Z for zoo

We are learning about the letter z this week. Sawyer has done a great job learning to identify his letters and sounds. I think I mentioned this before, but I LOVE the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. We checked it out from the library and he learned all of his letters and sounds in a week. Of course I continued to reinforce his learning. We ended up buying the video and I want to buy the others as well. We have borrowed them from the library from time to time and they are all really good.
I bought some glitter zoo animal stickers from the dollar tree this weekend. I let Sawyer draw a zoo scene and I drew one for Jax.

Then they put stickers all over the zoo. I had the boys name all of the animals and their sounds. Jax is pretty good with his animal sounds. He loves the bebra (zebras). I liked these stickers because they had texture. They were easier for Jax to grip than flat stickers.


We also made animal tracks one day. I had the boys paint with some of their animals. They had a blast making tracks all over the paper. I found this idea on No Time for Flash cards.

When they finished I let them wash the animals in warm soapy water. I pulled chairs up to the sink, so they could give the zoo animals a bath. We talked about how the zoo keepers take care of the real animals at the zoo.
I was hoping we would get to take a trip to the zoo this week, but I don't think we will be able to.

Weekly Activities: Y week

Well, we finished up y week. I am glad, because like I said before there are not too many y words. Thursday the boys were eating yogurt and Jax made a huge mess as usual. I decided to give him a piece of paper and let him paint with his yogurt. Plus, yogurt starts with Y. Hooray! He had a blast, but Sawyer didn't want to join in. He said yogurt doesn't go on paper. I told him it was o.k., but he was not interested.I don't have any pics, because my battery was charging that morning.
I changed out their buckets this week. I tried to incorporate y in a couple of the buckets. I put yellow play-doh and a few tools in one bucket. Another bucket had yarn and this water bottle.
Jax did this twice for short periods of time and I don't even know if Sawyer touched it all week. Oh, well.
They both loved transferring water from bowl to bowl. Sawyer was able to get his own water and bring it to the tray. The good thing about this is that when they spilled they just used the sponges to wipe up the mess.

In another bucket I put multi-colored pom poms, tweezers, and an egg carton. Jax loved this activity, but he wasn't able to really use the tweezers. He wanted me to help him and he was trying so hard.


I bought these foam beads at the dollar tree last week. Sawyer enjoyed it. Jax wasn't able to get the beads on, but he could get them off and he also liked to stack them.


They both had fun playing with stickers. Last week I had stickers in a bucket and they weren't interested at all. This week I took them out, but they asked to do stickers just about every day. Sawyer loves these sticker books from Chic-fil-a.

Another option I gave the boys was flower arranging with yellow flowers. They each tried this for about 2 minutes on Monday and then moved on.
I have changed out the buckets and am looking forward to another week of learning with my boys. We will be starting the letter z today.

Letter Y

This week we are learning about the letter Y. There are not a ton of words that start with Y, so I am trying my best. We talked about yogurt, yarn, yellow, yippee, and yo-yos. Sawyer said, "what's a yo-yo?"
The first activity we did is glue yarn to construction paper.

It was simple enough for both boys to do without much help. I just put glue on Jax's paper and he put put the yarn on.

Yesterday, I brought out the shaving cream. Both of the boys love this activity. I like to do prewriting practice by having Sawyer write letters in the cream. He wrote a couple of letters, but he was more interested in just smashing it around.
Today we made yellow y collages. First, they colored the y yellow with colors and markers.
Then they glued on yellow paper and put on yellow stickers.
My poor kids are never fully dressed for these pictures. Jaxon had just eaten lunch, so i took his shirt off so he wouldn't make a mess. Sawyer had just used the bathroom and didn't put his pants back on. They really do have plenty of clothes.

Weekly Activities: Easter Theme

I have been reading a lot of tot school blogs this past week. I really found a lot of good ideas on this blog and other links on her blog. I have started to incorporate the "tot tray" idea. Instead of trays I am using colored buckets, since that is what I have. I am going to fill 4-6 new buckets each week with different activities and let the kids choose what they like to do. I had great success with some and not so much with others, but that is what learning together is all about. We were also all sick this week, so I didn't do everything I had planned.

Jaxon's absolute favorite thing to do this week was put noodles into this water bottle lid. He chose this activity almost every day. Sawyer enjoyed it too. He would put 4 or 5 noodles in at once, but Jaxon took his time and carefully put one noodle in at a time. We used spaghetti and small shells.


In another bucket I hid small toys in this Easter grass. I drew pictures of the objects and had Sawyer match the object to the picture. J had fun just digging in the grass for the toys. We did this once and only once, because the grass was a mess. I am still finding it all over my house. Next time I would just cut up green paper for the grass. They enjoyed it and I am glad we did it, but I hid it in the closet the rest of the week, because I just couldn't handle the mess it made.


Another big hit this week was play-doh. I gave the boys Easter cookie cutters, a few play-doh tools, and play-doh and they had a blast. J was concentrating so hard.

I filled another bucket with plastic Easter eggs. On each egg I wrote a capital letter and the lower case letter, so they could match the eggs by color and letter. I knew this would be too hard for Jax, but thought Sawyer would enjoy it. Well, J enjoyed throwing the eggs around and so did S. He matched a few of the eggs, but it didn't hold his attention for very long. He only chose this activity once or twice. He did have fun sorting them into colors.
S also enjoyed cutting paper this week. Another activity I had that neither boy chose was putting stickers on egg cut outs. Usually S loves playing with stickers, but he wasn't interested this week.
He did really enjoy playing with his opposite puzzle and stamping. These were unplanned activities that he asked to do.

All in all it was a good week and I look forward to changing out the buckets and trying some new activities. We also did structured crafts and activities that I posted through out the week. I enjoyed teaching Sawyer about the true meaning of Easter this week. Today he has been telling everyone, "Happy Easter, Jesus lives!" Indeed He does!

More Easter Crafts

We have all been sick this week, so we haven't been able to do all the things I planned. On the other hand we have been home non-stop, so we have done quite a bit. Yesterday I started feeling better, so I took Sawyer outside to pick dandelions. There weren't too many dandelions, so he also picked some grass.

I let him paint with them when we came inside. He wasn't interested in it at first. Then I tried it myself. I guess it looked like fun, because he joined in.

This week I have been telling the boys about the Easter story. We have read a little part each day. Today we talked about how Christ's tomb was empty. We also did this craft.

The boys painted each side of a paper plate. Neither of them wanted any help.
I used a rolled up paper sack as the stone. I also drew my own angel. I am really a pitiful artist. I am not very crafty either, but my kids don't seem to mind. I hope that it helps Sawyer to remember the story.

Hand Print Bunnies

I helped the boys make bunnies using their hand prints. I just painted their palm, pointer finger, and pinky with white paint and placed them on the paper. I had them paint a nose on and I drew the eyes and mouth. I cut them out and let them glue them to the paper.

Then they colored the paper. There are cuter things with this I could have done with this, but this was simple and fun for them. We are all sick this week, so simple is good.

Sweet Art

After we did the jelly bean graph I decided to let the boys paint with peeps.
Sawyer saw these and wanted me to buy them. He doesn't like marshmallows and I think they are gross, but I saw on someone's blog that they painted with peeps.
They work like little sponges and make cute bunny prints. I didn't get any pictures of Jax, because I didn't want to leave his side. I was so afraid he would try to eat the paint covered peep. He didn't seem to realize it was edible though, and enjoyed painting.
I also let them glue a few jelly beans on the paper.