Weekly Curriculum

Monday: Card sorting
Tuesday:  Eggs & Carton
Wednesday:  Painting
Thursday:  Glitter Paint & Cotton Balls
Friday:  Busy Bags

Monday: Card Sorting

Nico likes to sort cards while his abuelo is playing solitare.  So far we are working on red and black piles (and a separate pile for the horsie...ie, joker) , but I will extend this to suits or numbers and counting when he gets better at it.

Tuesday: Eggs & Carton

 I found plastic eggs at Hobby Lobby for super cheap, so Nico and I practiced sorting the eggs.  I put pom poms of the same color inside, and he had fun opening and closing them.  We also practiced patterns.  I put colors in the top row, and Nico had to match them.

Wednesday:  Painting

Since Nico's grandma is an expert in painting, I had her give Nico a lesson.

Thursday:  Glitter Paint & Cotton Balls

   Nico has been really into looking at the clouds lately, so we made our own clouds.  Nico squeezed the glitter paint (way too much) and then pasted on the cotton balls.

Friday: Busy Bags
Today we just played busy bags from the first swap.  He went through almost all of them!
 

Weekly Curriculum

Monday: Busy Bag Exchange
Tuesday:  Pom Pom Magnets/Pom pom Tube
Wednesday:
Thursday: Water Painting
Friday:  Paper Dog

Tuesday: Pom Pom Magnets/Pom pom Tube

Since we were so busy with the busy bag exchange yesterday, we didn't have time for a project.  I'm happy to report that the busy bags turned out awesome!  I am going to save them until I have this baby (hopefully sooner than later!!!).  That way, Nico will have some fresh toys while I am getting adjusted to life with 2 children.

Today we did two projects.  First, we used the pom pom magnets on a cookie sheet.  I printed out a gum ball machine from the internet.  Nico had to practice one-to-one correspondence by putting a pom pom on each circle.  There are colors, but we didn't even attempt that.  He had enough trouble getting the pom poms where they belonged.  There is definitely room to grow on this activity!
For the second part of the activity, I made a line of pom poms, and Nico had to match the colors in order to make the same line below.  Again, he has room to grow.  I had to point out the colors and show him where they went.  But, I think he'll get the hang of it if we practice some more.

 Pom Pom Tube:

This activity didn't turn out quite as I envisioned, but it was lots of fun.  I gave Nico a tube from our old laundry hamper.  You could use PVC pipe or some other type of tube.  I replaced my hamper, and so I had this tubing laying around.  My idea was to give Nico a variety of objects and have him see if they would fit through.  We started with pom poms, but I quickly realized that they got stuck.  In order to "unstick" them, I blew it out.  That made Nico erupt into a fit of giggles, so a new game was born.  We would put a pom pom in the tube and then shoot it out by blowing.  He had a hard time blowing hard enough to get them out, but by the end he was really getting the hang of it.  We practiced naming the colors and counting the pom poms.  I'm sure there was some sort of science lesson on air pressure that I could have addressed, but that seemed a little over his head.  So, we just enjoyed our fun activity.

Thursday: Water Painting

Painting with water on construction paper.  So easy!!!
Friday: Paper Dog

We took a piece of paper and folded down the ears.  Then we glued on google eyes.  They Nico put "spots" on the doggie with markers. 

Weekly Curriculum

Monday:  Toilet Paper Valentine
Tuesday:  Beads in Bottle
Wednesday:  Cotton Ball Sheep
Thursday:  Magnetic Pom Poms

Monday: Toilet Paper Valentine

Yesterday we worked on a fun and easy craft for Nico's papi.  I took a toilet paper roll and dented one end to make a heart.  I used scotch tape to hold the dent in the toilet paper roll.  Then I let Nico "stamp" some construction paper with the roll.  I think the end result turned out pretty cute!

Tuesday: Beads in Bottle

 I filled a bowl with beads, and Nico's job was to drop them in the bottle one by one.  They make a nice sound when they hit the bottom.  We tried a glass bottle, but after I told him to be careful not to break it, he got a little scared and preferred the plastic one.  He spent lots of time filling the bottle and dumping it back out.

 After he did it a few times, I gave him a small spoon to work with for an extra challenge.

Wednesday: Cotton Ball Sheep

  This one didn't turn out as cute as I hoped, but it's the process that counts.  We traced Nico's hand on black paper, and then we cut it out.  Nico wanted to do more cutting, so he cut around the outside of his green paper.  Then we glued his hand print to the paper.  Next, he filled in the palm of the hand (sheep's body) with cotton balls.  He wanted to glue a few extra on the side, too.  Then we added a google eye.  Again, he wanted to add extra google eyes.  At one point, we had 4 or 5 eyes on the page before he tore them off!

Thursday: Magnetic Pom Poms

 Since I'm making these for the busy bag exchange, I let Nico try them out.  I used a hot glue gun to glue a piece of magnet to a pom pom.  Then, we put them on a cookie sheet.  I am going to use this activity with internet printables in order to teach letters, shape, etc.  Also, we will practice patterns.

Busy Bag Swap

Busy bags are small bags of reusable materials that keep kids busy.  They are educational in some nature.  They work on things like fine motor skills, gross motor skills, colors, counting, etc.  They are portable and meant to keep kids busy at the doctor's office, waiting in line, or just at home on a rainy or snowy day.  Here are some links to sites with busy bag ideas.

http://moneysavingmom.com/tag/busy-bag-ideas
http://frugalgranola.com/2011/11/busy-bags-for-little-hands
http://unsolicitedadvice-n-such.blogspot.com/2011/07/young-toddler-1-2-yrsbusy-bag-swap.html

The idea is for each mom to create one activity several time (last swap it was 12).  Then we meet to swap, and each mom gets 12 or so new activities for their child.  You can search online for ideas or create one of your own.  Please look at the list below so we don't get duplicates.

The busy bags that we did last time were:

1. Pool noodle and string
2. Piggy Bank
3.  Pom Pom stuff in
4.  Sandpaper/Yarn art
5.  Button Snake
6.  Clothes pin Drop in
7.  Pipe Cleaner and coffee cup with holes
8.  Color craft sticks/Color matching
9.  Sponge Jewlery
10.  Egg Carton and eggs
11.  Fabric fasteners with snaps
12. ??? (I can't remember....anyone?)


We will meet on Monday, February 20th at 3:00-4:00 at my house to exchange busy bags and have a playdate.  If you can't make the playdate, you can still participate in the exchange.  You can either drop them off early or you can find one of the other people in the exchange to leave your materials.

As people sign up, I will put their names below with the activity the are making.  On Monday, February 13th, I will count the number of people so you know how many activities to make.

Swapping Moms:
1.  Katy Ruotti:  Magnetic Pom Poms
2.  Stella Krall: Pom Pom and pinchers
3.  Sarah Pagel:  Alphabet/Number Tracing Dry Erase
4.  Kim Payette:  Felt Pizzas
5.  Poppy Niosi: Memory Game
6.  Melody Leung:  Homemade Number Boards
7.  Josie Cooper:  Eric Carle Matching Heads/Tails Game
8.  Sarah Key:  DIY Watercolor pages
9.  Ashely Ring:
10.  Linda Shilling: Seasons Matching Game
11. Brooke: Clothes Pin Number Match
12.  Lori Beske: Color Craft Stick Matching Game
13.  Maritha Lyden Miller: I Spy Game
14.  Jennifer Orshak:
15.  Heather Bernhard:

Weekly Curriculum

Monday: Number Plates & Pom poms

Tuesday:  Toothpick Styrofoam and Sticker Letters

Wednesday: Toilet Paper Caterpillar

Thursday:  Repeats of Number Plates/Pom poms

Friday: Repeats of Toothpick Styrofoam and Sticker Letters

Monday: Number Plates & Pom Poms

 

Today we worked with numbers.  I drew the numbers 1-5 on a paper plate.  I also drew on the corresponding number of dots.  Then I had Nico place a pom pom on each dot as we counted.  Afterwards, we put the pom poms under the plates and counted them as he discovered them.  We also talked about the colors of the pom poms.  We are going to keep this one out all week to play.

Tuesday:  Toothpick Styrofoam and Sticker Letters

This activity was a huge hit!!!  I drew dots in the shape of the letter "A" (letter of the week) on a small piece of Styrofoam using a Sharpie.   Then Nico had to put a toothpick in each of the dots.  This activity was not easy for him, but he was really concentrating and trying to get it right.  It took a lot of fine motor skills.  We will definitely be working on this more in the weeks to come. 

 

I picked up small letter stickers from Target on clearance for $.99.  Nico loves stickers, and I wanted to use these as an assessment for him to see which letters he can easily identify, and which need more work.  This was trickier than I thought because the letters were so small.  Again, it took a lot of fine motor skills.  We went through about half of the alphabet before he got sick of it.  It think it was just too much concentration for one session.  We did this and the above activity back to back.  Together we spent about an hour of really focused time.  I will be coming back to this activity as well.

Wednesday: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This was a super cute idea we did at art group this week.  First we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Then we glued healthy foods to a toilet paper roll that was cut into pieces.  Then we decorated them with markers.  We threaded ribbon through some paper puncher holes, to string them together.  We added some googly eyes, and we had a neat caterpillar.  Too cute!