The Letter U

Honey Pot is 3.5 years old.

Leap Frog Fridge Phonics

We introduced the letter of the week as usual by listening to Scout's song.

Pattern Block U Puzzle

We printed out the letter U from Confessions of a Homeschooler's amazing set of alphabet puzzles.

Tracing The Letter U

I found this set of alphabet tracing pages from The Measured Mom and I love them! I wish I had discovered them sooner. So much easier for little hands to trace than dotted lines.

Salt Tray U

We pulled out the salt tray that we created during our S unit and practiced making U's as well as some other doodles.

U is for Unicorn - Footprint Craft

It has been so long since we've done a hand or footprint craft. We always enjoy these. I found this idea from the Handprint and Footprint Art blog. Honey Pot loves playing with her ponies and one of them is a unicorn. So I knew she'd just love making one for her U unit. First I painted her foot white, and she pressed it down onto paper. Next I let her choose three colors for the horn and mane. She finger-painted stripes onto the horn first.

Then she dipped three fingers into the colors at once to make the unicorn's mane.

It came out beautiful!

Once everything had dried, she glued on the horn.

And I drew on the face. Cute!

U is for Underwater - Sticker and Glue Craft

I found this idea from House of Baby Piranha. Honey Pot had seen Little M&M's sticker craft during his circle unit this week, and wanted to do a sticker craft too. So I cut out water from blue paper and a U from white paper, and she got to work.

She really took her time adding the stickers, and explained all along the way what each sea creature was doing. "He's swimming up." "He's getting the bubble." "He's following him."

Afterward, I added dots for her to trace so she could write the word UNDERWATER.

Perfect!

U is for Umbrella - Pushpin Poking

We have done a similar activity in the past with giant pushpins. To extend the activity, I had her use the bottom of a cocktail umbrella instead. She enjoyed doing this, and worked very quietly and carefully down on the carpet.

When she was finished, she flipped it over and traced the shape with her finger. Great activity!

Umbrella Playdoh Fun

Honey Pot loves her playdoh activities. We brought a few of those cocktail umbrellas up to her craft table and played with them in all sorts of ways. First she made a simple beach scene.

Then she added a person to stand under it.

We cut out U's with our playdoh cookie cutters and added more umbrellas.

Then she got really creative and started constructing things with her playdoh and umbrellas!

This one was her favorite construction. I asked her what it was, and she said a microphone!

And then she started singing a song into it. LOL!

Then of course the cupcake liners came out of our playdoh container, and she had to make some pretend cupcakes.

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Circles

Little M&M is 2 years and 1 month old.

Stacking Cheerios

We started off our circle unit with something Honey Pot did when she was learning about circles. It was so much fun! First I cut out a circle shape from playdoh, and stuck two pieces of uncooked spaghetti into it. Then I asked Little M&M to stack them up. He loved doing this!

Circle Playdoh Fun

While the playdoh was out, I noticed Little M&M sticking his extra Cheerios into it. So we cut out more circles of various sizes, and used some of our other circular playdoh accessories (buttons, googly eyes, etc.) too.

Sticker Shapes

I found this idea on Pinterest, from a blog called Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds. I traced a large circle onto paper, and asked Little M&M to put these stickers onto the dots to make a circle. He and Honey Pot both always love sticker activities!

Size Sorting

I kept the playdoh cookie cutters out for our next activity, as well as some pom poms of three sizes. Then Little M&M had to sort them by size.

He always enjoys sorting activities, and asks to do them over and over. So the next time we arranged the circles into a Mickey Mouse and he loved that!

Circle Glue Craft

I found this idea from JDaniel4'sMom. I printed out a bus template from the Internet. Then I used a circle punch to cut out lots of yellow and black circles for Little M&M to glue onto the bus. We started with the wheels.

And then he added glue for the yellow circles.

That were a lot of circles for his little attention span, so I helped him toward the end. But he was pleased with the end result!

Coloring Page

He kept asking for "other a'tivity" but I had nothing else prepared. So I quickly printed out a coloring page from Mia's Craft Ideas. He actually colors in the lines fairly well sometimes! I colored the page with him.

I even caught him holding his crayon properly a couple of times!

Circle Hopscotch

We were eager to get outside one afternoon during circle week, so we brought the chalk out and played for a while. I drew multiple circles in a row, each a different color. Then I asked Little M&M to hop to a particular circle. For example, I'd ask, "Can you hop to the blue circle?" And he loved doing this! He's been perfect with color recognition, even colors we never focused on individually like brown, pink, silver and gold. But this was a fun review!

Of course Honey Pot wanted to play too!

Circle Paint Craft

Honey Pot also joined us for our next activity. In the past we had used sponge shapes for prints. But those are a little too squishy, and I wanted a clearer result. So we used plastic cups! I poured four different paint colors onto small plates, then the kids made circle prints on brown paper.

They came out really great, and the kids had fun!

Circle Hunt

We finished our unit by going on a hunt around the house for circles! We gathered all the circles into Little M&M's Easter basket. First, the shape puzzle, because we were sure to find one there!

I was surprised at how many circles we had lying around actually. Many in their toy kitchen and on their music shelf.

When we were finished, we dumped out the basket and explored all of the circles we had found!

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