Letter B

Oh, look! Another letter :)  Click Here to get this:



Once again, these pages can be used with pom poms, coins, buttons, do a dot markers, bingo dabbers... M&Ms. anything round.

Letter A

I'm working on a Seuss Alphabet set for Letter recognition. Click Here for Letter A. If you know a better way to link files to a blog, let me know. Google Drive and i don't get along. It keeps distorting my files and leaving things out.

Cat in the Hat Toddler Activities

Today I prepared two pattern/ colour matching activities for Katie. I found the templates for my activities Here and Here.

The first one is a cookie sheet with magnetic pom poms. You could also use do a dot markers or bingo dabbers. I didn't have enough red or white pom poms for this activity, guess I'll need to buy more :)

The second is just a hat, with a second hat cut into the different strips. Both pieces are laminated in this activity. Katie sat very quietly while I laminated and cut the pieces out, and then lost interest very quickly afterwards. She opted to eat raisins instead :)

I think a smaller version of the puzzle activity would work well in a totbook...maybe in the future.

I was at Fabricland the during the weekend, and didn't pick up anything to make Katie a Cat in the Hat hat. But here's an easy tutorial if you have the material or a craft store on hand: http://mamalusco.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/dr-seuss-hat-tutorial.html

Monday :)

Happy Monday! Need any craft ideas for the week? Head on over to obSEUSSed. Can't find anything in their archives? Check out their Seuss Link collection.

The Cat in the Hat game

This is a game we received either for Katie's birthday or Christmas last year. We've played it a few times when our friends 5 years old was here, and it was a huge hit. Every time he was here after that, he would ask to play. It's silly, fun and gets you moving. Like most children's  games, it only takes about 15 minutes to play, so it holds their attention. If you head on over to Wonder Forge, you can see all of their I Can Do That games. We also have the Richard Scarry's busy town eye found it board game. I love playing board games and working on puzzles. Katie is old enough now that we can start doing these things as a family. I hope to get more games like these in the near future. ( Christmas hint hint )

Oh, and i apologize for the lack of creative updates recently, we've had a stomach bug making it's rounds at our house.

Dr. Seuss Nursery

I had alot of time on my hands before I had kids. The pictures in this room were placed according to the height of the furniture we had bought. We hardly used our crib, so gave it away and bought a toddler bed instead. This time around, we just co slept from the beginning. Lately I've found that our bed is too soft, so we brought our double mattress from the guest room upstairs and put it on the floor in this room. We all sleep much better now. I get to start the night with my hubby, then I migrate to DJ's room when he's hungry, and have a good sleep on a firmer mattress, and Elijah doesn't get kicked or woken up during the night. Win Win.

It took me a week to sketch and paint this room. All I did was start with a fresh coat of white paint, find some pictures i liked from various Dr. Seuss books, free handed them on the wall and painted with acrylic paint. After that we just applied a clear coat from Rona. To make things easier, you could find an overhead projector and print the pictures you want onto transparent sheets and trace the outline on the wall. I however, did not have access to an overhead projector, so I chose to free hand it. Can you name the books?

By the light of the moon, by the light of a star, they walked all night form near to far. I  would never walk, i would take a car

You'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut

Would you like them in a box? Would you like them with a fox?

Unless someone like you, cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not.

So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life's a great balancing act.

My daughter loves when i read these books and point out the pictures :) Have a great Tuesday, and read some Seuss today!

Seusstastical

We're starting t new theme this week :) Here's a sneak peak this morning, since my hubby didn't work yesterday, so we treated Monday like an extra Sunday ♥ I'll post the rest later.

Grammy reading My many colored days to Katie, almost a year ago.

A Color of His Own Totbook File

After fiddle farting around, I think we figured out a way to upload the totbook file without distorting it too much. The pictures are slightly out of place compared to the ones on computer, but I think it prints fine. Let me know if you have any problems with the file.

• I printed everything onto card stock, and laminated it. 
• The puzzle I printed as a 5X7 and cut into 6 pieces
• Heads and tails were simply cut in half
• Matching cards, you need to print two copies
• the seasons wheel is simply attached with a brad and the back portion is glued to the folder.
• Once again, the pockets are from homeschoolshare.com

Please do not download and house these files on your website, you are more than welcome to link back to my site though. I would love to see pictures if you make this totbook, and any suggestions for future activities or changes I could make to better this file, would be great! Enjoy!!

Click the link below to access the files.
Totbook

A Color of His Own Totbook

Sneak peak at what I've been working on for our final activity to accompany this book. It's not quite complete, as I still need something for the title page and I need to secure a few of the activities still. The size sequencing activity needs a paper clip, of which we apparently have none. The season wheel needs to be glued on and I need to decide if I'm going to laminate the colouring sheets or not. If I do laminate the, I'll be using rings to attach them to the folder. Once I've figured out how to attach a file to my blog, the pages will be available for your personal use. If you decide to share them, please only provide a link back to my blog, don't house my files on your site. The pockets are from homeschoolshare.com.

front. blank :)

inside

size sequencing cards

puzzle

Matching/memory cards

Heads and Tails

Season wheel

Counting cards

Colouring pages

Everything

Felt Board
Matching Cards
Play Dough Mat
Painting and Transparent Sheet

A Color of His Own Activities 4 and 5

Picture post today :)

Painting, using the picture form yesterday's play dough mat

Traced the colouring sheet onto yesterday's page protector

Katie went around giving the chameleon many different colours. He's even Katie coloured here :D

 

Felt Board
Matching cards
Play dough mat

A Color of His Own Activity number 3

I've been busy organizing a busy bag swap lately, so today's activity was inspired by one of them. I used the chameleon template that I mentioned in the last post, and enlarged it to take up most of a sheet of paper. After printing it, I put it inside of a clear page protector. We used it as a play dough mat. This was Katie's first play dough mat, and she loved it! She was more interested in it when I was helping though, so it didn't work as the distraction I had hoped for while making dinner. The purpose of today's activity was to see is a page protector would work well as a play dough mat, or if it would allow the page to move around too much. Laminating the sheets is the other option, but is far more expensive. If you have the extra money, I would laminate the pages. But by placing the picture in a page protector, you can cut down on cost big time, and change out the page as desired. The only downfall is that little hands take the pages out when you're not watching.

The other activity I prepared for today, was this...

The kids were through playing with the "puppet theater", so the box was taken apart and I painted large coloured circles on the other side. Since 'A Color of His Own' introduces many colours, I thought it would be a fun learning tool. I plan to leave it on the floor for awhile, maybe do some colour sorting activities, or maybe matching or movement, who knows! There's plenty of ways we could use this. Right now the kids are just having fun jumping form circle to circle and spinning around on it.

Felt Board
Matching Cards
Painting and transparent sheet

A Color of his Own activity number 2

I recently bought a Scotch branch laminator. I'm going to love it, especially since my kids put EVERYTHING in their mouths. My first and only laminating project so far, was to make colour matching cards to go with the book.

I found that there are too many cards for Katie to match. So instead of putting all 10 pairs in front of her, we'll be working with three at a time. As she gets older, these can be used for a memory matching game, or i might create a Lapbook and include these in it.

You can find the image I used for this weeks activities Here.

A Color of his Own Felt Board
Play dough Mat 
Painting and transparent sheet

A Color of his Own

This week, we're going to be focusing on one of our favorite books right now. 'A Colour of his Own' By Leo Lionni. Except I think it's spelled Color...he's probably not Canadian.

Look at that, turns out he's not Canadian

 For today's activity, we read the story while using our felt board. I made the felt pieces by simply tracing the characters in the book and cutting out templates. Tracing my templates on felt, cutting them out and painting them with acrylic paint. Nice and easy! Have a look!

Katie loves placing the pieces on the board, removing them and putting up the next one. Her favorite part is saying 'red with white polka dots'. DJ on the other hand, just wants to eat everything in sight. Om nom nom, chameleons. This is an activity we do without him.

Side note, I love when kids figure things out. Especially things you never would have thought of...

Did you know that magnets stick to corner bead? Happy Monday! Go explore!

colour matching cards
Play dough mat
Painting and transparent sheet

A Neverland Halloween

If you know me, you most likely know that Peter Pan is my all time favorite story. So it's not surprising that i dressed my kids up as Peter Pan and Wendy Darling for Halloween. Both costumes are homemade, and were inspired by the following blogs:

http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2009/10/peter-pan-costume.html
http://sewinharmony.com/the-wendy-dress/

And just for fun, I strapped a cabbage patch doll to Dj's back using Katie's Mei Tai. He was dancing around in circles trying to reach it. i love my kidlets ♥