Baby its cold outside... winter crafts

Ok, so here in Long Island its not and hasn't been that cold yet... but... winter crafts are always fun :-) Here are a couple of highlights from this weeks classes...

My Preschool class made these cute water/ juice bottle snowmen.... 

we filled them with cotton balls and decorated with buttons and felt. 

I got the idea from here.

 They were very serious filling the bottles with the cotton balls... 

 

 We made pizza... with some garlic, tomato and motz cheese.... always a fan favorite... 

Thank you Pampered Chef for the recipe :-)

  Sprinkling on the cheese...

The finished pizza...

 Frequently I hide alphabet letters around the room... that the children have to go and find... and put in alphabetical order... these are foam letters that are meant for the bathtub... I think I got them from Walmart... or a similar store...

We read My Red Mittens (I really like this for the preschool age... its short, its cute and it has fuzzy mittens)... After reading the kids put their hand-prints on the red mittens that they glued to black construction paper...

 Braeden painting some snow flakes...

  An example of our finished Mittens...

To see what others are up to this week, check out:

http://www.weirdunsocializedhomeschoolers.com/category/weekly-wrap-up/

stART- The Snow Day

A Story + Art = a great stART!!!For our story this week we read The Snow Day- one of Ryleigh's favorites. In it, it snows so school is canceled and the bunny gets to stay home...and waits to go play in the snow... for our project this week we made styrofoam paint snowmen....

I taped a template that I cut out of a snowman to paper and then had the girls use styrofoam to blot the paint on..giving it a snowy look...

We then removed the template after the paint had dried a little bit...so that they could decorate them.... the girls glued on a felt hat, nose, scarf and buttons...

Ryleigh's finished snowman...

For more great stART posts check out A Mommy's Adventures!
For more fun projects check out My Delicious Ambiguity , ABC and 123... and JDaniel4's Mom

TOT SCHOOL- WEEK FOURTEEN 33 MONTHS

Unfortunately both kids have been very sick so we have been a little off our normal routine...both are much better now! We did have lots of time for Tot School though...we focused less on "crafty" this week ....here are the highlights (we did soooooo many trays this week...and repeated them a lot...so I have narrowed it down a bit...not that you can tell by the shear amount of pictures that are here)....:

Ryleigh dressed for dance...before becoming sick...

We practiced cutting...I haven't found a pair of scissors that really work well for her yet....but I am going to try Melissa and Doug out....(hope for the best!)

Tracing....I broke a crayon for her so that she could practice her grip...then I drew some lines for her to follow...

Braeden helping Daddy Work.... while watching big sister do some projects at the table...

I went to Confessions of a Homeschooler...my newest favorite blog ever!!!.... and printed some of her printables for Ryleigh to work on this week. Then I laminated them for future use...so in love with my laminator....Here she is putting some flat stones on a "S" is for Snowman worksheet.

Braeden jumping in the 'roo...watching Ryleigh...

Ryleigh working on a new puzzle...she totally loves her puzzles...

Braeden has really started to be mobile lately...he not only rolls over (both sides) but he now will skooch himself all over...he does well moving backwards....

Ryleigh taking a break to spin....

Working on some patterns, recognizing/sorting capital and lower case S, and tracing...also some nifty items I printed off Confessions of a Homeschooler....

Ryleigh practiced her gluing and made a Valentine. ... she glued small paper hearts onto a big paper heart that I cut out for her.

Braeden...right after he got a dose of his meds...less than amused....

We have done this project before, but Ryleigh really liked it so we did it again. She colored with washable markers on a coffee filter and then used a pipette to transfer water over to it...to make the colors run...very pretty...

More from Confessions of a Homeschooler... matching up letters to spell snowman and also working on some numbers....

Ryleigh working with her magnetic name train..... here she is making them into circles....

She has been working on letter recognition and the sound they make.... she knows almost all of them...currently her favorite is "I".... Generally I am not a huge fan of movies/DVDs for her but I do really like Leap Frog's The Letter Factory....she loves it and picked up most of the letter sounds after watching it twice.... here she is playing with her leap frog letter bus (a hand me down)..which quizes about letters/ sounds etc.

Here she is sorting flat rocks by color.... she did not like this activity as much as sorting M&M's by color....

Stickers... never a dull activity.....

Ryleigh likes to "help" me work out.... here we are playing "catch" with the big ball....

Check out what others are doing in their Tot Schools by clicking here.

TOT SCHOOL - WEEK THIRTEEN - 32 MONTHS

This week we did Music Class, Dance Class, stART, The Letter of the Week ("I"), lots of projects and another birthday party. A busy fun-filled week.....It is getting fun to watch Ryleigh and Braeden actually start to play together.....it recently occurred to me that next fall Ryleigh will be doing preschool (from home) and Braeden will be doing Tot School....craziness...

Braeden watching his sister run around at the Birthday Party

Ryleigh in a princess dress at the Party

Ryleigh climbing...also at the Party.

Ryleigh "tutoring" Braeden after Music class on Monday... on the baby instruments.

This week we did the Letter "I"....I decided to do I is for Igloo because it is so cold...and we continued on with our unofficial winter theme... For this project, I had the girls sponge paint white (snow) on the I and the Igloo...then we glued them on a piece of construction paper.

Some of the girls painting

The finished "I"

Because I really like hand-print art...I decided to try out Penguins....but we used the sides of the girls hands...we painted them black and then had the girls use their finger tips to add beaks, feet and the white belly.....you REALLY need to use your imagination for this one...but I think it came out cute...and has been added to our winter display on our sliding glass door....

"E" painting the Penguins...

The finished Project....

I had the girls do marshmallow snowmen...an idea I got from No Time For Flashcards... this is a great way to practice fine motor skills...and self control...in eating the marshmallows... Here is a picture of all 4 girls' projects drying...
Braeden and Juliette playing together while the girls had snack
(Both babies seem to really like the Weebles....)

Ryleigh working on her floor Number puzzle

Ryleigh and I made apple turnovers again...we got up to the part of the squishing the apples in the bag...and she decided that she would rather ply with Braeden's toy....(I think it is an IPOD...it makes noise...over and over...and over...and over.....)....anyway...this is a picture of her playing with it while I finished the turnovers....

I had Ryleigh do a shape snowman. I cut up some circles, rectangles, squares and triangles...asked her to find a certain shape....and our snowman was made....I think the tilted hat makes him look spunky.... and the skewed buttons really add something to the charm...

I also had Ryleigh make an igloo out of scrap paper and glue....great for gluing practice. She really liked the gluing...(putting the glue on the paper)....didn't care so much for putting the paper on the glue...

Ryleigh plays with her Doll House every day...she likes to have the "girls"...the two girl dolls...play projects and puzzles...(thats what the books are in the attic of the house)...Elmo of course is there to oversee everything....

Here the "girls" are playing princess chutes and ladders with us...Ryleigh really likes this game for the Princesses and I really like it for the counting....
Check out what others are doing for Tot School this week at 1+1+1=1.