Play Dates, Preschool and Fun

Saturday morning we had a potluck breakfast play date with our playgroup: Little Adventures Group.  When we were done eating breakfast we broke out some animal puppets we got from a great friend and started putting some together.

 EMan mostly loved eating the foam pieces, silly boy.

 Our completed puppets.

 Preschool on Monday was a blast!  We were learning all about caterpillars and the letter C.  It was such a busy fun day that I didn't get a lot of pictures.  Here M is putting foam stickers of leaves on her picture.

 Then, M rubs a crayon over the top of her leaves to make leaf rubbings for C the Caterpillar.  We're using a worksheet that goes along with the Amazing Action Alphabet.

 A did a great job rubbing her leaf picture as well.  I think the best tip I heard was to tape down BOTH papers for this rubbing project.  And because there aren't any fresh leaves outside (it is winter here after all) I was excited to find the foam leaves on sale at a craft store.

 T colors his sight word "a" from the Moffatt Girls blog.  Under the word "a" is a color by number butterfly (we were learning about caterpillars and butterflies for the day).  The butterflies didn't work out quite as well as the word.  I don't think my 3 year olds quite get the idea of color by number or color in designated spaces yet.  Good for me to know :)

 I created some dice out of wood blocks.  Using a permanent marker I drew on dots 1-3 (repeated twice).  Then we played a stacking blocks game.  You roll the dice, and add that many blocks to the tower to see how high you can make the tower.  We played in pairs to practice taking turns and cooperation.  Here is A and I's tower.

 M gets ready to roll the dice for her tower.

 After preschool, the boys were a bit restless while I was trying to get lunch ready.  I was glad I had printed off a few of these extra do-a-dot printables from DLTK's Growing Together site.

I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! Body Painting!

Recently C decided that any kind of painting should be finger painting, and any kind of finger painting should be whole body painting, so we set up a play date to do just that - Body Painting!  I cleared the room of anything that I didn't want to was after and I laid a paint tarp on the floor.  The boys thought this was a whole lot of fun.  It was slippery!

 When all our friends arrived we read this book: I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! By Karen Beaumont and Illustrated by David Catrow. It is a great little boy who is a little naughty and paints his whole body. 

 Then we got to mixing paints.  I used the recipe from I Can Teach My Child.  I used soy milk instead of cream or cow milk due to allergies in the group.

 We learned all about mixing different colors to make new colors.

 Let the painting begin!  Kids were instructed to stay on the tarp, and were broken up into 3 groups with each group sharing a "paint tray".

 C got right into this activity!  How perfect!

 T was the first to explore painting his face, and then hair. 

 C wondered how to paint his back.  He gave this a try:

 And T copied...

 M thought it would be a great idea to paint her nose orange!  How cute!  All of the kids in our two day a week preschool are also in our community playgroup: Little Adventures Group.  We were glad I and M and their little Brother were able to join us for this play date.

 I painted her foot blue.

 After we were done everyone got to take a "bath" in our swimming pool by the kitchen sink.  Using soy milk, cornstarch and water it was actually easy to clean up.

Lil' Learners - Turkey Thursday

Thursday is Lil' Learners Day.  It's the day I focus on activities that are more EMan (14 months) focused.  Of course they are still fun activities for the older boys.

We started with some handprint turkeys.

 The finished product:

 I printed out two copies of a turkey and colored them identically.  I laminated both turkeys and left one whole and cut the other into one body piece and 12 feather pieces.  I put magnetic strips on the back of all the pieces.  The idea being that EMan could practice puting them on the turkey (not matching yet) and T and C could build the turkey next to the turkey picture, like a puzzle.

 We acted out the five silly turkeys book: dancing...

 sleeping...

 We played a "Toddler Turkey Trot" and put pictures of turkeys all over the floor.  The idea was to get EMan (and the other toddlers) to run around picking them up and handing them to mom.  EMan thought this game was a lot of fun.

 When we were done with Turkeys we got out the large motor blocks and slides.  EMan enjoyed showing the littler kids how to do it.

Snow Day!

Today all the school districts were closed around us, so we canceled Little Adventures Preschool.  I dropped all my "Turkey" lesson plans for the day and went in search of snow related ideas from blogs I love.  During breakfast I jotted down ideas and then took off running with the boys.  I'm exhausted now.

We started with brush/finger painting white on a piece of cardboard.  I plan to cut out snowflakes from it after nap time.

 While we were painting we practiced writing letters, more specifically our names in the wet paint.

 Here is C drawing a big "O".

 Next we moved on to cutting out snow flakes.  This was a bit hard on our little scissors.

 They boys each made 3 snowflakes that they were really proud of before they lost interest.

 One broken pair of scissors later...

 Our beautiful masterpieces.  C's is on the top center and the bottom right.  T's are on the middle row right and bottom row left.  My example is the middle row left.

 Soon enough it was snack time.  We made "Snow-Cream".  I made the boys a green smoothie (spinach, banana, apple, whole milk) and then topped it with a cup of snow for the boys to mix together to make an ice cream texture.

 Next, I gave each of the boys a tray of snow and filled 4 kid sized spray bottles with water and food coloring.  I didn't want to get everyone dressed to go play outside (particularly EMan, whom I knew wouldn't enjoy it) so I brought the snow inside to us.

 They got to work spraying their snow to make different designs.  Of course they thought it was also awesome to eat the colored snow - no problem for me!

 I showed the boys that they could make a mini snowman.

 EMan wanted to get in the action as well.  He poked at the snow a little bit and then whined that his hand was cold.  It was a good vocabulary building activity.

 We started a snow science experiment first thing this morning.  We got three bowls and filled them each with one cup of snow.  Then we set them in different rooms of the house.  We wanted to see where the snow would melt the fastest.   Here are pictures of 2 bowls at the one hour mark.

 I made a chart to write down our experiment on.  Since the boys don't read I think the chart was lost on them.  Perhaps if I do this again I'll plan ahead and have some pictures ready and color code the chart.  We'll still check the garage one after nap and then at dinner time to see when it melts.

During lunch I read the boys some of our snow related books.  I'll finish reading the rest of them throughout the day.

I'm frustrated that preschool keeps getting canceled, but I guess that's the name of the winter game.  I look forward to seeing all my little ones again on Monday.