I is for ice and igloo and other misc. items!

First off I would like to share our new "keeping healthy" process for outside.  :-) 

This has been floating around Pinterest.  What a great idea!  Have the tissue and trash right there!  Use double sided tape or hot glue to attach two boxes of tissue to each other.  Then rubberband together for additional support.  I created a visual to put on the front for my preschoolers.  I plan on laminating the label and attaching with sticky tac so that it can be reused.  I imagine that the boxes will need to be replaced eventually.  :-)  Someone had the thought of attaching a small bottle of sanitizer...I like that idea also, but I have a large one that needs to be used up.  I might create a little "box" on the side for a small pump bottle sanitizer in the future so that it's all one piece for easy transferring.

I is for Igloo

A great fine motor/scissors activity.  Reinforce upper and lowercase letter I.

I is for Ice Transfer

I loved what I heard from T.- 2.5 yrs old as he was transferring (pic on right).  A few of the crushed ice pieces were too big for that bottle he was using and he'd say "too big".  "Here small one."  Then after a couple of too big ones he started looking in his bowl and saying out loud whether it would fit or not.  This age is great!  They are transitioning from toddler to preschool behaviors.  :-) 

A Word about Puzzles

We had a puzzle day over the weekend.  Recently I found some puzzles on sale...then 2 more boxes on clearance at another store and that same week one of Donnie's coworkers gave him a box of 4-100 piece puzzles for the boys.  So!  :-)  I love puzzles and wish I had a space in my house to keep one up all the time.  A large one at the kitchen table really doesn't work well.  Cuts our workspace for daily activities in half and messes up our supper routine.  :-D  Well, some day maybe I'll have a puzzle table we can keep a puzzle going without getting in our way! 

Anyway...we have a ton of puzzles...from wooden knob puzzles, to foam puzzles to 4 piece+ jigsaws.  One thing we do with jigsaws is to flip them over at the end of the first time putting them together and writing a couple letters or a symbol on each piece to represent the puzzle title.  That way when a piece gets left out on the floor (which it will!) then we better know where they go.  It's wise to label the box with the corresponding symbol.  A word about puzzles and preschoolers...give them a chance!  I have a set of 12 piece alphabet puzzles that we work with frequently but seeing a preschooler capable of a 24 piece jigsaw is not uncommon.  :-)  Here's one we did today...

Color Wheel

Yesterday, we did the 12 piece Letter I puzzle so today I pulled out a 24 piece color wheel puzzle we got at a dollar store (they aren't always the best quality coming from the dollar store but this one wasn't bad!).  This was to reinforce the cool colors vs. warm colors lesson we had yesterday.  They did well working together.  One reminding them that "That can't go there it's has a straight part."  and another reminding "We need to look for the same colors."

Toddler Color Sorting

I find that having "tray work" out for Mr. T. here really helps our morning go successfully.  There are activities he's just not ready for or doesn't spend as much time with so having a variety of trays out for him to work with independently is very beneficial.  And since there is a big possibility we'll be homeschooling next school year...I wish for him to get accustomed to independent tray work.  Use one tray at a time, putting the tray back, etc.  Here I provided a variety of colorful items.  I placed one item in each section of the tray and he sorted the rest of them.  After he got over the fact that it was sort by object vs. sort by color...this activity really appealed to his natural sense of order.  :-)

Puzzles and Toddlers

Since we are on the subject of puzzles and toddlers...

These types of puzzles are great vocabulary builders.  He was manipulating/playing with the puzzle pieces and he'd show me one and I'd sing a little song to go with it.  Kind of like Old MacDonald's Farm.  Oh the simple things like adding a song.  :-P  They love it and it's very beneficial!

I is for igloo

I decided to read Jan Brett's The Three Snow Bears today to go along with our I is for igloo theme.  Cute book, I love the illustrations best.  The endings of these retakes of the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears tend to leave me hanging a bit.  I don't always agree with how they end.  :-)  Still a worthwhile read!

I simply scanned images from the book that went along to create a retelling activity.

Long I-Short I

A very simple activity to create.  :-) 

I folded two pieces of l2x18 white construction paper in half (together), cut the basic igloo shape, cut the top layer on the fold to make "doors", stapled the two igloos together, and added the few details there were.  K. cut out the Long I-Short I pictures.  She glued the labels in the igloo and then glued the pictures on the correct side of the igloo.  The short /i/ sound is a bit difficult for her to remember yet.  She gets it confused with short /e/, understandably.  So we've been doing quite a bit with short vowel sounds the last little while.  The Long and Short Vowel sort pages can be found at http://firstgradealacarte.blogspot.com/2011/11/e-i-o-u-sorts.html

Measuring Igloos

We've done quite a bit with nonstandard measurement and using a ruler such as this (Print Shop) helps the children to transition from nonstardard measurement to "real" measuring with a rule.  After estimating how many penguins wide each igloo was, she measured with the ruler and seriated.  Then she was welcome to take the ruler around to measure other things she could find.  (If I hadn't created this activity BEFORE I had decided what book I was doing...I would have used polar bears instead of penguins.  :-p)

Cool Colors Painting

A nice open ended art activity-painting on aluminum foil.  I cover a piece of cardboard (cereal box cardboard works great) with aluminum foil and tape at the back.  When we paint on aluminum foil, I add dishsoap...this helps the paint stick to the foil and not flake quite as much.  Also gives it a shiny, smooth look, at least while they are painting with it.  :-) 

We've been talking a bit about seasons the last few weeks and so we started this activity reminding ourselves what a color wheel looks like.  (There are many different types of color wheels.  I like to use the simple six color color wheel with preschoolers.)  I cut the wheel in half, in front of the children, keeping one half warm colors and one half cool colors.  Then we talked about what each half reminded us of.  Summer colors or winter colors.  Worked perfectly!  Led right into the discussion of the warm and cool colors and how where there are igloos it's "winter-y" feeling out...cold...cool.  So I provided the cool colors- blue, green, and purple- for them to paint with.  Just to encourage noticing detail and conversation I gave K. a small, medium and large paintbrush.  :-)  She loved that little one!

Sugar Cube Exploration

Decided to have my husband pick up sugar cubes for this week as it is similar to blocks of ice/snow that would have been used for igloos.  They built with them for a bit.

Then I gave them colored water and eye droppers.  :-)  K. kept telling me, "It's going down!"  "It's timbering!" (My personal favorite.), "Oh, Ms. Amber...remember when we did D is for Dissolve?"  BINGO! 

Will let these be all for now.  Will share what we did with our I vocab cards in another blog.  Hope you have a lovely week!