Tots and Me... Growing Up Together

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

Littles Learning Link Up: Under the Sea Unit: Introduction and All About Fish Book

Littles Learning Link Up is back on Tuesday!!

Each month you will find:

Posts where I share what I have been up to with my elementary-age children and the preschoolers I work with at our homeschool co-op (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).
The occasional round up post.

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme. Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up.

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

Here's a peek at what we have been up to in our homeschool.

Last week was a no-school week, so we didn't do much. Though we did work on a bit of our geography with Let's Go Geography. That review will be posting this week. Other than that, we didn't get much done. Of course, Harold's birthday was on Monday, so they spent the day playing games and big sister Krystal came over. He chose homemade veggie lovers pizza for dinner and we had cake and ice cream. I didn't get a chance to share the pictures last week for Wordless Wednesday, so I hope to have time to do that this week.

Moving on to our preschool lesson:

During our last penguin lesson, while we were waiting for the paint to dry on the handprint penguins, I started our new Under the Sea lessons. Technically, the only reason we were still on the penguin unit that week, was because of more than half the class being absent the week before. So, I segued from penguins swimming in the sea, to discussing what they eat that lives in the sea, and their predator that live in the sea. Then I had them list other creatures that live under the water.

Next I decided to read Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae.

We talked about the different oceans and seas on Earth.

Then the children put together a simple under the sea picture. I had them glue some yellow construction paper on the bottom of a piece of blue construction paper. Then they colored some ocean animals and the glued them onto the ocean habitat. A couple on the floor, a couple swimming in the middle, then a couple at the top.

Under the Sea Collages:

The following week we continued our Under the Sea unit by focusing on fish. I read the book Swimmy by Leo Lionni.

Here are all the supplies used for the All About Fish Book.

We started with the Handprint Fish craft, which ended up becoming the cover of the book.

You will need a light blue paper for the background. I decided to paint them with blue watercolor paint the night before. If you have time with your children, they could paint it themselves, but we are limited to the 2- one hour classes, one time a week, so I have to get some things prepped in advance. I decided the watercolor paint gave it the water feel that I wanted.

You will also need acrylic paints for the handprints and a paintbrush. The marker was for them to draw on the eyes and such.

The other mom and I went around to the children one at a time and had them choose two colors for their handprint fish. That is why there are no pictures of this step. We made sure to have the fingers face away from each other as those are the tails. Though we did have one boy who wanted their fish to be swimming away from each other.

Then we used green paint for seaweed. For this step they just needed their fingers painted.

Then we added white fingerprints for bubbles.

We set them to dry, and they worked on their "Parts of a Fish" page.

I had printed out a picture of a labeled fish, plus one where I had blanked out the words. I gave them the one with the blanked out words and I cut the words out of the other one for them to glue on. So, first they colored the fish orange, then we talked about each part, pointed to it, and labeled it.

When they came back from gym, I had the papers set up in the order we were going to finish them off in.

They had to add eyes and a mouth to the handprint fish.

Then they glued the Parts of a Fish page to a piece of blue construction paper. And next, I gave them little tidbits of information about fish, and they glued them onto the third page of their book.

Then, I stapled their books together.

As it was Valentine's week, we finished the day with Heart Whale Valentines for them to give to their parents.

I decided to let them cut out their own hearts, because otherwise there wasn't much to do to make these their own work.

Then they decorated them, added heart sticker eyes and a mouth. The tail was formed with a smaller heart folded in half and the water spout is a small blue heart. On the inside we wrote, "I Whaley Love You."

We sang the song, "One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I caught a fish alive." Plus a song that goes to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus." We found a video for this song online, but I don't have signal at the camp, so we didn't watch it. I just wrote down the words. There were five different ocean animals. And, of course, I added motions.

The shark in the ocean goes chomp, chomp, chomp,

Chomp, chomp, chomp

The shark in the ocean goes chomp, chomp, chomp

CHOMP....CHOMP....CHOMP!

Same pattern for the following:

The turtle in the ocean goes snap, snap, snap...

The crab in the ocean goes click, click, click...

The jellyfish in the ocean goes wibble wobble wibble

The fish in the ocean goes swish, swish, swish (though the one girls wanted to do, The fish in the ocean goes swimmy, swimmy, swimmy...)

We will be continuing the Under the Sea ocean for at least another month. Well, there are lots and lots of ocean animals you know.

Here are a couple of things I would like to share with you:

Fishy Under the Sea Literature and Craft Round Up

St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Fun Round Up

Fun With Dr. Seuss Round Up

Penguins, Penguins All Around Round Up

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 5 wonderful posts linked up. I will be sharing a the most clicked on posts (yes there was a tie), plus a randomly selected post.

Please, don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

This week's first most clicked on post is:

Brandy from The Barefoot Mom shared 101 Thing to Do Outside with Your Kids.

This week's second most clicked on post is:

Megan from My Full Heart shared How to Make a Butterfly Feeder (100 Days of Art Day 11)

This week's randomly selected post is:

Teaching with Faith shared The Good Samaritan Craft

Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, 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 school 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 child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday 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.

No button currently, and there won't be one until I can figure it out seeing as Photobucket has changed things. Feel free to still share the picture in place of the button. Just link it to my Littles Learning Link Up permalink please.

I am sharing over at

February Homeschool Round UP {Homeschool Collection}

Monday, February 24, 2020

Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up- February 25, 2020

Welcome to Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up with your hosts Karen @ Tots and Me, Emily @ Emily Reviews, Shelly @ The Attic Girl, and Rena @ An Ordinary Housewife.

So glad you could join us as we share our giveaways on Tuesday's Giveaway Link Ups.

This link up will be posted Monday at 7 PM est. and run all week long! Make sure you stop in as often as you can to list your latest giveaways.

Here is how to use the Giveaway Link Up

1. Post your reviews and/or giveaways, as many as you have, be sure to add the end date (family friendly please)

2. Help spread the word about the giveaway link up by grabbing our button, Tweeting or posting on Facebook. (Not mandatory- but it helps get more exposure to your giveaways as well!)

3. Take a moment to enter any giveaway that strikes an interest to you!

Featured Giveaways

LEGOLAND Discovery Center Philadelphia Family Pack Annual Passes US only Ends 3/6

The Call of the Wild Fandango Prize Pack US only Ends 2/28

Featured Reviews

Supplementing Our Homeschool with Lessons from SchoolhouseTeachers.com {A Homeschool Review Crew Review}

Exploring Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with LitWits Kits {A Homeschool Review Crew Review}

If you would like to follow the hostesses, we will gladly follow you back! Simply leave us a message to do so.

Thank you for linking up with Karen @ Tots and Me, Emily @ Emily Reviews, Shelly @ The Attic Girl, and Rena @ An Ordinary Housewife .

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Throwback Thursday Blog-Style #295: February 20, 2020

Welcome back to...

I know, I know, Throwback Thursday seems to be all about sharing pictures from the past, great memories that mean something to you, that you would like to share with others. At least that is how it appears to me. Throwback Thursday wasn't something I was participating in, and then I came up with an idea.

I thought it would be great fun and a help to my blog to share old content, but not just any old content. Each week I will share an old blog post from a previous year, any year, BUT it has to be from the current week (for example, something I've posted around February 20th, from any previous year) I will go in, edit the post if needed, add a pinnable image if I don't already have one, and share it on Facebook.

Would you like to join in? You do not need to edit your past post in any way, you don't need to create a pinnable image, though it couldn't hurt, in fact it will help your blog traffic to add quality pinnable images to your posts.

Just go into your archives, choose a favorite post from this current week from any previous year, and link it up below. (If you don't have anything from this current week, it is still okay to link up with a post from a previous year around this time. And if you haven't been blogging for a full year, feel free to share any earlier post.)

Please make sure to share from the past as instructed above. The spirit of Throwback Thursday Blog-Style is to share posts from the past. Please follow the guidelines. I would hate to have to delete your link.
Thank you

I will be pinning posts to my appropriate Pinterest boards and will be randomly selecting a Featured Throwback Thursday post to share next week. Just a note, I will be sharing a picture from your post if you are selected as the featured post, but I will link back to your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. By linking up you are giving me permission to use your picture in the post.

Here is my Throwback Thursday post

Originally posted February 15, 2019
Improving Skills in Multiple Subject Areas with IXL Learning {A TOS Review}

Here is this week's randomly selected

Featured Throwback Thursday post:

Brandy from The Barefoot Mom shared

Make Your Own Mineral Identification Kit

To participate, link up below. It would be great if you could visit several of the other posts that have linked up. Stop by, comment, and pin images so we can help each other.

Happy Throwback Thursday!

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Littles Learning Link Up: Penguin Unit- Lesson 3: Comparing Penguins of the World

Littles Learning Link Up is back on Tuesday!!

Each month you will find:

Posts where I share what I have been up to with my elementary-age children and the preschoolers I work with at our homeschool co-op (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).
The occasional round up post.

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme. Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up.

Here's a peek at what we have been up to in our homeschool.

We are still working on geography with Let's Go Geography. Though in our history reading, we haven't gotten past China. Tabitha has gotten a few weeks ahead of us, because she does her reading independently. She has also started reading a book about George Washington from YWAM Publishing.The younger children and I will read through it slower, using the unit study that we received.

I'm working on Reading Comprehension with Hannah, using the PRIDE Reading Program. We also received some Early Reader Box Car Children books that Harold read quite quickly. I plan on him rereading at least one to do some sort of project with it.

Moving on to our preschool lesson:

We have been continuing with our penguin lessons.

We sing the songs I came up with every week.

Did You Ever See a Penguin (tune of Did You Ever See a Lassie)

Did you ever see a penguin, a penguin, a penguin

did you ever see a penguin waddle around?

Waddle this way and that way, waddle this way and that way

Did you ever see a penguin waddle around?

See the Penguins (tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb)

See the penguins standing there, standing there standing there

See the penguins standing there,

In Antarctica

They would go tobogganing, tobogganing, tobogganing

The would go tobogganing

Down the snowy hill.

Of course I have motions and movements for these like our songs from last year.

We also sang our snowy, winter songs from last winter.

We read the book Penguin and Little Blue by Katherine Tillotson.

In this book, Penguin and Little Blue are together in an aquarium and they end up going on "tour" throughout the United States. However, what Penguin really wants is to go back home to Antarctica to be with his own kind. At the end of the book they end up taking a ship there and Little Blue stays with Penguin.

This sort of led into a discussion of different penguins and how they live in different parts of the world. We learned that the blue penguin wouldn't have lived on Antartica, but over near Australia and New Zealand. I showed the children pictures of eight different penguins and we learned their names and where they lived, plus how tall they are.

I made little copies of each penguin picture for the children to glue onto a map I printed out and glued into a file folder.

We put the penguins where they live. It does make me curious how many people think all penguins live in Australia. Did you know the majority live on the islands north of Antarctica, and then there are those that live on the southern tips of South America and Africa?

Before the lesson I taped black pieces of paper together to represent the different penguins' heights.

Then, the children took turns measuring the "penguins" with my tape measure.

After we were done measuring each one, I hung it up next to the emperor penguin we made the week before. We didn't make the other ones into penguins because I wanted to be able to reuse the paper.

Then we began a salt dough hand penguin project that I had seen on Messy Little Monster. I had the children help measure and pour the ingredients for the salt dough. Then I kneaded it/

We gave the children a piece big enough to flatten out for their handprint.

It wasn't until two weeks later that they got to paint their penguins as most of our class was gone the following week.

They started out by painting the handprint white. The palm was the iceberg and the fingers were the penguins.

Then they painted the outer part blue for water, and we helped them paint the black outline and flippers, plus add feet and orange beaks.

Aren't they cute. Sadly, we had forgotten to poke a hole in the top while they were still soft, so they couldn't hang them up as planned.

The week that we only had a couple of children, we made lapbooks I had purchased from Mrs. Jones Creation Station to learn more details about penguins, such as anatomy, life cycle, where they live, what their prey is, and what preys on them, some more different types of penguins, and what they are, can do, and look like

Our unit wrapped up and we started a unit on Under the Sea.

Here are a couple of things I would like to share with you:

Penguins, Penguins All Around Round Up

Arctic Fun Round Up

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 6 wonderful posts linked up. I will be sharing a the most clicked on post, plus a randomly selected post.

This week's most clicked on post is: