Black and White

Little M&M is 23 months old

Black + White Zebra Craft

We started our unit with a gluing craft. The fun template comes from Kids Craft Weekly. I put dabs of glue throughout the zebra, and provided Little M&M with strips of black paper. We identified the colors and talked about how zebras have stripes.

Here is how it looked when he finished putting the strips of paper on.

When it was completely dry, I cut it out and asked him to glue it onto a black piece of paper.

Then I wrote the word "ZEBRA" out in white crayon, and had him do some letter matching. He did so well with this! I think it's time we introduce more alphabet into his tot school units!

Ta-da!

Black Playdough

We used our homemade batch of playdough with some laminated mats we made a few months ago. I created them all myself except for the dump truck mat, which I found on Pinterest and revised. Unfortunately I lost its source. If you recognize it, please let me know!

The first is a bee, where he had to practice rolling the dough to make stripes.

Adding spots to the ladybug.

Putting wheels on the car.

Loading rocks into the dump truck.

Black + White Sensory Bin and Sorting

Instead of a discovery basket this week, I created this bin for him. It is made up of lots and lots of black and white yarn, as well as three black and three white objects.

I hid the objects inside before presenting him with the bin.

He dug his hands in to explore. Then I asked him to search for the black and white objects.

And he sorted them onto black and white pieces of paper.

Some objects were a little tangled up in the yarn!

Color Review - Parking Lot

After introducing each color we like to do an activity that reviews all that we have learned so far. This week we played with one of Little M&M's favorite things: cars! I have a huge roll of brown paper that we sometimes use to draw roads, or line the holiday table with so we can decorate it before we eat. So I tore a piece off and made Little M&M a road and color-coded parking lot. I've seen a ton of these on Pinterest, so I'm not sure where the idea originated. But here is our version.

We drove the cars around, greeted one another's cars. "Hi, purple car. I'm a blue car." He could play like this for a long time. We'd drive all around the road and come back to park in the parking lot.

"Where is your green car going to park?" "Right dair!"

Black + White Night Sky Craft

We finished our unit with another craft. I gave Little M&M star stickers to place onto a white piece of paper.

Then he painted the whole thing black with a sponge brush.

This is the first painting craft that he felt the urge to complete the entire paper. Usually he dabs his brush a bit in the middle and says he's done. He must have liked the sponge brush!

Then we allowed it to dry for a bit.

I lifted each sticker just slightly, so he'd be able to pull them up. Great fine motor practice!

And when he had finished, he had a beautiful black and white night sky. "Look'at I made!"

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The Letter S!

Honey Pot is 3.5 years old

Leap Frog Fridge Phonics

To introduce the letter of the week, we listened to Scout's S song!

S is for: Salt Tray

I have been seeing versions of this all over Pinterest. What a perfect unit to begin one! I used the Melissa and Doug box that Little M&M's animal magnets came in. (Never throw their wooden boxes away!) We started with some S shapes: the letter S, swirls and squares. Honey Pot just LOVED this sort of pre-writing practice. She did such a wonderful job, and it was a great sensory experience as well. We will be pulling this back out frequently during quiet-times, to practice other letters and shapes!

She decided to do some free drawing. Turns out this was a submarine. LoL. Still fits the S theme!

S is for: Sticker Storytelling

Yes. A thousand times, yes. Honey Pot is a natural storyteller. Oftentimes at dinner she will tell us stories--wild stories about ghosts, wolves, Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan, lava or monsters. I discovered this idea from The Imagination Tree, and thought it would be a nice prompt for her to explore this interest in storytelling. I pulled out both Honey Pot's sticker books, as well as my childhood ones. Then I gave her a piece of scrap paper. And I let her choose a few stickers for each story. I asked her to tell a story that included each of the items. I started her off with "Once upon a time," and let her take it from there. The following is what she came up with.

Sometimes I would try to help her become more descriptive. So I may have encouraged her to say "a pink bird" instead of simply "a bird." And we always finished with, "The end." She had such fun with this activity, and I think we'll be doing it again!

Worksheet - Connect the Dots

This comes from Education. She likes connect the dot pages, and this one helped her discover more words that start with S.

Worksheet - I Spy an S

This also comes from Education. This was a new one for her, and she enjoyed it! I would ask her what she saw in the picture, and what letter she thought it started with, based on the beginning sounds. She found other words, such as tree and bird, which she knew didn't start with S. And she only circled the things that did. I had to help her with the sunflowers though...as she only knew them as flowers.

Worksheet - S Maze

This comes from Twinkl. She used her dot marker to follow all the S's to the end.

S Pattern Block Puzzle

We like these printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Honey Pot had no trouble with this!

S is for: Snowflakes

Honey Pot also completed an S craft that used some of our old snowflake confetti. It introduced another word that starts with S, further familiarized her with the shape of the letter, and was nice fine motor practice as well. She likes having a fun project to show Daddy when he gets home too!

Playdough Fun with S Shapes

We love pulling out the playdough for almost any unit. This one was particularly fun, as we focused mainly on rolling and playing with snakes! We slithered them around the table, had our snakes talk to one another and eat food. Sometimes their heads detached as they became too thin, and she thought it was hysterical.

Honey Pot added some eyes and a noodle mouth.

Here's one that has a button nose!

She practiced making really looooong snakes.

She used a craft stick to make a mouth indentation!

And she maneuvered her snake into an S shape.

And all on her own she started to roll it up. S is for snail too, by the way, Honey Pot!

Here are some other S shapes we made, most with cookie cutters: snowman, the letter S, star, snake and stegosaurus.

An S Snake.

And S is for seahorse! Kind of. Sort of. Right?

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