E is for Elephant

 Ok so we are back to a Monday again and we got a little bit back on schedule for the first time since letter B week.  This week is letter E week and we decided to start with one of Gooba's  favorite animals, the elephant.  The first thing we did was an old favorite activity of Gooba's, moving tiny erasers with tongs from different sized containers.  At one point we did count some of the erasers, though right now Gooba can only count up to six.  This has been great fine motor practice for her and she just adores picking things up with the tongs!

 Next we sorted cards with capitol and lowercase letters on them. First we tried to do this on the table, but Gooba insisted that magnets be involved with this activity, so we went for it!  Today, despite some lack of interest for mommy's rules, she did a pretty good job sorting the cards.

Since we already had the magnets out, we moved onto some magnet pages.  I had two different ones, but after this one and the previous activity involving magnets, she started to lose interest.  After playing with the magnets and announcing that she was not listening, I know..., I told her she would not be able to help make elephant cookies if she didn't play by mommy's rules.  The picture to the left is what happened 15 seconds after I made that statement.  Toddlers are such stinkers!

 Next, I followed through with my promise and we made elephant cookies.  We used Pillsbury sugar cookie dough and added some extra flour.  I found the best way was to roll the dough almost back into it's original log form and cut of two circles for each elephant.  The first circle I flattened out to make the head.  The second circle I flattened out and cut into thirds.  The outside two thirds became the ears and the middle became the trunk.  Then I just smooshed them all together.  Very important next step!  I put the whole cookie sheet in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes.  Then I baked them at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  The second batch was much colder and did not spread out nearly as much as the first batch.  Then I just used icing and sugar wafers to make the details on the face.  These were a big hit, Gooba LOVES helping me in the kitchen.  She also loves eating!

A little bit later we worked on some cutting.  One of our kindergarten teachers at my school told me the number one thing kids can't do is cut, since all parents are terrified to give their kids scissors.  This time she did better than last time.  She let me help her with that first cut across the top and then I let her go for it.  This is definitely a skill that needs some attention.  This is also a skill that requires her to have help from mommy, something she is not a fan of.  So I have found that perhaps teaching to cut involves fine motor, listening, patience, and calm.  Of course, all things every toddler possesses!

 Speaking of fine motor, looks how far our line drawing has come!  It's actually touching the line this week.  Boy, she has come a long way with this one in just a few short weeks!

Time for my favorite part... CRAFT TIME! This first one is actually one I worked out in my own little brain, as opposed to all my other ideas being stolen for around the web.  The head and trunk are her footprint and the ears are her hands.  Then she stuck on the eyes where I put the glue and I added the little trunk lines with marker when it was dry.  So cute!  I love how this one turned out.

Then since she loves having her hands and feet painted we painted her hands again to make these two cute little elephants.  She added the eyes where I put the glue and I added the markers when it was dry.  The original idea I saw for this was a mommy and baby elephant, but Gooba was extremely offended that I would paint my hand instead of hers, so we did two babies instead.





We did a few more things I did not take pictures of.  From 1+1+1=1 we used some of the Animal ABC's pages on the computer.  Since we are just now drawing lines, drawing shapes is out of the question.  So instead I pulled up the page on the computer and I called out the shapes and she pointed to them.  We did the same for the colors page.  We also used the vocabulary builder from the same set of worksheets and we talked about and answered questions about the picture of the elephants.  Mostly we talked about the baby elephant.  Somewhere at some point we also kind of did a lacing card, but she was a little to excitable to really pay any attention to that this morning, maybe we'll take it out again this afternoon.  I also hope to take out our plastic elephants and our elephant puppet and have some creative play when she awakes from her nap.  All in all, though we had some spurts on defiance and an absolute refusal to use the potty today even though we've been dry for almost a week, I still feel like we got a lot done and had a lot of fun too!




Printables graciously borrowed from 1+1+1=1, Confessions of a Homeschooler, and Making Learning Fun.

D is for Dinosaurs and Daddy

 This week continued to be crazy despite the fact that our family went back to Connecticut.  I guess I just need to get used to the idea that our life is crazy and just embrace it!  So we moved onto one of Gooba's new favorite things, Dinosaurs!  The first thing we did was play with some modeling clay and some plastic dinosaurs I got at Dollar Tree.  I saw this idea on Pinterest, which directed me to Our Crafts ~N~ Things, and LOVED it for making dinosaur fossils.  I was under the impression, no pun intended, that the modeling clay would dry rather quickly and then harden.  It took about two days to get rubbery and hasn't hardened yet.  This was my first experience with modeling clay, so maybe I just didn't get it.  I think if I were to do this activity again I would use play doh instead, that seems to get very hard overnight.  Either way Gooba had a blast playing with the clay and smashing the dinosaurs into it.  Our plan was to later bury the dinosaurs in some dirt and dig them up, but temperatures have been in the triple digits for days and it is miserable being outside.  Maybe we'll save them for F week and file them under fossils.



After we were done playing with the clay we moved onto capitol and lowercase D sorting.  Gooba not very interested in this activity today, mostly because it paled in comparison to the clay. She sorted one of each and then was pretty much done.

Ok, here comes a proud mommy moment, I left Gooba alone to work on some magnets while I made her lunch and TADA she made the whole letter D herself with the magnets!  I love watching her grow!

After magnets we worked on some patterns.  Gooba was not so much interested in making patterns with these cards today, but she was all about sorting them.  That counts enough for me!

Then we did a coloring page next and Gooba seemed very interested in trying to trace the letters today.  Perhaps this came from her mega success tracing a D a few days earlier.  She did pretty good as far as staying near the letters goes.

Then we had another success.  She traced a capitol D AGAIN!  I'm so proud of her, she is really improving her control.

The next day we worked on using some dot markers to trace a capitol and lowercase D.  She went crazy again with the bingo marker and started coloring the paper.  Hand control is growing, but not self control.  I guess I can't expect too much from a two and a half year old!

After using the bingo marker we looked at a bunch of pictures on the computer for Daddy day.  I pulled up some animal family pictures and had her point out which ones were the Daddy.  This is perhaps one of her most favorite activities, she is constantly classifying things into family groups.  Her favorites are the ones involving babies.

Next we did this really cool activity I saw on No Time for Flashcards called magic letters.  I used white crayon to draw a capitol and lowercase D on half sheets of paper.  Then Gooba used watercolors to color over the paper.  The watercolors don't paint the white crayon so voila.... magic letter D's showed up on her paper.  She was less impressed with this activity than I was, but she enjoyed the painting aspect of the whole thing.


So this week we left out several things again that we had planned, but we had a blast nonetheless!  I can't believe next week is already week E.  The summer is flying by and we are living up every minute of it.  Also today we broke ground on Gooba's under the deck playhouse.... hoping that will be a really fun space for our little girl to grow up.



Printables graciously borrowed from Confessions of a Homeschooler and 2 Teaching Mommies.

D is for Ducks, Daffodils, Daisies, and Derecho

 This next post is a combination of two days.  Things have been a little crazy around here after Friday night's "derecho" storm, which took out the power to our entire region.  We luckily had power, but our restaurant did not for two and a half days.  Some people will unfortunately have to wait a whole week before they regain electricity.  Needless to say, things have again been a little crazy.  I'm starting to sense a theme here, an unwanted theme, but a theme nonetheless.

So despite the derecho storm we continued on letter D and some ducks.  We started with some coloring pages.  This first page she mostly colored in the lowercase d.

These next pictures were a very similar sheet with a very similar result.  She was in love with coloring in that lowercase d!

Then came the proud mommy/teacher moment.  There was no mommy help on this one.  She actually drew a capitol D all by herself!!  Whoohoo! Awwww I was so proud of her!  Gooba however was like "yeah I did that."  She cracks me up.



Our next activity was stamping the letters on the duck with a bingo marker.  She actually enjoyed this and stamped all the letters... before she just went crazy and colored in the entire duck.  I'll take it as progress!

Then it was craft time!  I really enjoy how much Gooba is getting into crafts, mostly since I love crafts and this is a great excuse for me to make them.  So I got these ideas from Pinterest, but I tweaked them a little bit.  I cut out the pieces and Gooba helped me glue them on the paper.  As you can tell, I gave her a little more liberty with the glue this week.

After craft time we played with rubber ducks in the water table.  Definitely the hit of the day.

These next pictures are from today when our friend Pretty Girl came over today.  Poor Pretty Girl and her mommy had no power until this afternoon, so they came to Story Time with us, another fabulous day by Gooba, and then came over to do some crafts.  First I cut some leaves and stems out of paper plates and they finger painted them green.  This was another idea I adapted from Pinterest.   Gooba LOVES to finger paint.


Then while those were drying we let the girls go crazy with the glue sticks!  I had previously cut out lowercase d's, the yellow center, and the white petals.  Then we had the girls glue down the d and add the yellow circle into the center.  Next we directed the girls to glue the petals on making sure the white part was touching the yellow part.  The didn't come too bad!





To the left is the final product for the daisy D.  Our petals got a little out of control and we went back and fixed them.  To the right is our finished daffodil.  We glued our finger painted leaves and stem onto the paper and added a cut out of a semi-star to the top.  Then we glued a muffin wrapper to the center of the flower.   All in all a pretty good start to D week!  Looking forward to some Dogs, Dinosaurs, and Daddy!








Printables borrowed graciously from 1+1+1=1.  Craft ideas from Play and Learn with Dana, Molly Moo, and Totally Tots.