Tot School/Preschool–St. Patrick’s Day

- Abigail is 25 months old -	- Adam is 4.25 years old -

We had some fun during the week of St. Patrick’s Day!  We didn’t get to everything I had planned, but such is life.  I used the pack from Musings of Me (which is no longer available), and ideas collected from the internet.

Letters

Get to the Gold!
Adam had to trace from a-z to get the Leprechaun to the pot of gold.

Abby also had a page and she colored a letter and named it for me.  I need to sit down and quiz her to see if she actually does know all upper/lower case letters.

Numbers & Math

Both kids enjoyed placing the Leprechauns under the mushroom to match the number I had chosen.

Abby

Adam

I did a little bit of addition with Adam.

Adam did some patterning.

Abby did some size sorting and we used the words “large”, “medium” and “small” while she worked.

Puzzles, Matching, & Games

A favorite was playing Roll a Leprechaun.
We took turns rolling a dice and adding a piece of our Leprechaun that corresponded to the number.

Adam and I worked on a puzzle together.

Pre-Writing, Fine Motor and Manipulatives

Pre-Writing pages for Adam.

“Let’s Cut Paper!” Kumon workbook.
Adam struggles with opening the scissors back up so I just bought a spring-loaded pair.  Hopefully that will ease the frustration for him. 

“Same or Different” Preschool workbook.
He loves workbooks!  He’d do 10 pages a day if I let him.
And this is what Abby was doing….coloring right on top of the table as close as she could possibly get to her brother.  Maybe I need to pick up a few cheap workbooks just for her to scribble in since she obviously knows that his is “cooler” than her coloring book. :)

For some Fine Motor play, both kids spooned beads into an ice cube tray.

Ping-pong balls through a tube.
This was meant just for Abby, but both kids had fun together.

And then they played golf!

“Busy Bugs” from Discovery Toys….a favorite!
Adam worked on patterning.

Abby worked on color matching.

But the most fun is just playing with the bugs!

And this is my location of choice after sitting on the floor for a while….nothing better than laying on the couch and having birthday parties for bugs!

Art & Fun

We made Shamrock Sun Catchers one day.
First we tore up green tissue paper…

Then we stuck the pieces onto clear contact paper…

Then we folded the contact paper over and Mom cut out shamrocks shapes to stick on the window.  Cute, easy, and fun!

On another day we made Marshmallow Rainbows.

Lots of snacking took place!

One of the highlights was making Shamrock Rice Krispie Treats!  I think I’ve made Rice Krispie Treats once so this was a new and fun experience for them.

Man were they hard to cut out!
Finished shamrocks.  Yum!

Sensory Bin

For the Sensory Bin I used split peas as the base and added in foam shamrocks, little shamrocks torn off of a garland, and plastic gold coins.
They had fun digging for gold coins and transferring everything into a “pot of gold”.

 

On St. Patrick’s Day morning they discovered a trail from the door to a pot of gold under the table!
A little Leprechaun had left some goodies for them!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!! 

Tot School/Preschool– Valentine’s Day!

- Adam is 4.25 years old	- Abigail is 24 months old -

This post is WAY overdue, but hey…I’m pregnant.  So for journaling purposes, here is our Valentine’s Tot School/Preschool theme!  It was supposed to be just the week of Valentine’s Day, but with super long lasting colds taking turns with each of us, it was spread out over about 3 weeks in February.

Sensory Bin
I used pink, red, and white faux rose petals as the base and put in some foam hearts, heart bracelets, and little boxes filled with heart erasers and/or red glass beads.

Adam found all the glass beads, aka “jewels”, and ran off to pretend he was a pirate hunting for treasure.  Abby had lots of fun playing in the petals, (which I later discovered dyed her socks pink!), putting erasers and beads in and out of the boxes and just being silly with Mommy.

Art and Fun

We made valentine’s collages for grandparents.  They loved being able to choose whatever they wanted to stick and glue on their papers.

Abby coloring her hearts.  She was “supposed” to color each heart a different color.  She did blue and then went crazy with the black!
Heart mosaics with red glass beads
I’m really trying to find things they can do together because inevitably, one wants to be doing what the other is doing all the time!

We sang “BINGO” using the word “HEART”. 
Adam thought this was especially fun.

Tonging or spooning heart-shaped ice cubes.
Adam really liked this activity last year….not so much this year. 
Abby kept coming back to it over the course of our school time.  She loved it!

Letters

Both kids did a Letter V Identification page with dot markers.
Adam did great finding all the upper and lowercase V’s.

Abby had fun doting.  I asked her the names of different letters and she pretty much knows them all!

Adam easily blew through placing an eraser on the letter that the picture started with.

I brought out this file folder game for Abby, forgetting that it was matching lowercase to uppercase letters.  She was thoroughly annoyed that we kept trying to say a certain letter matched another.  In her mind, they DID NOT match!  Adam matched a few before getting bored.

Numbers

Adam put together this puzzle by placing the strips in number order.  He thought it was pretty cool that once he was done, it made a picture!

He found the missing numbers, again in number order.  He did 9 out of the 16 or so cards that I had before he got bored.  I’m thinking simple addition is not too far in the future for him.

We all had fun graphing conversations hearts!

Puzzles, Matching, and Games

Lovebug Matching Game

Hearts in Shapes Puzzles

Animals in Love Puzzles

I pulled a few of these out at a time and Abby did really well matching them up!

Heart Size Sort (Abby)

Shadow Matching

Achy Breaky Hearts Puzzles
Adam refused to do this last year, but enjoyed it this year.  Dad was home at the time, so maybe that helped? :)

Heart Race game
The kids love anything involving a die!  We took turns rolling and moving our piece along our line of hearts.  First to finish won!

Adam and I played several rounds of Dominoes.  I actually don’t know if we played by the real rules, but we just took turns drawing a card and finding a place to match it.

Pre-Writing, Fine Motor and Manipulatives

Pre-writing practice pages.
I wish I knew how to correct his pencil/crayon grip!

Which One is Different? worksheets

Magnetic Pom-Pom page
Rather than putting the pom-poms on the circles, Abby just played with them on the cookie sheet.

Later, Adam did it “right”.

Adam had fun cutting strips of heart stickers apart.  The first strips were 1/2” wide.  The second strips were 1 1/2” wide so that he would have to use two snips to complete the cut.  He really struggled with that, so we went back to just the single snips.  The problem is that he can’t get the scissors to open wide enough, so I’ve ordered some spring-loaded ones to see if that will help.

Abby loved putting these heart sticks into the lid an oatmeal canister!

I then asked her to sort the red and pink hearts and she did perfectly.

Adam decided on his own to pick up the pieces of the Achy Breaky Heart puzzles using tongs.

The best part of the weeks we spent on Valentine’s Day was that I brought back Circle Time!  They absolutely love doing the calendar, weather, singing songs, and reading books together!

I got most of these printable activities from Musings of Me (which has since privatized her blog and stopped making free printables) and 1+1+1=1’s Valentine’s Day tot pack.