4th of July Tot School

So, who's excited for the 4th of July?! I have said it before, and I will say it again- it is one of my favorite holidays! I am excited to check out the parade in our new city and then we are hosting our first party at the house for the whole family. Can't wait!

Anywho, the point of the post today is to share the 4th of July activities I did with the boys last week. In no particular order... (all printables and some of the ideas were found at Oopsey Daisy and 2 Teaching Mommies).

F is for Firework Dot page: I couldn't find our dot markers (and I don't like the ones we have anyways), so we used dot stickers on this page. Matthew really impressed me because he filled every circle perfectly instead of being haphazard.





Pre-Writing Practice: Matthew loves drawing with markers, so this was great for him. John loved doing these pages too and asked to do them several times. Again, Matthew impressed me with following the lines pretty well.





Scooping Red/White/Blue balls: John didn't care for this all that much, but Matthew really liked scooping up the small balls and carrying them around the room and transfer them somewhere. I added a dice for John and he would roll to see how many balls to put in the tin. He really liked that game (even though it seemed really boring to me!)



Star Cookie Cutter Painting: The boys made paintings with cookie cutters. Matthew's was cute with red and blue stars...John's was with random shapes and didn't quite fit the theme of the week! Then they wanted to take out the easel and continue painting which was so cute! Matthew LOVES to paint, but it is hit or miss with John.



Sticker Pages: I quickly drew an F on a page for John and an S for Matthew. They then filled in the letters with the appropriate stickers. I knew John would keep his stickers in the lines, but Matthew again impressed me with how much he has improved with fine motor skills since the last time we did activities! Dad even jumped in to help Matthew (after putting away all the stickers that were dumped out on the floor!).







Firework Painting: We took the paints, small koosh balls, and paper and headed outside one afternoon. The idea was to dip the balls in the paint and then throw it on the paper to make a firework image. I think if we had bigger koosh balls (and some more powerful throws) it would have been better. The boys still liked it...in between jumps in the pool. I would not recommend doing this near the pool because it distracted the boys and the paper got so wet that we couldn't keep the artwork, but the boys had fun!





Sorting Colored Balls: We took out the ball pit balls and sorted them into three buckets: red, blue, neither. We did this by throwing the balls into the buckets which was a fun gross motor activity.



US Icons cards: We played with these US icon cards for a little while. Matthew and I did matching with them (which was too boring and easy for John). John didn't want to play memory with them, but I gave them the cards to hide around the room and then go find them to match them up. They REALLY liked that game (even though they hid ALL the cards in the toy kitchen!).



Counting Clip Cards: This was the first time for John to do clip cards. I wasn't sure if he would be able to do it, but it was as if he had done this 100 times! He loved this activity so I will be sure to add more clip activities for him to do.



I think we may have a couple more activities to do this week, but mostly it will be baking and making desserts for Wednesday! Hope everyone has a fabulous 4th of July!




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4th of July Tot School resource

Today the boys will be starting their 4th of July tot school activities. I am so excited because we haven't done anything in months. (I am such a bad mom, right!?). Now that we are more settled we are ready to get our butts back in gear!

I will share exactly what we did later but I wanted to tell you where I have found the BEST ideas. Have you been to Oopsey Daisy? Love that site! She has 'Mommy School' packets (she is a former teacher) and they list out the cutest little activities to do with toddlers. I found the 'U is for USA' packet yesterday when I was planning and it was perfect!



So, go over to her Mommy School page where she is so kind to share her materials with us. And be sure to say 'hi' and 'thank you' while you are there!

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Toddler Art Tuesday - Painting with Eggs

Yes, we finally have another installment of 'Toddler Art Tuesday'! As the boys were watching a TV show, I quickly went to Pinterest to find a fun Easter themed activity to do with the boys. I found this egg painting activity from Hands On: As We Grow. I thought the boys would love it!

I taped construction paper onto the boys' slides. Each kiddo got 4 containers with paint and 4 plastic Easter eggs. The idea was for the boys to dip the eggs in the paint and then roll the egg down the paper. They did pretty well with it but honestly they didn't love it as much as I thought they would. However they still played outside with this set-up for about 20 minutes because Matthew was happy just playing with the paint (and thus covering his big 'ol belly with paint!) and John liked driving the trucks down the paint.









You can see this is not a clean and neat project. I am totally fine with that though!





Even the bath afterwards was messy as Matthew decided to use the left over paint on his hands to paint the bathtub. Thank goodness for washable paints!



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Tot School - Easter

Hey everyone! I am actually posting again today. Are we impressed?! Well, don't be. I am posting a couple tot school activities I did with the boys LAST YEAR for Easter. Way to be on the ball, right?! So, after going through my pictures from a year ago with a little smile on my face, this is what we apparently did...

Nest and Egg Matching:
I used the printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler and had John match plastic Easter eggs to each picture. It was great practice in counting on the picture and counting out the physical eggs. There are more great printable activities from COAH and if I am not too lazy, I will try some more of them out next week with the boys.





One-to-one Correspondence:
I put out a bucket of eggs and had John fill an old egg carton with eggs. This is practicing one-to-one correspondence. Then it quickly turned into throwing practice as John just started chunking eggs across the dining room.





Number Matching:
I revised the egg carton activity. I numbered the spaces in the carton and numbered the eggs. John practice putting the eggs in the correct spot. I was glad to have him practice numbers higher than 10, although he really had been a pro at numbers for a LONG time. If I had to guess, this was probably easy for him, but he liked it!



Egg Shakers:
For Mr. Matty B (look how cute he was in his little helmet!), I made him some egg shakers. I filled eggs with small items like beans, beads, etc. Then I hot glued the eggs shut AND taped around the seam to make sure those bad boys didn't open. He liked shaking them and hearing the noise. Even though it isn't picture, I also gave him a bucket of themed toys to play with on the floor: soft bunnies, Easter books, egg carton, etc.



Shape Matching:
I bought a set of Easter cookie cutters. I probably had good intentions of making sugar cookies or cute lunches. I doubt that actually happened. However, I did turn it into a matching activity. John matched the cookie cutter to the picture. Very simple!



Egg Decorating:
John is VERY allergic to eggs. So I was wondering how I would have the boys dye eggs without him being able to touch them. Thankfully I found a cute decorating set that had little foam roller brushes. So Brad helped hold up the egg and John could paint it without touching the egg. I even found another set this year and it is in the closet ready to go! I also saw online that you can put an egg in the middle of a whisk and dip that into the dye. I will try that one too!





However, I didn't trust Matthew to handle the eggs (he was so young still!) so he played with his egg rattles and watched us have the fun. I am so excited for him to be able to participate this year!



Of course we did all the traditional Easter festivities: tons of egg hunts, presents, making Easter Bread (YUM!), and of course wearing bunny ears Easter morning.



I am getting excited for Easter after writing this post so I am going to force myself to plan activities this week so we can get back into gear. This whole 'keep the house clean to sell it' thing is cramping our style! :)

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Valentine's Day Tot School

Did you know that tomorrow is Valentine's Day?! :) Hope you have your Valentine's ready to hand out to your favorite loved ones. Well, we spent last week doing some Valentine's activities here with my favorite loved ones.

Matthew and I had some fun one-on-one time one day while John was at preschool. We started with playing with Valentine's themed window clings. He putting the clings on and off the window...over and over again! (We had just played with a new doctor kit, so he didn't want to part with the stethescope.)





I put some small erasers in plastic conversation hearts and Matthew enjoyed opening and closing the containers. Well, he enjoyed opening them all but couldn't quite get them closed again. I was surprised that this very simple activity kept him entertained for a long time!





I pulled out the formula container and heart picks from last year. Matthew did really well with this and could get the sticks in the holes without too much trouble. John also liked playing with this when he got home. It really irks him, though, that there are more holes than heart picks. He just REALLY wants everything to be nice and even!



He helped me address envelopes to send Valentine's to Nana, Grandma, and Grandpa.



I set up a little post office area, but didn't get a picture of it. I had a phone, cash register, stickers (stamps), address stamps, cards, and envelopes. We took some cards and put them in the mailbox. This was actually difficult since they cards had to be slanted to fit into the mailbox.



One of Matthew's favorite games was our 'Heart Hunt'. I 'hid' paper hearts in the living room for Matthew to find and put he them in his shopping cart. I didn't actually hide the hearts but rather placed them around the living room in plain sight. It is funny that he watched me put the hearts around the room, yet he still needed me to help him find them again! He was so cute playing this game and we played it twice that morning.



**The printables I used were from last year. I think they are from Musings of Me, but she doesn't have them posted anymore. You can check her Teachers Pay Teachers site though!**

John joined us for the rest of the activities, starting with counting kisses. I put a numbered card out and John had to count out that many kisses for the bear on the worksheet. You can see they LOVE chocolate so the worksheet is completed with chocoloate-y drool spots. :) Matthew liked helping put out the kisses too. John could do this perfectly and I was so impressed that he is even getting the hang of subtracting!


not sure why this is rotated!!



John put these boys in size order...



and sorted letters.


(He also did WONDERFUL at completing patterns using colored heart erasers. He could do every pattern I threw at him. I was so excited! But, no pictures of that one.)

Matthew put hearts on a dot page.



I got the idea of a letter matching game from a blog that I follow (and of course I can't remember which one now!). I wrote lower case letters on little heart erasers and put them in plastic conversation hearts. Then I wrote upper case letters on large paper hearts and arranged them in a heart shape on the floor. The idea was that John would match the erasers to the correct heart on the floor. He did this fine for about 3 erasers and then got frustrated that Matthew was 'messing up the heart' on the floor. So, he decided to instead practice his jumping skills and jumped over the hearts. Matthew also joined in which is so dang cute since he can't really jump yet. Every once in a while he gets about 1/2 an inch above the ground and I think it surprises him. SO CUTE!







We had some yummy heart lunches...




did some arts and crafts projects...





and played 'post office' by mailing letters to different houses (or in our case, putting the mail under the door). John did great at writing house #1 on his envelope and adding the return address sticker and 'stamp'.








All in all, we had a great time. As usual we didn't get everything done that I had planned, but that is ok. I am looking forward to hanging out tomorrow with my favorite boys while we get ready for John's preschool party. We have lots of baking to do which is one of my favorite things to do with them.

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day!
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