Theme: The Letter M
Honey Pot is 3 years and 1 month old
Little M&M is 15 months old
Books
We borrowed some great books from the library this week with titles containing the letter M. We read them throughout the week, and I often asked Honey Pot to identify the M in the title. Honey Pot's favorite here was Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet, followed closely by Maggie and the Monster. Little M&M favored The Moon and I particularly loved Moose Tracks. Something fun for everyone!
Pattern Blocks
I finally purchased pattern blocks for Honey Pot. The set contains about ten pictures, but there are also tons online! I found an alphabet set from Making Learning Fun. Honey Pot loved doing this!
No, she wasn't this neat. She put them all in the right places, but I helped straighten them up.
M is for Marshmallows
I am so in love with this activity that I first found at Say Yes To Hoboken. I took it a step or two further, and we were able to combine these fine motor skills and shape identification with color recognition and counting as well. First, I drew up a template using the colors that matched our toothpicks.
Honey Pot then chose and identified her first shape, and counted how many toothpicks would be needed for it. Then she collected that many in the color that matched.
Then she worked on jabbing a toothpick into the marshmallow. I did need to keep reminding her to use two hands. "One on the marshmallow and one on the toothpick." But once she remembered to do that, she did very, very well at assembling her shapes. Proud mom here.
I never pushed her to finish. After completing each shape I asked if she wanted to do another one. She always did! We first established the shape, the color we needed, counted the sides of the shape, then she assembled.
We of course recognized that the word "marshmallow" begins with the letter M. And I wanted to throw the letter recognition into the project too, so she built an M as well.
Here is the final product. Yes, there was some marshmallow sampling done as well. Ahem...from both of us.
Playdoh M
We like to use playdoh for each of our letter units. This one was a lot of fun. As always, we started with a cookie cutter.
Then she had some cake.
We keep some popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, buttons and things in her playdoh basket. So she found something to represent a candle all on her own, asked me to sing Happy Birthday to her, and blew out the candle!
I had to run with her cake idea, and bring it back around to our M theme. So I had her cutout another M, and decorate her "M cake" with button "sprinkles."
After pretending to eat it, she made another one for me. And sang Happy Birthday, of course.
Then, playdoh monsters! Her idea, not mine. But "monsters" starts with M. So I was sure to point that out while we played.
And congratulations, Little M&M, on your first playdoh experience!
M Lunch
I threw together an M lunch for Honey Pot: M-shaped cold-cuts, melons and munchies. She loved it so much. She had seconds of everything. I'm pretty sure these cupcake liners make food more appealing. I might test this hypothesis and start serving her broccoli in them.
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