Then, with the leftovers, we made some sea creature magnets for the refrigerator (jelly fish, sea horse, starfish, Nemo, angelfish and other tropical fish) and they turned out great! Felt is super easy to work with, even with beginner skills like mine. 
Here's a sneak peak at my newest project. I'm almost done with the cutting process and just need to work on the time consuming sewing/embellishing process. Can't wait to show you how it turns out!! 
This week was a little tough. The boys started the week off with their 7th respiratory infection of the winter - this is way past ridiculous - so they weren't into that many activities and they were much more whiney than normal. It's hard to find motivation for learning when you're just trying to keep them happy! It was also a little tough because I feel like I'm in a rut with my color work. It seems like I'm doing the same activities every week but just swapping out one color for another and even I'm getting bored with it. We don't have our printer set up at home, so most of the activities I do have to be either with toys/items that we already have or I have to draw/create them from hand. It's hard to find the time to do that! I'm really going to try to be more creative this week though for Orange and Yellow. I decided to combine them to hopefully give me more ideas for activities.
We looked through our book about colors and identified different red items. We reviewed the green and blue pages from the last two weeks too and they remembered most of the objects. I was surprised that when I would point in a general direction to a pile of cars and say 'bring me the red car' that they could actually do it by the end of the week! It doesn't hurt that their favorite vehicles right now are fire engines and ambulences!
We reviewed our shapes and colors with these Sesame Street flash cards from our Dollar Store too. They were more interested in the characters than identifying the shapes, but it kept them entertained for a little while.
Play-doh is always a hit too, especially with cookie cutters. I'm not sure how I can make this activity more advanced or more educational though - any ideas? I'm looking for ways to take everyday household items and use them for Tot School to gain skills without buying new things every week....
... Like this!! This was my favorite project/activity of the week and the boys totally loved it! I had bought a pack of colored foam paper from Target on clearance and had no idea what to do with it. I had some leftover velcro and a cardboard box too, so I went to work with my cookie cutters and made this little game for the boys. I just gave them the red pieces this week, but I made red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple shapes for them to match. There's actually two boards for them to work with, but that's only after we're using all the colors together. I can't believe how good they are at matching up the right piece to the right outline! Eli is my Mr. Meticulous! He lines them up perfectly and makes sure each piece of velcro has a solid stick to the board. Eventually, I'm going to color in the shapes with corresponding colors so they can practice both shape matching AND color matching with the same activity, but for now, I just wanted them to get the hang of the game.
We were supposed to go to a Touch-a-Truck event this weekend but it poured down rain so it was cancelled until further notice. Bummer! The boys would have loved all those red vehicles!
This week's theme was blue and ocean animals and the boys had a great time with some of the new activities that we tried. I think I want to incorporate more of the 'traditional' tot school activities next week, with more intentionality on fine/gross motor skills, but for now, these things will have to do!
We had a couple fun snacks this week to tie into the theme: blueberry pancakes and blueberry banana parfaits, berry blue jello and shark shaped crackers, just to name a few.
I printed out some magnet pages from Making Learning Fun - the blue horse from Brown Bear, Brown Bear and the Whale and Octopus from the Ocean themes. We used blue do-a-dots, crayons and play-doh to fill in the circles, and we used flattened marbles on the white circles too. They have a hard time with the marbles because they want them to 'click' into place like a puzzle piece, which they don't do. Maybe velcro might be a better option because they can stick the pieces where they belong.
The weather was perfect this week for playing outside! I filled a giant Tupperware container with water and added lots of blue food coloring and smaller Tupperware pieces and they had a blast pouring and splashing.
I found a package of Sea Animal sponge pellets at the Dollar Store, the same kind that we played with as kids that dissolve into an animal shaped sponge. They really liked making the animals swim in the 'ocean' and we worked on color identification once they were all fully formed. I had to laugh when two of the 18 'sea animals' turned into a rabbit and a horse. I'm not sure how those slipped through!
A week of studying ocean animals isn't complete without watching Finding Nemo and going to the aquarium! They love Nemo, they were terrified at the aquarium... even by the clown fish! If they weren't in the stroller, they were clinging to us for dear life, so it was a bit of a challenge to get a good picture.
What a fun week! We started our color themes this week with GREEN (as well as nature, springtime and flowers) and the boys really seemed to have a good time. I started off by finding all the green toys in our house and also making a 'drop box' using green Popsicle sticks, pompoms and buttons. They loved putting each little item in the juice bottle opening and then dumping them all back out. We tried transferring the items into the bottle with the green shovel too, though they needed a lot of help keeping it steady. We looked through our color books (Shiny, Touchy, Smelly Colors and My First Colors Board Book) and the boys got really good at pointing out each item that I would ask them to identify. We built green block towers too. 
Thanks for stopping by and checking out our GREEN and NATURE activities this week. Next week we're focusing on BLUE and SEA ANIMALS - leave a comment if you have any ideas for us!
To see what other Tot Schoolers are doing this week, check out 1+1+1=1
This was a pretty busy week! We started our Tot School activities at home and then travelled from Georgia to Michigan to spend Easter with family. Here are some of the things we did while we were still at home...
They played with their Shrinky Dink Easter eggs all afternoon! (Here's the post where I made them) Looking at them, putting them in cups, pouring from one cup to the next, trying to string them on pipe cleaners and hiding them inside plastic eggs.
We used the plastic eggs to match the same colored pompoms too. They were so focused trying to open and close each egg!
We made Easter bunny hand print cards to send to the grandparents too! I first saw this idea on Tons of Fun but have seen many pictures of this craft since then too. She has some great ideas for other holidays that I'll be sure to make with the kids!
In Michigan, the boys participated in two egg hunts, painted Easter eggs and found their Easter baskets. I found a Melissa and Doug puzzle of farm animals that I'm going to use for a future Tot School theme and they got a Little People Around the Town book that I'll be able to use for lots of different themes too.
Since the boys are a little older this year, Easter was so much more fun! They weren't quite ready for the true meaning of Easter activities, so we'll be gearing up for that next year. This week's theme in Nature, Spring and the color Green. I have a couple ideas but not many days to get them done. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment!To check out what other Tot School moms are doing this week, click here
