T is for Turkey

Thanksgiving is such a great time of year. I love thinking of all the things I'm grateful for. This year, I really wanted to stress the importance of being grateful to C, as I think he is getting old enough. We'd talk about the things we enjoy and love everyday in November. We have so much to be grateful for!

My munchkin and I started the letter T the week before Thanksgiving so we'd have lots of time for T activities. While doing our scavenger hunt for things that start with T, Colby thought about tickets. This was brilliant because I had some left over from his party that he could "tape" onto his letter T. He spent a lot of time on this.

For a math project I cut out some circles and let C color and paste them onto construction paper. Then I wrote a number on each paper (from 1-9) and cut out some feathers. Colby enjoyed gluing the amount of feathers that corresponded to the number at the top. We did a few each day, as this activity took longer than expected.

Gluing feathers onto his Turkeys

I had read on a website for Montessori schools about a book called Thanksgiving by Anne Rockwell . This book was perfect for C as he loved the illustrations and the story was easy for him to understand.

The activity is to give the child some beads which signify different parts of the story that as they retell it, will remind them of when the Pilgrims came across the ocean, met the indians and the food they ate. It took some fine motor skills to place the beads onto the bracelet, something C can always use practice with. I found the instructions here: http://http//mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/my_montessori_journey/2009/11/thanksgiving-story-bracelets.html

For the holiday we rented a beach house with the rest of my family. It was wonderful to have three days of enjoyable company, good food, games and great conversation. I brought some of the activities with us to share with his cousin. Here they are making turkey apples, although I'm not sure they ever finished. They were too busy eating the marshmallows, grapes and cranberries.

And yes, of course, we ate Turkey!!!!

M is for Monster!!

I have two little monsters, so this week's topic seemed appropriate. It also happens to be Halloween and my oldest, C, is dressing up like the cutest little monster I've ever seen, so it was even more perfect.








We have been doing our calendar (talking about the days of the week and months, looking at patterns, and guessing what the next day will be) since October, so how perfect that this week started a new MONTH. In fact, I have noticed when we are focused on a certain letter, planned activities just happen to begin with that letter, without me even trying.

This week one of my friends invited us to the local Children's Museum. They were having a Halloween party and the kids dressed up in costume (D was a cow!). There were special activities with a Halloween theme including a glow in the dark room with slime, bubbles and ooey gooey creepy crawlies. We probably should have waited to visit this room right before we went home, what a mess!




This month, at the museum there is a Lego Exhibit. Both boys really enjoyed building and destructing (hey they are boys!) things.












We also played in the dig pit, a huge room filled with "dirt", dump trucks, scales and shovels.



















I think both of my monsters liked the water room the best, however. We watched a Halloween puppet show before having lunch and heading home. Both boys fell asleep on the way home. That's how I know we've had a successful morning!

Of course we did our typical activities. C put marshmallows on a big M, did a scavenger hunt for M words as I wrote them down and practiced writing capital and lower case M's.


I found a super cute monster memory game online. There were cards with pictures of 1-10 monsters on them and then a card for each number 1-10. C enjoyed counting the monsters and trying to find the number that corresponded. We also cut it short and did cards 1-5 for the memory game part.

I found these adorable little yarn monsters. It was a little bit messy but C really enjoyed winding the gluey yarn around the yogurt dish and it sure turned out cute. Here is the link I used, I forgot to take some pictures!


I think the highlight of the week was the monster dough. Both boys spent over an hour making and remaking the perfect monsters out of dough. I made the dough using 1 cup oatmeal, 1-2 cups of flour and 1 cup of water. This was a child led activity. I placed a blob of dough in front of the kids as well as some resources (goggly eyes, straws, pieces of paper, pumpkin seeds and pipe cleaners ) and let their imagination do the rest. Our monsters sure turned out cute!

Things that start with M
Objects: moon, monsters, mud, magic, museum
Foods: macaroni and cheese, mustard, mozzarella, milk, marshmallows, mashed potatoes, mushrooms
Animals: moose, mouse, monkey

Our introduction to mommy and me preschool was super anticipated and an exciting event. This summer my oldest, C, turned three and my husband and I made the choice to keep him home from preschool. Many factors were involved in this decision, but man have I enjoyed getting prepared. I've done some research on-line for curriculums and lesson plans and have had a blast looking at what other stay at home moms have been doing with their preschoolers. I decided to start with the letter A, it just made sense! C already recognizes all of his letters so my idea was to begin writing and discussing their sounds.

I started our week off by finding catchy and fun YouTube videos to show the varying sounds "A" made, or the many variations to write a lowercase "a". To be honest, I never really thought about how many sounds A makes....no wonder the English language is so complicated. C loved watching the videos and found several more to listen to as well. I'm not sure if we were just so excited to be doing school or if I need more lesson plans because we wizzed through most of the ideas I had for letter A in the first day :)

I had found some pictures of apples that were different sizes. C was to put them in order from littlest to biggest. This was more difficult than I thought it was going to be for him and he took some time to get them organized. Once he did that I had him switch it to biggest to smallest. Then we took the apples, put them in a basket and sang about them falling down (to the tune of London Bridges Falling Down) and threw them in the air. Both C and D LOVED this activity and I think we did it for over 45 minutes!

We also painted with Apples, ate lots of apples and took a tour of an apple orchard as part of our lessons this week. Sorry I didn't think to grab my camera during our lessons this week so no pictures of our first week of school :( I guess we are all learning as we go!

P is for pumpkins

One of the best parts about parenthood is reliving all my childhood memories and sharing them with my kids. Therefore, its especially exciting around the holidays. This week happens to be the week before Halloween. I chose the letter P so we could focus on all activities pumpkin. Whenever a new letter is introduced we always start by going on a scavenger hunt for things that start with that letter. This week was no different. I write down all the objects on a big blackboard. Then I instruct C how to write the letter and practice on our chalk board or paper.








This week we had a block letter P and C glued his favorite snack (popcorn) onto it.






For math skills he placed halloween candy (he'd already eaten most of the pumpkins so I had to improvise with other candy corns) to match with the numbers from 1-6.








Both kids LOVED painting mini pumpkins with white glue and sprinkling glitter on them. C chose blue, as it's his favorite color and D chose green. The pumpkins turned out gorgeous!


C thinks it is super fun to point to the new letter he is learning on the street signs as we are driving which was a good thing this week since we spent quite a bit of time in the car going on outings. We went to the pumpkin patch with our friends from my mom's group and had a party for his friend who was turning three. I try to emphasize that all of these things start with P! I probably drive my little guy crazy, but I think he likes finding new words that start with our letter.




We also attended a Halloween play (designed specifically for children ages 2-10). C loved the interactive nature, despite covering his face with his shirt when he got shy. Then we had a picnic at a park nearby and played.

I drew pumpkins and laminated them. I gave C markers and told him stories about his pumpkins (which he named after characters from the movie CARS). The stories were typical situations that occur for children including playing at the park with friends, friends not sharing their toys, etc and had him draw the face on the pumpkins that would match how they might be feeling in each situation. C loved this activity and since they were laminated we could erase them and start a new story as many times as we wanted.



Other ideas for the letter P
Animals: porcupine, puppy, penguins
Colors: purple and pink
Foods: Popsicles, peanut butter, pineapple, popcorn, pasta
Art: play doh, pasta necklaces, painting, paper plate pumpkin shakers