New Works

On Sunday I took the boys outside to play, and while my back was turned, Bumblebee opened the door to go inside and do some work!  I added several new works to their shelves over the weekend.  For some reason the one that captured Bumblebee was the golf tees and foam.  While we were there, Link of course checked out all the new things on Bumblebee's shelves without even looking at his own.  With some encouragement we did his works together.

To Link's shelves I returned the felt and push pins and added sandpaper numbers (missing from pic), matching sandpaper letters to little wooden letters and an acorn counting activity.

Link's shelves

Link seemed to enjoy doing his work today, but I was very involved.  We also didn't make it through the entire box of letters for matching.  For each letter that he matched he volunteered a word that began with that letter :)  He worked very intently on the felt and push pins though.

Link's push pin work

To Bumblebee's shelves I added a bit more.  Starting on the far left top the new things are: an object box, shape puzzles, and a small abacus.  On the bottom shelf the balancing cactus and belt box are new.

Bumblebee's shelf

On his other shelf I added the foam and golf tees, with no hammer, the peanut can has small holes and toothpicks, and next to that is the lacing orange.  The bag below contains cubes and rectangular prisms for sorting.

Bumblebee worked with the foam, peanut can, cylinder block one, and shape puzzles.

After the boys seemed to be winding down I set up an activity for them that I had been thinking about.  I set up two stools on one end of the classroom, with a bowl of macaroni on one stool.  On the other side of the classroom I set up two stools, with an empty bowl on one and a tray with a measuring cup on the other stool.  I showed the boys how to get one scoop of macaroni and set it on the tray.  Then I walked carefully over to the other side and set the tray down on the empty stool.  Then I poured the macaroni into the empty bowl.  I put the scoop back on the tray and took it back to the other stool.  Both boys did this about four times.  Carrying the tray without spilling the macaroni was the tricky part for both boys.  I plan to continue this in various ways, adding a line and changing the measuring cup and macaroni out for other items.

Link is a very active little boy and I thought it might be more fun doing things that involved moving :)  Today I decided to try something to peak his interest in his sandpaper numbers.  First, I brought 0-4 to the kitchen table.  Since it was just his birthday, he's pretty interested in these numbers.  Baby Bear is 0, Bumblebee is 1 and about to be 2, and Link was just 3, but is now 4.  He learned these five numbers very quickly.  Then, later today we played hide-and-seek with the numbers.  I brought up the rest and we'd take turns hiding them.

Link closing his eyes while I hide the numbers.

First, I would hide them so that he could see the numbers when he found them.  That way I could say "Bring me number 3" and he'd look for that one specifically, passing the others up when he found them.

Sequencing the numbers

 He is at the stage where he knows what order they go in and can identify them if I say the number.  It is harder for him to remember the name of the number when I point at them.

Tracing

Proud of his find

Having fun with numbers!

Link LOVES hide-and-seek!  I think he could play it all day.  We played for a solid hour, then I thought we should take a break so he didn't get too burnt out.  I think I'll try this again with some letters and number rods.

New on the shelves and the marathon school day!

Before we left for vacation last week I added several new activities to the shelves.  Link only had time to do one or two, so he was very eager to go to the school room today.  We spent three hours there the first time and an hour the second time!  When I put his brother to bed for the night, he asked to go again! (we didn't)

Tonight I'll just mention the new activities:

• color box (I took out the 3 pair from Box 1 and put in about 10 pair of color swatches I picked up from Lowes)
• Classification cards - farm and ocean pictures
• What does not belong
• Dinosaur matching - I printed two of these to use as visual discrimination cards (I figured they would be more interesting than the leaf ones)
• Same / Different Cards
• Fall cutting strips
• Pouring beans between two cups
• Locks w/keys
• Money sorting - nickels, quarters, and pennies
• "B" sound box - bat, batman, boat, bunny, brown bear, blue block, barn, bottle, belt w/buckle

One of the three hours we spent in the school room was not doing an activity.  Daddy went to Atlanta this week, so while he was there I had him pick up various sized boxes from Ikea.  Link helped me put 6 of them together today.  Talk about pincer exercise!  Each box had about 12 holes to be pushed out and 4 screws with nuts to be attached.  Link did almost all of it with me holding the box together.  

Tomorrow (hopefully) I'll have some pictures of the new activities and a rundown of the three days we've had in the school room this week.

First School Day

I'm so excited to say that we finally had our first day in the new school room!  After looking through all the pictures I want to talk about, I've decided to split this into two posts.  First, a look at the room.  When we bought the house we had the basement finished and had a space made specifically for school.  Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried, we could not get windows in the room because of the slope of the land.  It is small and won't work forever, but it is a dedicated space and will work for now.

We turned this....

.... into this.

  

I bought the shelves from Ikea and compared to most other shelves, they are a steal.  They all cost somewhere around $150-$200.  They are untreated pine, with no back and no sides.  But, they are very versatile.

I mentioned most of the activities in my last post, but I've got pictures this time.  First we have the few practical life works. On top I put a few shirts and hangers, in the middle is a basket of towels for folding and some pom poms for sweeping, and on the bottom is a box with two belts for buckling. Then we have pattern cards and work mats. Then Air, Land, and Water sorting cards on the top shelf and tweezers with pom poms and shapes on the bottom.

 

On the next set of shelves I have some paper, colored pencils and a circle stencil on the top.  Next is a bucket with clothes pins and color box 1.  Second to the bottom is the Association of Objects cards and on the bottom I have tongs with pom poms for transferring.

While Link was very excited about starting school, I think he was most excited to know that he was going to get to paint again.  So I have some of his art supplies on a top shelf.  This way he can see them and ask for them, but he cannot reach them himself.

Just to give a better view of the room, here it is from both sides.  We did end up putting a computer in here, but it doesn't seem to be too intrusive.  If we expand and need the space, it can be moved out.

I plan to cut some of these shelves in half and use them in the boys' closets for toys.  I don't really need the vertical space and I think it will make the room seem larger if the shelves are lower.  I can only really use one wall because the room is so small.  The double doors at the end have shelves where I keep my supplies out of sight (and store tons of things I don't have any other place for right now).

He ASKED for I Spy!

It's been really slow going, but Link has been doing 2-3 little activities 1-2 times a week, and I Spy cards maybe 3-4 times a week.  Here's what I've put together so far:

We don't have room for much, so I stole 2 shelves from Daddy's bookshelf, and we put out a work rug in the small little space in front of the shelf.  This room isn't off-limits to Link, but he can't reach these things because we don't want him hanging out in the room alone.

I made I Spy cards even though I know you are supposed to use objects because I don't have a ton of objects, or the money to buy a lot right now.  Plus, its hard enough thinking of things that start with a certain sound, finding actual objects seems almost impossible (I know its not, because I've seen other people do it, but whatever.)  Also, I didn't like anyone else's pictures because they all use clip art and things I'm not sure Link could identify.  So I made new ones.  (feel free to download them here)  I only have A through G right now, but will add them as I make them.  I used a business card template because we have lots of business cards we'll never use for anything else, and they are easy to cut up :)

I also made some classification cards.  I took pictures of my kitchen, living room and a bathroom and printed them on index cards.  Then took pictures of things from each room and printed them on the business cards.  I figured it would make more sense to him if it was our house.  I plan on making some more with themes, but I'm not sure how yet.  I'm thinking things like things-you-take-camping, or things-that-go-outside.  But I may never get around to it.

The other things on the shelf are toys that Link seems to like, but he doesn't play well with them unsupervised.  The lacing beads got a lot of use as a fishing pole, until he got tired of it. So I moved it to the shelf and do it with him.  He really enjoys threading them on.  The Melissa and Doug See and Spell was not supposed to go out yet because I thought it was a little too advanced for him.  But my sister sent it to him for Christmas and he wanted to play with it as soon as we got it out.  So I give him a couple of boards with the letters already in them, and he does it like a puzzle.

That's all we've done so far.  I have a few other things on the shelf, like a matching game he used to love but won't touch now, and some little paper mache boxes that are different shapes.  Link likes to take the tops on and off, so I'll get it out again soon.

I'm super slow and not very creative, so adding activities takes me forever.  I don't even have a plan right now for adding anything new.  Once I stopped worrying about it so much, its actually been less stressful, and we're doing something, so I'm okay with "slow".

Favorite Activities

I thought I'd start out by showing some of Link's current favorite activities and the toys that he has on his shelves right now.  The first one is cutting his fruits and veggies, known to Link as "cut-cut".  This was always fun for him, but recently he has taken notice of how I cut his food up and he really wants to do it too.

Ok, so he has lost his little wooden knife, and is using a ruler, but it works.  Sometimes its a little hard to cut ->

And he also likes to show his buddy, Bear, how its done as well.

He's pretty good about putting things back on his shelves, although I do spend a good bit of time picking up fruit from random places in the house.  In this picture you can see some of the other activities he has on his shelves.

I just recently got his pots and pans back out, and he has been enjoying his tool set since Christmas.  He's also got a basket of books and a puzzle here.  The mats are used for keeping his activities together when he's working but he's only using them right now for specific things, like the matching game and puzzle.  We're working on that though.  I don't have a picture of him doing the matching game.  I have some little wooden tiles with animals and we lay them out face-up on the mat.  He chooses the pairs and puts them in a little bag, he's doing about 10 sets right now.   I am amazed at how much he likes doing it.  I keep this activity on the higher shelf because I don't want the little tiles spread all over the place.  The shelves above his head hold items he can play with only with supervision and books that we read to him but he doesn't have access to read by himself.

In the other part of the living room is his toy shelf which used to be in his room, and will soon be going back there.

He's got stacking/nesting blocks, a train with blocks, and two different types of stacking disks.  This shelf will be changing soon, but I'm not sure what I'll put out yet.

One of the things that gets Link the most excited is watering his plants.  When he sees me coming with his watering can he runs to the door laughing he is so excited.  Or, he runs and gets his watering can when I mention it.  He helped me plant all of his flowers and his tomato plant.

See how he's putting the tip of spout on the flower?  We've been working on keeping the water "on the flowers" as opposed to on the ground or off the side of the porch, and he takes it literally.

I love how happy this makes him every morning!  I can't wait until that tomato plant has some tomatoes on it.  He is going to be tickled pink to pick them and eat them off of his own plant!!