Toddler Ideas Tuesday: December 9, 2014

Welcome back to Toddler Idea Tuesdays! I hope you will join with me again in sharing the fun activities, crafts, and lessons that you are doing with your young children. 

Today I wanted to share our rainbow muffin tin that we made last week.

We were learning about rainbows as our science topic with My Father's World 1st grade. Additionally, one of the Bible stories we read was the story of Noah's Ark. I figured having the children make their own rainbows for this muffin tin would be a great sorting and fine motor activity for Harold and Hannah. Of course, the older girls had fun too.

We used Fruity Ringers cereal, large marshmallows, and pipe cleaners.

I gave the children their own bowl of cereal and had them sort them.

Harold did a pretty good job.

Once they were sorted, I had the children thread them onto a pipe cleaner which had one end pushed into one half of the marshmallow.

It was actually easier for me to just bend the end of the pipe cleaner for Harold.

The older girls placed the cereal on in the order of the colors of the rainbow. I allowed Hannah and Harold to put them on in whatever order they chose.

We left enough room at the end to push the pipe cleaner into the other marshmallow.

Unfortunately, the pipe cleaner wanted to keep popping out and straightening. I decided it would work better in the muffin tin, though they didn't stand up very well. The children loved them though. 

In addition to the Fruity Ringer Rainbow, the children had:

Red grape tomatoes

Orange carrot sticks

Yellow pineapple 

Green broccoli

Blue Jello

Purple yogurt

In the center of the muffin tin the had a Noah's Ark shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Now onto:

Toddler Idea Tuesday Features

On my last Toddler Idea Tuesday post, there were 5 wonderful posts linked up. I will be picking one randomly selected post to share, plus the top clicked-on post. 

This week's randomly selected post is:

Channon from Sunshine By Channon shared this cute decorating idea: Decking the Halls With Perler Beads.

The following post had the most clicks:

Jen from Chestnut Grove Academy shared a wonderful collection of Workbox/Learning Tray Christmas themed ideas in her Workbox Wednesday - Christmas post.

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your toddlers and preschoolers? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on my Toddler Ideas board and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up. Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our toddler time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your toddler, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Sunday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

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Toddler Ideas Tuesday: April 22nd, 2014

Welcome back to Toddler Idea Tuesdays! Have you been busy with your young children?

Last week was our last week using the My Father's World Kindergarten level. Our topic was Y:Yellow, focusing on how God made all things beautiful and all the colors. While we had focused on colors while we were doing our V:Vegetables unit last month (because of it falling around St. Patrick's Day) we still had some fun with colors with Y. The girls (including Hannah) really know all of their colors, so I figured we could work together to help Harold learn them by having a Color Scavenger Hunt.

I wrote the colors on separate index cards in black, as I wanted to see if Tabitha and Amelia could actually read the words, which they can. I showed one at a time and they needed to look around the house and bring back something of that color. They were supposed to work in pairs, but Hannah decided to work on her own, so Tabitha just helped Harold.

Now onto:

Toddler Idea Tuesday Features

1- Shecki from Greatly Blessed shared some great ideas on keeping little ones busy while you are homeschooling the older children. She listed Free and Cheap ideas, plus really cool Math Manipulatives, plus some ideas that would work inside or outside. 

2- Jennifer from Hint Mama shared a Very Easy Toddler Activity (also guaranteed to keep younger ones busy while homeschooling older ones, it seems). Do you have cardboard boxes lying around your home? They would make great "Think Boxes" with some crayons and/or markers. 

3- Lisa from Our Country Road shared her No Theme Preschool Week.  I really enjoyed her idea of using knobless cylinders to create flowers, plus she shared a link to a Bulb Ordering printable.

What sort of activities do you do with your toddler? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on my Toddler Ideas board and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up. Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our toddler time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your toddler, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

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Penguin File Folder Learning Activities

We have been focused on penguins for a few weeks now and I wanted to finish up with some cute file folder games for the girls. There is one for Color Matching, one for Word Families and one for Math Facts as I wanted each girl to have something to help them at their level of development.

Here is how I made the basic folder:

I printed out pictures of penguins. As always I Googled "penguin coloring pages" and found one that I liked and then inserted it into my Word processing program to adjust the size. 

And I printed out some buckets/pails.

If you are wondering what the staples are all over the pages for, this is one of my time-saving strategies. I take several (up to 5) pages and staple them together so I can cut them together without the pages shifting.

Each file folder needs 6 penguins and 12 pails.

I cut the top off of 6 of the pails so I could tape them together to make a little pocket.

I taped the sides and bottoms together to do so.

Then I glued both the pails and the penguins into the file folder.

For the color matching folder I colored the front (cut) part of the pail before I taped it to the back.

Also, for the color matching game I wrote the colors on the penguins in the coordinating colors.

However, the other two folders are going to be slightly different. I attached Velcro to each of the penguins so I can change their bellies depending upon what word families or math facts we are working on.  I just cut additional bellies out of card stock.

I am going to have Amelia work on some /a/ word families to start with.

Tabitha will be starting with some simple numbers.

I found a simple fish pattern and cut them out in the 6 colors of the rainbow.

Hannah will match the fish to the correct color. 

Amelia will have to think of and write several words for each word family.

And Tabitha will have to find the sums and differences that make each number.

The older girls will write their answers right on the fish. If they want to write more I will give them more fish.

When we are ready to move on to other word families or math problems I will just cut out new white ovals for bellies.

M&M sorting

I was trying to think of a fun way to do some sorting exercises with the girls.  Seeing as we are on the letter Mm I figured M&Ms would be fun to sort.  The other night I came up with the idea for the following sorting tray and spent some time making one each for the girls (instead of sleeping). 

I gathered together:

a cereal box for each girl

construction paper in the colors of M&Ms

scissors

hot glue gun

glue stick

a can to trace to make circles

M&Ms

I cut the back off the cereal box

I then traced and cut out the circles

and glued them in the box with the glue stick

I outlined the circles with the hot glue gun to give them  each a ridge.

Today the girls got to sort 1/4 cup (a serving) of M&Ms.  I measured them out and placed them in half of the top of an egg carton. (Did you know those egg cartons are very versatile?)

It was really interesting watching the girls sort.  Amelia took one randomly and found where it needed to go.  Tabitha would start a color, find all the M&Ms of that color before moving on to the next color.

Then I made some graphs so we could see which color had the most M&Ms. I just drew some lines to make 6 colomns and traced circles up the columns.  The girls just had to place the candy on the circles.  Tabitha caught on really quickly.  Amelia needed some extra help, but that was expected. 



Update:
I am also linking up to

Carnival of Math Play