4-20-09 Garbage Truck and Burlington's WOW

(posted 8/20/09) We went to an OUTSTANDING event in Burlington, hosted by the Alamance Mommies group (sister site to my near and dear Triad Mommies) - Wheels of Wonder. They had every type of vehicle there that you could possibly think of - construction, delivery, emergency, limos, helicopters, army, tumblebus, monster trucks, go carts, etc. etc. etc. The kids were allowed to climb in/on/around all the vehicles and most of them would allow them to honk horns, press buttons, etc. Let me tell you, this was RIGHT UP Ryan's alley - if it has wheels, he is ALL ABOUT IT. I won't post all the pictures here - but I'll put them in a slide show you can click to get to (or see the right hand side of the blog for link).







Anyway, their handout was a coloring sheet of a truck that Ryan INSISTED was a garbage truck. Lately, he has grilled me for info about garbage trucks. They run two to three days a week here in our neighborhood for various things and when Ryan hears them, he INSISTS on going outside to watch. The. Whole. Production. Great... Anyway, so Alamance Mommies Wheels of Wonder prompted even more discussions of garbage trucks.

We colored a few coloring sheets, read a few books (a few of the favorites were Smash! Mash! Crash!, I Stink and Cars and Trucks) and then created our own garbage truck (original idea - No Time For Flashcards). A great way to work with the concept that you can put shapes together and make anything you want. Oh, and the q-tip painting was fun too (you can't see it, but he colored the wheels with a few markers also). Later, I realized I should not have had Ryan glue the back of the truck on, but to use something so it would pivot (like a brad). Oh well, maybe the next garbage truck we create...

Resource - Free Family Calendar

We don't need this quite yet, but I know a couple of people that really like it.
Cozi.com

Resource - Homeschool Freebie Of The Day

HomeschoolFreebieOfTheDay

A great resource!!!

Sand, Buttons and Rice Trays

3-25-09 Sand Play
Ryan loved this one - too cold outside to play in the sandbox, just right for inside. Took some small objects and buried them into some of the sand from the sandbox. A bit of a mess inside, but it was worth it - he played for more than an hour in the sand and was grinning most all of the time. He worked on transferring the sand from one bowl to the other, as well as finding the objects, burying them, counting them, sorting them, etc. etc. etc.

The objects to be hidden:

Discovering the objects:

Playing with all sorts of kitchen items in the sand:

Transferring the sand...slowly...from one bowl to the other...slowly...



3-26-09 Buttons
This was another big hit and he asks for buttons quite a bit now - he also played for over an hour with the buttons! Sorting, dumping, picking up, making noise with, counting, making pictures with (Ryan started making shapes with them), spooning into muffin tins/cups/bowls/etc. - lots of fun with buttons. In fact, I forgot how much fun buttons were! We had a lot of fun going through all the buttons and discovering different patterns, shapes, sizes - comparing them all, talking about which ones we liked better than others, our favorites, etc. Ryan's favorite just so happened to be my favorite too.





I made these two, but he told me what to make. This is a teddy bear.

My son is obsessed with 'not happy' over the last few weeks - "Is she not happy?", "He's not happy", etc. "Mommy, show me not happy", "Mommy, he's angry", etc. He points it out in all the books we read and makes me go back to that page over and over, slowly going over each person's face. I do so hope this "obsession" is normal.

3-27-09 Rice Play
This led to rice play - he is loving all these transferring trays! He played with this one for almost an hour. Lots of scooping, dumping, feeling (great sensory with all these), digging hands in, spooning, etc. One of his favorite scoops is a toilet paper roll that has one end mashed flat and stapled together.



For the last few weeks, he likes to make letters out of random objects. This time, he poured sand into a few holes in the ice cube tray and said "Look mommy...a F!!!". Great job buddy!

A few tray times...

Ryan just loves doing tray times. He averages anywhere from 3 - 12 a day, depending on what else is going on that day. If we are home, he is constantly begging to do trays. Who can resist, right? So anyway, I'll try and catch up over the next few days on some of the things we have done. I'm not going to always post the repeats we do - but I do put out a couple of repeat trays each day - things that we've done before (not crafts, but more of the fine motor skill development, some gross motor, reading, coloring, puzzles, worksheets, abc stuff, etc. etc. etc.).

3-23-09
So, one of them was threading cheerios on a piece of yarn using one of my thick yarn needles. He wasn't thrilled with this one - any threading ones really. He got through it b/c we talked about the birds that might eat the cheerios. Unfortunately, we haven't seen any actually eat off of it - and it's time to take the soggy mess down. But, it's one he did well, just not happily. Guess we won't be doing this one again.

4-5-09 Nail Board and Alphabet poster

(posted 8/20/09) My dear friend gave us a couple of 'tools' that she had left over from her teaching days and we promptly put them to use. These are just a ton of fun and so many things you can do with the ABC poster. I'd love to hear other ideas you would use this poster for - please comment!



Rubber band shapes on the nail board - great for fine motor development and shape/color recognition. He's grasping the concept you can use shapes to create other things - like a house, or two squares can make a rectangle or two triangles can make a square, etc. This board comes out about once every two weeks. Then, I spend the next couple of days chasing rogue rubber bands...

4-4-09 Painting in the sun

(posted 8/19) Ahhh, the sunshine...we've missed you. Ryan wanted some outdoor time (so did we)...he had a ton of fun "painting" with water and scraping the chalk. It allowed us to get some garage cleaning done. Does that ever end?

4-2-09 Numbers and Rocks

(posted 8/19/09) This is another one of those that sometimes is a favorite, other times not at all.
Other times we've blogged about this one: the first time and another time.

4-1-09 Domino Fun

(posted 8/19/09) Hmmm...so many tray times to choose from...which one shall I pick?


Domino time! We like to stack, count, match, etc. Sometimes this tray is a hit, other times it's a "chore" and he quickly gets bored. I guess you just have to be in the mood...