T Lessons

We were able to accomplish quite a bit this week. The girls made paper plate turtles over a two day period. On day 1 we sponge painted the carapace (top shell) green and the plastron (lower) yellow.

The pictures were taken on day 2 so all my attention could be on the girls as they painted. In the above photos they are getting ready to glue on the legs, tail and scutes (the scales). I alternated between white glue and glue stick. I found it was better to put the white glue on the plate so the girls could place the legs and tail where they belonged. Then I let them use the glue stick to glue the scutes on independently.

I also realized it made more sense to do the scutes first. as they went on the bottom of the plate. And after gluing on the legs and tail to the top of the plate glue was dripping (I did it in this reverse order for Amelia first before realizing the consequences.)

Next the girls drew eyes and nostrils onto the heads and I stapled two identical head pieces together, leaving a hole at the neck, big enough to poke in a couple of cotton balls for a 3D effect. Then they glued the head onto the plate and I stapled the bottom to the top. I bent the neck back and stapled it so that when it fell forward it wouldn't droop too far.

Tabitha loves playing with her turtle.

So far that is our only craft. Though I am trying to think of something to go in their letter T book.

I made a file folder matching game. Matching upper case T and lower case t.

(And of course, triangle starts with T)

I pulled out Tabitha's Melissa and Doug Alphabet Train Floor Puzzle she received for her birthday last year. She had only used it once and it was forgotten. I am glad I remembered it for the letter T. We laid the pieces out and sang our way down the alphabet, pausing at each letter for the girls to go hunting, repeating it over and over and over. The last few letters Tabitha finished off by herself, without having to repeat the alphabet song.

We also got the jump rope out and used it as a tightrope.

(I even had Tabitha tippy toe across.)

I also introduced a couple of new

Montessori activities:

I found some "Parts of a Turtle" cards at Montessori Materials. They have a bunch of materials that are free, you just have to look for the items listed in purple.

(For some reason I can't get these pictures to turn the RIGHT way)

And I made Egg Sound Shakers. I keep them in a basket and they are to find the matching sound and place them in the egg carton. I started with half a dozen, but that seemed super simple for Tabitha, so I brought out the rest and a full dozen egg carton.

She enjoyed shaking them, though she discovered right away that the matching colors held matching sounds. So, I had her close her eyes and I handed the eggs to her.

As she tended to peek I decided to use her doctor's mask as a blindfold.

After she matched the sounds for a while, she wanted me to try. So, I closed my eyes and let her put the eggs in my hand.

And last week I forgot to post about an activity I introduced. I am considering it Montessori as it was an activity we used with the toddlers where I worked. It is a math/numeral recognition/one to one correspondence activity. I had this in the planning stage for a while. Tried to make my own numerals, big mistake. I finally broke down and printed out the large number templates from dltk-teach.com. I cut them out and contact papered them. Each numeral has the corresponding number of pieces of Velcro attached. (The one other thing that kept this on hold was that I wanted to find black Velcro so it would stand out more, but when we finally made it to a Walmart, I forgot. So I went ahead with introducing it anyway.) Tabitha enjoys attaching the snowmen to the Velcro. At the Montessori we changed the attachment objects with the season, so I will soon be changing it to a more springy picture. At the Montessori we didn't have the numeral zero. I decided to add it so I could show the girls that zero means nothing, there is no Velcro on the zero and you don't need to put anything there.

Our wordcard words this week were:

tent, telephone, turtle, tiger (the ones I found sign language signs for)

tag, toucan and Tabitha.

To see what others are doing with their preschoolers and toddlers head on over to Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1.