Fine Motor Skills with Cheerios!!!

Another great pinterest find to help work on our fine motor skills. I don't know how much practice the two little ones had other than pulling the Cheerios off and eating them - but they did have a lot of fun and we had smiles all around!!

Supplies:

Cereal with holes in the center

Plastic Cup

Wooden Kabob Sticks

Ready for fun toddlers!!! (Ha, Ha)

Colors and Fruit?!?! Why not?

So I had a great idea to try to emphasize the different color of fruit during breakfast. The night belfore I glued different color construction paper to paper plates. In the morning I placed contact paper over it because I didn't want the juices from the fruit to mix with the ink from the paper itself.  As much as I thought this was a great idea - the kids were caught completely off-guard. They literally didn't touch their fruit at all. This is a BIG surprise, especially for Michael that eats more fruit than most adults (in fact more than 2 adults combined). I left them out and eventually he realized it was real fruit and ate it. I still love the idea and showing fruit different visually is on the list from Michael's OT so even though the response was lukewarm it is probably worth some more exposure to help him continue to be more comfortable with eating food that looks a little different.



Letter E Day!

Yipee!! For the letter E!!! Today we started the day with our normal letter pancakes followed by our worksheet work.   Ms. Gabby loves elephants so we followed it up with mixing grey paint, and then making our very own elephants!! Since the painting and then gluing of objects is a two step process I work on the painting after breakfast and then finish the art project after lunch!! 

Letter E Worksheet

Make Your Own Elephant Supplies

In an attempt to bring multiple concepts into play we first mixed black and white paint in ziploc bags to watch it turn to grey. Then we painted our paper plates with paint brushes. Once they were dry we added trunks, ears and eyes. 

Zoo Animal Day!!!

Zoo Coloring Sheet

I found a coloring sheet for their own coloring when they want. I have started to do this more often to help give them an opportunity to play on their own but, still tie in the days activities.

Animal Flash Cards (with a color twist)

For the animal cards I found zoo animals of different colors. To help make the matching easier I added the color name at the bottom of the card. Since we have become the master at matching colors on the color sheet I keep using it.  That being said I will be looking for some new and fun ways to teach colors because, I think we have mastered this matching stuff (for Michael anyway).

Counting Cards

Using the same animals I created couting cards. This was a fun way to use the same type of visual items but, differently. We are still struggling a little with the number matching. So I did change our counting sheet to see if that helps a little. Stay tuned to see if it is actually helpful or not.

New and improved counting sheet



Music Day

In addition, to pulling out our box full of music toys and making music with our favorite Baby Genius DVD we had a busy day of supporting activities as we learned about all different types of things while using a "music" theme.

 

Make Our Own Shakers

One of the first activities we did make our own shakers.  I used two different types of bottles and two different types of "shaker" material to ensure each one had a little different sound.  One with small beans and the other with rice. To get started I placed a small amount of food coloring and a little bit of water on the bottom. I then filled with the desired material. Sealed them up and let them shake!!! They had so much fun when they realized each one was changing a different color! It was a great way to bring color into our day where I had not previously planned it!!

Color Matching with Music Instruments

I found this picture of different color instruments to use with our color matching sheet today. Although it doesn't have all the colors the sheet has it still worked out ok. Although the second clarinet (?) went either in red or orange - which I felt like was fine.



Counting with Drums

Using the counting sheet from confessions of a homeschooler. Today instead of apples or pompoms I cut up little drums to use in the small boxes instead. It was a great way to use one of our favorite sheets again but, in a way that supported the theme of the day!

Music Flash Cards

We rounded out the day with card work showing instruments we have around the house as well.  Cards are probably Michael's least favorite activity and today proved to be no different. We at least did make it through them once.



Weekly Schedule!

Monday	Letter F	Food: F Pancakes F Worksheet Art: Paint Fish Outlines (For Fishing Activity on Tuesday) Art: Foam Sticker Flowers Concept: Size - shape sort pompoms as center of flowers - Small to big
Tuesday	Fishing	Fine Motor: Fishing Art: Fishing
Wednesday	Valentines Day	Breakfast: Heart Pancakes; Red Strawberries Lunch: Heart Cookies Valentines Day Craft Counting: Hearts
Thursday	Gross Motor Skill Fun	Obstacle Course: Holla hoop - hopping, running around cones, crawling under bridge, slide Red/Light Green Light Practice: Jumping

Cars & Couting

We are trying to find interesting way to work on counting! It is working as we are getting more vocalization with numbers so yipee! I used the sheet below and cut them out, laminated them. Since we are a huge Cars fan in our house I figured this would be a welcomed activity!! Once cut out we put them on the number sheet below. This turned out to be harder than I anticipated. We did have fun but, it may be over their head. I have some ideas to make it easier for them (i.e. putting numbers on the back of the cards)

Our next activity with cars to round out the day was cars painting. I put paint down on our giant roll of paper and let them drive the cars through it.  They had a great time - enough that resulted in bath time!!



Cars & Colors!!!

Today we did activities around increasing our exposure to colors.


Different color 'telescopes'
To make the different color telescopes I took a combination of old papertowel rolls and toliet paper rolls. I was fortunate that one fit into the other nicely so it helped keep the different color cellophanes secure. I did end up running out and taping some to the outside which worked fine as well. Once the cellophane was secure I wrapped the outside of the tubes with the corresponding paper color so that they could be easily identified by them.

Here are some shots for the fun that we had!!!

Matching Cars

This is another good example why I laminate almost everything. I use this color matching sheet at least once weekly with different shapes, color cards, etc. This week it was different color cars. This one was very well received so we have been using these cars almost daily since this day.



A Day About Me!!!

We have been having a lot of fun lately with head, shoulders, knees and toes. Today we made self-portraits.  They had so much fun putting them together. Admittedly, they are a little creapy looking but, it was a lot of fun to talk about eyes, nose, hair. The best part for them?? The yarn hair!! They loved it!!

I am fortunate enough that both my little ones have blue eyes and blond hair.

Impromptu Color Matching Activity

Although this activity started out as our normal fun building blocks I decided to enhance it a little by bringing in some matching.  I laid out 4 pieces of colors that matched our blocks. We focused on matching the blocks to the right colors and building color towers.  This one took a little work but, I am interested to see how it goes next time.

We love building in our house so anytime we can incorporate something that enhances an activity we already love I am all for it!!

Letter C!!!

Oh what fun!!! Today was letter C day!! We started out our day with our typical Letter breakfast. C Pancakes and Cantelope!!

Letter C Worksheet
I have been trying to use the letter words to illustrate other tasks that we will be doing during the week as another way to reinforce words, topics, etc.  This week we have an entire day of things that go (specifically cars!!) so of course cars made the worksheet!!!

Cat Art
I made an outline of a cat and glued on the wiggly eyes. These are small so I feel like it is safer if I complete that part especially since Ms. Gabby loves to put them in her mouth. We used cotton balls to give the cat her soft coat and of course talked about them being soft against our skin etc.

Cat outline

Stamping fun!!
We pulled out the roll of paper and the letters A - F today and had fun stamping with finger paints.  They had a lot of fun but, it almost always results in an impromptu bath! =)

Weekly Schedule

Another fun week of fun-ness scheduled!!! Ha, ha!  I have to say getting everything in plus, play groups, gymnastics, therapy and swmming is proving to be a little bit of a challenge. Especially keeping up with the recaps.  Hopefully, I will be better at taking pictures this week and staying on track. (Although I am already behind so ....well here is this weeks schedule.

Sea Day!!!

Today was so much fun!! With the added addition of fresh snow to play in outside we had a lot of activities to keep us busy inside. 

We started with Sea Sensory Play (see detail here)

http://funwithtots.blogspot.com/2013/01/sea-sensory-play.html 

We pulled out the cardboard box boat again (from our Monday B Day Play)

Number Play

This is another reason I laminate things. I pulled out the number sheets from last week. Feeling inspired I took a picture of the page from our Board Book 1 Fish, 2, Fish, 3, 4,5 and printed them out to place on the right spot on the number page.  Right now I left them in full strips given the ages of my two. This is one though I can easily see cutting up each of the fish and grouping them into the right area by color. 

Sea-Sensory Play!!!

Inspired by an amazing blog that brings sensory play into bath time (http://www.growingajeweledrose.com) .  While it snowed outside we did sea sensory play inside. I am not brave enough to fill my whole tub up but, the kids thoroughly enjoyed it!!! And neither the noodles or the water stained either of them.  They needed some prompting to even touch the pasta (or I mean seaweed) but, once they did they loved and  couldn’t get enough!!! So fun!!!

So I pretty much followed the directions as outlined on the above blog. I made and colored pasta with food coloring. I did that task in Ziploc bags – I was really hesitant on this once because I was confident the color would transfer to skin --- but it didn’t!!  Filled our sensory play bin with water colored with both blue and green food coloring (nothing stains) and then let them have fun with the pasta and our bath toy animals.

Lesson for next time: Pick up some heavier sea animals so I can hide them in the sea weed and talk through floating and sinking. This was the plan I just ran out of time this weekend to go hunting.  We did talk through the different animals, the sounds they make, etc. as we played.

Letter B!!

Feeling like I am channeling Mr. Rodgers a little lately. Today was our letter B Day!!!! And what a day it was!


We started out the day with B Pancakes and what else??? Blueberries!!!

Starting out with Breakfast

Letter pancakes has become a staple for Monday breakfast. We are having a lot of fun with them and they are just so easy to make.  As a note: we use gluten-free pancake mix which I think is a little denser so it sticks together and stays together easier.

Worksheet

We followed up breakfast with our letter B worksheet. It is amazing how much children remember from week to week.  This week they needed no prompting for the paint dabbers and jumped right in.

Cardboard Box Fun

I don't what I am going to do once we actually get rid of all the cardboard boxes from Christmas. We have so much fun changing them into new things!! This week we made our cardboard box a boat.  I think a little of that was lost on them but we had a blast!

Bee Making

We rounded out the day with making a Bee.  I cut out the shape of a B with both yellow and black construction paper.  I then used the black paper to for the stripes. Add wings, wiggly eyes and pipe cleaner antennas and voila!!!! A Bee...of course all Bees need flowers so we made those as well. I had a leftover kit from the spring that has foam art flowers so it worked out perfectly!



Weekly Schedule!!!

Where are the days going?? I feel like they are just moving faster, and faster.  So far so good we are having a great week, pictures and details forthcoming!!!

Inside Snow Day!!!!!

Why go outside when you can bring snow in?!?!?!  I absolutely love playing with snow as I mentioned the other day so before it was completely melted away we did some snow play this morning!!  Here is a pic of the two of them just loving the snow indoors!!!

Farm Animal Day!!!!

We finally sneaked in Animal Day it took until Saturday though!

We did rice play to find animals. We also used them to play in play-doh to work on imitation play by getting them to go to sleep, putting like animals together, etc.  We rounded out the day with some “Old MacDonald” with flash cards to represent the animal we were doing!! FUN!!!!

RICE PLAY

Rice continues to be one of the sensory activities I love to hate.  They love it and it keeps their attention (so naturally that is enough for any mom to love it) but, no matter what it makes a mess. I actually ended up sitting Gabby in the big container today because, it is her that makes the biggest mess. It helped and limited the mess. The little animals I picked up from Oriental Trading.  We hid them, talked about the noises they made as we took them out etc. Tons of FUN!!!

Animal Cards

These are good for aiding Old MacDonal singing as further visualization of what you are signing about. If you make two sets you can also use them to work on matching, etc. Again these are ones I laminated for uses later down the road.

Numbers Day!!

Boy was I not prepared for today. I had some how not thought through the activities which resulted in last minute creation in the AM.  We ended up having a great day today though. Activities (such as the number board) which I thought would never hold their attention did an amazing job of just that.

Apple Tree with Numbered Apples (above)

I made trees first on printed paper to provide both of them with some type of guideline to paste the tree and the trunk with. Of course, they both need guidance on this part so for now I think it might be lost on them.  I think cut out both pieces from construction paper.  Using the pictures of apples that I used for counting I just put a text box over them and added bold numbers.   To help make it easier I put all the glue and then let them add the numbers. Michael did amazingly well with this craft activity (especially the apples) I don't know if it was just close enough to what he does with flash cards to appear familiar but, it definitely held his attention.

Numbered Apples

Number Cards with Apples (above)
Using the number cards I created with square boxes I created a page with apples small enough to put in the boxes and line them up next to them.  We spent probably about 15 - 20 minutes adding them on clearing them off, etc. As a FYI I laminate almost everything. This makes it more durable for when being manipulated by toddlers plus, I then can store them away and use them again if I want / need to. The number sheet I created but, pulled my inspiration from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Apples for Number Cards

Daily Flash Card Fun
Everyday we work on flash card words with Michael (and of course Gabby jumps in). We have a standard set of words we are working on but, I also made flash cards with numbers today and we used the radio (also in the color activity) to practice our numbers

One, Two Buckle Shoe coloring Fun
As a "free time" activitiy I google 1.2 Buckle My Shoe Coloring Page and found one to print out. Only Gabby choose to color it. Since we already had a structured art activity I was more than ok giving Michael a pass.  The one I pulled was from Mother Goose Club


We count daily with Michael to three which he is vocalizing (we practice when jumping down from brushing teeth, getting changed, etc.) This weekend though he did a great job when asked to count his cars. I said "One" and he finished by counting up to six and then of course using six twice.  We had vocalization and constant counting of numbers when he was about 18 months but, have not seen it in a while - it was so nice to see it hopefully that means we are taking steps in the right direction.

Colors Day!!!

So if you are wondering what happened to Tuesday and how it went. I can tell you we didn’t get to the animal activities and I can’t even tell you why. We were busy and we have play groups on Tuesdays which is why I limited the additional activities but, it was bath time before I knew it so we will make them up this weekend.

So our color day went AMAZING!!! We even had activities I hadn’t originally planned like green eggs and different color fruit stacks for breakfast and we made friends with an old toy in a new way (the pic below of the little radio with flash cards).  I got some amazing vocalization from Michael today. While stacking fruit this morning I was reciting the colors. He jumped in (and added green) but, his “yellow” was fantastic.   During our snow play we got an un-prompted ‘circle’ because the cups we had been playing with made a shape of a circle and lots of vocalization of “cup” when using our stacking cups to mold the snow.   I also had some unprompted counting when tossing the ball back and forth (as a skill I have been using but, it was nice to see him initiate it this time).  They both did a great job matching their colors and Gabby is working on the word purple as of today!!! All-in-all for two kids that had absolutely the worst sleep I have seen in a while we had one of the best engaged days. 

Ok so here is what you are really looking for.

Breakfast Idea:

We added green food coloring to eggs while scrambling them. I used log wooden kabob sticks to stack fruit. I unfortunately didn’t have any strawberries or they would have found their way on here. I waited for the kids to stack and it did with them naming each color along the way. 

Matching Colors

To match colors I borrowed the colored apple print out from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  (Note: there is a lot of other great reinforcement activities out there for all different levels.  I picked up color cards from our local paint store. I picked up the large single color cards so I actually had to cut them in half for them to work.  We also ended up using these cards in a new way with our radio toy since it has an opening on the top. We put them in, took them out, only put in certain colors. It was another great reinforcement activity and not even one I planned!!!

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/08/letter-for-apple-2.html

Dried Pasta Necklaces

All I had was icing food coloring so I used that and a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol. I put the desired amount of pasta in individual Ziploc bags, coating the pasta with the mixture to color then set out on a paper towel to dry. I did them the night before and we didn’t string until mid-morning and still came across pieces that were not fully dry.  I would recommend this as a weekend prep item going forward.  I also used the pasta we had in the house and I probably needed some bigger pieces the biggest hit was the wheel pasta and although they couldn’t string it they loved playing with it and had not problem helping!

Snow Play

To do color snow play make sure to use watercolor paints rather than food coloring (I actually got the tip the day before thankfully!!) We played in the snow for probably 30-45 minutes. They both loved it and it prompted great interaction from the both of them!! I am happy we live somewhere that has snow and am now looking forward to having it available as long possible. I think there is a lot of great new ways we can use it to continue to “purposeful play!!” I have some ideas in-store already!! Some things we worked on today was scooping, imitating play (pretending cups were actually cups; squishing, etc.).

Letter A Day!!!!

Our first letter A day is complete!!!!!!!

Letter A Pancakes
We started out the day with letter A pancakes. Since Michael is autistic and we are taking steps towards becoming gluten-free. This was the first day trying pancakes that were gluten-free and I was pleased that they were a big hit.   I made the pancake batter as instructed and then put the batter into a ziploc bag by cutting off a corner of the bag I turn it into a quick, cheap pastry type of bag where I can shape the batter as I pour it onto the pan.  Presto, chango.....pancakes are now in the shape of a letter. I think this is going to become my Monday staple as we move through the alphabet every Monday.

Letter A Worksheet
For this weeks worksheet I picked up a new product called Senso Paint. Basically, they are like bingo stampers but, scented (who knew?!?) It was just something I happened to pass by when picking up a few craft items this weekend. Gabby did great and was really in awe at the whole concept. Michael of course took a lot more prompting to get him to use it (he absolutely hates crafting activities other than ones that involve foam crafts).  Upon completion the worksheets are living on my wall of art for the week so we can keep visually reinforcing the letter A. 

Making An Egg Carton Ant
The Egg Carton Ants are easy enough.  I cut out two ants in a each with three bumps from the bottom of an egg carton.  From there I used a hole-punch to make holes for the legs that I added with brown pipe cleaners.  They both got to paint them brown and I added the googly eyes after they dried to finish them up.

That about rounded out our day along with singing the ants go marching 1 by 1 with our egg carton ants.  Combined with our normal activities of free play, therapy sessions, etc. it was a busy day but, it went rather well and each activity was broken up. I don't know that they know the letter A anymore today then they did before but, I feel like they had fun and whether they know it or not are actually learning things.

Week 1: Schedule

Part of my New Year's Resolution this year was to spend Sunday's getting the week organized with themes by day and activities that align to the theme to allow for constant reinforcement.

Here is a copy of our schedule for the week. I will post pictures and details from each day to let you know how things are going, what works, what doesn't work and look for your feedback, ideas, suggestions to make each activity better!!

Getting Started

My Goal:  Keep Michael (my two-year old autistic son) as well as, Gabby (my 15 month old) daughter engaged in thoughtful activities that are fun for them, but thought-provoking and educational. Here is where I will capture our efforts in mastering a more "purposeful play."