Letter T

Honey Pot is 3 1/2 years old.

Leap Frog Fridge Phonics

We introduced the letter of the week as usual, with Scout's song and a couple of animals whose names begin with T!

Salt Tray - Prewriting Skills

We created the salt tray during our letter S unit and Honey Pot enjoyed it so much. She often uses it during quiet time, but for this week's unit I added more shapes for her to try. Uppercase and lowercase T's, a triangle and the number two. She loved doing this!

Playdoh

Honey Pot started off her weekly playdoh adventure with some T cutouts.

T is for trains and trees!

Then she decorated them as she pleased with some supplies we keep with our playdoh: buttons, colored craft sticks, pipe cleaners, colored noodles.

T is for TWO candles.

T is for TEN candles. 

T is for TRIANGLES.

T is for TIRES.

And look at that fun person she put in the car!

T is for TEAPOT. Honey Pot thought of this T word all by herself. Insert group singalong here! Little M&M and I have been learning this song at our weekly storytime at the library. And Honey Pot seems to know by heart just about every fingerplay song there is. So she led our singalong.

T is for TRACKS. We'd done this before during our popular Dinosaur unit. What a hit! Honey Pot stayed busy with this for a long time.

T is for TEETH impressions.

T is for TRAIN TRACKS. This was a lot of fun too!

Have some dinosaurs walk across the train tracks for added T fun...

T Maze

Honey Pot loves to complete these alphabet mazes from the Education website!

T Pattern Block Puzzle

And she also did the pattern block puzzle that comes from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

T is for Tens Tower

I came up with an idea to give Honey Pot some practice counting by tens. I taped pieces of paper, with the numbers 10-100 on them, onto her Mega Blocks. Then asked her to build a tower, counting by tens. She knew most of these numbers, the obvious ones that sound like they should (i.e. forty, sixty, seventy, etc.). But she initially had trouble with the numbers that don't sound the way they look (i.e. twenty, thirty, fifty). We looked at each number by covering the zero up, and imagined we were counting to ten. This helped her build the tower when she was having difficulty, and we would practice saying the actual numbers along the way.

By the end of the week, she was counting by tens so very well! So proud!

T is for Tissue Paper Trees

I found this idea originally at Counting Coconuts, although we didn't shape ours like a T. First I printed a tree template onto paper, and Honey Pot colored the trunk brown.

She added some glue...

And stuck on the tissue paper!

Perfect!

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Easter!

Honey Pot is 3 1/2 years old.

Little M&M is 2 years old.

Easter Books

We hadn't gotten themed library books in a long time, as we've been focusing on Honey Pot's letter units and Little M&M's colors. It was so fun to go with a list and grab so many books to go along with our theme. We have really been enjoying these too! For half of the week we kept them downstairs in the living room to share and read together. Then we split them up for the second half of the week: the top row of big kid books in Honey Pot's room for bedtime readings, and the bottom row of toddler (mostly lift-the-flap) books in Little M&M's room.

Marshmallow Bunny Craft

This idea comes from No Time for Flashcards. It was a perfect start to our week of Easter activities! The kids each had to sample one marshmallow before the craft, and were given three to eat afterward. I'm proud they were able to craft without eating midway through! I printed a bunny template directly onto colored paper (because my freehand drawing skills are atrocious). Then I squirt the glue around the template, and the kids got to work!

Little M&M needed to reapply some glue. Happy to do it himself!

Adding googly eyes, a nose and a tongue.

Honey Pot did her own gluing for the facial features.

So cute!

Playdoh Fun with Easter Shapes

Playdoh is quickly becoming one of Honey Pot's favorite downtime activities. We are so happy to have received this tub of cookie cutters from Santa for Christmas. It's getting a lot of use! We cut out tons of egg shapes and decorated them with buttons, colored noodles, and other designs from our tools.

We have two silicone cupcake liners with our playdoh supplies, so Honey Pot couldn't resist making an Easter cupcake! Notice the bunny cutout on top!

And bunny faces with googly eyes were also created. Such fun!

Strawberry "Carrots"

I saw this idea floating around on Pinterest, but do not know whom to credit for the original idea. We made carrots out of strawberries! I stuck a lollipop stick into each to make it easier for little helpers to dip them.

We melted down the orange candy coating, and dipped our strawberries in. Then we placed them into our cake pop stand to harden. 

We didn't dip all the way to the stems, for fear of the strawberries falling off the sticks. But they came out pretty cute!

Yummy!

Magnetic Pom Poms

I printed this cute egg shape from Free Homeschool Deals for Little M&M to do some color matching. I put it on a cookie sheet and provided him with the magnetic pom poms. He loved it!

Easter Worksheets

Honey Pot completed some worksheets from Over the Big Moon. First some practice in completing patterns.

Then circling which bunny is different, and explaining how.

And finally counting and number recognition. I am so pleased to have found this so she could get some extra practice for numbers 11 and 12. She did great!

Easter Sensory Basket + Fine Motor Skills

As a spur of the moment activity one rainy morning, I brought out an old Easter basket and set of empty eggs. Little M&M sat for a good long while, opening and attempting to close the eggs. Putting them into the basket, taking them out.

He loved the sound it made when he opened it. "Pop!"

Pattern Block Bunny Puzzle

We love our pattern blocks from Melissa and Doug! We tried out this bunny puzzle this week.

This is as far as Little M&M got. He's still new to this type of puzzle!

Honey Pot loves doing these, and finished hers all by herself.

Egg Hunt and Color Match

Little M&M had a fun time while his big sister was at preschool one morning. I hid some eggs around the room for him to collect, then bring back to the bunny that matched it.

He had so much fun with this, and asked for more! So we brought out bowls in orange, yellow and blue too, and matched those. Though I don't have pictures of that part.

Egg Hunt and Pattern Matching

Honey Pot also had a hunt, while her little brother was napping. I hid some egg halves around the room, and she had to collect them all in her basket.

When she had found them all, she had to put them back together by following the pattern cards. I found the idea for mixed-up eggs at Make and Takes, although in their activity, the kids hunted for patterns, instead of creating them. I thought Honey Pot might enjoy snapping them back together herself! It was great fine motor practice!

There was a top and bottom of each color, so in addition to finding the right color she had to pay close attention to their size in order to create the egg properly.

She did great!

Paper Plate Chick Craft

I found the idea for this from Keeping It Simple. First Honey Pot painted a small paper plate yellow.

Then she glued on two googly eyes and a beak I cut out of orange paper.

Looking at her finished product. :) I think she liked how it came out!

Then I added pipe cleaner feet. So cute!

Easter Egg Garland

The kids also helped me create this Pinterest-inspired plastic egg garland! Love this!

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