C is for Car!

Books

We began our C is for Car week with a trip to the library, to borrow books about cars. Our very favorite is If I Built A Car by Chris Van Dusen. What an imaginative story, and the rhyming text was sweet and fun.

Learning Shapes

1+1+1=1 has a fun printable packet about Disney Pixar's Cars, a movie that Little M&M is just in love with. So I printed out the matching game to help him review his shapes.

We glued it into a file folder, and returned to it multiple times throughout the week. He's really getting the hang of these, and loves the accomplishment of matching them all up!

Magnetic Pom Poms

For some letter recognition and fine motor practice, we printed out a letter C from Shannon's Tot School and slipped it into a plastic sheet protector. We pulled out the magnetic pom poms and a baking sheet, and he got right to work!

Leap Frog Fridge Phonics

This used to be how we introduced each letter during Honey Pot's alphabet units. Today we pulled it out for review, as Little M&M learned A and B before our long Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas themes! He listened to each ditty about A, B and C.

Then I asked him, "Which is C?" and so on.

Mega Block Puzzles

We LOVED this activity during our Valentine's Day theme last year! So I used the same template and created some car puzzles for Little M&M.

There were some familiar faces, such as Lightning McQueen and Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. And I also created a big letter C puzzle for him. He loved these and did them often throughout the week.

Letter C Roads

I had these filed away since Honey Pot's Letter C Unit almost three years ago!

We pulled out our little cars that we bring on road trips, and we drove them around the C's.

Eventually he even made a racetrack!

"Car'd" Game

This idea and printable comes from the amazing Toddler Approved! I gathered a few of Little M&M's cars in various colors, and we tried to follow the pattern cards.

Honey Pot helped too. She was awesome at it.

Little M&M struggled with placement but always grabbed the right color.

Afterward I asked them to work together to try to build a big letter C out of all of the cars!

Pattern Blocks

I printed out two templates for our pattern blocks: the upper/lowercase C's and a car. We love these puzzles, and I love finding so many free templates on Pinterest!

He said, "Do it with me," so I placed a few pieces and helped to straighten them out so he wouldn't get frustrated while he worked.

Car Lacing

I picked up this fun transportation lacing set from the Dollar Spot at Target at Christmastime. So I pulled out the car one, and let him do a little bit of lacing today. We've done this without a "kit" before though...just print any image onto cardstock, punch holes around it, and have the kids thread yarn (with one end of it taped) through it.

Scavenger Hunt and Review

I started gathering various letters we had around the house, and came up with this activity for review. I placed A's, B's and C's in a container with paper shreds. Little M&M had to first find them, then sort them by letter.

We used playdough cookie cutters, blocks, fridge magnets and AlphaBots. When he found one, I would ask, "What letter did you find?" Sometimes he knew it, and othertimes I helped him. The repetition of saying their names is wonderful!

For final review, after all had been found, I asked him, "Where are the C's?" and so forth.

Playdough Fun

We do this during most of our units. Today we made a fresh batch of playdough, and made some C's and cars.

Honey Pot added eyes to her cars!

C is for cupcake too, so Honey Pot extended her play with these cupcake liners that we also keep with our playdough stash.

Monster C's!

And I have various playdough mats with our stash as well. Today we pulled out the car one, and Little M&M added wheels with playdough and buttons.

Honey Pot has been working on beginning sounds and spelling. So she pulled out another playdough mat and put candles on the cake, which she discovered also start with C!

Car Bath

Stir the Wonder had a great idea to make bath-time extra special. I cut out some roads from black foam, and drew white lines on them with crayon. This was the set-up I created before bath-time: 

It also contained four cars, and two stop signs that I cut out from red foam. Little M&M loves pointing out all stop signs while we're driving!

After the initial drive across my track, the kids pulled the roads down and built their own tracks!

This race track entertained Honey Pot for a long time!

In the end, this inevitably happened. But the novelty of playing with cars in the bathtub was a huge hit! Honey Pot in particular stayed in here for a long time!

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Christmas Crafts & Activities!

We love to share our Christmas activities! Click on the links below to see what we did in previous years, or keep scrolling to see what we did this year:

Advent Calendar Ideas, part one

Advent Calendar Ideas, part two

The Grinch Theme

Christmas Tree Theme (2013)

Frosty the Snowman Theme

Christmas Tree Theme (2012)

Books

We borrowed books from two of our local libraries (shown below) and combined them with our home collection (not pictured) and had a TON of Christmas themed reading material to last the whole season. So much fun. The kids' favorites were: Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Pussycat's Christmas.

Letter Recognition - Christmas Tree

Little M&M worked on his alphabet and fine motor skills with this simple craft. He enjoyed peeling the stickers and matching the letter on it to one on the tree. I would say the letter out loud each time, and he surprised me a couple of times when he was able to say it first!

Pom Poms and Tongs

This is an activity Little M&M pulls out on his own quite often. This time, I pulled aside only Christmas colored pom-poms, then let him pick them up and drop them in a cup. He loves this.

Christmas Tree  - Ornament Counting

This is an activity Honey Pot has done in the past; although, she used to only do the smaller numbers. This time she did all the way up to twenty. The printables come from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Little M&M gave counting with one-to-one correspondence a try too!

Dot Marker Candy Canes

Honey Pot needs to wear a patch for multiple hours each day to strengthen one eye due to amblyopia. So during those hours we have what we call "Patch Time," which is a time of sit-down, up-close activities such as writing, coloring, crafts, puzzles or reading. Sometimes, at the kids' request, I have to come up with crafts quickly off the top of my head. This is one of them. I just printed candy cane templates, and let the kids use dot markers as they pleased. Little M&M stamped in random fashion, but Honey Pot chose to make patterns!

Candy Cane - Tape Resist Paintings

Then I printed a larger template, and covered sections with masking tape. When painted over, I would remove the tape and the candy cane would be striped. As it turned out, Honey Pot chose to paint her own stripes, no tape needed! Both kids had fun with this.

Craft Stick Rudolph

I am a little frustrated that I never took a picture of the final product. But for this craft, the kids painted craft sticks brown. When they were dry, we glued them together in triangle. Then the kids added two googly eyes and a red pom pom nose. It turned out very cute.

Threading Jingle Bells

I intended on the kids sharing the package of jingle bells, and threading as many as they could onto a chenille stem. But Little M&M soon lost interest in this activity...

and so Honey Pot threaded every single one onto hers! She had fun using it as an instrument afterward.

Uppercase/Lowercase Match - Christmas Lights

This file folder game comes from Itsy Bitsy Fun. Honey Pot correctly matched all of the lowercase letters to their uppercase letter in the strand of lights. Cute activity, and requires a lot of focus!

North Pole Sensory Bin

Using some of the Insta-Snow I found on Amazon, I created this sensory bin for the kids. I cannot believe we haven't discovered this stuff sooner! Amazing! By just adding a little bit of water, you get this wet, powdery substance so similar to snow. The kids loved putting their hands inside, and created a small world with their North Pole characters.

Later, the asked permission to use their construction trucks too. Why not?

Torn Paper Santa's Beard

I gave the kids strips of white paper, and invited them to tear them into small pieces. Then we smeared glue under Santa's face, and they created his big white beard. They finished off his look by gluing a white pom pom to his hat too! Such a cute craft!

Building Towers with Red and Green Blocks

We love building things in our house. We have a whole shelf of toys with various types of blocks (Lego Duplos, wooden blocks, Mega blocks, Lincoln Logs, V-tech Go Go Smartwheels...) and they ALL get used. Today we Christmas-ified our block play by sorting out only the red and green ones. This is an activity in itself! Then we got to work.

I'm always amazed at my kids' creations.

Building towers with Little M&M...

In the Kitchen - Making Slime

We did this activity last year as well, during our Grinch theme. It was such a hit, we just had to do it again. This time we used red glitter glue. First the kids helped me prepare it in the kitchen...

then we played with it!

Stretchy...

"A donut!"

Rolling it into snakes...

Later, Daddy pulled it really thin and we could look right through it like a window!

We also made bubbles to pop!

And our favorite, monster-making. As a matter of fact, the eyes don't get stuck to the slime, so we made this into a sort of an I-Spy game. We hid numerous eyes inside the slime, and then had to squeeze and stretch it to find them all again.

Ball Pit Ball Christmas Bath

This was a fun and simple activity we put together for the kids' baths during Christmas week. Great play time!

The Night Tree

We did this activity last year as well, but kicked it up a notch! In the book, the family decorates a tree in the forest with edible decorations for the animals. Last year we just did bird seed ornaments, and this year we did those as well as popcorn garlands. We look forward to adding more items each year. We chose a tree in our backyard, so we could keep an eye on them.

Over the next two days,we saw creatures big and small come and enjoy the treats we left out for them! Squirrels...

Birds...

and even deer! It was so incredible to watch.

Merry Christmas!