D is for Daisy

Daisy starts with D.

Addy was being a little restless today so I decided that we needed to do some fun activities.  Since it was raining outside we quickly came up with some letter crafts.

Here is her daisy d.  We didn't have any of the right colors of foam to make an actual daisy so we just made up our own.  I just have to add that Addy's cutting/scissor skills have improved greatly! 

I found this activity with a quick search on google.  We ended up simplifying it quite a bit just to work with the skills of a 3 year old.

 She was pretty happy with how it turned out.

 This was another one that we found that we actually had the supplies for.  Addy really liked bending the pipe cleaner around so we ended up making several of these cute flowers. 

D is for Dinosaur

We started the letter Dd and today we focused on Dinosaurs.

After reading several books about dinosaurs, we made our own dinosaur D.

For this activity, addy worked on patterns.  I would start the pattern and she would have to finish it.  Then I just let her get creative and do her own for awhile.  There were also some other pages for finding things that are different and sequencing.  

This was one on counting.  I was really impressed that Addy could do this all on her own.

Preschool Daze had a lot of great ideas for our dinosaur theme but I liked this one the best.  Addy decorated a giant dinosaur using colorful shapes.  I had her tell me what the shape and color were before she glued them on.  I also had her count how many squares, circle, etc.  So this was a great learning activity!

C is for Castle and Crown

Lately this little girl has been into playing prince and princesses. I thought it would be a great idea to pull that into our learning but I didn't want to wait until we got to letter P.  So I started to think of things that began with letter C that tied into that same theme and I came up with castles and crowns.

The first thing we did was paint a castle using a celery stick because it makes a letter C. 

Here is a link to the coloring page we used.

Just look at that happy face.

Sadly most of the C's are backwards.

 This was a great activity because it helped with recognizing the colors and shapes. It was also a great way to practice coloring and staying in the lines.  Something we really need to work on! 

 I found this page here but you have to scroll down a little ways and then I just saved the image to my computer and then printed it out using word.

Then we drew our own castle complete with a prince and princess.

 Every castle needs a princess! And you can't have a princess without a crown, so that is what we did for our next activity.  Our crown template can be found here.  The best part of this project was using the glitter glue! It was a big hit.

Then we built a castle for all the princess dolls.

We also read a couple of castle books including our favorite "The Paperbag Princess".  It is such a cute book!

C is for Cloud

Clouds

To be honest, today's lesson was a little less than planned out.  Addy came up to me and said she wanted to do one of her letters so I just sort of threw this together at the last minute.

Thankfully, we did still have the book "Little Cloud" from the library so I just went with that.

After reading the book, we made our own cloud out of cotton balls.  Then on the back of the paper, Addy also painted another cloud.

A couple weeks ago I was on pinterest and saw this little cloud experiment so I looked it up and then tried it.  

This next activity definitely won me the best mom ever award! All I did was put shaving cream on a cookie sheet and told her to play in the 'cloud'.  Addy couldn't believe that I was going to let her play and make a mess on purpose.  It was serious heaven for her!  We tried to practice writing a couple of letters but it turned into mostly just playing and having fun.

C is for Caterpillar

For today's lesson we did a lot of activities revolving around a Caterpillar.

 We read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle

Then I made a little caterpillar our of pipe cleaners that Addy could use to weave through all the food the caterpillar ate in the story.

Then I helped Addy make a caterpillar by painting her handprint.

 Once the paint dried, she drew on his little face.  I thought it was so cute with two little eyes and a big nose!

Sorry this picture is upside down.  We made a caterpillar C for our alphabet book.  We even put all the color pom pom's in a pattern. Addy picked out which color came next and then helped glue them down.

 Next we practice writing some of the letters in her name.  She's got the letter A down!  It is pretty exciting.  Once the letter writing got too boring, we moved on to putting all the letters in her name in order.  I would mess them all up and she would put them back together. Idea found here.

 Also on that same website was a link to print off these little caterpillars.  They are all different sizes so we just worked on putting them in the right sequence.

 By this time she was a little worn out!

 So we got ready, ate some lunch and then had a fun treat of caterpillars!  That put a smile back on her face.

B is for Barn

For our last day with the letter B, we learned about the barn.

I got the idea to make a big barn out of poster board from the Mommy n Me bookclub website.  They had such fun ideas to use with this book.  We tried to use the spray bottle mixed with paint and water method to make a textured barn, but it kept getting clogged.  So we just ended up painting it with a regular brush.

 While the paint was drying, we made a little sheep and pig to live in our barn. The template for these animals, as well as a smaller barn, can be found here.

 To complete the barn; we added a door, window, roof and hay stack all out of construction paper. Also for the hay stack I cut up pieces of yellow yarn that Addy glued on to give some texture.  Maybe over time we'll make some more animals to add to our barn.

Once the enthusiasm over the barn wore off, we sang Old MacDonald had a Farm.  We used these cute little finger puppets that I'd made awhile back as the animals on the farm.

B is for Ballet

Today we used the letter b to help us learn about the ballet.

We read a couple 'Angelina Ballerina' books.

 

Then we practiced the moves we saw in the book.  I actually took ballet when I was younger so I tried to teach a couple of basic moves and now Addy asks me all the time if she can put her ballet dress on and I'll teach her some more.

Then we made these little ballet dancers.  This was an activity that took a little preparation because you have to cut everything out on your own.  There is no pattern.  I thought Addy did a really nice job coloring and making the cute little face.

b is for butterfly

This butterfly day is brought to you by the letter b!

This activity is found here.  We changed it to make it a little more simple. Instead of using wax paper we just cut and colored foam paper for the wings.

Then I helped her make these fun bandaid butterflies.  Those fun colored bandaids I got at the dollar store several months ago.  We also used cut up paper towels for the wings because I couldn't find gauze.

 So easy and she had such a fun time decorating the wings!

I also found this fun butterfly at the dollar store.  Addy is always asking me to paint so this was a good task for her.  And it is now hanging and adding a lovely decoration for our window.

B is for Bear

Today's letter B focuses on bears.

We read "Jesse Bear, what will you wear?"  I loved this book as a kid so I just had to throw it into the mix.

I'd made this file folder activity a long time ago so I pulled it out and let Addy dress up the bear. Just like in the book. Here is a link for a jesse bear printable kit I found while searching. 

Then we read "Bear wants More" by Karma Wilson.

Made a bear puppet (which I can't remember where i got it from) and then I printed out all the things the bear eats in the story and Addy helped act out the story as I reread it.

Then we had our own Teddy Bear picnic and ate a snack of teddy grahams.

Somehow the giraffe also made it to the picnic.