February Lesson Plans : Week 1

February Theme - Transportation

After completing my first official go at monthly lesson planning, I have learned some things and decided to make a few changes. For starters, though I have planned the entire month of February (or just about), I am going to post the lesson plans a week at a time to make it easier to refer back to and change as needed. Also, I have decided to add a few new things to our schedule. Starting this month, I am adding a weekly bible verse and story to our lessons. This is something I have been wanting to do for a while and God had finally given me the push to give it a try! Morning Circle Time is another new thing we are going to start. I started this with E for a few weeks right before I went back to work but it didn't stick. I have realized over the course of last month though that our mornings could use a little more structure so we are going to ease our way into an informal circle time and hopefully build from there.

Week 1 ~ Trains and letter T 
                 Bible Verse: Go and make disciples of all nations... Matthew 28:19
                 Tot Trays:    Letter T road map
                                    Number train with counting bead
                                    T is for train magnet page
Monday
    Morning Circle
         book - Freight Train by Donald Crews, Valentines Day in Vicarstown by Rev. W. Awdry
         songs - Train fingerplay, Little Red Caboose
         activity - Train patterning
    Art - T is for Train cut and paste shape train
    Afternoon activity - Letter T train track (masking tape on floor)
Tuesday
    Bible Time ~  read  100 Bible Stories : Tell the Good News
                          memory verse coloring page
                          listen to "Get on Board Little Children, There's Room for Many More"
Wednesday
    Library
    Baking - Valentine Cookies
    Art - Heart sticker relief painting
Thursday
    Morning Circle
         books - Freight Train by Donald Crews, Trains by Lynn Curlee
         songs - Train fingerplay, I've Been Working on the Railroad
         activity - Choo Choo Soul dance party
    Art - decorating cardboard train
    Afternoon Activity - pretend train ride (props : tickets, maps, luggage. stools for train cars)
Friday
    Field Trip
    Art - Toilet paper tube train whistle
    Afternoon Activity - Choo Choo Soul DVD

Tot School : Winter Wrap-up

E is 24 months, C is 22 months, B is 4 years

Winter may still technically be in full swing, but we are officially done with it in this household. We had a lot of fun wrapping up the last of our winter activities this week and are ready to (at least mentally) move past this chilly season on to hopefully warmer and brighter things! Here is a look at our last wintery week.

 Arts and Crafts

Epsom Salts Painting

        This is an easy and essentially mess free painting project with a little science added in to boot!  Just mix up an Epsom Salts solution. I think I used about 1/4 cup salt to 1/2 cup warm water. You want the solution to be saturated (or close to it) for the best results. Let the kids paint with mixture on dark colored paper and watch the crystals appear as the water dries!

E gave Minnie Mouse a nice little  painting lesson

Tin Foil Painting

        I saw this idea a few weeks ago (I think it was on Peaceful Parenting but now I can't find the post). Anyway, I'm so glad we gave it a try because the kids LOVED it! I taped sheets of tin foil on the table in front of each kid and squirted a blob of yellow and a blob of blue paint and let them have at it. B is very into mixing colors and right away asked what yellow and blue make. He gave it a try and figured out for himself that they make green! The kids loved mixing the colors together on the smooth and shiny surface - Great sensory work! 

 

After a while I went around and drew the first letter of each kids name into their paint. This got them all started trying to make letters and design on their foil, a great writing exercise! When they had their fill of painting we made a print of their work on a sheet of paper! I love process oriented art that happens to yield a great product as well!

Cotton Ball Snowmen

        A winter theme would not be complete without this classic craft. 

Gross Motor

Snowman Bowling

         This cute little bowling set was easy and quick to put together and was a great indoor gross motor activity.

 This activity proved to be a great exercise in taking turns. I tend to stick to activities that the kids can all do simultaneously because its just easier to manage that way, but this experience let me see just how very much we need to practice this important skill!

Sensory

Colored Ice and Water Play

        Water play is always a hit around here. For a little added fun we added some blue and red ice cubes which slowly turned the water purple as the ice melted! 

B came up with the idea that the ice cubes were fish and they all had fun chasing them around in the water trying to catch them in their cups!

That's a wrap of our winter theme. Check out how more tots are playing at http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com/

Montessori Monday

Tot Trays

Hammering Golf Tees  -  

 E loved this work and chose it often throughout the week. I don't know how I managed not to get any action shots.

Bear Dressing Puzzle -

  

Though this was not originally planned to go on her tot trays this week, we stumbled across it in the basement over the weekend and she was so enthralled by it that I decided to keep it out. As she selected different outfits I made comments about what type of weather it looked like bear was dressed for. After awhile she started talking about it as well ("Sweater will keep teddy warm" or "Teddy's ready for a sunny day"). She also like selecting different faces and labeling the expressions (happy, grumpy, tired...). 

Salt Tray - I kept the salt tray out since she enjoyed it so much last week. I don't think she even touched it once this week. I am learning that I need to switch EVERYTHING out on a weekly basis no matter how much she time she spends working on something. She likes the excitement of discovering new things!

Practical, Practical Life Work

E loves helping me make coffee in the morning. She very carefully measures the beans in the spoon and transfers them to the grinder. Practical life work doesn't get much better than this!

Wet Pouring

I finally found some good pitchers for pouring work at the thrift store. This activity kept her busy and happy for a good 30 minutes while I prepared dinner the other night. She specifically asked for warm water to pour which I found interesting. 

 She asked for a cup so she could pour herself a drink.

Water just tastes so much better when you pour it yourself !

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Tot School : Baby Its Cold Outside

B is 4 years, E is 24 months, and C is 21 months

Sorry for the late post. I had everything all typed up and ready to go but forgot to publish it over the weekend. With B out of school for Martin Luther King Day, last week seemed especially busy. The kids kept entertained with still more winter activities.

Arts and Crafts

Mitten Finger Painting

 Definitely a highlight of the week!  All 3 kiddos delighted in the unique sensory experience of finger painting with mittens on! I wish I had gotten a good picture of the finished product because they really turned out neat. The mittens created a cool sponge painting type effect.

Ice painting

This was another project thoroughly enjoyed by all. I made ice paint by freezing popsicle sticks in cups of water colored with food coloring. The kids had fun swiping the ice across their papers and noticing the trail of

colored water it left behind. Heavy weight water color paper would have been better than the printer paper I  had on hand. It quickly became saturated and tore quite easily however the kiddos didn't seem to mind. They couldn't resist touching the ice and learned/reinforced many great vocab words during the process (cold, freezing, slippery, melt).

Science

Salt and Ice Experiment

E and I did a fun and easy science experiment together on Wednesday. We observed how salt melts ice by sprinkling salt onto a block of ice and watched as the colored water we dropped onto the surface traveled through the holes created by the salt. It really was quite mesmerizing to watch! In addition to being a fun science experiment, this project was a great fine motor and color mixing activity all wrapped into one. I had been trying to get E interested in using the droppers for a couple of weeks now and had no luck until this experiment. It is such great exercise for little fingers so I was excited to see her finally take to it!

 

Math 

Mitten Match

I finally broke down and bought a personal laminator and had to try it out by making this adorable mitten matching game. On the front sides of the cards I put the numbers 1-6 (I plan to do 1-10, but only had time for the first 6 this time around) on the backs are decorations with the number of items corresponding to the number on the front (ie. one snowflake, two stripes, three hearts).

 We played a couple of different games with these through the week. For the first game, I laid out one of each number on the table with the decoration side up. I took turns handing the kids the other half of the pairs and asking them to find the matching mitten. This was super easy for B of course. E has really been into matching things lately so I feel like she could have gotten it if she'd have had some time to think before B pointed out the matches to her right away. Oh well, that is the challenge of planning activities for multiple age groups. We played this game again with the number side to work on matching numerals. 

Another way we used these cards was with the cloths line game. I hung one of each mitten, number side facing us, on a clothes line. I laid the rest of the mittens, picture side up  on the floor. The goal was to work on matching numerals to quantities as they hung up the matching mittens. B humored me by doing it once but really wan't all that interested.

I created these cards to be open ended and used in a variety of ways I just haven't quite through all of the uses yet. If you have any ideas of other games we could play please let me know!!!

 Outdoor Play

 We didn't get out as much as I would have liked this week but we did manage to squeeze in a quick outdoor play session. All of the hard work of bundling 3 little ones pays off when we finally get outside and breathe the fresh air even if it is only for 10 or 15 minutes. It is so refreshing! The kids had fun playing on the snow covered play set, pretending the slide was a sledding hill and and the cover of the sand table a toboggan..

 They discovered a sheet of ice and began munching on pieces before I could stop them. I figured the harm was already done so I stifled my motherly inhibitions and let them enjoy their icy snack

Besides, how do you resist that face? 

Mom's Favorites

E has really been into building with her legos ever since she got them for Christmas. She has mostly stuck to building towers and occasionally attemted tunnels. The other night she built this for daddy and told us it was a Camel. I was so impressed and proud of her creativity!

E decided to use her "shopping bag" as a back pack. Too funny!

E and Daddy in their tent - a favorite evening activity lately!

Scissor Practice

I have been thinking about introducing E to scissors for a couple of months now.  I looked and looked in all of the local stores for some good beginner scissors and couldn't find what I was looking for. Then I saw a review from The Adventures of Bear for these scissors and thought they would be perfect for E but I never got around to ordering them. Finally I gave up and forgot all about introducing scissor work to E until the other day when we were working on our bear cave project. She carefully watched as B cut out his bear and asked to try when he was all done. I showed her how to put her fingers in the holes and she did successfully make a couple of cuts in her paper however she struggled with opening and closing quite a bit and the regular (non-saftey) blade made me a little nervous. Last weekend as I was browsing the isles of Walmart I noticed these scissors which I had not seen in stores before. These were exactly what I had been looking for all along! The safety blade gives me a little peace of mind and the spring action makes it easier for little hands to use. I love that unlike the Timberdoodle scissors they have holes like regular scissors so little ones learn the proper grip right from the start ( E started out with her fingers in the holes and switched to the grip she is using in the photo below. She resisted when I tried to correct her so I just let her go with it for fear of disrupting her interest. By the next day she was back to gripping them properly - just experimenting!) .  E has LOVED her new scissors and has chosen to work on cutting every night! She has such a knack for fine motor work like this and I love how focused she gets. Cutting paper is a very important job!

 Her cutting box, which holds her scissors and some scrap paper, is stashed in a low kitchen cabinet near E's desk which allows her free access to her scissors whenever she wants, yet gives me a heads up so I can supervise properly.

Tot School : Winter Animals

It's snowing!!!
We finally got our first measurable snow of the winter. Granted, it is barely an inch, but it still puts me in the mood to share with you some of the winter activities we have been up to over the past week. I have to confess that I didn't make it to the library this week (actually I did make it but I forgot my card) so we didn't have most of the books on our lesson plan and probably wont have any for next week either. Never the less, the kids enjoyed all of our wintery activities.

Though not really winter related, E continued to enjoy her tot trays at home. This weeks trays included rice pouring work, a salt try, and the tonging work from last week instead of the stacking sugar cube work listed on the lesson plan. E's favorite by far was the salt tray. We had tried this once several months ago and she wasn't quite ready for it. Though she is still a ways off from actually writing letters, she is definitely using it more appropriately now, making designs and prints in the salt. All great pre-writing practice! Here you can even see some squiggles that kind of resemble the letter S.

She also liked when I would write an S in the salt and then help her trace mine by guiding her finger!

vigorously erasing her designs

She spent quite a bit of time doing the rice pouring work and can do it well both left and right handed!

We started off the work week by reading The Mitten by Jan Brett. Thankfully we own that book so we were still able to stick to our plan. We followed up by doing a mitten lacing activity. This was the first time I had introduced lacing cards to the kids so I was interested to see how they did. E and C both gave it a real effort. It was pretty challenging but I think with a little more one on one instruction they could quickly catch on.

I am sure B could have done this, however he decided it was much more interesting to fashion his mittens into some sort of trapping device and enjoyed tying things up with them instead ( I wish I would have gotten a picture. It was amusing to see his little imagination at work!)

Monday was a gloriously beautiful and sunny day which is hard to come by this time of year in Ohio so we made it a point to get out and enjoy the great outdoors.

 E was afraid of the big red swing last time we visited the park ( several months ago ) but not anymore!

 Her favorite thing was the teeter totter! She had the biggest grin on her face and proudly chanted "teeter totter bread and water" which she must have learned from Nana and Papa because I have never taught her that.

 The tots both enjoyed looking for wild life. Here they are trying to spot a woodpecker that was making noise at the top of the tree. They were also convinced that there was a crocodile in that little creek :)

We spotted several brilliant cardinals along the way. I can't get over how beautiful they are against the bare trees and bright blue sky.

We finished the day with a fun painting technique using water colors and salt.

When sprinkled on the wet paint, the salt absorbs the water which concentrates the paint around each grain creating a speckled effect - art and science all wrapped into one!

Thursday we learned all about bears and hibernation. I turned the dining room table into a bear cave which provided much entertainment throughout the entire day. B even requested it as a repeat activity on Friday. We discussed the meaning of the word hibernation and talked about why some animals sleep all winter as we played. We went through many cycles of the year, gathering food in the fall, curling up to sleep in the winter, and waking up to stretch and eat blueberries in the spring.

Sorry for the terrible photo quality ( my good camera should be fixed soon) but I hope you can still appreciate the cuteness of these jammied little ones all curled up in their cave on a snowy winter day!

In the afternoon, the kids made a simple bear cave craft. They colored in a brown bear I traced for them and glued cotton on a paper bag cave to make it look snowy. I taught them a this cute little song and they enjoyed acting it out with their bears and caves!

Time for Sleeping
(Sung to the tune of "Sing a Song of Sixpence")

Now it's time for sleeping
The bears go in their caves
Keeping warm and cozy
Time for lazy days
When the snow is gone and 
The sun comes out to play
The bears will wake up from their sleep
And then go on their way.

Bear going in cave

Tucking bear in with a blanket to keep cozy (her idea!)

Bear waking up and going on its way

Brady had a snow day on Friday so I nixed the rice poring that I had originally planned on and threw together a quick winter animal sensory box instead. 

The kids always enjoy sensory boxes and, as usual, added their own items as play progressed. Some how or another we ended up with a tractor, a truck, a toy garbage can and a cookie jar that was really a shark included in our little forest by the time they were done. I found it interesting (and cool) that B chose to use a plastic container as a shark rather than grabbing his actual toy shark. 

We finished the week playing with play dough and using animal figurines to make tracks in the "snow". 

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