We are into second month of lockdown due to COVID-19 and have almost settled to a new normal. Morning times are dedicated to hands on learning activities or worksheets for M while R works on his online learning stuff. Our dining table has practically become a homeschooling table. I love it that way because I can attend to both kids with ease. Also being close to kitchen makes it easy to help them out while cooking too.
We have finished Letter A and Letter B by now. I love to plan out the activities for each week and can’t wait for her to try it out. Even if she ignore some activities I have learned to shake it off and try again some other time.
Here’s the plan for Letter C week.
Focus Wall
As you already know we start our letter of the week with a focus wall and object bin. It gives a headstart and she’s always excited to see new stuffs up on the pocket chart.
Day 1
🔸Object Bin
This time I wanted to present the objects in a different way to her. I displayed them on the wall in Ikea Lustig frame. She took out each item and curiously explored them.
I had caterpillar, cupcakes, chair, corn, carrot, cookie,cheese,camel,cat,crab,car. I guess there’s lot of things that starts with letter C 😊
🔸 Letter Collage
Whenever you do a letter of the week it’s always good to do a collage with items that starts with the letter sound. File them all together and they can flip through them once it’s all done.
For Letter C we choose cotton balls. Alternatively you can use Cheerios, car stickers or corn kernels to fill the letter.
Once finished we tried to brighten it up with some colors. Using droppers and colored water she painted the cotton balls well enough. Later we pasted the ‘C’ on a green sheet of paper.
🔸Cutting Station
She’s so interested in scissors lately and gets fascinated with all the cuttings that I do. So I thought she may enjoy a cutting station with a variety of materials to choose from and she did!!
What’s on the tray: Cardstock/ Plain paper/Foam sheets/Streamers/ Paint strips/Felt/Straws/Yarn/Pipe cleaners.
The most favorite one was straws and she loved the tick sound it made when it’s cut. She held the felt with both hands and asked R to cut them for her.
🔸Pattern Block letter
She enjoys making the letters using pattern blocks. So I plan to include them in our letter of the week program until she gets bored of it. The free printables are from Confessionsofahomeschooler.
Day 2
🔸 Book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar
We focused today’s activities around the must read book’ The very hungry caterpillar’ by Eric Carle. I have an emotional connection with this book. It’s the very first book I purchased for my elder one right after he was born ( yeah I read to him even when he was weeks old 😊). So this book bridges me to the cuteness of my baby. Fast forward we are reading the same book now and it hasn’t lost it’s luster.
🔸 Potato Masher Caterpillar
A simple caterpillar art using potato masher and green & red paint that gives astonishing results.
Steps:
🐛Use green and red paint to stamp body and head.
🐛Cut eyes from yellow and green foam ( you can also use googly eyes).
🐛Draw mouth, ears and legs using the black marker.
🔸 Caterpillar Name Match
The name practice board is the first name recognition activity I ever made for her. It’s a great fine motor work along with learning letters of the name. You will need :
✨ Paint stir stick.
✨ Clothespin.
✨ Green and red foam sheet.
✨ Black marker.
✨ Pipe cleaner.
Here’s the steps on how to make the board.
🐛 Cut circles out of green foam sheet as needed.
🐛Write the letters of name on paint stick and the green circles.
🐛 Stick the circles on top of clothespin.
🐛Create caterpillar face from red foam sheet, markers and pipe cleaner.
🔸 Caterpillar Dot page
I printed these free very hungry caterpillar pack from Totschooling.net. She have plenty of worksheets to go with the book. I just got the caterpillar dot page and this time gave her some mini apple erasers to fill the dots.
Day 3
🔸Vocabulary Cards
We love using these vocabulary cards from The measured mom. She have listed many ways to play with them rather just simply flashing the cards. We did a matching game to identify the object names and she got them all right.
Next up I made up a game to practice names as well as to get them moving. I purchased this clear pocket cubes from amazon and it’s well worth the investment. Just insert one set of cards on the sides of cube and spread the other set on floor. Have them roll the cube and ask to jump/hop/slide/tiptoe to the corresponding cards on floor.
Needless to say they had so much fun with this game and took turns to do some ‘workout’.
🔸Carrot Painting
We made a carrot craft today using a real carrot to paint it orange. Just cut a carrot long enough for the little to hold and let them stamp on a cardstock paper.
Once dried off cut a triangle out of the painted portion and stick to another color paper. Next up trace their hands on a green paper and cut them out. She loved this part and asked me to do more.
Glue these hands on top of the carrot and an amazing carrot with their little hands is ready!
🔸 DIY Carrot puzzle
I love to make toys out of cardboards. They are sturdy enough, available in plenty and reusing is good for earth too. Also I enjoy crafting any time. This carrot puzzle is made with two rectangular boards.
Cut out different shaped triangles on first board. Paint them orange and number using markers. Paste the cut out board on top of second board and draw green leaves and roots.
It’s a great activity to practice number recognition and size sequencing.
🔸Playdough Letter Mat
This printable alphabet Playdough mats are from the website inmyworld. They are not free but I purchased it for my eldest to practice tracing. For M I rolled some Playdough snakes and helped her to make the letter. Use any small objects to poke into the Playdough for extra fun.
She asked for marker to trace the letter. She’s not tracing in right direction but she could hold them between the lines. This girl loves dry erase markers!
Day 4
🔸 Book: If you give a mouse a cookie
This book is a little too descriptive for her and has many sequences of event. But still I just wanna familiarize her with the ‘If you give’ book series by Laura Numeroff.
I have printed these free sequencing printables from here. She can’t quite sequence the story yet but she loved to put them on and off the velcro on the paint stick.
🔸Paper plate Cookie
For the bookish play we made a paper plate cookie in the afternoon. You will just need :
- Paper plate
- Brown paint & brush
- Black paper
First paint the paper plate brown and make sure to cover every area. Cut some dots from black paper for chocolate chips and glue it to the plate. It’s such an easy craft with an amazing result and looked so real!!.
🔸 Felt Cookie Counting
This one was a quick idea occurred to me while reading the book. I made the cookies out of brown felt and wrote the numbers on them. Next I cut out a jar shape from green & purple felt and hot glued them together.
We counted them and arranged in order on the table. Her favorite part was to put the cookies in the jar and trying to shake them out!
🔸 Cat printables
These free cat printables are from Carissa ‘s Letter C Tot school pack. You can download it here. We did the tracing, stamping and dotting pages.
Day 5
🔸Letter C mini book
We read the letter C mini book from the measured mom. It has some nursery rhymes connected to letter C and she loved to sing them with me. You can download it for free here.
🔸 Paper plate Car
Another easy craft to do with car obsessed toddlers to learn Letter C. Supplies needed:
- Half paper plate
- Paint of your choice & brush
- Black & White paper
Paint the paper plate with color of your choice. My kids decided to make yellow and green car. Cut two circles from black paper for the wheels and two squares from white paper for windows. Once paint is dry glue the wheels and windows on the car and voila it’s ready to roll!!
🔸Car wash Station
I think cars should be an important theme while learning Letter C…. I mean which toddler doesn’t love cars anyway? We collected all of our cars in the house and decided to give a foamy bath to them. I used bubble bath to make foam and added some blue coloring too.
They had solid 30 minutes of fun scrubbing, rinsing and spraying the cars. Sensory bins are great way to engage the kids and you can possibly have that reheated cup of coffee in peace. But be prepared to clean all that mess later 😆
🔸 Car wheel color match
I got this free printable from hello wonderful. We used dot stickers to match the wheel color. In her website she have given different ideas to use this printable.
Sensory Bin
This week I decided to make a bookish sensory bin. The very hungry caterpillar is one of our favorite books and they loved reading and watching the animated movie.
Supplies needed :
- Green aquarium gravel
- Red & Green poms
- Wooden discs
- Parmesan cheese container
- Story printables
- Caterpillar face printable
The detailed steps on how to make the bin can be found here.
Playdough Invitation
An invitation to make cupcakes. What’s on the tray:
- Homemade red dough
- Cupcake liners
- Color rods
- Buttons
- Jewels
- Cut straws
- Pony beads
We all made our own yummy cupcakes. M chose jewels as her sprinkles and R took all of them. Later we stuck the color rods as candles. Then we sang Happy Birthday song for each one of us and ‘blowed’ the candles 😊
She was not ready to leave her cupcake and was carrying it in her palms all around.
The Wall of Fame
