Fine Motor Skills: pom-poms in a bottle

Easy one for younger tots - grasping pom-poms with finger and thumb and putting into a bottle.
We also tried with tongs but although B could grasp them initially he let go straight away so we will be trying this again.

Letter A: a is for apple magnet page

Following on from this post  we have created an "a is for apple" magnet page.
The file can be downloaded from here as a pdf.

Making Learning Fun has an uppercase A for free here

Related Pinterest Boards:
Homeschool
Alphabet
Magnet Pages
Plants/Seasons

Learning Letters: Reinventing the Wheel

Why reinventing the wheel? Well the ultimate aim of teaching your little ones letters is to get them to read and write- obvious isn't it.  Alongside letter recognition we have been watching phonics DVD's  (Fun With Phonics and Alphablocks - both from the BBC) and using Jolly Phonics Workbooks 1-7, all of which use lowercase letters.  We even managed to find Chicka Chicka Boom Boom on YouTube  which starts with the lowercase letters (although some uppercase letters make an appearance).   Even your average piece of type nearly all the letters are lowercase.
But when you look at the learning resources I have been using like the magnet pages from Make Learning Fun

they are uppercase. How confusing must that be to a 2 year old?  So in the interest of consistency we are starting again and using lowercase letters first.  Of course this means producing my own magnet sheets etc.  (hence re-inventing the wheel) but there you go.  Resources to follow shortly (I hope - I'm nothing if not the laziest person on the planet sometimes).

Science Sunday: Fun with magnets

This is kind of a learning activity for B that developed a life of its own :)
The original idea - (whilst the older two are at school) Fish shapes in different colours, each with a paper clip on their nose, pick up the fish with the magnet say the colour (we are keeping it simple for our 27 month old and using orange, green and blue).  Simple, classic done by billions of people since the dawn of time - well OK at least since the invention of the paper clip!
Here is what it evolved into:
This magnet thing sticks to these too!

and this

have you seen what happens when you put it in an entire box of these things

"Wow cool!" yep that is a direct quote!

The really interesting thing is that I let him run with it and choose all the objects to test with the magnet and they were all without exception made of metal.
Maybe colours can wait for another day!

Head on over to Adventures in Mommydom for more Science Sunday ideas

Letter E: E is for Elephant: Elmer

Elmer is an elephant created by David McKee.  As you can see Elmer is different to other elephants because he isn't ordinary elephant coloured.  In this first story of a series Elmer finds out it is OK not to look the same as anyone else because he is special just the way he is.

Here are some of the resources we chose to use with the book this week:

• Elephant shape craft from First School
• Elephant maze (easy) from Kids Front
• There is a whole page of elephant themed stuff over at Confessions of a Homeschooler, every kind of preschooler activity is covered from lacing cards to spelling and writing practise.  We already had some of these printed so we used the size sort and colour by numbers for our "Elmer day".
• Elephant paper chain.  You know how elephants walk along in a line each holding the tail of the one in front with their trunk - this will be kind of like that and each one can be different like Elmer.
• Elephant costume - here's one I made earlier! or follow the instructions here to make an elephant mask out of a paper plate.
• Stand-up elephant to cut out and decorate
• Colouring book fun has lots of elephant colouring pages
• Elmer spot the difference  from  Random House
• Elephant dot-to-dot (numbers 1-20)
• Elephant dot-to-dot (counting by 10's)
• Elephant dot-to-dot (letters A through T)
• Elephant maze (hard from Billy Bear 4 Kids)
• Pictures from my safari minibook to colour from Busy Bee Craft
• Elmer colouring sheet from Random House
• Elmer Word Jumble puzzle from Andersen Press
• Elmer Wordsearch from Andersen Press

Pictures to follow as as when of course. Wish us luck it should be a busy day!

Railway Tunnel

If you have boys the chances are that you have a train set.  The only trouble is that once the bug hits it can get very expensive.  A and B are always piling up things to make bridges etc.  to go over the basic track; and they usually fall down within 30 seconds (cue the temper tantrum!).
Having got fed up with rebuilding every circuit of the track when the boys played with the trains I decided to get them a tunnel.  This is when I discovered how much these things are (yes it does really say 34 and a half dollars!) for a plain arch glued to a piece of track.
So having had a scout around the house here is our version

Yep it is a washing detergent bottle that was destined for the bin that has been cut to shape.  I love a freebie!

Letter C: C is for caterpillar, the Very Hungry Caterpillar lacing cards and online animated video

Having put together the resources for the Hungry Caterpillar on my own post here I came across a mention of hungry caterpillar lacing cards for download from Confessions of a Homeschooler. The link for the download is near the bottom of the post for the letter C so you will need to scroll down.  Brilliant as we still have to get around to actually producing these here.
 This is a fantastic site with millions of great ideas (many available free for download), just be sure you stock up on printer ink before visiting because I guarantee there will be something there you just have to print out and use!

We also found the online animated version here for if you want a change from the book.