For the last couple of weeks we have been focusing on Christmas activities during our school time.  Unfortunately, we did not end up with much learning time in the past few weeks, so we did not get to very many of the activities I had planned.  Maybe next year!  Here are a few of the activities we did manage to squeeze in.

She made a hand/foot print reindeer.  She got really upset today when she found it in the trash and we had to pull it back out to play with!

We made a reindeer snack with a square cookie cut in half, raisins, jelly bean, pecans and peanut butter.

For this game Mikayla would choose a magnetic number and place that many ornaments (pom poms) onto the tree until she had the tree filled up.

I put magnetic letters in a stocking and she pulled them out one at a time to identify.  She was able to say each letter!  After each correct identification we would both say "Jingle Bells"! 

We also did a really neat nativity storyboard with her handprints.  I can not remember where I saw it, but basically it was four handprints, each turned into an animal that represented the nativity story.  A donkey for Mary heading to Bethlehem, a cow for the manger and stable scene, a sheep for the shepherd and a camel for the wise men.  Then in the middle of the four handprint animals was her fingerprint to represent Baby Jesus.  It was a great learning tool for her to retell the birth of Jesus.  Of course we played with Christmas stickers and did a few other crafty activities that I did not get a picture of.

I am not sure what the coming weeks will hold for our learning time because we will have the twins we cared for in August living with us again.  They will be with us for a month so I don’t expect to get much learning time in!  We will see though.  They are both walking and running and what not now so it will be more like having triplets than it was before!

We spent the last two weeks studying the Letter G off and on.  We did a lot of crafty activities.

Felt gumball machine game.  The idea behind the game was that she would roll two dice and count out that many gumballs to place in the gumball machine.  However, she struggled with counting both dice together.  She wanted to count each dice individually.  We eventually shifted to using just one dice, but by that time she was through playing.  She wanted to just "dress up" her gumball machine (which partially inspired my Felt Mr./Mrs. Potato Head game I made her for Christmas).

Letter G Grapes.  We took a bottle cap and dipped into purple paint to make a grape, then she stamped onto the letter G.  When she was done we glued a green leaf on the top.

We are way behind the blog world on this game, but we balanced marbles on top of golf tees.  She was excellent at this and was able to complete in no time at all. 

We then scooped marbles into a bottle.  This was a little harder for her.

We played a feely bag game.  I took one of her wet bags and put one object at a time inside.  She had to close her eyes and feel what the object was and then make a guess.  She did great and only missed a couple.

We made a picture of Grover by painting a cutout blue and then gluing on the other body parts and letters to his name. 

I wrote letters onto a strip of paper.  Then she rolled two dice and counted over that many letters to identify the letter.  We ran into the same problem with counting two dice at once.  She tends to be a little stubborn so she wouldn’t let me help show her how to count them together!  We ended up dropping the second dice and just playing with one.

Handprint giraffe – it was really cute until she smeared the red paint across his face!

Final letter G Grapes and a gold glitter letter G.

Another letter G giraffe made from foam and the spots are her finger prints stamped.  She had so much fun with this one that she spent the next hour (literally), cutting and tearing scraps of paper to make her own giraffes.  We ended up with a whole pile of "giraffes" by the time she was through.

And of course we had to finger paint with green paint!

As you can see in most of the pictures, Mikayla loves her art apron her Mimi sent her.  If we paint, she wears it for the rest of the morning!  Mikayla says, "Thanks Mimi".  For our cooking lesson this week I wanted to make guacamole, but living an hour from a grocery store hindered us from getting our supplies.  We settled for a Letter G lunch instead – grilled cheese, grapes and goldfish. 

For the next couple of weeks we will focus on the Christmas season.  We will also throw in a few "winter" activities just because they flow well with Christmas, even if we aren’t experiencing the cold here!  We have a lot of "distractions" in the next few weeks, so I am not sure how much learning time we will actually get to.  But we will do our best.

For the past two weeks we have been studying the Letter T and Thanksgiving.  I had a lot of activities planned for the two weeks.  Some we got to, but a lot got missed because we had a couple of days where we were unable to have school (more on that in a later post).  I guess we will just use those for next year.  Here are some of the many activities we did in the last two weeks.

She put Thanksgiving themed stickers onto the letter T.

I made a letter dice out of some of the letters we have been studying and turned it into a letter graphing game.  She would roll the dice and then put a sticker above the letter.  She did great and caught on really quick at putting the stickers in the correct places.  The only downside was that she wanted to keep playing even when we ran out of boxes!

I wrote letters onto the bottom of an egg carton and had her "hammer" the letter down when I called it out.  Thanks Lara for the suggestion, she loved it!

She weaved string around the letter T.

This was a two part game.  Part one, she would choose a number card (number on the front and corresponding dots on the back) and then count out that many turkeys.

Part two, after a few days of the first game she was tired of it so I wrote numbers on the turkeys and had her match them up with the number cards.

Letter T turkey – thanks again Lara!

We wrote letters on the sidewalk with chalk.  I called out the letter and she would run and stand on the corresponding letter.  We did this in between drawing lots of pictures on the sidewalk!

This was one of my favorite activities from the past two weeks.  I laid out some letter cards on the ground and got back out her letter dice for this one.  When she rolled a letter she would go stand on that one and then gobble like a turkey.  The best part was instead of saying "gobble, gobble" she said "cabba cabba" and referred to turkeys as "cabblas".

We played several feather games.  For one game she rolled two dice and then counted out that many feathers.  We also color sorted the feathers.  I also hid feathers around the living room and then she would find them (again, thanks Lara).

One last feather game we played was making a Turkey counting book.  I drew out several turkeys minus the feathers and wrote numbers on their stomachs (and corresponding number of dots in the corners).  She glued on the correct number of feathers to the turkey bodies.

One of my favorite crafts from the two weeks were these turkeys we made for our Thanksgiving lunch.  We started by painting some cardstock with lots of colors.  Then I traced and cut out her hands (three per turkey).  For the body I cut toilet paper tubes in half and glued on the rest!  We stuffed napkins inside and used them as napkin rings.  They turned out really cute.

We also made some textured letters to spell THANKS and made it into a banner to help decorate the house.  We used foil, buttons, pom poms, ribbon pieces, cut up straws and glitter.  I was pretty pleased with how it turned out!

In case you missed last week’s post about the turkey name game, it is yet another idea for a letter T activity.  We also worked on a really fun Thanksgiving song that we will try to post on YouTube for you to see soon.  She sang it before we had our "feast" on Saturday for all our guests.  Precious!  Like I said we had a lot of activities we didn’t get too, but maybe next year!

Due to some unexpected travel time last week, we decided to extend our Letter F week into a second one.  Mikayla had a blast using fish, flowers, frogs and families/friends to learn all about the letter F and practice basic math skills.  Stay tuned next week for the Letter T (we are skipping ahead because of Thanksgiving and Turkey)!

This game is a two part game.  I cut out different colored fish shapes and wrote the numbers 1-5 on them (these are the numbers we are heavily focusing on right now for recognition).  The first game is a colored paper clip matching game.  It is as simple as its name, match the clothespins to the correct colored fish.  She actually pretended that the paper clips were the fishing pole and when she "caught" the fish she proceeded to give it a big kiss!  I made these from thin construction paper, but I would recommend thick paper or cardstock because they were very flimsy for her to attach the paper clips.  The second game is a counting game.  For this game she would only match up the number of paper clips that are written on the fish.

Of course we did lots of finger painting!  She loved this.

More finger painting – like I said we did this a lot!  Side note – round plastic lids work great for paint trays (this one came from a can of cocoa).

We sorted big and small flowers from my hair clip supply.  I had her use tongs from her kitchen to pick the flowers up with to work on her motor skills a bit.  This also turned into an impromptu game where she made a flower soup for us to eat.  Her sense of imagination never ceases to amaze me!

She glued flowers onto the letter F.  At first she had a hard time with squeezing the glue, but after she got the hang of it she did great.  She even had me get more flowers out because she was having so much fun with the glue.

She sorted straws into a color coded egg carton.  I flipped one upside down and colored them different colors.  Then I cut a small hole in the top, big enough to stick the straws in.

Flower/letter match.  The petals had capital letters and the centers had lowercase letters. 

I made flower petals with the letters in her name and then wrote her name on a strip. She matched the flowers up with the correct letter.  We even took away the name strip to see if she could make her name without seeing it.  She got the first few letters, but then needed some help. 

I put spaghetti noodles in an empty pepper shaker and let her empty and fill it up.   Great fine motor practice.

I made some fish with numbers on them and then worms with dots.  She counted the dots and matched them up to the correct number.  She is starting to recognize her numbers and can almost always find the number 1 and the number 5. 

In the middle of one of our letter games she thought it would be fun to put letters on her fingers.  Since she was having fun I rolled with it and had her tell me what letters she was putting on them. 

We made French toast  Have I mentioned how much this kid loves helping out in the kitchen?  She even loves to do dishes…not sure where that comes from!

We had lots of fun with these little froggies from my craft selection.  We rolled the dice and made that many froggies jump.  We got out our foam numbers and set that many froggies on top.  And we just played with them – they took baths, went to the park, ate a big dinner and had lots of fun.

She put fish stickers on the letter F.  She is trying to make a fish face here.

And what Letter F study would be complete without a paper plate frog??

We also made a flower out of her hand and foot prints, made a Letter F with feathers and a few other side activities!  We also made a couple of forts throughout the weeks for her to play in.  We spent a lot of time talking about family and friends, reading through our family/friends picture book I made before we left and worked on a special project for some of our family and friends in the states. 

As I mentioned previously, in honor of Thanksgiving we will skip forward to the Letter T for Thanksgiving and turkeys!  Stay tuned for lots of T fun!

Mikayla had a fun week filled with Letter E.  We made some crafts, ate some eggs

We practiced tracing and identifying our numbers while singing "The Numeral Song" by Dr. Jean.  If you have never heard of Dr. Jean and work with young children at home or in a school setting you should check her out.  She has some great educational songs and even some fun songs to just sing and dance to.  One of our favorites is the "Tooty Ta" song.  I have 2 or 3 of her CD’s but would love them all!  Seriously, check her out.  It will be well worth your time!

I made a "letter puzzle" game by putting letter stickers on the back of a cereal box.  She then had to match the magnetic letters to the correct sticker letter.  Since they were Mickey stickers we had to sing the "Hot dog" song from Mickey Mouse clubhouse (not sure if this show is shown in the states or just here, but it is a cartoon version) that she loves so much. 

I made an ice cream uppercase/lowercase matching game that she wasn’t supposed to find until the letter I, but found this week.  We went ahead and played it using only the letters we had studied to this point.  The ice cream was capital letters and the cones were lowercase letters. 

Here is a closer view of the game.

This was a two part game.  Part one she took all the items from a tupperware container and sorted them.  They were three distinct sizes.

Part 2 was to put the items into the container using the correct hole – small, medium or large.  She spent a good thrity minutes playing this game over and over…I thikn she liked it!

Since she loves playing with dice I incorparted this into several of our games this week.  For this game she rolled the dice, counted the dots and then found the correct number.  Since she isn’t great at identifying the numbers yet I would sing our "Numeral Song" and then write it on her chalkboard.  She would then match it up. 

Speaking of chalkboard, we spent some time learning to make smiley faces this week.  She made this one all by herself with me only giving her verbal prompts on what to do.

Letter E elephant.  He looks a little crazy, but it works!

And of course we had to exercise with Elmo via our Elmocize video.  She loves this!

And what E week would be complete without at least one Elmo project (sorry Catherine)!  I was pleased with how this turned out.  I cut out the shape of Elmo’s face and Mikayla painted it red.  She did awesome at painting all the white spots.  Then I cut out the eyes, nose, mouth and letters to spell Elmo.  She glued them all on and did surprisingly well with placement.  I only had to help her out a bit!

Letter E egg carton

I made a large letter E out of envelopes.  Mikayla then rolled her dice and put that many E’s in her E envelope.

We dressed up like an elephant and sang "The Elephant Song" by Dr. Jean.  Here is the video – she got a little camera shy!

Last week we had some interrupted learning time so I opted to continue on with the Letter D this week.  We also had some interrupted learning time this week so all in all we got about 4-5 days of D in over two weeks!  On Monday we were in Mbabane to get our TRP’s taken care of and then on Thursday we went on some home visits with childcare staff.  In addition to D activities we also reviewed some of our letters from previous weeks.  Here are some of the D activities we completed this week.

We painted dots on the letter D.

This isn’t letter D, but Mikayla has gotten to wear she will choose school activities to play with instead of her toys.  Here she is playing with a patterning game at the desk while I was making dinner.  I thought she was playing with toys until I turned around!

I took our disc golf discs and scattered them around the floor.  Then I placed letter cards inside.  She dropped the ball onto the disc and identified the letter.  As she gets bigger she can identify things that start with this letter.  We had an extra disc with no letter so that was the dancing disc.  Anytime her ball landed on that disc we both had to start dancing!  And when she got bored with this game we went outside and through them around the yard.

We found this book in town on Monday.  It teachers her basic line movements.  She loves writing in it and then erasing it off!

For our final D project we made donuts.  I found a great recipe that Mikayla could help me with all the way through.  When it came time to rolling out the dough she grabbed her IKEA rolling pin and went to town.  Then she took cookie cutters and cut out her own donuts.  Here she is enjoying them fresh from the oven.

Next week we will move onto the Letter E – elephants, eggs and Elmo.  I know my friend Catherine is cringing right now, but rest assured we will throw in Grover when it come to the Letter G!

Donut Recipe:

1 1/3 cups warm milk, 95 to 105 degrees (divided)
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
5 cups all-purpose flour
A pinch or two of nutmeg, freshly grated
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Place 1/3 cup of the warm milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the yeast and set aside for five minutes or so. Be sure your milk isn’t too hot or it will kill the yeast. Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg, and salt – just until the flour is incorporated. With the dough hook attachment of your mixer beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed. This is where you are going to need to make adjustments – if your dough is overly sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. Too dry? Add more milk a bit at a time. You want the dough to pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl and eventually become supple and smooth. Turn it out onto a floured counter-top, knead a few times (the dough should be barely sticky), and shape into a ball.

Transfer the dough to a buttered (or oiled) bowl, cover, put in a warm place (I turn on the oven at this point and set the bowl on top), and let rise for an hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.

Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2-inch thick on your floured countertop. Most people (like myself) don’t have a doughnut cutter, instead I use a 2-3 inch cookie cutter to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the smaller inner circles using a smaller cutter. If you cut the inner holes out any earlier, they become distorted when you attempt to move them. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise for another 45 minutes.

Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden, 8 to 10 minutes – start checking around 8. While the doughnuts are baking, place the butter in a medium bowl. Place the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.