E is for...

E is for egg...

We did an egg hunt for these puzzle eggs. We found the pieces throughout the house and then put them together at her table.
We did this egg shell craft. I've been dreading doing this but it actually was really great. This was the first time May has actually understood that glue makes things stick if you leave them there long enough. I just rinsed out some egg shells and then dyed them with food coloring. May mixed them up in the bag and glued them on the E paper.
E is for elephant...

We did some stuff from Confessions of a Home schooler although not very vigilantly. We also did just some regular coloring pages that we had in our coloring book that had elephants on it.

Our flip book animal was an elephant. May had a really hard time making the "eh" sound and she didn't really recognize it when we came back to it later so we'll have to revisit this one soon.

E is for envelope...

I have some bright colored envelopes that I put the numbers 1-10 in and put them around the house. I taped different numbers and envelopes up on the wall. When may found the envelope then she would take the number inside and match it to the number on the wall and then match the envelope to the other one on the wall.

Z is for...

It was hard to think of things to do for the letter Z! Here are the few things that we did.

We made a Zebra puppet found here.

We played Zebra dominoes and did some coloring pages from Confessions of a Home schooler found here. She has a cute little game that is similar to the cootie game which I think would be fun to try.

We practiced zipping up the zippers on our jackets.

Our crowning event was going to the Zoo. Can I just say our Zoo is terrible. I got half price because we have an aviary membership and M* is free- would never pay full price to go to our zoo. There are hardly any animals!

Sprinkle and Wipe

I saw this super great activity here on Chasing Cheerios. So simple but M* was enthralled.
Materials:
Salt Shaker
Sponge
Baking Pan
Fill the salt shaker with water then let your kiddo sprinkle it into the pan then show them how to suck it up with the sponge. Repeat...repeat...repeat...and again.

Finger printing

We used ink pads to make some finger print art this week. I think next time we do it I'm just going to put a big piece of paper on the table instead of giving her little ones.

C is for...

C is for clothespins.
We practiced putting clothespins on things a lot this week. M* didn't quite get it but she had a lot of fun pretending to clip things on and of course she knew exactly how to get them off. I cut some clothes shapes out of felt and we made a mini clothes line for her to clip them on. She had fun just trying to put them on but I would also ask her to find me the one that was pink or blue etc... and then ask for a specific clothes item like a sock.

For this activity you need clothespins circle stickers (like the garage sale stickers) and bowl or a cup. I used a cool whip bowl and put paper around the outside. Stick different color stickers around the outside and have a coordinating clothes pin for it. I put sticker on the inside and outside of the bowl. M* wouldn't turn the bowl or let me turn the bowl so this way she could do all around it without upsetting her.

C is for cake. We made a cake this week. M* loves to bake. She is a pro and dumping all the ingredients in and stiring them up.

C is for camping.
We set up a tent in my mom's backyard for the day. (I am greatly looking forward to the day when we have our own backyard to set things up in). The first thing we did in our tent was put together a simple puzzle. I used this picture here and cut it up into about 5 pieces. Then we did our caterpillar activities that we had been doing through out the week (see below). And then we went on a "C" hunt. I clipped some papers with the letter C written on them around the tent (using clothespins) and had M* find them and put them in her bag. To finish the camping fun we made some smores in the microwave.

C is for caterpillar.
I found this new great website. This gal is amazing I can't believe how talented she is. We will definitely be using her things as part of our letters. The blog is called Confessions of a Homeschooler. Here is the link to her letter C stuff. Some of it was a little too old for M* but we used the color matching caterpillars, the letter lace card, and the lacing cards for the story "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". All of which M* was able to do with to problem (she is almost 2 just to give you an idea).

Also, just out of pure happenstance we made this cute chicken at the library story time.
You need a cup, a piece of string, a small piece of felt, a small piece of sponge, and something to poke a small hole (we used a skewer). They also gave us eyes and an orange nose (that was torn off before I took this picture) but you could just draw those on.

Poke a small hole in the top of the cup. Thread the string through and tie a knot onto a red piece of felt.
Tie the small piece of sponge onto the bottom of the string. Then let your child color it and decorate it however you want.

When it's done you make it make a noise by wetting your fingers a bit and pulling down on the string. It actually makes a chicken noise it's pretty cool.

I-Spy Bag

Have you seen these? They are so cute. Here is a tutorial here.
Just as a side note I filled mine with rice and it turned out so heavy so don't skip buying the poly fill beads.

Dinosaur Land

This idea came from this super spectacular idea here. Mine is way scaled down compared to the awesomenes that the idea came from but oh well. I must apologize for being terrible and giving tutorials. I don't think to take pictures a long the way until it is done. I found the pack of dinosaurs for this in the dollar bin at target.

First thing I did was cut out to pieces of brown felt for the ground you can make them as big or small as you want.

Cut out the shapes that you want for your grass, water, and whatever else you would like to add. That brown bump in the back of mind is supposed to be a cave but its a little flat. Sew these pieces to your top piece of felt. Also if you would like yours to fold up then put a piece of velcro on each side (You can see mine in front of the the cave and behind the water).
For the trees on mine I glued them to a piece of felt and then stuck some velcro on the bottom of it. That way when it gets folded up you can take them off an lay them down.

The next step is sew the two pieces of the big felt together. I sewed mine wrong side together and then turned it inside out but if I were to do it again I would just put them together right side and sew around the outside since the felt won't fray.

This works great fold up into your bag and take to restaurants especially if you have a toddler that isn't terribly interested in the crayons and paper.