U is for USA!

Books

We borrowed three USA books from the library for our letter U day! Little M&M was a little young to appreciate these, but I really think Honey Pot enjoyed learning about our country. America Is... in particular is a beautiful book, and really illustrates the different landscapes and ways of life that exist right in our own country. Honey Pot began to get a gist of how big the USA really is.

Letter Recognition Activity - U Flag

I created a flag template in Photoshop Elements for today's activity. I encouraged the kids to color blue around the stars, and to color every other stripe in red. This was a great exercise in following directions, as well as practice staying in the lines!

And of course Honey Pot must always add hearts to every picture!

USA Landmark - Memory Game

I created this in Photoshop Elements for today as well. I chose eight landmarks in the USA, printed the page twice, and created a 4x4 memory game for the kids. It was a nice introduction to some important places in our country, and it was good for them to become familiar with their names.

The kids were pretty good!

Little M&M even wanted to play again after we had finished the first time.

As an extension, I took out a map of the USA for them to see. First we talked about our home state, and where that is. Then we made note of where some of our friends and family live. Honey Pot was able to find a few states on the map by recognizing the letters. For example, she found where Pennsylvania is by finding the word that started with P. Texas was also an easy one to find by sounding the word out. We grabbed a few of our pictures from the memory game, and also briefly discussed the directional terms North, South, East and West. 

Would you like to print the U flag or USA landmark memory game? Grab them below!

    

July 4th!

Monday - Literacy

Fireworks Scissor Skills

This printable comes from Itsy Bitsy Fun. They had a few fun ones from which to choose! So pleased with how well Honey Pot has come along in her scissor skills. This new pair from Amazon has definitely helped!

ABC Order and Tracing Worksheets

These come from Gift of Curiosity and the Education website, respectively. Both were a hit with Honey Pot!

Tuesday - Math and Cognitive Skills + Craft

Spot the Difference

This comes from the Education website, and it was a fair challenge for Honey Pot. Over the Big Moon has a fun July 4th Pack that has a few more of these!

USA Maze

Honey Pot loves mazes! This cute one comes from Kids Activities Blog.

Shades of Color

Gifts of Curiosity had an interesting printable that would challenge the child to sort the red, white and blue stars from light to dark. This activity would have never occurred to me, and I'm so glad I came across this concept. Honey Pot had some trouble, so we've saved these printables and will keep working on it!

Salt + Watercolors - Fireworks Craft

I've been meaning to try this craft with Honey Pot! The version we followed comes from Crafty Morning. First I drew some firework shapes onto black paper, and went over them with glue. (Honey Pot might have been able to do this part herself, but I thought she'd enjoy the cleaner result of a more practiced hand.) Then I had the kids pour salt over the glue with spoons.

Once they had covered all of the glue with salt, we dumped the excess salt off. Honey Pot and Little M&M then used a pipette to drop small amounts of red and blue water (dyed with food coloring) onto the salt. A little bit goes a long way. And it is fun to watch the color spread along the trail of salt all by itself from just one drop!

In the end it looked something like this; although, Little M&M and Honey Pot went a bit pipette crazy, and soaked most of their papers with water. So this project turned out to be more about the process than the final product! Fun though! We'll do this again.

Wednesday - Social Studies and Skills

USA Study - Pushpin Poking

I printed off a coloring page of the USA, and had Honey Pot poke holes within each state. It provided nice fine motor practice, as well as providing an opportunity for discussion on our country. We talked about the fifty states, and pointed out where we and some of our family members live. I had seen on Pinterest that some people do a similar activity, where the child pokes a flag toothpick into each state on the map, which is atop a piece of Styrofoam. Had I found those toothpicks, I would have done the same!

Weaving - Skills Practice

I came across this weaving idea from JDaniel4'sMom. I love the idea of using a draining mat from the Dollar Tree! Instead of using separate red, white and blue ribbons though, we used just one patriotic ribbon. I knew Honey Pot would lose interest if she had to do it too many times.

After the first row of weaving, I asked if she wanted to do another. She wanted to do just the top and bottom rows, and I didn't push her to go any further. This was a success!

Thursday - Sensory + Music

Soap Foam - Sensory

This idea had been on our summer bucket list, and I was so excited to try it on this hot afternoon. Instead of the rainbow version that I had first seen on Fun at Home with Kids, I made ours red, white and blue of course. Mix 2 TBSP of Dawn Soap with 1/4 cup of water, then mix on high speed for 1-2 minutes. That's it! This was so easy and so much fun. We'll be doing this again! First I mixed up a batch and dumped it into the kids' sensory bucket.

They had so much fun digging their hands in! The water table was filled nearby, so they enjoyed transferring bubbles to the water table and water to the bubble bucket.

And that happened.

And of course, the feet went in.

After a while, the bubbles had started to dissipate so I whipped up a couple more batches of bubbles.

Hose at the ready...

Patriotic Sing-along

We also listened to some patriotic songs today, which I'm ashamed to say the kids had never heard before! Just some of the classics such as This Land is Your Land, God Bless America and My Country 'tis of Thee.

Friday - Science

Firecracker Cookies - Cooking

We put on our aprons and spent some time in the kitchen today baking these Firecracker Cookies from Cookin' Cowgirl. Now, we had significantly fewer sprinkles than the recipe called for...as in, perhaps a quarter of what they used. I don't know why it was so hard to find red and blue sprinkles, especially at this time of year, but I used what I could find. And the cookies came out just fine. Delicious, soft and cakey cookies! Yum!

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Memorial Day

Theme: Memorial Day

Honey Pot is 2 years old

Star Cookie Cutter Prints

Memorial Day is coming up! We kicked off the return to our Tot School adventures with a fun craft that I discovered on No Time For Flash Cards. It had been so long since we put on her smock and had some messy fun. She was so excited to go to her craft table! First I squirt out a little bit of red and blue paint onto a paper plate – she told me what the colors were. I then asked which cookie cutter she wanted to start with, as we have multiple sizes. I was so pleased when she said “the big one,” and then later, “the small one.” She has grown so much even over the course of two months! I showed her how to press the cookie cutter into the paint, and then press it onto the paper. She quickly caught on, and she really enjoyed this project.

Patterns

We used her magnetic pom poms on our homemade chalkboard for the first time. I created a simple pattern, and asked her if she could create the same pattern on the line below.

 She started off well!

For the second pattern, I just asked her to sort the pom poms by color.

Shaving Cream Sensory Bin

For our new and improved Tot School, I want to include more sensory experiences. (The water beads were such a HUGE hit during our purple theme!) But Honey Pot doesn’t like a mess…so I wasn’t sure how she would handle this activity. She asked me to go first, so I did. Then she hesitantly dipped one hand in.

I encouraged her to dig in with both hands, to squish it around. We discussed its properties, and swirled it around with a rubber spatula. I added a few drops of red and blue paint as well, to tie it in (however minimally) with our Memorial Day theme. Then we kicked it up a notch and squirted water into it (…this was her favorite part).

 After she had had enough, I began to clean up our station. (I also threw in an impromptu load of laundry!) Then I patted some of the shaving cream mixture onto paper, folded the paper in half, and opened it up for her. I didn’t expect it to look like anything in particular. But it did, and she helped point it out. “Butterfly!”

Red, White and Blue Jello Stars

Honey Pot and I made Jello for the holiday as well. (I found the recipe and idea here.) She helped me mix ingredients together. We discussed the hot water and the cold water as we used them. And she even helped me to cut the stars out. They came out very pretty…and were tasty too!

American Flag Craft

We also made a simple American Flag. I provided Honey Pot with strips of paper from my scrap stash, as well as her star stickers and some glue. She placed a couple of the stripes on herself, but lost interest after that. So I finished them and then directed her to the stickers!

Alphabet Review

I know we have only covered letters ‘A’ through ‘G’ individually, but I thought it would be nice to incorporate some alphabet review into this week’s theme. I wrote down some words related to the holiday and asked her to point out particular letters. She did great – even with letters we haven’t covered yet. I read the words to her, but didn’t go into much discussion about what they mean or how they relate to the holiday. She is only two after all!

Then she decided to draw freely on the chalkboard. Apparently this is a picture of a girl. Sure…I can see that.

Magnetic Pom Poms

We concluded our theme this week by placing magnetic pom poms on a picture of the American Flag. It is always such a simple and fun way to extend our activities, and practice fine motor skills. The free printable came from Making Learning Fun.