December Sensory Bin

Yesterday I switched out Alex's sensory bin. I did a winter/ Christmas theme.

Everything in it came from the Dollar Tree. It cost $5 total. It has cotton balls, some glittery craft foam snowflakes, trees and snowmen, 6 jingle bells, 12 Christmas themed erasers and 2 snowman boxes with covers. Alex has been having fun with it, he really likes putting the bells in the boxes and shaking them up.

C is for Cold

~Alex is 33 months~

So we started working on the alphabet again. Today we did C is for Cold. Partly because Alex loves to watch Leapfrogs Letter Factory (the letter C's are cold in it) and partly because it is cold out now.  We bundled up and took walk in a nearby small downtown area. It was nice to get some fresh air, and we did a little window shopping. When we came back Alex did a letter C with his Do A Dots.

We read Winter Friends by Carl R Sams II. Its a cute little board book with great illustrations

Then we made a snowman out of cotton balls. I drew the snowman shape out on a piece of blue construction paper with a piece of chalk then I painted on the glue and let Alex apply the cotton balls. I helped him add the felt and foam details and he drew some snow on with chalk.

I also froze some little trinkets in a piece of ice for Alex to explore. I used a few glittery craft foam snow flakes, and trees, a letter C that I cut out of foam, a red jewel, a little gingerbread eraser and a piece of red string. I gave Alex a bowl of warm water and a turkey baster to use to melt the ice. I also gave him some tweezers to help get the trinkets out of the ice.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 Wishing everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday!

Today we did a few last minute Thanksgiving activities. We did some turkey baster painting. I saw this on Little Learners Lounge Alex had fun with it.

And just for fun we baked up some pre-made turkey cookies. Alex liked to watch them bake through the oven door,

Pilgrims

This morning we watched. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It was actually on tv last night, but it was too late for Alex so I recorded it to watch this morning. I had never seen it before, it was cute. Alex enjoyed it.

There was also a little bonus cartoon called The Mayflower Voyagers

After watching Charlie Brown's version of the first Thanksgiving we made a shape pilgrim. I cut all the pieces out of contruction paper and then helped Alex glue them together. He is good placing the facial features (eyes, mouth etc.), but the other pieces where kind of hard for him to know where to place them.

Shapes we used

It was cold, but we played outside for a bit until Alex soaked himself with a container filled with rain water.

So silly.....

After we dried off we did some Do-A-Dot pictures of Pilgrims and Native Americans that I got from here.

Turkey Fun

Today we did a few turkey related activities, as I mentioned in the previous post we taking the week off from doing the alphabet so we could do some Thanksgiving related activities.

We made a paper plate turkey that was from a kit that I got at Micheal's. It was a simple directional gluing craft. It came out pretty cute. Alex still needs a lot of help getting the pieces in the right place, but seems to do better when I lay the glue down for him. I think he came out pretty cute.

We also played with some homemade play dough. I got this great play dough idea and recipe from Counting Coconuts blog.

 At first we used a turkey cookie cutter, but that got boring fast. So I made 2 balls, a large one for the body and a smaller on for his head, we added some googly eyes and Alex had a lot of fun adding all colored craft feathers.

The feathers were tickling his face. LOL

The weather broke for a bit. We've had rain and dreary, cloudy weather for almost 2 weeks here, so we decided to go outside and play. I quickly made up a batch of turkeys that I could hide around the yard so Alex could go on a turkey hunt. He loves any kind of hide and seek or scavenger hunt games so I knew he would be a hit.

 For these cards I just printed a clip art turkey and taped one colorful craft feather to the back. I gave him a little bag to collect them in and off he went.

Thanksgivinig Activities

~Alex is 32 months~

So I decided to take a break for the alphabet so we could do some of the fun Thanksgiving activities I have seen in the blog world.

We read Five Silly Turkeys  by Salina Yoon

This is a cute little Thanksgiving counting book, it counts backward from five. Very similar to Ten Terrible Dinosaurs that we read the other week. 


We went for a walk even though it was gray and dismal outside. Woody HAD to come with us.

Woody climbed  a tree.

We made a hand print turkey. Alex put red, orange and yellow hand prints on a piece of paper. Then I cut out a circle and oval out of a brown paper bag for the body. I drew on the details and then we glued on some googly eyes. Then I cut out the turkey.

 Then Alex worked on sorting people and food from 1+1+1=1 Thanksgiving Preschool Pack

and we did some puzzles from Lawteedah's Thanksgiving Tot Kit

We haven't used our cardboard blocks for a while so I pulled them out and Alex had a great time building towers and then destroying them. 

and that was our day....

I'm sharing this on We Play  Show and Tell  Read.Explore.Learn and  Thanksgiving for Toddlers linky party

B is for Bubble

~Alex is 32 months~

We read Sesame Street's Bubbles Bubbles

I think I got this a couple years ago in the Target dollar section. Alex still likes it. It has cute rhyme and illustrations.

We also watched these videos. B is for bubbles a classic Sesame Street clip and Salamander's Bubble Counting Song.


We attempted to do some bubble painting. Alex ended up taking a sip of the soap bubbles through the straw, gagging and then throwing up. (Worst Mom of the Year award here)  So if you try this make sure your little one doesn't drink it! Alex is fine, he drank some juice, ate some snacks and quickly recovered. Hopefully I didn't traumatize him about using straws.

Before the incident photos

Then we tried to do some bubble stamping. This didn't work too well either. You are suppose dip a paper towel roll or tp roll in paint. It is suppose to create a bubble that you can stamp on paper. Our paint didn't make bubbles but Alex had fun making circles anyway.

I got these bubbles at Michael's and we decided to check them out. They are suppose to last longer then regular bubbles and not leave a wet sudsy mess. They do leave little sticky white spot on things though. We had fun though chasing and catching them.

and of course we played in the sink with some bubble bath

Lastly we lined up some paper bubble in order of size. I found a bubble clipart and just printed out a sheet with 6 different sizes and then cut them out. Alex had never tried sizing items before and he did surprisingly well once I told him how it was suppose to go.