Pinecone Art

Today we collected pinecones and painted them for Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Using a cardboard tray we rolled the pinecones in paint.  We had fun talking about the colors and using action words such as "roll".   

These will look nice on our mantel for the holidays.

Holiday Sorting and Matching

Many concepts can be reinforced with matching and sorting.  Today I created five different matching or sorting activities that practice different concepts.

Our first activity is Turkey matching or sorting shapes using milk caps.
http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/PDF/whotooktheturkey.pdf

The second activity is color matching snowman using pompoms.
http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/PDF/cbsm.pdf

The third is matching upper case letters to lower case letter snowflakes.  I used foam circles so that I could write on them.
http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/PDF/snowflakesongs.pdf

The fourth activity is matching number penguins.
http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/PDF/fivepenguins.pdf

 The fifth matching activity is matching buttons on a Christmas Tree.
http://www.earlylearningactivities.com/PDF/treepuzzle.pdf

Hope these learning activities make your holidays a little more fun.   

Corn Fun

We had a good time today working with corn.  Both Adeline and Ian enjoyed working on their ears of corn project.  We made these from some poster board for the ears and green foam pieces.  We then glued popcorn on for our corn.  I did use a glue gun to glue on the green foam.

 
This was a great sensory and fine motor activity.  This was one of the first projects I did with Adeline using glue.  I did squirt on the glue and let her spread it around with a paint brush.  That worked.  She did rub her finger around in it a little but that was OK.


Later, we looked at our pumpkins and talked about "big" and "little".  We have been working on this concept for a little while, I just like to keep changing it up with different items.

 

Adeline's absolute favorite activity was transferring popcorn.  I never did this with her before and she didn't want to stop.  I think you will be seeing more transfer projects coming up.

This is a great way to work on crossing the mid line exercises and fine motor skills.

Last, we talked about "where is pumpkin".  We are working on those wh words and what they mean.  I put a pumpkin a yogurt container and had her find it.  I have been saving containers so that I can have Adeline practice opening different types of things.

Thanksgiving Fun

Today we had some fun learning about some of the things we see in the fall and during the Thanksgiving season.  I have been doing some reading about some of the Montessori  methods and I feel like they work so well with what we are trying to do with Adeline.  I will be incorporating more of these things into our day.

One important aspect is teaching our children how to use everyday tools.  Today we put together a sensory box of fall items and Adeline practiced using a tong, and ladle.  The tong was a little more difficult but she really enjoyed using the ladle.  This exercise requires a lot of turning the wrist and arm, all important skills.   Her favorite were the pumpkins that I found on clearance at Wal mart.

One on one correspondence with pumpkins.