so I thought that this would be a fun way to put the two together.

 (click on the picture above to download)

I started with the letter “A” and continued with the whole alphabet in order, but it zig zags around the page like a maze, until you reach “Z” at the bottom of the page. 

  I originally planed on having Emily color in each box, but she asked to use her dot markers and they worked perfectly!

Check out other great activities for Tots and Preschoolers:

C-A-T Letter Find, Sort and Graph

While I was looking for something in the basement I came across a box of all my teaching posters.  When I saw this bar graph one I knew that Emily would have fun using dry erase markers to create a graph.

1.  I found all the C-A-T magnetic letters that we had and hid them in our rice krispies sensory tub for Emily to find.

2. After she found all of the letters she sorted them.  I used pipe cleaners linked together to form a circle for her to sort them into.

3.  Next, Emily placed the letters on the bar graph chart that I had from when I was teaching 4th grade.  We compared the number of letters and talked about which had the most and which had the fewest.

4.  Finally Emily colored in the chart with dry erase markers.  She took off one letter at a time and colored the square.

The finished graph.  Emily was so proud of her work that as soon as Daddy came home she told him about it!

TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool

Emily is 36 months old and Juliette is 8 months old

This week we had a lot of fun doing our TOTSchool activities with our friends.  I was also really excited because Juliette has been joining in so much more.  She is so interested in everything we are doing so I am going to begin to add activities for her now too!!!

We made Yummy Yums again at Sarah’s house, they are amazing.  She posted the recipe on her blog so be sure to check it out!! (She also has many more wonderful pictures of some of the projects that we did together)

We worked on the letter N this week.  We decided to do N for names and I was so excited with how it came out.  I printed all of our friends names on a piece of paper and then cut them out.  The girls glued them onto the letter N.

Emily dot painted the letter N this is a great activity that was printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

  

While the girls were working Juliette found this little piano and provided us all with wonderful music.  It was so much fun to watch her banging on the keys.  She had so much fun with it.

 

Beading is a favorite activity with the girls.  This time I gave them lanyard to sting the beads onto.  Emily’s friend made hers into a bracelet that she wore for the rest of the week.  I actually won’t be surprised if she is wearing it to music tomorrow too!  They are so cute :0)

The babies hanging out while their sisters did their TOTSchool activities.  I love how Juliette is looking at Braeden!!

 

I had Emily cut out these Nn eggs for a project that we were going to work on at Sarah’s house.  This was printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 

My birthday was on Wednesday and Sarah and Dawn had the girls bake me cupcakes to celebrate.  They even sang me “Happy Birthday” before we ate them.  I am so thankful for my amazing friends!!

The girls sorted the Nn eggs that Emily cut out earlier and glued them on to the nest and strips of construction paper at the bottom.

Sarah made lacing cards out of foam shapes and I attached lanyard to them so the girls could practice sewing.  The girls did really well with this, which was excellent fine motor skills practice.

Juliette explored some books while the girls were working.  She loves pulling them out of the bookshelf!!

For our stART project we read The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and THE BIG HUNGRY BEAR and made a Torn Magazine Paper Strawberry.

Juliette had fun exploring some of the balls that were in her toy bucket.  I took them all out and showed her how they rolled.  She had fun hitting them together and dropping them onto the floor.

My girls!!  Emily loves her little sister and Juliette adores Emily.  It is so much fun to watch them play together.  I am so thankful for these two little blessings :0)

Our favorite books from this week:

• The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and THE BIG HUNGRY BEAR ~ Don and Audrey Wood
• Bear’s New Friend ~ Karma Wilson
• When I Grow Up ~ Mercer Mayer
• DK Touch and Feel Baby Animals

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking the buttons on the top of this page!!

TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool

Emily is 35 months old.

These are the past two weeks in TOTSchool and I am now finally caught up!! It definitely feels good to be back on track. I am looking forward to some great activities in the next few weeks. Emily has really started to show and interest in letters and writing them so that is what we will start to focus on.

We worked on the letter Ii with our friends at Sarah’s house. She has some good pictures of the finished products. We made igloos for our Alphabet book.

We made handprint/fingerprint penguins. I loved the way these came out. They look like they are marching across the paper. We used the side of their fist for the body and then their fingerprints to make the white belly, beak and feet.

Gluing mini marshmallows on this snowman was a great fine motor skill practice. They also enjoyed eating the marshmallows :0)

Emily had fun stamping with this penguin rubber stamp that she received for Christmas. I couldn’t believe what a great job she did lining them up. I left her to do what she wanted with it and really expected to see a bunch on top of each other. When she finished she called me over and asked me to write their names under them. Many of them were named Grandma and Grandpa I thought that was pretty funny.

We started a color wheel project in our Art Group. For the first week we did red. We will collage the primary colors and then work on the secondary colors.

We made blob paintings after reading It Looked Like Spilt Milk. Emily decided hers looked like a butterfly and it really did!

This, handwriting ring from Confessions of a Homeschooler was my favorite printout of the week!! I can’t wait to make some more. Emily loved working on it and it stayed out all week. She did an amazing job tracing the lines and different patterns too. I think she is definitely ready to work on letters now.

Emily decorated a teddy bear cupcake and Juliette really wanted to taste some, but she still has a while to go before we introduce her to these sweets!!

When we were at my mom’s house Emily wanted to play with these Make a Picture Tiles. This was one of my favorite games/toys when I was little. You get to make all different pictures with the different tile cards. My mom had this from when she used to sell discovery toys.

For our stART project we made paper plate penguins after reading If I Were a Penguin.

During our Art Group we worked on our Color Wheel Project. This week we focused on Yellow. Here Emily is painting with spaghetti

Some of our favorite books from this week:

• It Looked Like Spilt Milk ~ Charles Shaw
• If You Give a Pig a Pancake ~ Laura Numeroff
• If You Were a Penguin ~ Wendell and Florence Minor
• Good Night Moon ~ Margret Wise Brown

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking the buttons on the top of this page!!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree

We have been reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, by Bill Martin and it has become one of Emily's favorite books. We made a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree one day after reading the book more than 5 times in a row.

I have seen different variations of the tree on many different websites. For ours I made the outline of the tree trunk and had Emily color it in with a brown marker (Emily does not like coloring in with markers...she loves paint, but I was not in the mood to get out the paint).

I cut out some leaves out of green construction paper and Emily glued them onto the tree trunk.

Finally, I gave Emily foam letter stickers that I found at the Dollar Tree to put all over the paper. She was so proud of her Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree she showed it to Daddy as soon as he got home from work!!