N is for... N Necklace Craft

Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm and Meg from Adventures with Jude are hosting this great weekly party called Blogging Through the Alphabet. All are welcome to join in, just make sure to keep your posts family-friendly. I am determined to stay faithful this time around. I might not always post on the same day of the week, but I have every intention to post something each week.

Here is how I decided my "theme" for this round of Blogging Through the Alphabet. As I was going through old blog posts recently, I noticed I have some neat ideas for activities and crafts that I did with in the past. Unfortunately, I always included them in my weekly wrap up posts or more recently in Poppins Book Nook posts, so they sort of got buried. I can't really share them as individual activities or create pinnable images to promote them and share my ideas, which is why I started this blog in the first place (to share my ideas with others who work with children). So, I am going to make new posts for these ideas.

I have found there is a huge benefit in this strategy. I am remembering  ideas that I had forgotten, which means I can now do these activities with the younger children. I will be sharing the old pictures and possibly sharing new pictures of the younger children participating.

When we were going through the alphabet several years ago, I enjoyed coming up with crafts that incorporated the shape of the letter. When we were on the letter N we made N Necklaces.

N is for. . . N Necklace Craft

I drew a pattern on yellow construction paper:

I cut them out and the girls glued on the circle beads.

I helped them make an "n" on the middle bead.

Here are there completed n necklaces:

Don't you just love simple crafts?

M is for... M Mouse Craft

Cristi from Through the Calm and Through the Storm and Meg from Adventures with Jude are hosting this great weekly party called Blogging Through the Alphabet. All are welcome to join in, just make sure to keep your posts family-friendly. I am determined to stay faithful this time around. I might not always post on the same day of the week, but I have every intention to post something each week.

Here is how I decided my "theme" for this round of Blogging Through the Alphabet. As I was going through old blog posts recently, I noticed I have some neat ideas for activities and crafts that I did with in the past. Unfortunately, I always included them in my weekly wrap up posts or more recently in Poppins Book Nook posts, so they sort of got buried. I can't really share them as individual activities or create pinnable images to promote them and share my ideas, which is why I started this blog in the first place (to share my ideas with others who work with children). So, I am going to make new posts for these ideas.

I have found there is a huge benefit in this strategy. I am remembering  ideas that I had forgotten, which means I can now do these activities with the younger children. I will be sharing the old pictures and possibly sharing new pictures of the younger children participating.

When we were going through the alphabet several years ago, I enjoyed coming up with crafts that incorporated the shape of the letter. When we were on the letter M, I came up with this cute little mouse that has lower case m's for ears.

M is for. . . M Mouse Craft

The only materials needed for this craft are construction paper (pink and brown or gray) and glue sticks. 

I cut out an oval for the body, another oval with a slightly pointed side for the nose, tails, ears, a nose (not pictured) and the m shaped ears for the pink parts to be glued on to.

The girls glued the pink pieces onto the m ears, then they glued the ears to the head and the head to the body. They finished up by gluing the tails on.

They drew on an eye and whiskers.

Don't you just love simple crafts?

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.

<a href="http://totsandme.blogspot.com/search/label/Toddler%20Ideas "><img alt="Tots and Me" src="http://i597.photobucket.com/albums/tt58/kewkewphoto/ToddlerIdeaTuesdays2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a>

School Time V Week

We started this week trying to finish our "wind chimes." I thought I had a good idea.  We started painting some paper towel rolls to look like the sky last week.

Hannah had to see if her hand would fit through.

Then the paintbrush. 

I thought it would be cute to make it look like the sky as we were learning about God creating the sky on Day 2 of creation.  

We started this week by continuing the project.  The girls took turns painting clouds onto the rolls.

In the meantime daddy helped whoever wasn't painting. We had made a strip of clouds and numbered them up to 18.  Then they counted one to one with some cotton balls.

Our actual V lessons started with our muffin tin

Then we made our V collages:

Our words this week are:

van, vacuum, vase, vulture, volcano and violin

Our memory verse is :

Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth on me shall have eternal life.

I know I haven't posted the verse lately. I just forgot. We've still been learning a verse for each letter.  I also decided to start looking for sign language signs again. All of our words except for vulture had a sign I could find. (I was reading some old posts that reminded me of what I used to do.)

Next we made our "V is for Vegetables" book. We started with the cover. I had the girls trace the title.

(Amelia's)

Then they glued on some veggies.

(Tabitha's)

Hannah just colored her cover. Had to share this picture.

Then we gave some spots to our cucumbers. I had cut the veggies out of construction paper before we started.

And glued them into a V shape.

Next page was carrots. I had them draw on some lines and we glued them to the next page.

They added some greenery.

Next was the corn. I had them color some yellow and white kernels.

And the celery was colored light green on white paper.

Today I printed out a picture of a volcano for the girls to color.

 Then we looked at some pictures of volcanoes on Google Images. Then this evening we made our own volcano. I've been wanting to do this for ages.  We followed the directions at about.com.

Here are the ingredients for the volcano 

(We actually used have the recipe. Only 3 cups flour, 1 cup salt, 2 tbs oil and 1 cup water, though it needed a bit more, about 1/3 cup)

And the lava

The girls took turn measuring the ingredients and stirring the dough.

Then we patted it flat so we could form it around the bottle. It didn't work as easily as I had pictured, but we made it work.

The girls signed "volcano"

The bottle already has water and red food coloring in it. Then we added 2 tbs of baking soda.

Then we added the vinegar.

The results actually weren't as spectacular as I had hoped for.  It fizzed over, but it ended quite soon.  On a whim, I decided to add some more baking powder.  The girls were excited because it erupted again.

And again

and again

and again

and again.

Then it was fizzed out.

The girls had a great time.

We used a couple of different books.
The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin was a book we read last year when we did the letter V.

A mother and daughter are planting seeds like their neighbors, but the daughter can't understand why everything they are doing is different.  Bigger shovel, watering with a hose instead of a watering can, grass like shoots instead of leaves.  They are growing Chinese Vegetables, which when they are ready make a delicious smelling and tasting soup. The neighbors come by and trade some flowers for a bowl of soup. The next year, the planting is a little different in the neighborhood. 

There is a recipe for the soup in the back, but there is no way I could find chinese veggies around here.

We also read Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert.

The text is simple and the illustrations are bold and bright. Though I did take issue with the color choice at times (mostly the red sun). The pictures are labeled too. We get to see the seeds being planted and grow as they are watered and taken care of.  At the end the soup is made. Once again there is a recipe in the back. We are going to try this one though.

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