Time For Tots: The Letter A

Several years ago shortly before Lucas was supposed to start school, like most new moms I panicked wondering if he knew enough, if I had taught him enough.  Did he even know how to cut with scissors?  Would he be able to sit still and listen to his teacher?

And so Time for Tots Days began.

Once a week I planned a special lesson and activities for my kids; things where they could learn, have fun and help ease my fears of if he would be ready for school.   I did this all in the pre-pinterest days, so ideas weren't so readily available.  The kids loved these days and it was a goal to do at least one of these a month with Ryder before he goes to preschool.  Last Friday, on the last day of the month, we did it!  This time it was all about the letter A



A-Alligator
We began by making our A -Alligator. (original instructions here)
I cut out the letter A and then Ryder cut out the teeth.

At first we were cutting each individual triangle, but then switched to a row of connected triangles (definitely recommend this)
While he was cutting, we would chant, "A says ah and A" over and over again.

Alligator Lunch:
   I lay a bunch of random toys and things on the floor and then we brought the A-Alligator over for his lunch.  This alligator only eats things that start with A.  The rest of the things were thrown in the "garbage".

Apple Tree
  We came back to the table and Ryder painted apples on an Apple Tree.  I just printed a picture of a tree and he painted the red apples.
This was one of his favorite parts and he kept asking when he was going to be able to paint.

A-Ambulance
  While he was painting I cut out the little ambulances, (found on this website here) which he then glued to a letter A.

We read the Ambulance story, from the same A packet, I just printed the pages I wanted to use as it has a lot of ideas.   He loved the story and took it to his room as soon as we were done reading it.

He then sorted the Ambulances with the Big A and little A.

A-Tracing
  We finished with Ryder tracing the letter A.   I wrote a big A and little A with highlighter then he traced it with a pencil.  The letter written with highlighter seemed easier to trace than the standard dotted lines for tracing.

It ended up being such a wonderful time and Ryder immediately asked when we could do the letter B and then the letter C and so on.  When Eric got home, Ryder showed him the little ambulance book and all of the things he had made. I am so glad I stared this up again and will hopefully be doing this at least once a week.


Supplies:
  Scissors
  Glue Stick
  Green and White Construction paper
  Googly Eyes
  Toys or things from around the house that stat with various letters
  Picture of Apple Tree
  Red Paint
  Paint Brush
  A-Ambulance Activity Packet
  Paper
  Highlighter
  Pencil

To see past Time For Tots Days- click the tab up top, or click on the link here. 

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  I am linking this post up at the following crafting blogs

Time For Tots: Teaching Kids About Saftey

Yes, you read that title right, a Time for Tot's Day. For any of you that have been reading my blog for a while now may remember the Time for Tot's days I used to do. This was a weekly time where I would take extra time to plan little lessons and little activities based around a theme for the kids. I started these days to force encourage myself to spend that extra time and make that extra effort with my kids and help them be better prepared for school in the process.

When Lucas started kindergarten, our Time for Tot's days went by the wayside. Occasionally the kids would even ask if we could do another Time for Tot's day. I would say yes, but we would get busy and just never took the extra time to do them.

It is my new goal to do at least a monthly Time For Tot's Day.

I was sitting there feeding Ryder trying to decide what we should do and I felt like our theme should be safety. I truly believe that we can and are prompted and guided at times as to what we should do and so I try to live by the motto, "if you think it, do it" when it comes to those promptings, and so safety it was.

We began by talking about our "safe people"-Mom, Dad, Grandmas and Grandpas and just a few others.

The kids then made a red and green light-which they held up the correct light depending on if a situation was good/safe-green go or bad/unsafe-red. I found a list of different scenarios as part of the safety packet on thesafeside.org*
We talked about bike safety with this matching page
We then acted out different scenarios-someone knocking on the door when the safe adult was not around, someone driving up in a car and asking for help, etc. The kids really enjoyed acting these out and were asking lots of questions while we were doing this.

Then we did a safety puzzle. The kids each cut out their puzzle and put them together and I read each piece for a final review.
And then since we had red and green lights, well why not make a yellow and play traffic light (a modified version of red light/green light)

So our return to Time for Tot's Day (you can see past ones by clicking here or on the tab at the top of the page) was a success. While we might not have made as many crafts or projects as we often would, it was a lesson with importance and an impact that will hopefully last forever.

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Resources

• Questions for scenarios came from http://www.thesafeside.com/ -- in the download center here-- under the For Educators tabs*
• Additional scenarios came from http://www.radkids.org/-under kids activities
• Bike safety page found on http://www.radkids.org/--Kids Activities-Picture match

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And Ten Things to Smile About will be in one week,
Tuesday March 1st-get your lists ready!

Time Fot Tots: Nutrition

We managed to get another Time for Tot's day accomplished. I am not sure how many more of these we will have once Lucas starts school. I think I will need to still do something, to help ensure I am playing with them, but it may become more play based and a little less school like, as 1/2 a day of school will be plenty for him at this point.

This week's Time For Tot's theme was Nutrition.

I first taught the kids about the food groups and the food pyramid. Did you know the food pyramid has totally changed? It now has vertical columns and includes physical activity as part of it. So after I did some online reading and figured out what it all meant, I was able to teach my kids.

We began by coloring in the different columns of the pyramid. About half-way through, Lucas noticed the smallest column we had not yet talked about and said, "I bet this is candy". And well it is 'fat's and oils' or candies, so he was right.

We talked about what foods went in each category and which were their favorites. We also talked about why we needed the different foods and what they did for our bodies.

I then gave the kids each a paper with the categories written across the top. I underlined the words with the corresponding food pyramid color. They then used the grocery adds and cut out pictures to glue in each category. After Alex got a bunch of glue on her hands she gave up, but Lucas kept going and got more and more food on his chart.

We then wrote our "shopping list" with their favorite foods from each group.

At this point I had planned on getting the kids play food and playing grocery store. We were going to sort the food into the right categories after we bought it, but well we had the Ryder factor and never did get back to this.

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Resources:

• Food Pyramid Work sheets and lots of great info found at USDA or here
• Shopping List worksheet found at Nutrition Explorations or here
• Info on what nutrients come from food found here
  

Time For Tots: Space

Yep, you read the title right; we actually did a Time for Tots day again. It was part of my list of 30 Things I would do this summer and summer is quickly coming to a close.

For those who might be new to my blog, I started Time for Tot's days last October. I was in a rut. Days would go by where I really didn't play with my kids at all. Sure I fed them, dressed them, made sure they didn't kill each other... but the real play where I wasn't distracted by ten other things just was not happening. Also, I wanted to help Lucas be prepared for school by helping him learn to follow instructions, finish a project and even basic skills like cutting and writing. I figured one day a week I should be able to spend some extra time planning some activities and truly 100% interacting.

Some weeks went better than others but overall it was a lot of fun. I saw Lucas progress and learn to follow through with an activity, I saw Alex's ability to cut increase exponentially, and I had a lot less mommy guilt as I was fully involved during these activities.

Ryder being born 8 weeks early through a wrench into things. The times when I wasn't caring for Ryder both Lucas and Alex would be asking to play with me but both wanted to do different things. It made it easier to not play with either. When I realized what was happening I knew it was time for another Time for Tot's day. This one had the theme of Space.

We started off by cutting out pictures of each of the planets. We then glued them down in the right order. While they were cutting and gluing I asked them which planet they thought was the hottest and why. We talked about how earth is the only planet that can support life. And we talked about what the different planets were maybe like. Lucas kept asking question after question, some of which I knew and others I did not. We jumped on the computer to find out which planet has two moons (it is Mars) and read about what Saturn's rings are made of.

They both added moons and stars and Lucas added some black holes to his solar system.

Then we made some comets. We simply rolled up some newspaper into a sphere; we added some tape to help it stay. Then we wrapped aluminum foil around the ball then stuck our sparkly pipe cleaners into our rocket. They were actually really hard to push in so we ended up taping on Lucas'. But Alex stuck with it and was able to push all of hers in.
And finally to end the day, we used a cookie cuter and made a shooting star brownie.

After we ate the brownie, Lucas asked what the next activity was. When I told him that was it he said, Time For Tots days used to be longer, I don't want to be done. He was right, I had planned fewer activities as I wasn't sure how Ryder was going to cooperate.

So we got out some paper to write a story about space. Lucas ended up writing his own story, but I completely loved it of course. He was writing and drawing! Of course I would be happy.

It was a great morning. I forgot how good it feels to just take that extra time to plan some activities and accomplish them.

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Resources

• Planet Printouts found on the Center for Science Education by Berkley or here.

• Inspiration for comet from Creative Kids at Home or here
  

You can see past Time For Tots days here or by clicking the tab on top.
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Don't forget next Wednesday the 28th to write your Ten Things to Smile About Lists and linkup.

Time For Tots: Water, Volume and Measuring

Warning: Do Not do this Time For Tot's day unless: 1- you can do it outside 2- you are prepared for someone to get wet (in our case-myself) 3- you are ready to have a lot of fun

Lucas has a favorite book from the library this week (which I just realized were due yesterday, doh!) Toy Boat by Randall de Seve and Loren Long. In the story the little boy makes a toy boat which ends up sailing out onto the lake and is lost but thanks to a friendly fishing boat makes it back. Ever since we got this story Lucas has been asking why do boats float, etc. And he said, "I know what we can do for our next Tot's day; we can fill up my boat until it sinks."

Since the weather has warmed up quite a bit I decided why not do some water activities.

As I was looking up things for teaching kids about volume and measuring, I realized that most lessons on that subject (espeically volume) are for 4th grade, so I just put together this Time for Tot's Day on my own.

We began by talking about how you measure different things, length, weight, etc. and then I told them that you measure water or liquids with volume. I then set out 5 different cups and asked the kids to put in order from biggest to smallest which cup they thought would hold the most water. I wrote it down on a chart and then we began filling each cup.
We would fill up each up and then pour the water into a giant measuring cup and then write down the results. There were a few surprises as to which cup was the biggest and a lot were all the same volume.
We then used some measuring cups, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and 1. I asked Alex to read what the numbers were and then taught them the correct way to say fractions. I took the half measuring cup and asked how many times they thought I would have to fill it up to be the same as the 1 cup, Lucas got it immediately! I was pleasantly surprised. We then filled it up twice and poured it in the 1 cup measuring cup. We repeated this with the 1/3 and 1/4.

Then we talked about why things float. I had a bunch of different things (metal spoon, plastic spoon, sponge, penny, nickle, paper cup, almost empty paint container) and would hand the kids each one and ask if they thought they would float. Then they threw them in the big water tub to see if they were right.

Next we made our own sail boats. We used empty boxes from stick butter, popsicle sticks, aluminum foil, tape, and colored paper. The kids cut off one big side of each box. We then taped the end of the box that was originally opened to get the butter out. We then wrapped each boat's sides and bottoms in aluminum foil.

(We didn't do it-but I recommend wrapping the inside of the box with foil too)

The kids cut out their sales. We taped the Popsicle sticks and then taped the Popsicle stick inside of the boat to the side as this was easiest.
The kids were delighted that they actually floated.

And since I am trying to let go and just have fun, we even did some water balloons at the end just for fun. Which is when I got really wet... why is it so hard to tie water balloons??

You can always see past Time For Tot's Day Activities Here.