Flower Play Dough Kit

Another cousin birthday, and another play dough kit assembled! This was a cute little flower themed kit.  I love how fun and girly it turned out!

I used a taller Latchmate storage box that had a cute little storage tray. In the top I put a flower toob and a little wooden rainbow. I added some flower buttons in different colors and different sizes and some flower cookie cutters, as well as some homemade purple play dough.

The bottom had a tub of pink homemade play dough, a rolling pin, another flower shaped cookie cutter and a little metal tub with handle. I also threw in some flower vocabulary cards (free here) that included all the flowers from the toob.

Here's hoping that our cousins like it!

Flower Vocabulary Cards

Combing Little Reader Lessons with Montessori style 3 Part Cards is one of my favorite ways to build vocabulary.  Both my boys have loved new word lessons.  Whenever I can, I also make lessons that have Toobs or other toys to go with them, for a tactile matching activity.

Recently, I made a lesson and vocabulary cards to go with the Flower Toob.

You're welcome to print the cards for free from here.

Check out other free vocabulary cards here!

Brown Week

Archer is 18 months

In August I posted our Color Themes Goals. Those are what I had in mind while we started Tot School this week, not actually learning the color.

His little shelf had several books about colors (that included brown).  I also got out two of his Non-Fiction Sight Words books and one of his Meet the Sight Words readers (he likes those better than story books at the moment).  The poster was free from Isla Hearts Teaching on TPT. I also hung up the pages to his color book (free here).

Brown foods 3 part cards (free here). He is starting to do most of the matching himself. We also did the corresponding Little Reader lesson to go with most days. 

 Coloring his Brown Book (free here). We used crayons, markers and Do a Dots.

Painting (and tasting) with chocolate pudding. It provided a fun sensory experience for him, although he was pretty upset when I took the cup of pudding away.

Bin of miscellaneous orange objects.

Playroom shelves this week.  The goal of the toys is to entertain him and give him some fine motor practice.  Things like building, sorting and puzzles also provide some spacial awareness (math and even physics). 

These shelves had some two part puzzles, a magnetic tracing board, Unifix cubes, a rainbow stacking toy, our Hide and Seek Positional Word game (free here), a couple of puzzles and a bin of brown foods.

Hide and Seek Positional Word game (free here)

When he doesn't feel well, so wants to cuddle, but still play.

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Kaysha @ Memorizing the MomentsColorsFollow On

Christmas Book Advent Calendar Upgrade

Ever since Xander was little, I've done the Christmas Book Advent Calendar that has been circulating Pinterest. The idea is that you wrap 24 (or 25) Christmas books and the child gets to unwrap one every day leading up to Christmas. This year, I decided to upgrade how we do it A) to make it more special, B) to make it more environmentally friendly and C) to make it MUCH easier on myself in the future.

That first year, we didn't have enough Christmas books, so I used several "winter" books or other books I could kind of connect.  Over the years, we've collected more than the necessary 24, mostly second hand, so now have to open two on a few of the days. (I use the same books every year).

I used to wrap each book, every year. It took a long time and created a lot of wrapping paper waste.  Since most wrapping paper isn't recyclable and I've been trying hard to minimize the disposables we use, I made some simple cloth bags for the books. To be even more environmentally friendly (and economical) I used tablecloths I found really cheap at Salvation Army for the fabric.  I even had enough left over for a few bags to use for regular Christmas presents.

Now believe me, I am not professional seamstress.  The bags are very basic and took more ironing than sewing. I was worried about bending the thing paperback books when cinching the bags, so I made several of them extra tall, and floppy, as a result. Altogether, though, I think they look very festive.

The best part is, I never have to wrap them again! No cutting, folding or taping!  Just throwing them in a bag and tying the ribbon, where I'll store them for next year. 

Halloween Tot School

How can it almost be Halloween?!?  I had big ideas for all sorts of Halloween related Tot School activities, but house renovations have thrown us into chaos, so this is what we were able to accomplish.

Halloween Vocabulary Matching (free printable here)

Halloween Sensory Bin 

Cauldron Shape and Color Matching (free printables here)

Spider Rings on Posts

Magna-Tile Jack-O-Lantern 

Halloween Books 

Felt Jack-O-Lantern

Elementary Economics Book Club

Back in August I posted my Afterschooling goals for Xander. One of the areas I had wanted to focus on was economics.  He received the Tuttle Twins series by Connor Boyack for Christmas last year. It's a great set of books that focus on economics in an approachable, easy way.  He's read all of the books multiple times, but I decided to do a "Book Club" with him, to make sure he was understanding the take home messages from the books.

For September, we both read and discussed The Law by Connor Boyack. To guide our discussion, I made a set of discussion questions.  I included a key with some possible answers, based on the story. You are welcome to download them here.


As we work our way through more books, I'll update with the new discussion questions.

Cauldron Matching

With Halloween approaching, I was looking for themed activities to do with Archer.  I ended up making him these printables to practice matching his colors and his shapes. For both sets, I left the cauldron page intact and put it in a dry erase sleeve.  I cut up the manipulatives and laminated them. If your little one isn't reading, you could easily read the words for them and have them find the correct candy/pumpkin.

Color Matching Cauldrons

This one has candy in different colors to match to the cauldrons.

Shape Matching Cauldrons

This one has pumpkins with different shapes on them to match to the cauldrons. 

You can download the printables here.

Here's a video of my little guy the first time I showed him the pumpkins.  We definitely go at his pace and only for as long as he is interested.

You may also enjoy these free Halloween 3 Part Cards

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