TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool

Emily is 33 months old.

Emily and Juliette are playing together more and more! Emily was so excited when Daddy put together the excersaucer for Juliette. Juliette LOVED it too!

For Open Ended Art Emily created with Feathers, Glue and Paint. Her favorite color is Green so that is the color that she picked to paint with.

More of Emily playing with Juliette! She is interacting with her more and more.

Emily enjoyed working with Play-Doh. We used the shapes from a shape sorting toy as cookie cutters.

Emily and I played Oh Rats, a great color matching puzzle game my mom had from when she sold Discovery Toys. Juliette enjoyed watching. Emily’s favorite part was saying “Oh Rats” when we got a color that was already on our puzzle. It made missing a turn not so bad!

For our stART project we made Toilet Paper Tube Turkeys after reading The Turkey Ball, by David Steinberg.

Emily really enjoyed this great fine motor skills practice. She used her training chopsticks to transfer pom poms from one suction cup fish to the other. I got the suction cup fish at Dollar Tree they are the things you would put in the tub to prevent slipping. I was amazed with how much she enjoyed this activity!

We finished our week with Art Group at our house. Emily had two of her friends over to play with play dough, paint with homemade puff paint and make coffee filter turkeys. We also learned a cute new turkey finger play.

Our favorite books from this week:

• The Turkey Ball ~ David Steinberg
• Rabbit’s Pajama Party ~ Stuart J. Murphy
• Let’s Go to the Zoo Little People Board Book ~ Readers Digest
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? ~ Bill Martin Jr.

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

Friday Art Group

Coffee Filter Turkeys and Color Mixing Puffy Paint

We started with some Play Dough Free Play, we are still using the Pumpkin Pie Dough I made in October.

The Girls did a great job making their Coffee Filter Turkeys!

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First they colored a coffee filter with brown, red, yellow and orange markers.  Then they sprayed it with water to make the colors run.  We set them aside to dry.

While they were drying they put together the turkey bodies.  I had already cut out a brown body, orange beak and red snood so they just glued that all together and added a pair of wiggly eyes.

To finish the turkeys they folded the coffee filter in half and glued it together.  Then they glued the turkey body on top of that.

In between the two projects we did a cute Turkey Finger Play.

The Turkey
Original Author Unknown

The turkey is a funny bird.(Hook thumbs together and spread fingers to create turkey tail. )

Its head goes wobble, wobble.
(Wobble head back and forth. )

And all it knows is just one word:
(Hold up one finger. )

"Gobble, gobble, gobble."
(Make mouth shape with hand, opening and closing it while sounding like a turkey.)

 

Emily really enjoyed making puffy paint pictures during the summer so I knew that these would be a big hit at Art Group!! 

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I mixed up some blue and yellow puffy paint so that they could see what happened when the two colors got mixed together.   This project was a lot of fun!!

stART ~ The Turkey Ball

A Story + Art = A Great stART!
Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our book and art project and maybe even share your own too! For an explanation of stART click here.

This week we read The Turkey Ball, by David Steinberg. This is a cute rhyming story about a group of turkeys who spend the night dancing.

As we were reading this book I thought it would be fun for Emily to dress up a turkey for the ball. I tried to find a cute picture of a turkey on the internet, however non of them seemed to work for what I had in mind. Then I saw a picture of a toilet paper tube turkey and new we had to try it out!

Emily painted the toilet paper towel tube with brown paint.

Next, she glued on the face and some wiggly eyes.

Then, she glued on some feathers. This was her favorite part!

Finally, she decorated the turkey for the ball with some sequins and glitter glue.

Emily’s finished turkey is all ready for the Turkey Ball!

Open Ended Art ~ Feathers

 Fun with Paint Feathers and Glue!!

This weeks Open Ended Art theme is Feathers.  Emily has enjoyed feather painting before so I gave her the choice of gluing or painting with feathers.  She said both!  So I mixed some glue into the paint and she went to work.

Emily picked green paint to paint with (it is her favorite color!!).

After she used the paintbrush to paint she started painting with the feathers.

She enjoyed painting on the feathers too!

    

Emily’s finished Feather Painting!

I've Been Nominated!!

I can not tell you how surprised, but extremely honored I feel to be nominated for Best New Homeschool Blog in the 2009 Homeschool Blog Awards!!

I enjoy creating and adding to this blogs so much! In addition, I have "meet" such amazing people and gotten so many wonderful and creative ideas through this blog. It has definitely made me a better mother and teacher to Emily and now Juliette.

Check it out and please vote for me in the Best New Homeschool Blog Category :0)

Flying Baby

When I saw this baby activity I knew Juliette would love it. She loves when I lift her up high above my head like she is flying and I thought the words to this little rhyme were so cute!

To start I laid down on the bed and put Juliette on my belly with her head close to mine.

Up like a rocket, (I lifted Juliette in the air toward my face)
Down like a plane, (I brought her back to the starting position)
Back and forth like a Choo-choo train. (I raised her up again and gently moved her forward and backward)
I can fly here, (I moved her to one side)
I can fly there, ( I moved her to the other side)
I can fly anywhere. ( I moved her all over)

This activity is great because it is a lot of fun and it helps develop the muscles in the head and neck, shoulders, upper and lower back.

TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool

Emily is 32 months old.

Emily enjoyed playing with Juliette. She has been great at getting her to laugh. One day she had Juliette giggling like crazy as she was jumping across the room. It seems like Juliette can’t wait to join in on all of the fun that Emily is always having.

Emily had fun at music this week. She liked playing the egg shakers.

My friend Sarah invited us over for TOTSchool at her house. Here Emily is mixing the batter for pumpkin muffins.

Emily was excited to spoon the batter into the pan, however after the first two I was left to finish up.

Emily loved this great fine motor skill activity. Sarah put a piece of uncooked spaghetti into a mound of play-doh and gave the kids a plate of Cheerios. Emily put the all onto the spaghetti and was very excited to eat the rest for snack.

For Open Ended Art we looked at some of Henri Matisse’s cutouts and then Emily created two of her own. For our stART project we read Five Green and Speckled Frogs and made a Log with 5 Frog stick puppets to help Emily retell the story. This project was a big hit since she loves the color green!!

Our favorite books from this week:

• Five Green and Speckled Frogs ~ Priscilla Burris
• Toot and Puddle ~ Holly Hobbie
• If You Give a Moos a Muffin ~ Laura Numeroff
• Panda Bear, Panda Bear What Do You See? ~ Bill Martin Jr.

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