Toddler Ideas Tuesday: January 13, 2015

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. 

We have been working on some letter review. This is an activity I did with the older girls a few years go when we were doing Letter of the Week. I love making these tactile letters. This time we used the letter papers I printed out from ABC Twiggles, a fun preschool site I reviewed this past summer as a part of my Back to School/5 Year Blogiversary Celebration. In the past, I have just printed out letter templates to do this activity.

I try to find objects that start with the letter the children are making. So, for A, they glued on apple seeds and for B they glued on beans. I hold the glue and they hold my hand while we form the letter out of glue in between the lines of the letter. Then they glue on the little objects. Not only do they learn the shape of the letter, they are developing fine motor control.

We didn't quite have enough apple seeds for each of the children to do the upper case and lower case A's.

Now onto:

Toddler Idea Tuesday Features

On my last Toddler Idea Tuesday post, there were 2 wonderful posts linked up. I will be featuring both of them this week. 

The First Featured Post:

Kayla from Wild Berry Trail shared Literacy Connections: The Very Busy Spider Web Making.

The Second Featured Post:

Jen from Chestnut Grove Academy shared her Volcano Workbox Activities 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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School Time Week 36: The Conclusion of R: Rice and Rockets

This week we continued our letter R activities, when we had a chance that is.  The outdoors has been calling and we have had a hard time ignoring it.

Of course we started with our R muffin tin

We were able to make our rainbow rice, which I have wanted to do for a while and I figured this week would be perfect.
I actually followed the instructions I have for making colored noodles.  We dyed the noodles back in January of 2010. Here are the girls all ready to get to work.

We used the rice from our sensory tub.

It was very simple.  We placed 1 cup of rice in each bowl.

And added 1 tsp of rubbing alcohol and 5-7 drops of food coloring.  I have seen elsewhere that people of questioned the use of rubbing alcohol.  So, of course I had to experiment.  I tried coloring one bowlful with out the alcohol and it didn't mix in properly.  I have also seen a variation where people have used vinegar in the place of the rubbing alcohol. I actually experimented with that last January and found that the alcohol helped the color penetrate the noodles more fully for a brighter color and left them less brittle.  I shared about this in the above linked post, but here is the picture of the noodles so you can compare

                                 

Anyway, then the girls stirred the color in.  I actually found it coated better if I combined the alcohol with the food coloring and then poured it in the rice.  And you have to stir quite vigorously to get a decent coating too.

We then left it outside in the nice hot sun to dry thoroughly.  

Definitely looks better after drying.

It wasn't until a couple of days later that we got to use the rice.

We made our "tactile" r's.

Then we dumped the colored rice into the sensory bin.

I even let Hannah play in it.  She has been playing it the sensory rice tub with out permission for a while.  She loves to hear the rice as she spills it onto the floor.

On this day she enjoyed transferring it to the container and then...the floor (sigh).

Should have gotten a shot of the floor. Oh well.

Then I found the instructions for making a rocket in the book Big Book of Phonics For Whole Language.

While Amelia traced the letters USA and decorated her rocket body...

Tabitha cut out her "exhaust flames" and then got creative.

Then Tabitha decorated her rocket

While Amelia cut out her strips.

I really am happy with Amelia's progress with cutting on the line.

 I stapled the rocket into a cylindrical shape and also stapled on the paper exhaust strips.

Boy was it tricky getting the cones to stick to the top.

We are going to work on some rhyming activities (that I found in the Phonics activities book I mentioned above) next week.  I have not planned anything for our next letter because we have VBS over at the church where we meet for Play Group all this next week.  

This week's Bible verses were:

Our R verse:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Exodus 20:8

Our verse from the Interlock curriculum

And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. Genesis 1:3

This week we focused on light compared to darkness.  We talked about how when God made light it chased away the darkness, because with light there is no darkness.  Even at night there is light from the moon and the stars.  We went in our downstairs bathroom (the one with no outside window) and after seeing how dark it was I lit a candle, then blew the candle out and turned on a flashlight.  We talked about people years ago not having electricity and needing to use candles or oil lamps and such to see.  Then we turned on our electric lights.

We also spoke a bit about opposites.

Tiny Tot Time:

She loves finding paper and writing utensils to scribble with.

She decided it would be fun to hang on the table

She loves playing with the legos, though she really can't build with them yet.

I just thought it was so cute the way they all gathered together.

Amelia's constructions

Tabitha's staircase

A bit of a better shot of the stairs.

Hannah was having a blast putting the baby doll in the stroller and pulling it along with her.  She took it to the kitchen and started taking food out of the cupboard.  I said she was shopping.

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