5 Little Monkeys

We had a lot of fun with the 5 Little Monkeys Tot Book from Carissa at 1+1+1=1. Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed is a book we have read many times and is a family favorite. The boys read along with with me when I read it the first time.  We sorted monkeys by sizes, counted monkeys in the mini book, and put the letters of the alphabet in order.

Then we enjoyed retelling the story with the picture prompts.We also used our "monkeys in a barrel" with the book too.

We also watched a few different versions of the song "5 Little Monkeys" on http://www.youtube.com/ . The boys enjoyed watching them and I enjoyed discussing the differences in the songs and the book.

I had a lot of fun with my little monkeys today! Thanks, Carissa for sharing!


I am linking up to a very cool new "linky party" by one of my new favorite blog authors. It is called Thrifty Thursday at Playing With Words 365. You can visit by clicking the link or by clicking on the button in my side bar. The author's goal is to share free or virtually free activities every Thurs. I will be linking up there often as so much of my activities are free or very close to it,  as that is what my budget will allow. :)

This activity was free as it was a free printable from 1+1+1=1 and I already owned the book, but if I didn't I would have checked it out at my favorite local library!

Also linked up at Preschool Corner

Cyber Monday GIVEAWAY

Cyber Monday GIVEAWAY

Check out this amazing giveaway at Living Life Intentionally! Such great items!

Moments to Remember-November

 Moments to Remember was developed as a simple way to look back on our week as homeschoolers and find photos that encompass the memories we want to remember. 

The week may have been tough, there may have been more bumps than smiles, but in the end these are the moments that keep us going, the ones we need to remember.

This is a new linky is for homeschoolers, or families who are keeping their kiddos at home during the early years {we  are considered homeschoolers too}.

I thought this was a great idea by two other awesome blogging mamas, Carisa and Jolanthe.

So as I looked over my pictures of the week these two stood out to me:

 

May I always encourage and cheer him on in his learning and life and give him lots of "high fives"! I want to be his biggest cheerleader! 

 

  The smiles on their faces is priceless! I love the way they are hugging each other so tightly too! While they love each other dearly, they do have their moments when they squabble and fight. I want to remember this sweet moment of hugging, laughter and thankfulness with our Wreath of Thanks above them.

I am linking up to  Moments to Remember at 1+1+1=1. 
Hop over there to see other moments to remember from the week.  

Thanksgiving Week Fun!

We had a great week getting ready for Thanksgiving! The boys seem to be enjoying our "preschool stuff" more and more! In fact today, Friday, JP asked "Mommy, can we do preschool stuff" which is what I usually call our fun activities. So of course I said yes, even though it being the day after Thanksgiving I didn't have anything planned, I improvised!

My Goals for this week were:
-Read the rest of our Thanksgiving books
-Work on fine motor skills
-JP work on scissor cutting more
-Ultimately just enjoy our time together

So here is a glimpse into our week:

I recently bought a new bulletin board that I love! I love displaying all of the boys' work in one place. So fun!

I found some cutting practice pages online somewhere, please forgive me for not remembering where. They were great for JP!

JP cutting! I love that tongue out when he is concentrating.

We reviewed colors again with CA.

His face describes it all, he proudly does his work.

At this moment, JP was getting frustrated with his cutting and took a reading break! 

We also worked on transferring, sorting and counting beans.

 

Notice the tongue again! I love it!

 For fine motor skill practice I had CA put as many stickers on his paper as he wanted. He loved this!

 

 We worked on a Thanksgiving Preschool Add On Pack from Lawteedah 

Shadow matching

More cutting practice

Matching Thanksgiving pictures

Working on Small, medium and large

 The Daddy was able to be home with us more this week so I handed the camera to him!

High Five! Great job! With more shadow matching. 

He got a match and was so excited!!!

 We also sang a lot of turkey songs and rhymes together. This one was our favorite.

I’m a little Turkey
Tune: I’m a Little Tea Pot
I’m a little turkey
Short and fat
Thanksgiving Day is coming
What do you think of that?
I had better run as fast as I can
Or your mommy will roast me in a pan!

I found it at Playing with Words. We sang it all week and JP could sing it all alone, which of course I thought was great! Here he is singing for you. He gets one rhyming word off, but that is ok.

More fine motor skills work with pipe cleaners and beads to make bracelets.

 And a little more sorting by color.

All in all we had a great week together getting ready for "turkey day". Here are my biggest blessings in which I am very grateful for! I am feel immensely blessed to be this man's wife and these boys' Mommy!

I hope your Thanksgiving week and Day was very blessed!

I am linking up to Preschool Corner this week. Feel free to hop over there and see what other awesome mommies are doing with their "littles" . I get tons of ideas from these awesome ladies!

Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to leave me a comment! I love comments!
Trina

Wreath of Thanks

So I have been wanting to incorporate a fun, family craft night for awhile now and tonight we did a craft all together! So much fun!

I got this idea from the MomSense, Publication of MOPS International, November/December 2011 Issue on page 4.

We traced each family member's hands onto construction paper. Then we listed things each person is thankful for on the fingers of the paper "leaves". We cut a hole out of a paper plate to make a circle shape, you could use any sturdy cardboard material. Then we cut out the hands and glued the hands around the wreath. I then punched a hole in the top of the wreath, strung a ribbon through it and hung it on our door. Such a fun night!

CA and JP coloring their "hands".

I am linking this post to Living Life Intentionally-TGIF Linky Party. You can click on the link or on the button on the side bar to get there to see other amazing crafts and activities!

I am also linking up at Toys in the Dryer- Fun Stuff Fridays. Thanks for inviting me to share!

In November 2012 Linked up to:

Thanksgiving Lessons...

This week we had a lot of fun discussing Thanksgiving. I loved describing this holiday to my boys (ages 4 and 2) because I truly love this holiday. We read many of these books, some were from the public library and some were books I own from my teaching days.

I found a ton of great printables to use this week! I decided instead of printing them all and trying to do them all, I would pick and choose what I thought would work best for my boys! Oh the joys of doing preschool myself, I get to choose! Thanks to all the great resources I keep finding!

 So first we colored turkeys and worked on colors and color words from 1+1+1=1 here
Color the Turkey-Preschool Pack.

CA loves to color!!!

JP working hard to stay in the lines! I allowed him to do his independently by color coding the words for him.

Next we worked on an awesome  "Turkey, Turkey, What do you See Printable" at
Playing With Words 365  which was a fabulous mini book all about what foods we will eat at Thanksgiving. My boys loved reading this book and then gluing in the correct foods on each page. I didn't grab the camera for this one, sorry. It is a great activity that I highly recommend.
 
 One of my favorite activities in my preschool activities is teaching CA and JP the Word of God. I want our boys to hide God's word in their heart and what is better than starting at an early age. I am thankful for the awesome preschool blogging sites that offer such great resources for scripture learning. This week we learned "Be thankful to Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good. Psalm 100:4b". I too am learning scripture with my boys each week and I LOVE that! Click on this link to see the verse and activities we did this week.
Totally Tots-In My Heart

We also worked on vocabulary words and the concept of large, medium and small in relation to sizes from this awesome Thanksgiving Printable Pack at.
Preschool Corner

I wanted to do more Thanksgiving crafts, especially the ones where you trace your sweet children's hands to make a turkey, you know the ones I am thinking of. But oh no, my sweet 4 year old did not think "tracing" his hand would be fun, so I didn't push it. Maybe we will get to it the week of Thanksgiving. :)

I am very grateful to be teaching my boys while they are home with me. I never imagined I would have this much fun!

I don't recall what my cherubs were doing here, but I thought it was funny and this time I grabbed the camera! Silly boys who I love so! Oh and yes, we do work in our pjs often! 

This week I am linking up to Preschool Corner here. Be sure to check out what other awesome mommies are doing with their precious little ones.

November Fun so Far!

Hello readers,
We are still here and learning away! Last week JP chose our theme for the week. Back in August when I planned our themes for the year there was one week in November that I didn't have a theme for. So I asked JP what he wanted to learn about and he quickly replied, "Ernie and Big Bird!" So I penciled it in my planner, reluctantly thinking, "Ok, we'll see how this one goes". As that week approached I asked JP if he still wanted to learn about Ernie and Big Bird and my precious four year old clapped his hands, turned himself around and said, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" "Ok, then, we can do that", I thought to myself. So we checked out Sesame Street books from the library and gathered all of our the ones we own and read lots about Big Bird and Ernie. We colored a few pictures, played with our stuffed animals, and just had fun with the theme he picked. Unfortunately, this is is the only picture I took of our learning from that week. :) We just had too much fun to grab the camera, ok maybe I forgot. :)

Then this past week we learned about our five senses and how to use scissors.
We learned about seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. We made a "5 Senses Book" with each sense and body part drawn on it that the boys colored. We discussed our senses throughout the week as we cooked, ate, talked, and listened.

These are a few of the books we read.

I also bought JP his first set of scissors ever! I know that preschoolers need to learn this skill, I was just procrastinating. Ok, let me tell you in all my years of teaching preschool in college and then public school for 11 years, I never knew how hard it is to teach a child to hold a pair of scissors. I struggled to find the right words to tell JP how to hold them, so then I finally said, "Ok, just watch Mommy!" With much practice and still more to come his cutting skills are improving. Here he is working so hard!!

I love that when he is thinking really hard, his little tongue pops right out! Priceless!!

Notice the tongue again!

The tot of the house happily coloring!

We also matched number flash cards and worked on numerical order from 1-10.

Then I found a great activity at Spell Outloud  using lids that I loved and so I pulled out lids from my cupboards and we had a little fun!

 First we sorted spoons by color and then counted them.

Sweet CA sorting his spoons.

Such a proud smile of his completed work!

Then JP made a pattern with his lids.

While CA and I discussed large, medium and small.

 What great ideas that I found, I am now collecting an assortment of lids to implement the other great ideas I saw. Thanks Spell Outloud!

I hope you are all having fun with your "littles" too! Now we are gearing up for Thanksgiving! I can't believe it is around the corner. I have found such great ideas at 1+1+1=1 and Preschool Corner that I will be using this week to reinforce Thanksgiving concepts. Hop over there and enjoy!

I am also linking up to Preschool Corner.