T is for Tea Party!

Today we did a few "T is for Tea Party" activities as we finish up the end of our alphabet. Sweet E loves tea parties! She received a small Minnie Mouse set for her birthday, and ever since we've been having tons of tea parties. It's actually been a great way to have everyone drink plenty of water while we're outside on these hot summer days. Keep scrolling to see what Sweet E and I did today, or click on one of the links below to revisit similar themes from the past.

T is for Trains - 2015

Letter T - 2014

Books

There were more books at the library about tea parties than I expected! Sweet E and I chose these three to read. "Tea Party Rules" was our favorite. Such a cute story about a bear cub who wanders over to a little girl's tea party, where he is mistaken for a teddy bear.

Introducing the Letter T

I made our usual letter page for Sweet E.

She created the letter T in various ways: tracing, stamping, poking with a giant pushpin, building with tape...

and painting with a q-tip!

Teacups and Saucers - Larger Numbers

Sweet E seems confident with the numbers 1-10, in counting and recognizing them. And while she can count to 20, she forgets the number 15. So I created this activity to help her with some of these larger numbers.

First she counted up the dots on a teacup, and then she had to find the saucer with the number that matched.

This was great practice!

I'm a Little Teapot - Song and Craft

I found this tipping teapot idea at Danya Banya. First Sweet E colored in her teapot. Then while I cut it out, she fetched a paper plate.

She glued the teapot onto the folded plate.

And here is her completed teapot. But look...

It tips! Perfect little craft to go along with the song. So cute!

So next we pulled up this video from The Kiboomers on YouTube, and we sang the song several times. Sweet E loved doing this! Since she hasn't been to preschool, action songs are a pretty new concept to her. But we look forward to doing lots more of this when we homeschool preschool in a couple weeks!

Tea Party - Pretend Play

To finish our tea party day, we had to have one! Just like in the books we read, Sweet E put on some fancy jewelry, set the table with flowers, and invited some teddy bears to join us. (Honey Pot and Little M&M did too!)

We drank lots of "tea" (I kept a pitcher of water nearby to refill her teapot), ate some cookies, enjoyed some small talk (and some big laughs, thanks to the shenanigans of big brother and sister lol) and had a perfect tea party!

T is for Trains!

Books

We borrowed two library books, combined with two of our favorite train books, for our letter T day. Our absolute favorite is this version of The Little Engine That Could. It's a classic story, and Loren Long's illustrations are just gorgeous.

Letter Recognition Activity - Hole Punching

Just as a conductor punches train tickets, the kids punched holes in a letter T ticket. This was a great activity for strengthening their hand muscles!

Craft - Name Train

For our main activity today, the kids created trains out of construction paper. To assemble the train, they had to put the boxcars in rainbow order and spell their first names. (Each boxcar contained a letter of their names in real life, so please excuse the portions where I erased those.)

First they glued on their engines.

Then they glued the train cars beside it. Honey Pot knew both how to spell her name, as well as rainbow order, so this was easy for her but still fun! Little M&M could do his fairly well too!

Then they glued on their wheels.

Next, they doodled cargo and passengers onto the trains. And, minus their erased names, here are their completed projects! Super cute choo choos!

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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