Owls

Books

We did a mini-unit on owls this week, to accompany our Grandparents' Day craft. First we borrowed a few owl books from the library. These were very cute, and Honey Pot actually learned a lot about owls from them. 

Grandparents' Day Craft

We made owls out of Honey Pot and Little M&M's footprints this year, with the caption, "Guess WHOOO wants to wish you a happy Grandparents Day!" The inspiration came from Pinterest, linking here. We used a water bottle cap to paint the perfectly round eyes. They came out very cute!

Sticker Scene

This activity was for Little M&M. I drew a scene for him to place his owls onto. He had fun with this.

When he was finished he actually counted them up. He didn't use one-to-one correspondence, but he did recite perfectly the numbers one through ten!

Then he added extra stickers to this page I created for him with dot markers. We focused on one-to-one correspondence on this one!

Owl Play-dough Activity

Little M&M cut out a few owls and added eyes.

For extra fine motor practice, he rolled out some branches for the owls to sit upon.

Suddenly very into counting things!

And he obviously needed lots of branches!

Skip Counting

I found these cute labels from this site, and decided to use them to create a skip counting activity for Honey Pot. I drew branches with groups of five leaves, and we worked on counting by 5's. Remember when she learned how to count by 10's with Mega Blocks? Super fun, and she loves anything math-related.

Connect-the-Dot Owl

Honey Pot finished off our mini-unit with a connect-the-dot owl coloring page. The printable for this came from Free Kids Coloring and Crafts, and it was helpful in reviewing the tricky teen numbers again.

At the bottom she drew some of her own dots and connected them too. Fun week!

********************************************************************

Christmas Trees

Honey Pot is 3.5 years old
Little M&M is 21 months old

To see last year's Christmas tree unit, click here!

Book

We bought this last year, and have really fallen in love with it. We read it to jump-start this week's tree unit!

Magnetic Pom Poms

Many of the following are quiet-time activities that I did with just Honey Pot, while Little M&M was napping. Ever since she gave up her naps we've tried to do things like this to keep her busy, yet calm and self-sufficient. I made this in Photoshop Elements because I couldn't find one online that I liked. Notice my printer was running out of colored ink though!

Maze

Honey Pot really enjoys mazes! This one came from Busy Bee Kids Printables. They have tons of these, and at varying levels of difficulty too. This one is the easiest, for preschool age. Honey Pot flew threw this without issue!

Pattern Blocks

We love our pattern block set! This festive printable comes from PreKinders.

Tracing Lines

One of Honey Pot's favorite worksheet activities is tracing lines. This one comes from the Education website.

Christmas Star - Counting Practice

These come from Confessions of a Homeschooler, and actually go from 1-20! I only did 1-12 though, for now. After the New Year (as I predict we'll have a clock activity at around that time), I'll focus more on 13-20 with Honey Pot. She really enjoyed this! The trees with more ornaments became a little tricky, only because she couldn't remember which she counted already. Great number practice and a nice confidence booster for her!

Size Ordering - Craft

I have seen many of these on Pinterest. I love the ones that use patterned paper, so I dug deep into my old scrapbooking stash! I cut the paper first into a triangle shape, then into slices.

Honey Pot had to start with the biggest, and glue them onto her paper in size order.

Add a star to the top!

She also made a miniature, card-sized version of this for her pen pal in Canada!

Felt Board

We created this last year, but I wanted to pull it out for the kids to play with again.

First I assembled the tree, then gave it to Little M&M to put ornaments on!

He didn't quite get what I meant when I said to put the presents under the tree!

Next it was Honey Pot's turn!

Helping his sissy...

Ta-da! Nice teamwork!

Music - O Christmas Tree

As with last year, we pulled out our Mickey Mouse keyboard book, and played "O Christmas Tree." Honey Pot pushed the button that corresponds to that page of music, so we could hear it...

...then afterward she followed along to the lights to play the song herself!

Bubble Wrap Craft

I loved this idea from No Time for Flashcards! We have painted bubble wrap once before. Remember Honey Pot's Little Mermaid birthday party? Such fun! First I provided the kids with bubble wrap, green paint and a paintbrush.

Then, using a page that I printed a tree template onto, they pressed the paper over their paint.

We wound up with something like this.

They played with some spare bubble wrap for a few minutes. Then once the pages had somewhat dried, we added red ornaments using q-tips and paint!

After I had cut them out, the kids glued them to a piece of construction paper.

And added stars for the tops!

Little M&M made an extra card-sized one for his pen pal! This is his first card to her, and we're so excited to start their correspondence!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *