M is for Mitten

Some weeks I have no ideas, and some weeks I have no idea how I'm going to fit everything in!  I've been looking forward to M week for a while.  Here's why!

Day 1

We sang of few of Parker's favorite songs and moved right in to the name recognition exercise.  Last week I had him put the letters of his name in the right order.  This week I put his name on the board with a bunch of random letters.  He had to find the letters in his name and put them under the my writing.

Next, we counted to 40 and then did a mitten matching activity.  One mitten has the number and the other has the number in dots.  I laid them all out randomly and he got right to work.  Sometimes he moves his finger a little faster than he's counting, so this was good practice.

(In case you've noticed what he's wearing, it was -30 degrees outside that day, so I told him to just put clothes on over his jammies ;)

After reviewing letters A-L and their verses, we learned letter M, and its verse

"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord." Psalm 100:1

For our intro to letter M, he filled the M's with money.

Then we read

This is probably one of my all-time favorite children's books.  We read several Jan Brett books during J week, so Parker was familiar with her style of writing and illustrating.  I printed off these perfect manipulatives, cut them out and taped the mitten pieces together so he could put the animals inside.  First, we just read the story.  The second time, I introduced the mitten and animals and he put them in as I read the story.  The third time we didn't use the book.  We re-told the story together using the manipulatives.  He probably would have done it several more times, but it was time for lunch.  We had friends over that night and he told them the entire story =)  I love it when he does that!

Day 2

We started out by marching around the house.  Then we came back to our preschool area and reviewed the shape flashcards.  Right now, he knows triangle, square, rectangle, oval, diamond (rhombus), octagon, heart, circle and star.  I brought out some toothpicks and mini marshmallows to make some shapes with.  We talked about how the toothpicks were straight.  Then we went through the cards and decided which ones we could make with straight lines and which ones we couldn't.  We started with the triangle.  We counted the sides and then poked that many marshmallows with toothpicks.  Then I let him play around with them until he figured out how to put them together to make a triangle.  

We started each shape by counting the sides and poking the marshmallows.  For the rectangle, we looked at the length of the sides and I cut one toothpick in half to make the short sides.    For the rhombus, he took the square and squeezed it a little bit to make it fit over the rhombus.  I thought that was pretty smart!  

It just so happened that the toothpicks fit perfectly on top of our flashcards.  

(I pretended I planned it that way ;)

He and Ryan made a big star.  They started by making five triangle shapes and then putting them together.      

Then we read

Again, another one of my favorite children's books.  

We made Danielle Walker's Pumpkin Muffins.  For some reason, whenever I take pictures of food, it never looks appetizing.  Trust me, the babies were delicious!

After Adley woke up, we got out our instrument box, cranked up some kids praise music, and made joyful noises to the Lord!

Day 3

Today, we counted to 40, and then to five in Spanish.  Then we read

and attempted to do the experiments in the book.  

I gathered these random objects and put them in the sensory bin. 

He would place his magnetic wand over an object to see if it was magnetic or not.  He took those ones out of the tub until he was left with all non-magnetic objects.

The book also shows you how to make a compass.  That would've been pretty neat, but we didn't have a strong enough magnet to make it work.  Maybe next year!

Throughout the week we have been listening to this Mozart CD from the library.

We also read