Tot School

 Hunter is 30 months.

Letter W activities:

(Printables for the letter W are from 1+1+1=1 and Confessions of a Homeschooler.)

Hunter loves doing the do-a-dot printables for the letters.  I have to make sure we do one of these every week.

 Hunter colored his letter W paper and then glued some foam Ws onto the window.

I love that Hunter can do these color papers all by himself.  He looks at the color word and then finds the right marker to color with.

W is for Worm.
(I usually just do the same letter craft with Hunter that I did with Hailey when she was in tot school… but lately I’ve been asking Hailey for ideas and she has some really creative ideas for our letter crafts and this was one of her great ideas.)

Shapes:

We focused on the triangle again this week- I’ve been doing the same shape for 2 weeks since Hunter does not know all of his shapes yet.  Hunter used a triangle shaped block to do some triangle paint stamping.

Manipulatives:

This is another activity that I can just put out on the table for Hunter and when wants to, he’ll just sit down and do it without any help.  I put the paper onto a baking sheet and then he puts the magnetic pom poms onto the circles.

Other:

We are continuing out caterpillar/butterfly unit.  We ordered some caterpillars and watched them grow and then form a chrysalis.

Every day Hailey read us a book about butterflies.  She even used a butterfly puppet when she read on this particular day.  Hunter definitely enjoyed it!

Hailey and Hunter painted one side of a butterfly, then folded the other side over to show how butterflies wings are symmetrical.

Hunter’s butterfly on the top and Hailey’s on the bottom.

These activities are actually from a couple of weeks ago, I’m behind in my posting- so this is Hunter working on Father’s Day picture frame gift.  Hailey painted half of it and Hunter painted the other half.  Later they added some scrapbook stickers of tools but I never took a picture of the finished frame.

Stop by 1+1+1=1 to see what the other tots were up to this week.

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Week in Review

I am a couple of weeks behind in posting my weekly reviews, so I am going to do my best to remember what we did.

Language Arts:

We continued our author unit study about Tomie dePaola from Around the Kampfire.

Hailey really enjoyed reading the books we used in our author study!

We read several books that had Big Anthony in them and we talked about cause and effect- how all of the things that Anthony did were the cause, and then the effect was the result of his actions.

On the left, Hailey wrote several things that Anthony did and on the right she wrote the results of those actions.

Hailey also made a post card pretending that Strega Nona had gone on vacation- she decorated the front of the post card and pretended that Strega Nona was in Disney World.

On the back she pretended to be Strenga Nona and  wrote a message to one of Strega Nona’s friends- she decided to write to Bambolona and told her about the fun she was having on vacation.

Science:

Our caterpillars arrived at the beginning of the week to go along with our study of caterpillars and butterflies.

Only a few days after their arrival they were already preparing to go into a chrysalis.

By Friday we only had a couple left that hadn’t formed a chrysalis.

We did a comparison of butterflies and moths and learned how to tell the difference between the two.

Hailey and Hunter painted one side of a butterfly, then folded the other side over to show how butterflies wings are symmetrical.

Hunter’s butterfly on the top and Hailey’s on the bottom.

Every day Hailey read us a book about butterflies.  She even used a butterfly puppet when she read on this particular day.  Hunter definitely enjoyed it!

Be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of our fun activities.

Tot School

Hunter is 30 months old.

Letter V Activities:

We always start the week with a letter paper- this printable is from 1+1+1=1.

Hunter decorated a letter V to make our letter project.

V is for volcano.

Shapes:

The shape we concentrated on this week was the triangle.  I put painter’s tape onto a piece of paper and had Hunter paint all around the paper.

Then I peeled the tape off and we were left with this triangle.

Hunter practiced his shapes with this shape printable  from 1+1+1=1.  I put it on a cookie sheet, then asked him to find a shape, and he found the shape and put a magnetic pom pom on the shape I asked for.

Sensory:

Hunter played with Mickey and Minnie in this bin of pom poms.

Manipulatives:

Hunter and Hailey used our unifix cubes to build all sorts of things- but mostly swords to fight each other.

We used the magnetic pom poms again to practice numbers.

Other:

We are working on a super fun unit all about caterpillars and butterflies.  Hailey has read a different book each day during science.

For one craft we made these cute caterpillars- pom poms glued onto clothespins, then we added googly eyes.

The next day we put our caterpillars into toilet paper tubes and wrapped yarn around them to represent a chrysalis.

Then we colored coffee filters with washable markers and sprayed them with water.  When the colors run together it looks so pretty- we used these to turn our caterpillars into butterflies.

Hailey and Hunter made life cycle plates about the butterflies.  Hunter loves it when he gets to do whatever Hailey is doing!

Here is Hunter’s finished life cycle plate- eggs to larva (caterpillar) to pupa (chrysalis) to adult (butterfly).

We also made some butterfly sun catchers.

Here is Hunter’s finished butterfly.

We sang a song about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.  Hailey and Hunter loved the song and the hand motions to go with it.  Here are the words that we sang:

I saw a caterpillar
climbing up a tree.
He wiggled and he wiggled,
he wiggled right at me.
I put him in a box,
“Stay right there,” I said.
But, when I opened up the box
a butterfly instead.
I couldn’t do it,
even if I tried.
Only God in heaven
could make a butterfly.

Stop by 1+1+1=1 to see what the other tots were up to this week.

Be sure to like me on Facebook and follow me on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of our fun activities.

Week in Review

Wondering what we’ve been up to?  Here’s a few things we have been working on:

Language Arts:

Hailey finished up working on a story that she has been writing.  She wrote up a rough draft, we typed it, and then she illustrated each page.  She was very proud of her work!  She read her story to Hunter and he really enjoyed it.

We have been having a lot of fun doing an author unit study about Tomie dePaola from Around the Kampfire.  Hailey drew pictures of the main characters in some of his books and we discussed the traits that each of those characters have.

Science:

We started a fun unit all about caterpillars and butterflies.

Each day we read a different book about caterpillars/butterflies.

The first craft we made were these cute caterpillars- which are simply pom poms glued onto a clothespin with googly eyes added.

Then next day we put our caterpillars into toilet paper rolls and wrapped yarn around the outside- this represented a chrysalis.

Hailey and Hunter colored coffee filters with washable markers,

then sprayed them with water.  The colors all bled together and looked really pretty.

We used the coffee filters to turn our clothespin caterpillars into butterflies.

We sang a song about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.  Hailey and Hunter loved the song and the hand motions to go with it.  Here are the words that we sang:

I saw a caterpillar
climbing up a tree.
He wiggled and he wiggled,
he wiggled right at me.
I put him in a box,
“Stay right there,” I said.
But, when I opened up the box
a butterfly instead.
I couldn’t do it,
even if I tried.
Only God in heaven
could make a butterfly.

Hailey made this pretty sun catcher butterfly.

Of course, we read more books.

Hailey and Hunter worked hard on making the life cycle of a caterpillar.

Here is Hailey’s completed life cycle project- from egg to larva (caterpillar) to pupa (chrysalis) to butterfly.

We watched a Magic School Bus episode about butterflies.  We also learned about metamorphosis on Brain Pop.

Math:

Hailey has been working on multiplication and we played a memory game using the math facts she is learning.  For example- one of the cards might say 7×3 and the matching card would say 21.  It was fun to play and I love it when Hailey asks to play again!

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