Structured Play

A is for Airplane Today we started my Letter of the Week- A plans. You can read more about my plans here .    I found fabric letter stickers at a craft store and I placed one on a blank flashcard. They did not have lower case letters so I modified. I had Jacob trace the letter with his finger. I said, "Down, down, across" for the upper case and "around and down" for the lowercase. I have heard cutesy phrases to remember how to write the letters but at this age I feel Jacob would be distracted so I wanted to keep it very simple. Plus, we are not focusing on writing the letters but rather recognizing them. Next, we went to the Gel Lettering. I filled a large ziplock baggie with hair gel and green food coloring (his favorite color). I left the flashcard out and had him draw the letters on the gel pack by looking at the flashcard and repeating the saying, "Down, down, across" for the upper case and "around and down" for the lowercase.  

For this month I put together a file folder play pack from Home School Creations . This file folder activity set is super cute and she provides a complete set of printables! I have not used one of these for Jacob yet, (she has all sorts) because I did not think he was ready but this month we are giving it a try! We will go through the file folder activities daily. But today I will introduce Matching! One of the activities is Shadow Matching. Jake knows about shadows and had no problem understanding the concept of matching the symbol with the shadow.  We spread out the cards on the table. I picked up the fireman spraying water. I said what the picture was and then dramatically looked for the shadow. I pointed out what helped me see that it was the match to the fireman. He quickly picked up a symbol and found its shadow. It was quite simple for him. I had him tell me what the Fireman symbol was as he found the matches. He lined up the matches down the center of the table. We

Pin It For this month's Sensory Box I used shredded gift bag filler, heart erasers, heart noise makers, heart measuring cups, foam hearts, and foam words. The words are; love, hugs, and kisses. I had Jacob start exploring inside the box while I observed him. I wanted to see what he would do with the items on his own.    First thing he did was to grab the noise maker and use it to pick up the bag filler. He called the noise makers cranes! He lifted the bag filler with his "crane" and dropped it outside of the box. (Messy month!!) I could not believe that he looked at a red, white and pink box filled with hearts and he saw a construction project! He never ceases to amaze me! A Crane? He went to town playing in the box! He had so much fun picking up the filler and dropping it outside of the box. He made all the sound effects of a crane. He then used the heart shaped measuring cups as dump trucks and went around and picked up the filler. He gave me one and

Pin It This month I chose to focus a bit on Valentine's Day and a little on firemen. Jacob is loving firemen right now so I wanted to use his interest to infuse some of the skills I am trying to build. Many of the activities I planned for this month were found on Homeschoolcreations.com and 1plus1plus1equals1.com . These websites are great resources. I had planned to start Letter of the Week last month but we did not get started. Look for the start of a Letter of the Week this month! I am going to be adding Letter of the Week activities for about a half hour a day. Our Structured Play time has stretched to about an hour a day and now I want to cut that in half. We will do our Monthly Theme activities for a half and hour and Letter of the Week activities for a half and hour a day.     I want to reiterate a few points before the download: 1. My plans are not meant to be completed in any specific order. Each day is different and Structured Play time should be a fun

We have been working on counting for some time now and I have started introducing the numbers in addition to counting. I saw this on one of my blogs and knew it would be perfect! It fits in our theme and it is just basic enough for Jacob. 2 Teaching Mommies has this number book as a free printable! Check out 2 Teaching Mommies it is a great resource!! I printed and cut out the book. I told Jake that we were going to make our own book today. He loved that idea which excited me because I loved making books when I was young and knowing that he enjoys it as well opens up quite a few activities for us to do!  I had him count and color the snowflakes. I used my finger to trace the number and a say it. Then I had him try to trace it with the crayon. As you can see, he didn't do too great at first but by number 10 he did a perfect job!! Jake is doing a good job counting but I have to point or have him point at the items he is counting to get him to count correctly. His

Pin It Still no snow in our neck of the woods so I had to get creative... There is a fun project going around Pinterst that I thought looked perfect for us to try! It was on Toys in the Dryer .  I bought a bar of Ivory Soap and cut it in fourths. I took 1/4 and microwaved it! Yes, put it in the microwave and started her up! We watched and quickly a change happened! Peek in there to see! Jake was mesmerized! How fun! The soup grows slowly and largely (that is why we used 1/4 of the bar). I am not sure what the chemical reaction is that causes this to happen, we aren't ready for the technical part of the experiment, but it sure is cool to watch. We pulled it out after the soap stopped growing. I do not know the exact time but it was about 30-60 seconds. The soap comes out pretty cool to the touch, but I still had it sit before letting Jake touch it. We "cooked" all of the soap creating a nice size for some "snow" removal!   I placed the &qu

We started patterning this month! I wanted to start very simply and knowing Jake I knew I had to make it a kinesthetic activity. I found this ice cube tray thingy in the $1 section of Target and thought this would be perfect. I put a row of white puff balls a row of blue then and AB pattern of blue and white. I modeled what I wanted Jake to do "talking" through the whole process. Then had him go for it. He needed assistance. He wanted to just put puffs in random places so I had to point to the next spot for the balls. Once we got to the pattern row I pointed and said, "Blue, White" in a sing-songy voice so he could get the idea of  the pattern. I had him repeat after me.  Jake had a little trouble and got frustrated but we pushed through and he felt great satisfaction once he was able to finish the activity alone, "All myself!!" This is an important lesson for him and me! I have decided to be a little firmer with activities. I previously have le

Still no snow, although it is cold! Jake wanted to make a snowman again so I thought we could make one using cotton balls today. I got out the glue and he was in! I traced a snowman outline and let Jake go to town gluing cotton balls down. I told him to make sure filled the space with cotton balls. He glued down a button and a snowflake as well. For the next step, I had him tell me what he wanted for the snowman and I cut it out of construction paper and let him glue it down. He added a hat, eyes, carrot nose, mouth, arms, scarf and a pipe! He was reading Frosty the Snowman book! Look how proud he is of his artwork! Another fun craft project! 

Today we were feeling crafty! Jake wanted to make a snowman and since we STILL don't have snow (not complaining), we used a egg carton instead.  These are our supplies and an example piece. We made these last year and Jake played with it until it crumbled! I wanted to make one as well so he could see me put it together and do what I did. This way he can practice following directions ! I had all the pieces ready to go and we just took it step by step. I stuck the arms in, he stuck the arms in. He really paid close attention and tried very hard. No rushing and no asking for help! He even poured his own glue. As you can see he is still learning that a little goes along way! He is very independent when it comes to crafts. He doesn't want help and he wants to spend a lot of time on his projects. We used beads instead of buttons because we didn't have any buttons. It was actually Jake's idea to use the beads! I love is out of the box thinking! Cute snowme