Ten, Nine, Eight, Letter T & Chicka Chicka 123

Grace is 18 months

Jonathan is 37 months

It's been a couple weeks since I've posted. We've managed to stay healthy and busy! Here's what we've been up to the past two weeks.


Valentine's Day Sensory Play

We celebrated Valentine's Day with a fun new sensory bin. I recently found some plastic heart-shaped "table sprinkle" in the dollar section at Target. It made for great  and easy sensory play! We sorted by color, made patterns, and practiced some fine motor pouring. The kids loved this!

RRSP


We've reviewed the letter T this unit, and did many activities Carisa provided in her free curriculum.

Our T verse, props, and words

Jonathan cut out and taped his verse

Tracing "T" -- we're still working on pencil grip!

Books

We read some books from our Sonlight P3/4 curriculum this past week as well as some other favorites:

Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang-- this was sort of our "theme" for the week. We've read this book before, it's a cozy bedtime story.
Baby Says by John Stepcoe-- a story about a baby trying to get his big brother's attention. I think both Jonathan and Grace could relate to this story-- both kids requested it several times!
Busy Timmy from Eloise Wilken Golden Book treasury-- a charming vintage story about a little boy's activities during his day.
Chicka Chicka 123 by Bill Martin Jr. and Michael Sampson-- oh my, this is currently the story Jonathan requests every night. It reviews numbers 1-20 and then covers 30-100 by tens. It's really sparked a huge interest in numbers for Jonathan.




Math & Logic 


To go with our reading of Ten, Nine, Eight, we made a sticker book counting down from 10 to 1. We used Cars stickers, since Lightning McQueen is a favorite around here:

Jonathan made the book while Grace just had fun playing with stickers. We also practiced counting backwards, but this didn't click with Jonathan yet. At least reciting numbers. If he's counting down the number of "sleeps" until a desired activity, he has no problem knowing how many are left! :)

Reading 


We did a free trial of the website Reading Eggs. Overall, Jonathan liked it. We made it through the first eight lessons. It did help his word-building skills and he's read some words on his own. The only thing that frustrated him was that they would repeat an activity over-and-over again. For example, he would have to click on the letter "t" twenty times while it made the "t" sound. He got pretty bored with it and would want me to complete the activity so he could move on to the next one. But, he did enjoy it overall and has requested it several times. I haven't paid for access, I'm not entirely sure if it's worth it or not due to the level of frustration.


Art

We did a lot of coloring the past few weejs. I found some coloring books at the Target dollar spot and we had fun with those. Grace loves to color, but I have to watch her with the crayons!

Motor Skills 


We went to our park district's open gym time several times over the past few weeks. We also had a little bit of snow last week and had fun playing outside!

Linking this up to:

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1
Preschool Corner @ Homeschool Creations
Link & Learn @ No Time for Flashcards

Tot School: T is for Trains

Jonathan is 34 months
Grace is 14.5 months

Bible 


We've been continuing with our weekly Bible stories and this week we learned about King Josiah. We played games, sang songs and did crafts along with our story. Check in on Wednesday for our Kids in the Word post to see what we've been doing!


Reading & Language Arts 


This week, we focused a lot on trains. Jonathan loves his trains and his train table and even Grace has a lot of fun with them. We've been reading lots of books about trains. Here are some favorites:

Jonathan has a bunch of Kumon workbooks and we recently started working on his tracing book. He's really enjoyed tracing lines on some of the printables that Carisa does over at 1+1+1=1 so I thought this book might be of interest to him. We started doing one worksheet a day and he always asks for more. His pencil grip still needs a lot of work, but he's been having fun with it. You can check out some of his lines here:

Psst. You can also download some tracing worksheets over at SchoolSparks.

Art 


We did a little finger painting with a friend this week and we also pulled out the play dough:

We also did a bit of a picture study, looking at a painting by James Clarke Hook called Blackberry Picking:

We talked about what the people in the picture were doing and compared it to our experience of going to an apple orchard. I got the idea from Language Lessons for Little Ones by Sandi Queen.


Math & Science 


We talked about friction this week after reading about how trains travel on tracks to reduce the amount of friction. To do a simple experiment, we got out some of Jonathan's trains and attempted to roll them on the hardwood floor and then compared how they rolled on a rug. We talked about which trains went the farthest.

We also did a bit of a nature walk and went to the park this week. As we walked we talked about the different colors of leaves we found and tried to find red, orange and yellow leaves. When we got home, we did leaf rubbings and then pressed the leaves between two pieces of contact paper:

Sensory Play 


We walked through leaves and talked about the crunching sound they made. We also pulled out our fall sensory bin and Grace had fun playing with the silk leaves:

Motor Skills 

I threw some balls in our pack & play and this was a great way for the kids to get some energy out:

But the biggest news is Grace is finally standing on her own:

and she's taken three steps. So maybe we'll have a walker soon!

Pretend Play 


Of course, we played with our trains a lot:

and Grace has been enjoying her tea set from Nana:

Practical Life 


We've worked on learning how to get dressed-- this week we've been trying to do snappers:

and as far as potty training... ugh. Jonathan did so well with potty training and initiating going to the bathroom. Then, he just wasn't interested. We started having accidents and he told me he didn't want to stop what he was doing and go potty. So I'd love to hear advice-- what do I do? It isn't that he can't go potty but that he won't. He'll still go if I initiate and he wants to earn stars and get matchbox cars. But he won't stop what he's doing and tell me. Should I move him back to diapers? Keep pressing forward? It's tiring and frustrating to boot!



So, that's been our week. We're all a little under the weather this weekend, so I hope that we'll be up for some of the activities I hope to do next week. Thanks for stopping by!

Linking up to:

Tot School @ 1+1+1=1

Link n' Learn @ No Time for Flashcards

Sunday Showcase @ Mom to 2 Posh Little Divas & Classified Mom

Read Explore Learn @ J Daniel4's Mom

Preschool Corner @ Homeschool Creations

For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars