Practicing Letters

I am always looking for fun ways for Little Bug to practice letters. I want to focus now on her learning to write some letters (she is only 3 but she can write her nickname as well as a few other letters) and I found a mess free but fun way for her to practice - using paint in a bag. As a kid I had this toy which I thought was so awesome and now that I think about it the toy had the same concept. As you pushed down on the paint, which was under a plastic cover, you could see through to the neon colors as you pressed down. The same thing happens with the paint bag. Press down hard enough and you can see through to the table. Then to "erase" your work just smooth over the paint.

I had to adjust the amount of paint several times. You really only need a very small amount of paint. I taped my ziploc bag shut so that the paint would not seep out of the top.

That day she also practiced matching the Uppercase letters with the Lowercase letters. When I say she knows/recognizes all of her letters I should say all of the Uppercase. Doing these activities showed me which Lowercase letters we need to practice. Of course she can identify the ones that look like their Uppercase letters but it looks like we'll be doing some more fun letter activities focusing on the Lowercase. 

Exploring In Dirt

Today Alex was watching the show "Sid the Science Kid" and on the show the kids were exploring dirt. Of course after seeing that she wanted to explore too. On the show the kids had a shovel, some dirt, a magnifying glass and a journal page and they dug through the dirt and saw what was in it.

Well I went out and got some dirt for Alex to look through and she used her shovel to find some rocks, mulch, and even a worm. Well I tried pushing the worm out of the dirt for her to have a better look and the worm started jumping around. Literally it did and I screamed (it startled me) and so then Alex was scared. So we both decided it would be best to take the worm back to his  home (our front yard) so he wouldn't flop around anymore.

I Spy

I've read all over about sensory bins and I have wanted to make one for Little Bug for a while. Well this wasn't a sensory bin per say  but it was fun for her to dig through some rice to find the letters of her name. I hid foam letters for her name and then threw in some colored pasta to challenge her. She had a fun time finding her name and lining up the letters. She already knows how to spell her name but practicing can never hurt. We were able to work on letter recognition (again she knows her letters but practice is key!) and so she would say each letter when she would find it. When she would put the letters upside down  I would have her look through and see if the foam letters matched the ones I wrote. 

I thought she would enjoy digging her hands into the rice but she preferred to use her spoon. Then she hid the letters for me to find and I wanted to use my hands and she insisted I use the spoon - she thought I was "cheating" by using my hands!

V is for Volcano

Last night at bedtime Little Bug wanted me to read The Magic School Bus Blows It's Top which is all about volcanoes. I thought the perfect activity to do with her would be to make a volcano. I've always done this activity with my first and second graders at the end of the year and they always loved it so I thought she would too. She was for the first part of making the volcano but then when I said we were going to make it erupt she got scared. She thought it was going to be loud. I talked to her and told her it would just be bubbles like in her bath. So I erupted it twice - once with her inside the house watching out the screen door and then a second time with her outside with me.

She thought it was pretty neat once she saw that it didn't make sounds or anything. She is going through a bit of a "scared of everything"phase. But that's ok - she'll outgrow it. As long as I reassure her everything is going to be fine then she is ok.

When we came in then she drew a nice looking V on her chalkboard. I was pretty impressed.

The ingredients: baking soda, vinegar, dish detergent, red food coloring, clay, a mini water bottle, a funnel, and a cookie sheet to catch the mess! Oh and a baby monitor.............no you don't really need that but we always try to do the activities when Little Monkey is sleeping! And not pictured here, supplies that I needed to run into the house to get: a wet towel and some dry towels for wiping hands and then a piece of cardboard to use as the base of the volcano.

To make the volcano erupt just put some baking soda in the bottom of the bottle. Mix some vinegar, dish detergent, and red food coloring in a container and pour over the baking soda. The more dish detergent you use the more bubbles you will have. You can vary your measurements - I didn't measure anything.

Little Bug pushed the clay onto the bottle. She's used to playing with play-doh so clay was a little tougher. 

The finished volcano. We put the cardboard up near the rim of the bottle. This allowed a nice base to build the volcano on. 

 Top view

Side view

The eruption!

Little Bug covering her eyes at first...

 And then she watched with a smile

C is for Cloud

We talked about different types of clouds this week. Little bug loves looking clouds to find animals or other things. We'll be driving in the car and she'll say "Look Mommy - that looks like a dragon!" Glad she has a great imagination! Well she can tell  you what a cumulus cloud is and is very observant if the clouds are grey in the sky. As a craft we made a cumulus cloud with cotton balls.

After we made the cloud craft Little Bug did some weather jigsaw puzzles online and then we had a cloud race. We used a cotton ball and a straw and we raced by blowing air into the straw to move the cotton ball. I used this game also to teach Little Bug about good sportsmanship because she is obsessed with winning. God forbid my cotton ball got ahead of hers ! So I won on purpose once just to show her it's just a game, it's ok to lose, and to be a good sport. So another time I won again and this time around she said - good job mommy!

Her cloud craft 

 Some puzzles - she is getting good at using my laptop mouse! 

Cloud Race

Muffin Tin Monday

I was determined to post our muffin tin lunch post on Monday but sure enough I got busy and didn't have time. So here is is a few days late. This week we did a weather themed lunch because in PA we have been having quite an eventful week (hurricane, tornado warning, and earthquake).

Top: puffy marshmallows (clouds) , orange slice (sun) , ham (umbrella cutter for rain)

Bottom row: cheese (shaped like a funnel for a tornado), veggie sticks (broken up to represent the earthquake), and  ice cream with sprinkles (my version of a "blizzard") 

 I thought Little Bug would dive into the ice cream but she ate the marshmallows first. The whole muffin tin lunch was gobbled up though at the end! 

For other ideas for cute muffin tin lunches go to Muffin Tin Mom! 

It's Weather Week at Our House!

So this past week in PA we've has quite a weather week! Of course we've had our sunny days as is normal in August but we also had some weather that is not normal for our area - an earthquake aftershock, a hurricane, and a tornado warning!

On Tuesday I was feeding Little Monkey and Little Bug was joining us (as she is my shadow lately) and so all of the sudden our whole house shook! The chair I was sitting in, the windows, the walls, the closet, everything! At the time I was doing some laundry and I thought at first that it was just my washing machine getting off of the track because I was doing a bunch of towels. When the house shook it felt weird. Little bug said "Mommy what's that??? and hid under her blanket" My response: It's just the washer. Although I was wondering why on earth our whole house shook and thought......hmmm that's not right! It wasn't until I was done feeding him when I got a text from my sister asking about the earthquake. The WHAT?????? Oh..........so that's what it was. We just felt the earthquake that happened in Virginia. So that was a first (for all of us!)

Then on Saturday Hurricane Irene was making her way towards PA. We are about an hour and a half from all of the NJ, MD, and DE beaches so we were definitely going to have the high winds and heavy rain. We were in the 30-50 MPH wind gust range and got 5-10 inches of rain. Not sure of the exact amount but it was a lot! So in the midst of the hurricane at about 10:45 PM Saturday we were also under a tornado warning - meaning one had spotted. The emergency alert system came on saying it would be at neighboring areas at 11:00 PM. Scary. So we headed down to the basement and , well, we just ended up spending the night down there to ride out the storm. After the tornado warning we continued to have a watch until 5 am.

On Sunday I made a homemade anemometer, which measures the wind speed, and it worked! We still had major gusts of wind so it was really moving.

So needless to say I decided that talking about the weather with Little Bug would be a perfect fit for this week! Stay tuned for pictures of the activities that we are doing this week.

We got the instructions to make the anemometer from Weather Wiz Kids

Muffin Tin Monday

Last week we skipped Muffin Tin Monday since we were at the beach and this week I am a little late at getting around to posting but nevertheless I finally found the time. This week we did some activities focusing on the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and so I tried to make a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom lunch. I suppose I could have gotten a little more creative but I tried my best.

Little Bug enjoyed the lunch though. I thought she would eat the Cheeze-it's first because she loves goldfish so much but she doesn't seem to be a fan of them. I am though so I finished them off for her!

Here is her lunch:

Top row: Graham crackers, pears, ABC Cheese-it's

Bottom row: cheese cut outs (with black eyed P!), A coconut tree sandwich, pudding, and raisins

For more inspiration for lunches head on over to Muffin Tin Mom for ideas! 

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Little Bug has really been into this book lately. In fact, we've been reading it almost every night for the past week before bed. So today I decided to do some Chicka Chicka Boom Boom activities with her just to review the alphabet. She already knows the alphabet, recognizes the letters, even knows some letter sounds but the extra practice can't hurt. Plus, we have been focusing more on uppercase letters and I wanted to go over the lowercase letters some more. Here are some of the things we did today for our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom day.

First we listened to a song on You Tube

Source: youtube.com via Alison on Pinterest

 After watching the song on the computer we made our own coconut tree

 We started by using a toilet paper roll as a base, covered it with brown card stock, and then I cut out palm tree leaves. Then she stuck sticky letters onto the tree.

Here is the final product:

Next Little Bug went fishing for letters using a homemade fishing pole (made from a dowel rod, some string, and a magnet), and paper fish cut outs that I had left over from school, and paper clips. I only had a few left so I put a letter on each fish. 

 I told her to fish for letter A and she caught it.

 The nice thing about this activity is that you could use this fishing pole and other cut outs to review other concepts such as numbers, letter sounds, coins, etc. The possibilities are endless.

 Then she did some Uppercase/Lowercase alphabet matching with puzzles. On one side of the table are the Uppercase and on the other side are the Lowercase. After she put each puzzle together I would say the following phrase:

Big G Little G 

What begins with G?

Gift, Gift

Gift begins with G

/G/ 

(I would say the sound at the end)

She caught onto the little song and so we worked on letter sounds too

 Whiles she was doing the puzzle I got her a little snack appropriate for the day: 

 I took the letters of her name and I spread them out on the table in random order

I was trying to get her to spell her name. I only prompted her by telling her if she was wrong but I didn't correct her and tell her how to spell it. When I first started teaching her how to spell her name I put the letters into a clapping rhythm and I would spell it and she would repeat. We did this  A LOT! Well eventually she learned ALEX but I wanted her to learn how to spell her full name so later we added the end. So then she put the A down first and I said good....A......and then I clapped the rest of the rhythm. After I did that she spelled it right. 

 So all of the letters are not turned around correctly but hey - it's spelled right! 

And then I laid it out for her.................and then I ate it! 

Finally, since today is Muffin Tin Monday I made her a Muffin Tin Lunch with the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom theme.  

What fun activities have you done with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom?