Tools Activities

If found a great free printable tool-themed tot pack here from Our Little Monkeys. It's full of good activities and worth a look.

We used the shadow matching cards,

the alphabet (which worked nicely with some letter chips we have),

the shape matching,

 and the pattern pages.

Trip hasn't wanted to use his dry erase markers to complete the next two activities yet, but we'll try it again soon.

Printable Transportation Games and Playdough Mats

For our transportation unit, I again turned to 1+1+1=1 for some great printables. This page has lots of transportation activities and games for several age and ability levels.

I chose several games from the Transportation Preschool Pack:

the shadow matching cards,

the school bus size sequencing,

and the three-part puzzles.

I also created some playdough mats of my own.

Trip enjoyed loading the train and the truck with freight.

He liked backing the truck up (complete with beeping) to pick up the heavy loads.

The train cars got loaded,

then it went chugging across the table.

You can download and print these playdough mats for your own personal use. The train is here and the truck is here. They are black and white so you or your child can color them yourselves. 

Farm Tot Pack

I found these great farm printables from 1+1+1=1. There are lots of options, so I chose the ones that I thought Trip would enjoy the most. If I catch him at the right time, Trip does really well with these activities and seems to have fun with them.

He liked matching the cards to the animals on the grid. I made words to go with this for us to use in the future.

On this particular day, he asked to do this activity. He started off well, 

and then suddenly decided to put the grid on his head, so it was all over and the silliness began.

I thought this matching game was really cool since it had cartoon animals to match with pictures of animals. We had a lot of fun making animal sounds with this one.

 The heads and tails puzzles were another of Trip's favorites.

 The tractor size sequencing was fun too.

I printed the Barnyard Colors mini book for Trip to color.

He liked finding the color that each page called for and making sure that the animal was colored in.

There are many more great printables from 1+1+1=1, so be sure to check them out!

E Week- Letter E Matching Game

I saw the idea for this great matching game in eggs from Playing House and set out to make one of my own. I found some images of Elmo, an ear, an egg, an eagle, an eye, and an elephant online, printed them out, and cut them in half.

They fit nicely in large plastic eggs.

Trip actually had a great time opening all of the eggs, finding the matches, and putting together the puzzles.

If you would like to make a set of these puzzles for your own personal use, the PDF is available here.

Valentine's Day Banner

Upon seeing this super cute Valentine's Day banner, I knew I had to make something similar of my own for our kitchen/dining room. I decided to incorporate a scripture into my banner and chose 1 Corinthians 13:13- "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

I like the idea of using book pages, as in the original, but since I was adding more words, I figured it would be better to use a combination solid and printed paper. I cut my paper into 4" by 6" rectangles. I then folded the top half inch over to be able to hang each piece on the string. Once I cut a triangle out of the bottom of each rectangle, it was time to add the words. I typed up the scripture and printed it out, then cut apart the words and used double-sided tape to attach them to each flag. A little more double-sided tape and some string through the flaps on the back, and the banner was done.

If you would like to make a banner of your own, my document with the scripture is available here. Please print this for your own personal use only. Thanks!




I'm linking up with:

A Week- The List

I figured it was about time for us to focus on another vowel, so the A week planning began. There aren't as many words that start with A as I had expected, but we had plenty to do nonetheless.

Our A week fun consisted of:

• an A-themed hide and seek bowl

• an ant craft and snack

 

• apricot oatmeal bars

• an aquarium lunch and craft

• an alphabet A

•  and some Angry Birds fun.

As always, my brainstorming list is available here.



I'm linking up with:

                             

W Week- The List

W is our first letter of the week after our break from letters in December. It feels great to be back in the swing of things. I find that having a letter to focus on each week keeps me accountable to doing learning activities with Trip and makes me more intentional about spending quality time with him each day.

Our fun with W included:

• a game we called "hit the W"
• some fun food like dirt cups with worms and wheel-shaped pasta
• a walk in Mommy's childhood wagon
• working with wood
• washing play dishes
• writing on the windows

My brainstorming process and vocabulary list writing has gotten much easier in the last couple of weeks. I somehow came across this alphabet objects list, which is extremely helpful. I add words and don't use all the ones from the list, but it's nice to see what someone else has come up with. My W words list can be found here.

G Week- The List

We managed to fit in one letter during the Christmas season. I chose the letter G as there were several seasonal activities that fit nicely with it.

We enjoyed

• gingerbread playdough
• gingerbread cookies (made with no eggs, so no worrying about little ones eating raw dough!)
• a glowstick bath
• a guitar lunch.

Find my brainstorming and vocabulary list here.

K Week- The List

Trip's real name is Kirk, a name that he shares with his daddy and grandpa, so I wanted to introduce him to the letter K. K week ended up being a busy one, making me glad that we were doing a letter that doesn't appear at the beginning of many words and that had some easy activities to go with it.

Our K week fun included:

• playing king in a castle
• some fun in the kitchen (or mostly making a mess!)
• finding kangaroos and koalas in some favorite books
• kicking footballs and soccer balls
• a kiss-covered K
• K pancakes
• hunting for Ks around the house

You can read and/or print my letter K brainstorming list here.

D Week- Dinosaur Matching Cards

I found these cool dinosaur head and tail matching cards from the 1+1+1=1 Dinosaur Tot Pack. I printed them out, colored them, then laminated them for durability.

This activity is a good twist on the matching games we have already done (football and Thomas) and is definitely more of a challenge. Finding heads and tails that match didn't come as easily as finding two trains or two football team logos that are the same. Trip didn't quite get it yet, but he tried and we had some fun making some funny dinosaurs as well.

D Week- The List

Daddy has been waiting for "D for Daddy" week for a quite some time now. He was excited to do some fun things with Trip. Although there aren't that many words that start with D (making my list pretty short), there are some good ones, namely dinosaur, duck, and dog.

Our D week fun included:

• a D object sensory tub
• dinosaur feet
• a dinosaur matching game
• our ducky family
• making a dump cake with Daddy

L Week- The List

 
With six very large trees around our house, the amount of leave that have fallen in the last couple of weeks is staggering. Seeing as our yard and driveway have been thoroughly covered, L week seemed appropriate. Trip enjoyed playing in the leaves and I had fun finding pretty leaves on our walks.

Our L week fun included:

• a leaf and L object sensory tub
• a lion lunch
• playing in the leaves and then them getting covered in snow
• coloring on our light box
• a pasta lion
• a leaf-covered L
• painted leaves

My brainstorming list for L week is here.

C Week- The List

 
I made a list of C words and activities some time ago when my sister-in-law was starting a letter of the week with her son. It was so nice to just open the document and have the list ready when it was our turn to learn about C. I chose C for us a couple of weeks ago because we spent a week taking a long drive in the car to Colorado for our friend's wedding, which was held at Camp RedCloud. There were just too many Cs to ignore so it made it easy to plan what we would do. A letter of the week may not always work when we're not home, but I figured we might as well give it a shot. We were able to do some things during our trip and did others when we got home. We ended up spending two weeks with the letter C since there were several days when we didn't do any special activities.

Here is what we were able to fit in:

• C-themed hide and seek bowl
• cloud dough
• bath crayons
• special snacks for our trip and fun meals at home
• crocodile clickers
• a cotton ball C

H Week- The List

Although I had planned to share our letter C activities this week, I'll save that for next week so that you can see what we're doing for H week and Halloween.

This is what I have in the works for this week:

• a Halloween sensory tub
• some homemade Halloween decorations
• a hungry hippo
• hunting for H around the house
• poking holes and hammering

You can see my list of words and ideas here.

M Week- The List

Writing my list for M week was actually harder than I though. There are fewer words that start with the letter M than I expected. 

We started Trip off with a monkey room when he was born, so he has lots of stuffed moneys and things with monkeys on them. He has chosen one of those monkeys as his favorite and it has to be with him when he goes to sleep. Lately, he has also been having Monkey join in on our letter of the week fun. It's cute to watch him include Monkey!

Our M activities this week include:

• a super fun sensory tub
• magnet monsters
• mixing colors
• some fun food
• a monster M

B Week- The List

With Trip's love of all things sports and especially of the balls used in those sports, B seemed like a good next letter for him. My list of words that start with B and of potential activities is here.

I will be sharing about the following activities this week:

• the hide and seek bowl
• bubble bath paint
• homemade bread
• super simple bean bags
• balloon buddies
• our letter B walk
• a very big ball

F Week- Football Matching Game and Book

I created my first matching game for T week when Trip was really liking Thomas and Friends. A couple of weeks ago, I made a welcome sign for our door that has the logos of our favorite sports teams. Each time Trip sees it, he likes to say the names of the teams and he's actually quite good at it. 

With that in mind, I took those same logos, plus a few more, and made him another simple matching game. I usually put all of the cards out and ask him to find a certain team. Sometimes he sees a team he wants to start with and just goes for it. He caught on to the concept quickly with the Thomas game, so when he saw these new cards come out, he knew just what to do. Eventually, we will be able to play "memory" or "concentration" with these same cards, but at 25 months, we're just not there yet. You can find my cards here if you would like to make some of your own (please limit these to your own personal use- thanks!)

The other thing I did was write a simple book about the football teams that we like. As a teacher, I created mini-books all the time, so it was fun to make one for Trip.

I bound the book with an adaptation of something I saw on Pinterest. It's super simple and easy, but very effective. Just punch holes in the paper, put a rubber band through two holes, and slip the rubber band ends through a paperclip. Done!

I put the paperclips in the front, but they could also go in the back so that all you see in the front are the clean lines of the rubber bands.

 

I included the teams that all of us like,

as well as Daddy's favorite,

Mommy's favorite,

and our housemates' favorites. Trip loves to look at the book and is getting pretty good at saying whose team each one is.