Theme: Down on the Farm

Theme: Down on the Farm

July 1-5, 2013

O and E: almost 5!

I've been letting the boys pick the theme of the week (within reason) and this week they really wanted to learn about farm animals. One of the best strategies I've had lately for getting them both invested in what we're doing is to let them choose a specific thing within the theme as their own individual focus. Eli chose a horse as his animal of the week and Owen chose a pig. They both created a tiny book about their animal, used it for their number of the week and wrote a Can/Have/Are chart about it. Worked like a charm!

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We used a set of nouns and adjectives several different ways this week. (Don't you love it when you can reuse a material?!) They sorted them into nouns vs adjectives, sorted them into syllable piles, matched a noun and a verb to make a Mad Lib and draw a picture and put them into alphabetical order in their writing notebooks. 

I found a cute scrambled sentence game on Teachers Pay Teachers. They sorted into the right color/pattern, then made the words make the most sense. They chose their favorite silly sentence, wrote it in their writing notebook and drew a picture of it.

They LOVE anything that incorporates a magnifying glass, so these I Spy sight words pages are great! I found a cut and paste middle vowel page too (both on TpT).

These tiny books are probably my favorite thing to do with the boys. They get to use their imaginations, practice writing and spelling, draw, learn sentence structure and remember facts all in the same activity. Many times we'll space it out and complete a few pages a day until they put it all together at the end of the week. 

Owen's Pig Facts: A baby pig is called a piglet. Piglets go Oink Oink. Piglets live on the farm. Do pigs like to roll in the mud? Yes!

Eli's Horse Facts: A baby horse is called a foal. Horses run fast. Horses like to eat grass. Horses find bulls. (Not sure where that one came from!) 

SCIENCE:

Can/Have/Are charts about their individual animals. They had to come up with three for each column. Eli's been really into making hats lately - here he is sporting his 'horse hat' : )

MATH:
Today's Number. They wrote down the number of legs that 'their animal' has. Then showed it in tally marks, drew a shape with that many sides, wrote the number and tally marks for one more and one less than their number, spelled their number and drew a picture of their animal.

JUST FOR FUN: 

 Next theme: Planets!

Tot School - Ff

Tot School - Ff is for Firemen and Frogs

Owen and Eli: 38 months old

FROGS

We spent a lot of time this week reading books about how tadpoles turn into frogs and reading all sorts of frog books. Our footprint craft this week was from Pinterest and turned out pretty cute. We added the tadpoles at the bottom by painting the boys' thumbs and adding googly eyes.

FIREMEN

Our firemen printables were from Homeschool Creations and Mama's Monkeys and the boys' really liked them this week. We did the letter tracing and counting puzzles and the pre-writing practice to connect the firemen to the fires. I couldn't find a good firemen paper plate craft, so I made one up! Their handprints are supposed to be flames, I used a little creative liberty : )

We would have gotten to more this week, but I'm still getting used to THIS news! #4, due early June!

See ya next week for Letter Gg! Linking up to Tot School at 1+1+1=1

Tot School - Ff

Tot School - Theme - Ff

Owen & Eli: 30 months old

Our letter Ff activities took quite a bit longer than expected to finish because we tried our hand at potty training this month. Ha! We should have focused on F is for Fail! : ) We're taking a little break from all of that craziness and waiting a little longer (maybe until the summer so they can pee on the grass instead of on my carpet!) and instead, focused on Ff is for Feet, Fingers and Fish! Just to introduce the letters, we started with shaving cream finger painting. I drew the letters in their foam and they traced with their own fingers. What a mess! But they really enjoyed it and smelled so good when they were finished : )

We did a lot with paint for this letter too. They fingerpainted to color in their letter outlines and we foot-painted on a long pieces of paper too. They loved that part and were surprisingly good at keeping their feet on the paper. I can't believe it took me this long to purchase washable paint. Genius invention!!

I found this activity and thought it was really cute for their age group. I didn't take a picture of the finished product, but you can see it in the original post under the 'Make a Fish' heading. I think next time I might just have them paint the paper because a lot of the strips fell off after I cut the fish out.

I made Counting Fish a while back but never got around to making a 'fishing pole' for them. No worries, Cranky to the rescue! We 'caught fish' and counted how many Cranky could hold up in the air (lots of focus on Four and Five because of the Ff sound). I know they are only 2 1/2, but I really like incorporating the spelling of the words we're using during activities too. I'm sure they aren't getting it yet, but it'll come eventually!

I made a road for their cars in the shape of the letter F and f too. They filled the road with their cars and made them drive really fast too. All kinds of Ff sounds going on!

I'm really hoping to get back on the Letter per Week schedule. We'll see if twin two year olds, a seven month old, and life will let that happen! To see what other Tot Schoolers are doing, click over to 1+1+1=1