Winter Themed Activities - Tot School

I don't know about you, but here in Texas we didn't really have a winter. The weather has been pretty mild and we are able to head outside almost every day. There was a brief period of time when it was really cold in the mornings, but that is about as much as of a winter as we have had so far. However, that didn't stop us from having some winter fun for tot school! Here is a quick wrap up of what we did.

Not having snow on the ground didn't keep us from having fun building a snowman! I grabbed three boxes, wrapped them in white paper, and cut out some coal, a carrot, and a scarf from construction paper. Then the boys helped me build our boxy snowman. He ended up looking a little weird, but that is ok! Matthew had fun with this one!










We matched up our mittens. We also had lots of fun wearing our winter gear (hats, gloves, scarves) and looking at ourselves in the mirror. I am so sad I didn't have my camera then because the boys had SO MUCH fun!



We had our toys play in the 'snow' outside in the backyard. They played with the shaving cream snow for at least 30 minutes and had a blast.





Matthew made a 'P is for Penguin' picture with stickers. He LOVES stickers and is so cute when he picks out which one he wants next. I mean, look at that cute face!





They both made a 'S is for Snowman' picture. John's was very neat and put his stickers in the S perfectly whereas Matthew was a little more haphazard. :)





I found a really cute printable book from playing with words 365 so one night John and I made one together. Then he read it with Daddy during the week.





We 'ice skated' across the living room floor using paper plates. I got the idea from Oopsey Daisy (who had the cutest Winter Packet with TONS of fun ideas!). Yes, we used Halloween plates. The boys liked this one even though they couldn't quite get the hang of skating. They just shuffled across the floor. So cute!





Matthew matched colored snowflakes (from Oopsey Daisy). I was very impressed that he was able to do this! I don't think we have done matching cards yet so I was skeptical of how he would do with matching colors. I gave him three at a time and he got them right most of the time!





We had a little science fun as we used droppers to make colored ice cubes (using food coloring). Then we used the ice cubes to paint by tilting the baking pan so that the ice would slide across the paper. John was really interested in playing with the ice. The paper ended up just turning purple but I think if we used water color paper, it would have been much cooler!









The boys made snowmen with their names. I cut out the pieces and wrote the letters (obviously!) and I was so proud that John did the whole project on his own. From using the glue to placing the letters in the correct order, he did this with out even one word from me. I was busy helping Matthew with his and when I turned around, John was done!



Last but not least, Matthew colored with markers in a winter coloring book. He really loves to color with markers. John has never been much of a coloring kind of kid, but Matthew LOVES markers!



I am getting all our Valentine's Day stuff ready over the weekend and I am so excited. I am going to have the kids play in a pretend post office. I think I will have more fun than them with all the stamping and mailing going on. Check back to see what we did!

Please be a fan of lil Mop Top on facebook!! I link up to these parties!

Winter Tot School Activities

Ok, I haven't been here in a while! Sorry about that. Between Christmas, birthday parties and trying to plan to get the house ready to sell, I have been slacking in all blog areas. I am trying to get back on track though! So, I thought today I would pull up my old posts from winter themed tot school stuff from last year. This will help me kick start planning the next two weeks for the boys...hope it helps you too!

Snowman Footprints

Winter Accessory Playtime

Snowman Unit Plans

Please be a fan of lil Mop Top on facebook!! I link up to these parties!

Winter Accessories Playtime

We are a bit behind on our 'S is for Snowman' week so I am extending it a couple days. We get so busy some mornings going out to meet friends or run errands and John has been taking long naps in the afternoon so school time sometimes is in short supply!

Instead of sharing the week's plans (check back here for the letter S lesson plan!) I am going to share our 'playing with winter clothes' activity. It turned out really cute and John played for about 20 minutes on this one.

I took out John's gloves, mittens, & hats and my gloves, hat and scarf. It is kind of funny that we had so many gloves when we live in Texas and hardly need them!

First we practiced putting the items on. John definitely needs practice with getting dressed so this was perfect for him. We even dressed up some of his bears!



Then I said 'Let's play a game with the gloves!' and John said 'matching!'. Haha! It was so cute that he knew what we were going to do before I said it! I taped a string across the back of his chairs and used clothes pins to pin one of each glove and mitten. Then I handed him the other glove/mitten and he had to pull off the match. He had so much fun and we did this two or three times. He also loved trying to get the clothes pins back on the string and has finally started to figure out how to squeeze the pins and be able to clip them onto something. That is an improvement for him since the last time we tried to use clothes pins!





If I had been more prepared, this would have been a perfect craft to go with this activity! Maybe next time...

I link up to these parties!

Crafty Snowmen!

My sister and her kiddos came over on Tuesday so John and Bella could have a craft session together. Of course they had a blast (as evidenced by my very messy house!) and their little footprint snowmen turned out ... unique!

We first painted their little feet....



stamped onto paper...





and then decorated!



And seriously- why do kids feel they need to take out every toy we own when they get together?!







Ok, so it doesn't look that bad in the pictures, but it certainly feels abnormally messy right now! :)

I link up to these parties!

S is for Snowman - lesson plan & activities

I thought I would go in alphabetical order for the Letter of the Week with John, but I even just on our second week I changed my mind! :) So, we moved right along to letter S this week because I wanted to do a snowman/winter week while we were still in the winter season. And how appropriate is it that it SNOWED today in Texas!? John has been reading his 's' books this weekend about snow and snowmen so it was perfect that he got to play in the snow today and make his very own snowman with Daddy!







Here are my plans for this week:



I used some activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler and I found a super cute unit from Musings of Me. Mrs. Home Ec also had some great snowman ideas that I am borrowing this week!

Here is what I added or how I will modify:

1. Snowman Numbers: I printed out #1-10 and we will count out big marshmallows to match each number. Then we can eat them! I hope John likes marshmallows since he hasn't had them before. :)

2. Spell Snowman: I am again printing out two copies of 'snowman' for John to practice matching the letters to make the word. We did this with apples last week and I was impressed that by the end of the week John knew what the word was when he saw it or if I spelled it outloud for him. I left the word up on his pocket chart and one day he saw the word apples on a book and ran back to the pocket chart and said 'A-P-P-L-E-S apples!' I was so impressed! (my snowman word is at the end of this post!)

3. Winter crafts: My sister and I had thought about signing our kids up for an arts & crafts class at a local rec center. But we figured we could do our own crafts for way cheaper. So she is coming over this week so the kiddos can do a winter craft together. I am so excited! I happened to find this site over the weekend with a bunch of great crafts. It will be hard to choose just one!!

4. 5 Little Snowmen: Using the 5 Little Snowmen poem from Mrs. Home Ec, I printed out 5 snowmen, laminated, and added magnets. I will use these on the fridge while we read the poem so we can take off the snowmen along with the story. (my snowmen are at the end of this post!)

5. Play with Winter Clothes: just like it sounds! I am going to take out some hats, gloves, and scarves for us to play with. Maybe we will dress up his stuffed animals? Have John practice putting them on and off all by himself? We will see what he does with this one!

6. Snowman Snacks: We are going to make snowmen with the marshmallows, pretzels sticks (arms), and chocolate chips (eyes, mouth, buttons). We might be able to do this with a banana too!

7. I am using the letter s & pegs again this week. John did well with it last week and enjoyed trying to get tall towers with the pegs!

We will play with white play-doh, a Mellissa & Doug snowman stacker, practice pouring our snow (white beans), and listen to the song Frosty the Snowman. I also signed up John for a class called Kidokinetics at the rec center and I am so glad I did! He really enjoyed it last week since he basically got to run around for 45 minutes! Plus I just kind of forget you need to teach the kids how to do things like step side to side, gallop, take big long steps, etc.

Books we are reading:




Extras if you want them:


Want MORE snowman ideas? Check out Hart 2 Hart. They did some super cute stuff too! Love her snowman meals! (and everytime I read her blog, I am amazed at how much they get accomplished! I think it would take us about 3 weeks to do all that stuff. I am hoping she doesn't have a 5 month old to take care of as well so that way I don't feel too bad!! hehe!)

I link up to these parties!