March Madness!

Things have been a little crazy around here lately!  Mid March brought us some of the best weather I have ever experienced in Northern Michigan!  It got so warm that we drug out the wadding pool for a couple of days and Tootsie ran around the yard in her bathing suit!  Unfortunately, it didn't last.  It snowed all morning on Friday.  I don't know if it has been the change in weather driving us inside more or what but we have all been a little crabby with each other!  Tot School has been hit or miss but I have been trying to record the fun times and the activities that go well.  Here's a look at some of the things we have been doing.

Graphing M & Ms.  I've mentioned before that Tootsie loves any activity involving food - especially M & Ms!  We did this several times and she really enjoyed it.  We counted each row and discussed more, less and equal.  

I found this really cool puzzle recently at Goodwill.  The train cars are made up of three pieces each - wheels, top of the car and an inset with the number that corresponds to the number of creatures riding in each car.  So there's small motor work, color recognition, counting and number recognition all in one puzzle!  It's called the Numberland Express Puzzle and can be found at Amazon by following the link.

I can't remember the blog this idea can from but we really liked it.  I cut words out of magazines containing the letters "B" and "A," glued them on card stock and laminated.  "A" words are on the back.  I laid out the upper and lower case felt letters that I made and gave Tootsie a magnifying glass to locate the letters in each word.  While she liked searching for the target letters, she really liked identifying the letters in her name, my name and her dad's name better!

If you haven't visited Little Hands Big Work you totally should!  She has some great ideas, including this color wheel.  I used a computer generated pie chart to make the color wheel and then colored clothespins to match.  The back side has just as many wedges with star stickers to count.  The reverse of the clothespins contains numbers.  I haven't introduced the number side yet.

I made Tootsie some large pattern blocks out of felt and we spent a morning playing around with them. First I called a shape and she would jump to it.  Then I had her place different body parts on a shape.  We tried colors too and then I showed her how to make a rectangle out of two squares and a and a diamond out of two triangles.

We made sidewalk paint out of cornstarch, water and food coloring and headed outside on one of our warmer days.  

After painting the sidewalk for awhile, we painted each other's feet and made foot prints!  As a side note, sidewalk paint does not wash off your body on the first try :)

This is an awesome idea from Teach Preschool!  Tootsie had fun with it and it's been a big hit in my preschool classroom.  I covered one side of our easel with contact paper, sticky side out.  We have used colored strips of paper, foam shapes and straws to decorate the board.  

I made a few shapes for Tootsie to see what she would do with them.  She filled a few in with corresponding colored foam shapes and others she just matched strips of paper to.

I will be posting again soon about a few other projects we have worked on so check back soon!


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