M is for Mermaid!

It's M week! I was all set to do M is for Monster, and even planned out a week of fun activities. But Sweet E has been so in love with her Little Mermaid book and movie, that I decided to change it at the last minute. Keep scrolling to see what I came up with, or click on the links below to revisit similar themes from her big brother's and big sister's Tot School days!

M is for Money - 2015

The Letter M - 2013

The Little Mermaid Birthday Party - 2013

Introducing the Letter M

As always we began our letter of the week by creating it in various ways. This week: tracing, stamping, poking, building with playdoh, and covering with stickers.

She loves playdoh, and was happy to roll out the snakes to build the M.

So pleased with her work!

Mermaid Craft

I found this fun idea and free printable at The Best Ideas for Kids. First Sweet E and I colored in our mermaids. Well, I colored mine; she drew a couple squiggles onto it and moved on.

Then we squeezed some glue onto the paper, and pressed lots of sequins onto it!

And then she squeezed more glue onto it, and dumped a lot more sequins onto it!

Here is mine... the look we were going for...

And here is her's! 😂 💗

Seashell Dig - Alphabet Review

For this activity I wrote the letters we'd covered so far onto the backs of seashells. Then I buried them in sand, and invited her to find them. I decided to keep them contained in a bucket, so that they wouldn't get lost forever in her sandbox.

  

She got so excited to find one! 

I had written the names of the letters on a piece of paper, and placed it beside the bucket for her to match them up. I also had some mermaid stickers on there, that I found in our sticker drawer, to keep it in theme. 

I would ask Sweet E what letter was on the seashell. She'd tell me, and then place it onto the paper on top of the matching letter.

She loved this!

She did this activity a couple times in a row. And her big brother even played it with her again later!

Mermaid Ice Excavation

We've done this activity a number of times over the years. It's always fun! The night before the warmest day of our week, I froze her two mermaid toys in a dish. I tinted the water, and tossed in a few pretty gems and glitter too. The next afternoon we were ready to play!

I supplied her with some salt, warm water (in a spray bottle and in a cup with pipettes), and some tools. At first I could only find one tool, but then I ran to our playdoh supplies and brought out lots more! She loved spooning salt over the top.

And rescuing the gems as they became free.

She tried spraying it with warm water, while big brother and sister used the pipettes.

Actually, Honey Pot and Little M&M were all over this activity. I decided immediately that I would do this again soon, and in 3 separate dishes, so they wouldn't get in each other's way!

Those playdoh tools really helped!

The big kids have taken over!

Sweet E was able to rescue the second mermaid by herself!

Counting Bubbles - One-to-One Correspondence

Okay, excuse my drawing skills (or lack thereof LOL). For this activity I drew some bubbles on the chalkboard wall, in clusters from 1-10.

Sweet E needed to count the bubbles, find the number at the bottom, and place the post-it note on top of it.

While she can count to ten (and higher), she sometimes trips up while actually counting things. So this one-to-one correspondence activity was great practice for her!

She enjoyed this so much she actually did it three times in a row, and then again later. I guess my drawing didn't frighten her too much! 😆

M is for Money!

Books

Here are our books for the day. Very cute stories about kids earning and saving up money. Some parts were a little advanced, since my kids don't know the values of coins yet. But these were a great introduction for them!

Letter Recognition

After reading our books we completed one letter recognition activity. Today we pulled out our salt tray and the kids took turns writing M's and other designs inside it.

Coins - Sorting and Patterns

To begin our letter M activity the kids sorted coins from their pretend cash register. We talked about what each coin was called and how to recognize their differences (color, size).

Then Honey Pot created a few patterns with the coins.

Dollars - Store Pretend Play

To introduce the kids to dollar bills, we set up a little store! I slapped on some stickers with prices ranging from $1-$22...

Sorted their pretend money into piles...

And got out the register for one of us to be the cashier.

First I was the cashier, and the kids went shopping! I had them buy one item at a time.

They read the price sticker, and had to find the right amount of money to give me. Little M&M surprised me with his recognition of all the single digit numbers!

And Honey Pot did a terrific job of figuring out how add bills together. I explained the value of each bill to her, and asked how she might combine them to make, for example, $7. This was a new concept for her, and she did wonderfully.

We continued this game for a while, and each took turns being the cashier. Because it's fun to open the register drawer and put money away!

Then, Honey Pot gathered random items for her own store! She took the price stickers off of my items, and placed them onto hers. And the game went on for a while!

Letter M Theme

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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