Three Little Kittens {Letter M}

Painting with mittens!

Hanging mittens to spell her name!

Eating a mini pie!

Mitten matching!

Letter M craft for our letter wall!!

Little Miss Muffet {Letter L}

For the letter L, Taitum learned the rhyme Little Miss Muffet.

Day 1

She made a spider out of a paper plate, construction paper and googly eyes.

We later tied him to a curtain rod so she could run around frightening people.

;)

Day 2

We played the tuffet game.

The girls collected all the pillows in the house and laid them on the floor to be used as tuffets.

I then added tape to each pillow with various letters written on it.

I recited the poem with a little twist:

"Little Miss Muffet sat on a 'B', eating her curds and whey."

Tait or Piper would then run and jump on the pillow with that letter.

Day 3

Taitum posted a video on Facebook to survey who is and who is not afraid of spiders.

(Her homemade spider makes an appearance , too!)

She then compiled her data.

She placed a sticker on either the 'yes' or 'no' spider web.

Our FB friends are awesome at participating!

We ran out of spider stickers and had to switch to using do-a-dot markers.

It turns out more people are afraid of spiders!

I understand!

Day 4

We did a curds and whey experiment.

Tait added vinegar to some milk and observed how it causes the milk to separate and become chunky.

She later had a chance to eat her own curds and whey (cottage cheese).

Day 5

Finally, an 'L' craft featuring Miss Muffet, her curds and whey and that irritating spider!

Sing A Song of Sixpence {Letter K}

Initially, it probably doesn't make sense that I would choose to use "Sing a Song of Sixpence" for introducing the letter K. 

But the rhyme ends with a king so we went with it!

This was a fun rhyme to learn since Tait wasn't familiar with it and as a result, very interested in learning it.

She kept asking me to sing 'that bird song' to her over and over until she knew it.

This rhyme ended up taking us two weeks because we were interrupted by sickness and we never did get around to making a real pie.

I decided we'd save that little activity for another rhyme (and more sane week!) and call it good with four related activities!

Day 1:  

Taitum made a shape collage black bird by gluing together a rectangle, circle and three triangles.

This provided a good opportunity to talk about shapes.

Day 2:

I made Tait a playdough pie and told her to find what was baked in her pie!

She was unsure at first (perhaps she thought a blackbird would pop out??).

But when she found her first letter bead she was pretty excited!

Then she dug right in and told me what the letter was on each bead she pulled out!

Finally, we simply played with the playdough and I showed her how to roll the dough out in order to form letters.

Day 3:

Tait counted out 'sixpence' from some plastic play money we have.

I then got her to count out six containers and she practiced one to one correspondence by placing one coin in each container.

She really enjoyed this and played with the coins and containers for quite some time.

Day 4:

Tait made a letter K king for our letter wall!
(Doesn't she look so amused by my request for a picture?!)

Now we are moving on to the letter L with Little Miss Muffett!

*Linking up to 1+1+1=1 Gathering Place and Preschool Corner*

Jack and Jill {Letter J}

For the past two weeks, Taitum has been learning Jack and Jill and the letter J.

(I had intended to do a rhyme a week but things got hectic and so we ended up spreading this one out over two!)

Day 1:

Tait was commissioned to build a hill and then attempt to go up it while we sang the rhyme!

Of course, Piper and I helped with the building and took turns, too!

(It's harder than it looks!)

This activity caused a lot of laughter and was Tait's favorite activity!

She asked to do it everyday!

Day 2:

I made little buckets out of styrofoam and pipe cleaner and numbered them one to five.

Taitum then had to use tongs to transfer the corresponding number of water pompoms into the buckets.

She surprised me with how good she was at handling the tongs!

She needed a little help with the counting (mostly because she gets ahead of herself) but it took her no time to complete this and dump them all out to try again!

Day 3:

I printed off this J is for Jack and Jill do-a-dot sheet and Tait used pompom magnets to fill in the circles.

I left this out for a few days afterwards and it was used a lot by both girls - they just love using those magnets!

 Day 4:

Of course, Tait had no idea what a well was or what it meant to fetch a pail of water!

So this activity hopefully helped get the point across!

I filled the tub with water and threw in the foam letters that we have learned so far.

Then I provided Tait with a pail and got her to 'fetch' a letter!

She would pull one up and tell me which letter it was, I'd stick it on the wall of the shower and she'd go after another one!

She quite liked this although it was a challenge to fetch those letters!

My hubby said I should have made her go up the basement stairs each time to be really accurate but I think that would have been overdoing it! Haha!

(Also, I should note she doesn't know all the letters we have done so far. These activities are meant to introduce her to the letters of the alphabet and help her to become familiar with them over time. So don't freak out if your 3 year old doesn't know their letters yet. It's ok! Neither does mine!)

Day 5:

Finally, we did a letter J craft.

Tait glued on the letter, applied smiley faces for Jack and Jill, drew their bodies and glued on wooden shapes to make their bucket and the well.

Last of all, she used blue glitter glue markers to make the water splashing out of the bucket as they fell!

Despite the fact that it took us a bit longer to get through all the activities for this rhyme, Taitum, again, thoroughly enjoyed having her own special school time!

I am loving it too!

And Piper has been so considerate as well.

Sometimes she asks to join in which I generally welcome but other times when I have provided her with her own school work to do, she goes off and works quite diligently on it.

(I think it makes her feel like a big girl to have work she can do all on her own!)

Next week, I am planning on doing 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' with Taitum.

We will be using 'king' in the rhyme to learn the letter K!

*Linking up to 1+1+1=1 Tot School Gathering Place*

Itsy Bitsy Spider {Letter I}

September to December, homeschooling went exceptionally well.

Our days went smoothly.

(Well...as smoothly as can be expected with 3 littles in the mix...)

But overall, I am happy with the routine we have established and the curriculum we are using.

However, I felt like Taitum was missing out.

Don't get me wrong - by choice, she is there for nearly every second of our school time.

The problem was that it was frustrating for her.

She often couldn't do the activities at the same level Piper was doing them.

So even though I was including her in everything she was getting discouraged by the fact that her coloring or drawings or whatever did not look like Piper's.

I attempted to provide her with more age appropriate activities that corresponded to what Piper was doing but the bottom line was she was not developmentally ready to sit and work on a worksheet or attempt to cut something out unaided.

I knew what she needed - more hands on, movement and sensory based learning activities.

So over Christmas break I prepared a mini curriculum for Taitum that is all her own.

Considering how well Piper's school work is going, I felt comfortable adding a little extra to my planning and to our day.

Additionally, this provides Piper with a new challenge that I wasn't sure she could handle yet - individual work.

Long story short - she has blown me out of the water with her ability to listen to my instructions and sit and work on something all by herself!

Anyhow, back to Tait.

She loves to sing and is really good at memorizing rhymes so I've planned a different nursery rhyme for each week that corresponds with the letter we are learning.

We only spend 20 - 30 minutes each day learning one on one together but it has proven to be the perfect amount of time and such a confidence builder for her.

Taitum is so thrilled every day to have this time together with me.

And I can't explain to you how happy it makes me to make special time just for her!

This past week we learned the Itsy Bitsy Spider to go along with learning the letter 'I'.

Here's what we did:

Day 1:

We made props to go along with the song.

We made the spider with construction paper and googly eyes.

The water spout was a leftover wrapping paper roll that we painted.

We used these props the rest of the week to re-enact the song.

Day 2:

We had some contact paper fun!

I taped it to the table, added some spider bodies and numbered them 1 -5.

Taitum then added the correct number of legs to each spider by sticking pipe cleaners onto the contact paper.

I figured she would want to do some more 'sticking' once the legs were added so I simply cut up some construction paper into squares.

We then had a chance to learn about squares while 'feeding' them to the spiders!

Day 3:

Taitum practiced her colors with this little spider game.

She would roll the dice, name the color it rolled to and add that color clothespin to the spider!

This was such a fun game for her and she was delighted to teach it to her sister later in the day.

Day 4:

For our letter wall she made a letter 'I' itsy bitsy craft.

She glued a cut out letter 'I' to her paper, used her thumbprint to make the spider's body and added legs with a marker.

She then glued a cut out sun in the sky and used the eraser of a pencil to dab blue paint on for the rain.

Day 5:

Finally, Taitum used plastic spiders and paint to make spider prints all over the letter 'I'!

Piper joined us for this activity and both girls had a blast shrieking and giggling over the 'yucky' spiders in the paint!

Next week we plan on learning Jack and Jill to go along with letter 'J'.

I'm hoping that things continue to work out so well as they did this past week!

Taitum is also continuing with her All About Reading Pre Reading curriculum (which I've simply incorporated into this time together) and still joins us for much of Piper's schoolwork.

She is so quick to learn things and such a joy to spend time with!

And hearing her sing the song we're learning while off playing at other times during the day is just the icing on the cake!

In fact, we sang the "Itsy Bitsy Spider all through the grocery store today! 

:D

Linking up with 1+1+1=1's Tot School and Homeschool Creations' Preschool Corner!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar {Tot School}

A couple of weeks ago, Piper attended a summer camp at a local church.

That meant that for 5 mornings in a row I was down to 2 kids!

Considering that the babe naps for much of the morning, it ended up being quite the break everyday!

It's too strange not having all my kiddies with me every day but I took advantage of the alone time with Taitum and planned a whole week of activities surrounding The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Here is what we did!

First, she created the leaf with the egg on it by do-a-dotting a leaf green and adding a marshmallow as the egg.

I put this little counting activity on the fridge for her.

Each leaf had a number and she had to put the correct number of eggs (pom pom magnets) on each one.

Another day she made the classic egg carton caterpillar by painting the egg carton strip and adding anntenae and eyes.

She then helped me prepare a game to go along with her caterpillar by cutting out the pictures of food I had printed.

For the game, she would find and count the right food that the caterpillar ate as I came to it in the story.

It was pretty simple but she loved it especially since I added eating noises as she fed the caterpillar!

(Find the food printable here!)

Next, we went to work on a chrysalis.

I thought Tait would love paper mache since she adores sensory play but she ended up being totally grossed out by the feel of the water and flour mixture and I ended up doing the grand majority of it!

Piper helped her paint it after it had dried.

It's hanging on the wall in the kitchen right now and I plan to fill it with butterfly treats to surprise them some day soon! 

Likely after my next trip to Bulk Barn!

We added a little adventure to our learning by travelling out to a local fruit stand.

Taitum was in charge of finding the fruit that the very hungry caterpillar ate and counting out the right number of each.

She was thrilled to get to push the cart around and do her very own grocery shopping!

She couldn't wait to show Piper when she got home and both girls become very hungry caterpillars and gobbled it all up!

Piper joined us in our butterfly project.

The plan was to do a crayon resist painting.

Tait opted out of the crayon part and simply painted her butterfly while Piper did the crayon resist.

So there you have it!

The life cycle of a butterfly on our kitchen wall!

Now we are keeping our eyes open for butterflies and caterpillars when we're playing outside.

We did find some eggs on a leaf a few days ago!

We also watched this video which I found simply amazing!

The whole metamorphosis of a butterfly is so amazing!

I even learned some new things from the facts included in the video!

This week made me really miss our school time.

We really do have so much fun together!

I'm trying my best to chill out and enjoy these warm summer days but truth be told - I'm quite anxious for school to begin again!

Ha!

I never thought I'd say such a thing!

But I've been working hard on the coming years lesson plans and getting so excited for what is in store for me and my little gals this year!