- Adam is 42 months -
- Abigail is 16 months -
We finally completed our last Before Five in a Row book! I have loved reading these books and doing activities with Adam! We read our first book exactly one year ago and my very first Tot School post was on “Caps for Sale” using Before Five in a Row as a guide. Here’s a link. My, how Adam has grown in a year!
June 2010
Our 18th, and last, Before Five in a Row book was “Play With Me” by Marie Hall Etts. It’s such a cute little story! A little girl wants to play with the different animals she meets but they all run away, until she sits very still and quiet!
We talked about the expressions on the little girls face and how she must have felt when the animals ran away from her and then when they all came back. It’s amazing how our conversations have changed over the course of the year. Adam thinks, reasons, and expresses so much more now, as a 3 1/2 year old, than he did as a 2 1/2 year old and it’s fun to see! He’s a funny little guy to talk to! (Side note….he uses “an” for everything. Example, “I see an bug!”….”Can I watch an show?” No matter how many times I respond with, “You see a bug?” or “You want to watch a show?”, he always says “an”. It’s cute!)
During our Circle Time we had fun learning a couple of finger plays/songs, “Five Little Speckled Frogs”, “The Little Turtle”, and “Turtle Turtle”.
Acting like a turtle in “Turtle Turtle”
Adam sitting very still, looking around like the girl in the story.
“What Animals Would You Like to Play With?” book from Homeschool Share.
He glued the pictures on, and then I had him find the animal’s name by looking for the beginning sound. Some were tricky because they were blends, but by separating the sounds, he was able to figure it out.
Size Sorting
(the following activities are all from 1+1+1=1’s Pond Life Tot Book and Preschool Pack)
Pre-Writing Practice
I was happy to see that he could do this activity. The Letter of the Week curriculum we’re doing for Preschool has a lot of this and he loved it! If he slowed down, he was really good at following the lines! Now if only I could get him to use the correct grip!
He drew on this page and “re-rased” it over and over again. He even came back to it several times throughout the day!
“How Many Turtles Can You Stack?” Math Mat
“Reading”
Spelling his name with scrambled letters.
Although he can’t write it, he can spell his name! He used this Magnetic Alphabet app on the iPad to drag letters to spell his name on his own, without any prompting from us, (this was before the scrambled letters above). Another day, he was playing the iPad while I was busy with something and he ran over to show me that he had spelled “off” with the same app. I’m not sure when he learned how to spell “off”!
Using a cute printable from Life with my Giggly Girls, the kids fed this frog, flies.
The picture is taped to an empty cereal box with a slit in the frog’s mouth.
They played with this for a long time, both together and separately!
Homemade Bird Feeders!
We used pine cones, peanut butter, and bird seed to made bird feeders for our trees.
Too bad no birds have decided to eat our tasty treat for them. It may have to do with the fact that they aren’t canaries or finches…we had a very limited variety of bird seed to choose from! Or they don’t like peanut butter.
We took a trip to the aquarium with some friends!
The picture is blurry, but this is all 4 kids.
Two 3.5 year olds and two 15-16 month olds.
Adam and his friend Lexie looking at the rays. Neither one wanted to touch. Abby, however, couldn’t get enough of the water and didn’t flinch when the rays came up under her hand.
We also had a picnic at the park. I wish they lived closer so we could play more often!
Ok, here are a few things Abby did this week. I would love to be able to focus more on her…I just don’t know how! I’m going crazy trying to juggle the two of them because one is always unhappy about the attention on the other. Unless they are parked in front of the TV. Any tips?
Playing with matching cards. She loves to put them back into the box.
Bug Puzzle
Although she needs a little help getting them situated just right, I watched her look at the piece, then look at the board, and find the spot that matched. It was neat watching her concentrate!
Stacking the puzzle pieces
Wooden Tool Box
She kept putting the pieces on her fingers and then banging them together.
Fun in the Sun!
It has been HOT so we had fun playing in the kiddie pool. Adam was off squirting things with his squirt gun the whole time while Abby got in and out at least 100 times!
Picnic! We’re loving summer!!
Check out Carisa’s awesome blog at 1+1+1=1!
