Tot School: Life Skills

This week was full of classes and Summer camps, so we had very little time for "lessons" at home. Instead, I tried to incorporate some "life skills" into what we did.

After Princess-themed ballet camp, we played dress-up at home (since I was the only Mommy who hadn't even thought to bring a Princess dress for camp. Poor little Matchstick Girl was the only one in tights and a leotard.) We busted out her jewelry box, and she adorned us both with rings and bracelets. And snazzy reading glasses (dollar store) with the lenses popped out. She put the bracelets on in a specific order, totally mysterious to me. And she chose some for me to wear.
So she worked on sharing, cooperation, sorting, and imagination. [I worked on not falling unconscious, since I didn't get a nap, and it had been a long day.]

At camp they also made a cute, easy craft. Pre-made cone party hats decorated with curling ribbon (either glued to the tip or tied through the hole,) stick-on gems, and Target Dollar Spot or Dollar Tree foam stickers (they're better than the craft store ones because the foam is much thinner, which helps them to stay on the curved surface.)
I would also like to note that there were roughly 30 kids in her ballet camp, and the teachers had written each Princess' name on a paper grocery sack (to put their shoes and wands and finished crafts and snacks-from-home in.) Z was able to find her own bag, without any coaching from me! I was super excited, especially since the names were hand-written, instead of typed, and they used upper- and lowercase letters, whereas Z and I have mostly focused on all uppercase for her name. She was very proud of herself too, and guarded that bag like a favored toy. I was especially pleased that, despite them moving it between activities as new girls showed up late, Z was still able to find it when she came back out for a cry and a drink, snack time, and after camp. (It was a drop-off camp, but she wasn't ready to be dropped off, so we're practicing. I stayed in the lobby and she tried to stay in the class and listen to and be comforted by the teacher for as long as she could stand. After 60 minutes, her internal timer went off, and she was done. Other than preschool, where I've either been in the room or in an adjacent room the whole time, all her classes have been 45-60 minutes each. I thought it was funny that she knew when class should be over, even though there were still 2 hours to go, since this was a Summer camp. She took a breather with me, a sip of water to help cool her down, then agreed to go back in to the dance class for a few minutes until snack time. After snack, she was excited about crafts and story time.)

We've been working on perfecting her pouring skills lately. I'd bought a small pitcher from Tupperware at a fair booth last Summer, but got tired of cleaning up all the spills. She would pour until the pitcher was empty, rather than pour until the container was full, and I'm afraid I neglected to bother with it the rest of the year. So this time I've been coaching her through each pour, reminding her to do little dribs at a time to avoid spills. I fill it with milk for breakfasts, and let her pour it into her cereal and drinking cup. For dinner one night, she wanted juice, and I thought it might be fun to let her use one of the fancy china teacups and saucers I had bought at the thrift store for us to play tea party. (And for my MOMS Club Mother's Day Tea, which she loved.) I paid less than $1 at Value Village for each cup/saucer set, so I won't be upset if they break, and she gets to practice being extra-special careful with fragile grown-up things.
She was very careful pouring her grape juice, and didn't have any spills. She also was careful with her cup and saucer. She got to feel like a "big girl," and gained a lot of confidence for her success, and my trust in her.
This activity worked on pouring (life skill,) hand-eye coordination, being careful, pretend-play, success=confidence and self-sufficiency.

We also did some other things, but no photos were taken. She spent the weekend out on the driveway playing with her "outside toys" (Happy Meal toys and random things found while sorting through boxes) and coloring while Mommy and Daddy sorted through yet more boxes that have been sitting stagnant or accumulating in the garage for the past 11 years (Weekend 5, and almost done! Finally!) After we quit for the day and put everything back, she came to the backyard where Daddy had been doing some yardwork (most of the stuff in the garage is mine, so he lugs the boxes out for me to sort, then lugs them back into the "sell" or "keep" piles and kills time by mowing or hacking at blackberries, or the fallen trees in the backyard.)
She found my husband's saw (whatever the regular, non-electric kind is called,) and I offered to show her how it works and let her help me. I showed her the jagged bits on the blade and told her that they were sharp, and told her that it is not a toy and not for her to pick up. Then we picked a branch on the fallen plum tree and she held the handle with both hands and I helped her saw through the branch. She enjoyed it so much, we did it again, but then the larger branches were too far in and we were getting poked by the littler ones, so we put the saw away.
Skills: teamwork, being careful, effort=results, success=confidence

We also found 2 cherries on our cherry tree (in the 11 years we've lived here, I have never seen a cherry. My husband says they've been there and that the birds and squirrels eat them all, but this is the first time I've ever seen any!) We lifted Z up and she got to pick them herself. They were sooooo tiny. Practically just pit and skin. But she was thrilled with her bounty, and said they tasted really good.
We also have raspberry canes that we planted this year, and I was surprised to find berries growing! But it looked like something had been eating them before they were ripe. They'd get light orange, then next thing you know I'd find the core hanging there but no berry!

My husband said maybe they were ripe and falling off, so I went to check and see if they were ripe when orange. Apparently so! I'd been waiting for red ones, so we've been missing out! There were three orange ones, so after I found that they came off with the gentlest of tugs when light orange, I let Z pick the other two. She got to eat all three, so I can't tell you how they tasted, but she was thrilled.
Skills: patience, nature science (gardening and life cycles,) effort=results

She did get to play with a few "educational" toys (really, I view all unstructured play as educational. Maybe just to justify going online while she plays in her dollhouse. But I really do feel that creative play by herself is good for her too.) She played a Fisher Price Little People Bingo by herself, where she'd flip over a chit and then place it onto it's matching picture on a bingo card, until she'd done them all. She also had me get out this new mosaic picture toy I found at Winco (couldn't find it online, but Amazon has a few magnetic ones that look similar: a beginner one and a more advanced.) Ours isn't magnetic, and she had a hard time getting the triangular pieces into the slots. So she decided to just do the squares for now. And she only uses the picture design as a guide. Sometimes she was just in the mood for a big blue line across the middle. Since I feel that the process is more important than the results, I didn't push her to do it "the right way," and just let her be free to express herself.

Skills: fine motor, creative expression, self-confidence

 Linking this up with Tot School this week too!

Tot School: A is for Alpaca

Since we started the week out with a visit to an Alpaca Ranch, I decided "A" would be a good theme for this week!

The gift shop at the Ranch even had a book - "A is for Alpaca!" to go with the knit alpaca finger puppet (made from alpaca fiber yarn!) that I also purchased. We read that while eating our lunch on their lawn (and again on the potty at home, and at bedtime, and the next morning...)

It's kind of cute, and has a lot of great information ("B is for Bolivia. Alpacas come from three countries in South America: Bolivia, Chile and Peru." (plus a map of S. America with those 3 countries in different colors, and their names in the text in matching colors.) "C is for cria. A baby alpaca is called a cria.") There are some weak ones, such as "E is for end products. Alpaca fiber can be used to make beautiful garments and blankets." But overall, a nice little lesson in alpacas.

Later, we also read "The Apple Pie Tree" which I found super cheap at a garage sale or thrift store or something, but she loses interest before the end. Which is too bad. *I* think it's an adorable read, about a little girl watching their apple tree grow and change throughout the seasons, until they get enough apples to make a pie! But to be fair, I tend to lose interest in most of the books she requests (over and over and over)... often before I've even opened them!

After the Ranch, we stopped at a park near our house. The Parks Department has volunteers (or low-paid employees!) bringing activities to select parks in our city, along with free lunches through the school district.

So I used some of their sidewalk chalk to start our lessons!

She thought the legs I drew were too wide,
so I made 'grass' to help camouflage the extra lines!

After we got home, I set up a little outdoor water play, in the plastic swimming pool I just got at Rite Aid. I wasn't in the mood to do up a new sensory tub. But we did this just for fun. I didn't bother trying to make it all about "A." I'm just too tired. I'm FINALLY looking forward to being trapped in the car with her because she fell asleep on the way home from something (so I can get a nap in too!)... aaaaaand she stops napping. I think I'll wait until the next one is in school full time before trying to get pregnant again. This is ridiculous!
We had several inflatable pools, but when it gets super hot, they pop or melt or something. And I sure didn't want to be deflating and re-inflating them every time, so they were too big to store inside. And since they are so lightweight, we'd keep the water in them so they wouldn't blow away. The raccoons living under our porch use them for washing, so the ones we had out last year got pretty thrashed by them too.
So this year I'm trying out a hard shell one. Harder to store, but we're clearing the garage, so hopefully we'll manage!

I keep all her 'beach toys' in a large plastic basket/beach bag thing in the garage, so they were handy. I got out her water/sand wheel, and let her choose what else to play with. To go with her plastic tea set (Dollar Tree,) she chose an octopus sand mold (and after the picture, a bunch of other animal shapes too.) She enjoyed 'serving' them all tea!
And we just found a stash of empty spray bottles (used for water for my tie-dye playdate last year) to replace the one that came with her Melissa and Doug gardening set that she busted. (The bag and matching watering can got appropriated by me when we started our garden pots. But I found metal child-size tools at Target's Dollar Spot (also Fred Meyer) that I use instead of the plastic ones that came with the set. I also bought cheap gloves in the Dollar Spot for me, and spendier Dora gardening gloves for The Princess ($5 or $6, but they fit her tiny hands perfectly! Totally worth it!)
She spent at least an hour spraying my car, my husband's car, my legs, the pool, the garage door, you name it!

Later in the week, after I finally got the printer to work (just in time to print 2 pages and run out of ink...) I had her work on some fabulous free printable Aa worksheet activities from 1+1+1=1 (If you want more of a religious theme to your lessons, or to incorporate that as well, there is also a religious Aa themed printables pack and post.) I have a laminating machine, but it's still in the box until I shovel clear off space on my desk. So I put the activities in page protectors, and let her use non-toxic dry-erase markers to 'practice' her writing. (I call it practice, since she gets so frustrated that her lines aren't perfect. So I remind her that she is practicing, and learning and will get better the more she tries and doesn't give up and throw everything on the floor.)

*Just a heads up (although Carisa has a great troubleshooting post about it,) if you are having graphical issues when printing her stuff, try using Firefox web browser to bring the downloads up in, and make sure you have the most current version of Adobe. In hindsight, I would have tried just the browser one first, since Google Chrome has been giving me lots of other issues lately (such as not being able to update my GOOGLE BLOGGER SITE while on THE GOOGLE CHROME BROWSER!!! AAARGH!) I'm not sure what was causing my problems, since I downloaded both before trying again, but I went from getting black boxes behind any text or graphics she imposed over another image, to getting perfect pages! Well... 2 perfect pages. Then my printer danced a jig on my patience and demanded new ink, which I didn't have. I gave up and threw everything on the floor made my husband fix it and print the rest.

I will be linking this up to 1+1+1=1's Tot School

and JDaniel4's Mom's Read.Explore.Learn.

    

Tot School: Red, White and Blue Sensory Tubs

Rather than going to the effort of dying rice or noodles doing one red/white/blue tub, I decided to do 3 tubs this week - one for each color!

Red

Red flowers, pompoms, gems, ball, manta rays, car, and foam circles, plus Rr and 4

Since I chose to start with red and go in order (Red, White and Blue!) I also chose an Rr theme. Plus I tossed in some 4s for 4th of July, which had prompted the color theme to begin with. So Red Rubies and manta Rays (from a sea life packet at Dollar Tree) to go with the Rr theme as well. I popped the flowers off a multicolored stem from the Dollar Tree (came with red, orange and yellow, and we also got one with pinks and purples. I saved the stem cluster, to let her try and fit them back on as a fine-motor-skills/hand-eye-coordination tray activity sometime.) The ball came from her ball pit, and the foam circles were cut-outs from some foam shapes that I turned into picture frames for a holiday craft. (She likes to pretend they are tomato slices in her play kitchen, so I started saving them from the V-Day and Xmas crafts.) The car is from her Little People garage.
I don't have any pictures of her playing with it, since she started it while I was in the shower one morning. And she tends to spread the contents out fairly quickly if I'm not on her to keep them in the tub or sorting tray.

 White

"White Bunny," white mini tea set, pompoms,
Littlest Pet Shop kitty, and clear mini marbles

This one's not as interesting, and I dropped the Rr and 4 theme because I'm lazy it just didn't make as much sense with the white. Since she's been busting out her mini tea set ($2 at Fred Meyer) to feed beans to all her little dolls and Ponies and Pet Shops anyway, I decided to incorporate it. Plus I couldn't scrounge up a whole lot of white stuff.
We got White Bunny at the Dollar Tree. She saw it and HAD to have it. Until we stopped off at another Dollar Tree later that day and she found Orange Bunny. Exactly the same mangy little bunny, but in a sickly orange-yellow. All my pompoms are also from Dollar Tree. The red and white ones happen to be from a red/white/green/black set they carry at Christmas.
I found some mini clear decorator marbles at Michael's and they were heinously overpriced, but they gave me 25% off since the bag was ripped and some had fallen out. I originally got them for her marble maze, which I found at a garage sale for $1. Regular-size marbles don't fit, and it didn't come with any. So I was jazzed to find these. I had figured I'd have to go to a hardware store or something to find smaller ball bearings.

Her favorite part of the white tub was using the pompoms as food. She fed me loads and loads of "fluffy cake" and "cotton candy." 

As part of our white theme, since it was nice out that day, we also busted out her Moon Sand. I had found a barely used set at a garage sale last year for a few dollars that came with an inflatable play area to use it in, plus some sea-themed molds where the letters for the word of each shape form the design. So the "castle" mold has big and little letters stylized to make a castle. It's hard to describe. Anyway, it came with red white and blue sand. I just got out the white. I also busted open a basket of seashells from Dollar Tree and let her use those with it. I later added some of the white shells to her white tub theme.

Blue

White petals, blue necklace, snap-together people, foam squares,
pompoms, stringing beads and string

I had just found these white petals at a party supply store ($10/bag, but I had a $20 Groupon that I'd paid only $10 for, so I essentially got everything half-off!) I only used around 1/3 of the bag, so there were puh-lenty of petals for $10! I opted to switch out the beans for a few reasons. 1) I was tired of them. 2) I was tired of picking them up. 3) I thought the white petals would go well with the overall red/white/blue theme for the week, even though we were now on blue, and 4) I was really tired of those beans!

Pompoms came from a bold colors set from Dollar Tree, petals from Everything Party, and everything else from Target. The necklace was part of a 4-color set in the party favors section for $1.

The first thing she started doing was take everything out of the tub. I have a party tray I got from the Dollar Tree that I give to her for sorting stuff from her bin. This was the first time she actually sorted like-items into different compartments.

She sorted everything out of the bin.... to get to all the beads! She'd string them on as she found them, which made it more fun. Not just a dump-everything-out-fest.

(Ignore the mess in the background... I sure do!)

Red bin costs: $1 each for the gems, flowers, pompoms and manta rays. The beans and bin have been used before, so I'm not counting them. And technically, so have the gems. And the pompoms were bought ages ago for my crafting stash. The manta rays were part of a sea life set from Dollar Tree, which I bought in general for sensory tub supplies. I have a whole lot of stuff waiting in the wings now!
White bin costs: $2 tea set (which technically we've had for a few weeks, and wasn't bought to go into her bin,) $4-5 for the mini marbles (which I actually didn't even buy for her tub. She just dumped them all in after I bought them.) $1 for the pompoms (although as they came in the same packet as the red ones which I'd already used, it shouldn't count.)
Plus $1 for the sea shells, which went in after she played with her Moon Sand. I think the Moon Sand set was around $5. But I bought it last year, so I'm not counting it. Ross Dress for Less has some Moon Sand sets for $5-12 right now ($12-30 on Amazon for the same sets!) Didn't find any with an inflatable play area, but you could easily use a plastic tub.
Blue bin costs: $1 each for 2 packets of interlocking people, 2 packets of lacing beads, foam blocks, necklace and pompoms. $5ish (after coupon) for the petals.
Realistically, my total cost of stuff bought for all these sensory tubs is only $14. And that's for the stuff bought specifically to go into tubs. Not stuff I had bought for other purposes that I (or she) decided to toss in. And not counting stuff re-used from previous tubs (like the beans, or using a second color from the same packet of pompoms.)

Target's Dollar Spot has some great little sets for sensory tubs and activity trays right now. They had jumbo nuts and bolts, which I can use for color, shape or tools themes. Each color has a differently shaped nut and bolt head (triangle, hexagon, plus and square.) Great on an activity tray by themselves for matching color/shape of the bolt with the nut, and also great for screwing on and off practice. ("Lefty loosey, righty tighty!")

Also for $1 per bag, you can get 12 interlocking people. 3 each of 4 colors. The heads snap between the legs and the "hands" and "feet" snap into the elbows. They were kind of hard to slide in, I had to just jam them. But she was able to fit the heads into the legs no problem. Also great for color, circus, puzzle or people theme, or on an activity tray all by themselves.

There were also bags of plastic beads with laces in these same colors, but I had already dumped all the blue beads into the bin and didn't want to fish them out to take a photo. She really enjoyed finding all the beads and lacing them on to the string. That was her favorite part of any of the bins this week. Too bad I hadn't found them earlier in the week!
The blue foam squares also came from Target's Dollar Spot. There was a package with several shapes, each in a different color, that will be great for sorting activities, as well as shape and color themes. There were also foam clocks with movable hands, and some money, math and clock wipe-off worksheets. Fun stuff!

I plan on linking up to Tot School this Sunday (since I totally blew it and forgot to post the Sunday before 4th of July! Doh!)

Tot School: Our First Sensory Bin!

Inspired by 1+1+1=1's sensory bins, plus the fact that the sensory table was Z's favorite station at preschool, I decided to make a sensory bin at home. Plus hopefully it will help reinforce phonics and letters, which she refuses to participate with or learn from me. But if she knows that everything in the box starts with a 'D,' say, and says the words out loud as she plays with them, eventually we could graduate to sorting out items that don't belong. (Right now, when looking at a group of 4 items, say a dog, a snake, a rock and a dinosaur; and asking her which ones start with a "duh, duh" sound, then saying each name, she'll confirm that they all start with "duh." Until I put an actual "duh" sound at the beginning. "Oh, so it's a Dnake?" Frustrating. Sadly, I'm not a very patient teacher. Plus she usually just rolls her eyes at me and throws random answers without thinking whenever I ask her anything educational. Seriously. This kid refuses to learn directly from me.)

The Dollar Tree has cheap bins, but I wanted something a little sturdier, so I sprung for the $2.50 one at Winco. They had a $5 one with a lid, which I am now kicking myself for not buying, since it would make clean-up and storage so much easier. But it wasn't the thick Rubbermaid-type rubber. Ah well. I found 4-lb bags of pinto beans fairly cheap, so I got 2. Turns out I only needed 1. So make a note. 4 pounds of beans is perfect for these bins!

Fred Meyer has tubes of plastic animals on an endcap in their toy section for $1 each. I got frogs, insects, dinosaurs, farm animals and sea animals. Plus Dollar Tree has baggies of lizards, snakes, bugs and such periodically as well. I also found a basket of seashells at Dollar Tree, and a baggie of Autumn-colored gems. I got travel Scrabble and Rummikub games cheap at garage sales to scavenge for number and letter tiles. I also had a set of foam magnet lowercase letters, and small plastic cheapie uppercase. Plus various Melissa and Doug (and cheapie generics) shaped wooden magnets with pictures (MandD has a nice set of letter ones too, uppers and lowers!) And cookie cutters and molds from her Play-Doh sets. Somewhere we have tweezers, and I found a fun child-size spaghetti scoop in a Sneaky Chef Lotsa Pasta recipe/cooking set that is perfect for scooping and sifting with these beans.

She chose a "D" and dinosaur theme to start with, which was fairly easy, since I knew I only had the one packet of plastic dinos, so I only had to sift through her magnets to find some D's. She saw the baggie of Autumn-colored gems, and wanted to play with those too, so I decided to just let her, even though they didn't go with the theme, since this was our first attempt at a "lesson" using her toys. Then it occurred to me that they could be diamonds! (Yeah, yeah. I know. Wrong color. Sue me.) I also tossed in some silicone mini muffin liners from World Market ($3/12) to sort things into.

So she Dug for Dinosaurs, Diamonds and big and little D letters (she was confused, since the "little D's" were actually larger than the "big D's." I'll have to start calling them uppercase and lowercase) and put them into silcone Dishes. [I was actually a little pleased with myself for that one. Another "D."]

While she played, I scavenged in her Play-Doh tools bin and plastic animals sets for dolphin, duck and dog animals, cutters and molds, to reinforce the letter D tomorrow. Naturally, she had to add in all the new friends, so now I'll have to sort them all out again. Bleh. They all gathered around the dishes of "food" (beans and 'diamonds') on a tray I got out to keep the beans off the floor.

Now, all the homeschool blogs I read, with their sensory bins, have other lesson plans. Tracing letters, cutting exercises, sorting activities, maybe even a book to go along with the theme. Well. I'm not that organized. I'm just getting started, so this is all you get... for now. I did just get Danny and the Dinosaur at the thrift store, so we read that (a few times!)

Bin: $2.50, Beans: $3.50-$4.50 (I forget,) Dinosaurs: $1, Gems: $1, Magnet letters, silicone dishes and scoop already had: free (should be easy to scavenge similar items from around the house, if you want to try this. One of those spoons for spaghetti with wooden pegs sticking out (like a hairbrush, almost) might be fun too, for the beans to carom around between the pegs.) Total: $9 (used higher estimate on the beans.) and the bin and beans can be re-used with other themes as well. So just $2 for bin-specific items. And the gems weren't even originally FOR this. But I can use them for color themes (orange, red and yellow,) G for gem, J for jewel, and Autumn theme. Even a Princess theme.
Remember: a packet of farm animals can be good for A: Animals, F: Farm, or split up for other themes, like C: cow, D: duck, H: horse, etc! Ducks can go with birds for a B: Bird theme, they can be used to sort mammals from birds from amphibians later on too! And eventually you can toss in things that don't belong, so they can use reasoning and thinking skills to decide why a duck shouldn't be in the F-themed or Ocean-themed boxes. (Or justify why it SHOULD! "Ducks have F-feathers!")

I highly recommend the free printables and lesson ideas from 1+1+1=1 (be sure to check out the Tot Books and Tot Packs!) and Totally Tots. Really leaves almost no work for me to come up with lessons and activities, if only I would actually get around to doing them! There's even a dinosaur theme Tot Book, Tot Pack and links to dinosaur-themed lesson posts! It's like I don't even need to show up! (On the Totally Tots site, just enter 'dinosaur' into the search box for some more fun lesson and craft ideas!)

I plan on linking this up to Sunday's Tot School linky

and JDaniel4's Mom's Read. Explore. Learn linky on Friday