Tot School: R is for Rainbow

Luv Bug is 37 months old

Usually, I plan themes by season. I wanted to so a separate rainbow theme in spring and it just happened to coincide with our letter R week. There are so many cute ideas for rainbows, I had a hard time choosing. We fit in quite a bit this week since Luv Bug was very into tot school this week.

I set out 5 trays this week:

 This rainbow printable is from Making Learning Fun. Luv Bug did not care for this tray and barely touched it.

 I made this rainbow strip last year, but this is the first time Luv Bug was able to work the clothespins independently.

 I've dedicated her green tray as her science tray. This week I set out her polished stones and a book. She specifically requested the black box to put her stones in. This was by far, her favorite tray and she played with this many, many times.

 I made these for Luv Bug after I saw them at Counting Coconuts.

 Luv Bug has always been very good at matching. I decided to try to make it a bit more difficult and set out 2 shades of each color.

This was not a challenge for her, but I'll still set it out now and then because she enjoys matching.

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Carisa from 1+1+1=1 created an adorable Rainbow Tot Pack. We did quite a few of the printables in this pack. The pictures below are all from this tot pack unless specified.

I try not to do to many crafts with Luv Bug that are not open ended. For some reason, we did quite a few this week. I love this rainbow printable. I set out some rainbow colored paints and gave Luv Bug some q-tips to use as paintbrushes. As you will see, most of the crafts involved paint. We did these all at one time, then I gave Luv Bug some fresh paper and allowed her to use up the paints as she wanted.

As I mentioned above, Luv Bug likes matching games. This was her favorite activity from the tot pack.

I also printed a few pages from Confession of a Homeschooler's letter R unit. This do a dot page and the two below are from there.

We read The Rainbow Fish and made a cute Rainbow Fish craft. I cut out two fish shapes (I couldn't resist making one) and set out glue and these big circles from a pack of sequins and spangles.

We glued on a googly eye and added glitter to the tail and fins. Luv Bug really enjoyed the story and asked if she could make a Little Blue Fish.

I cut out a smaller fish shape for her and let her decorate it.

I I found this rainbow mixing page at First-School.

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I wanted to do a Noah's Ark craft and saw this adorable one by Mama Jenn.

We made ours a bit different. I cut out a circle from  the middle of a paper plate. I drew raindrops on one side and gave Luv Bug some blue paint. I drew a rainbow on the other half and put dots on so she'd know what color to paint. We fastened this to another plate with a brad, then  painted half a plate brown and glued it to part of the other plate. Luv Bug colored some animals I found here and we glued them to the back of the brown half.

Here is the rainy side.

And with the rainbow. I like how this turned out, but, if I was to do it again, I'd have her glue smaller animals to the rainbow half so it would look as if they were coming out of the ark.

I cut out ceveral circles in rainbow order from biggest to smallest. I had Luv Bug line them up in order.

Then she glued them in order.

Here's what it looked like finished.

After it dried, I drew a line down the middle on the back and Luv Bug cut on the line. .

She then had two rainbows. We talked a bit about semi-circles and half and whole.

Luv Bug made this cute little rainbow handprint fish I saw at Mom to 2 Posh Little Divas. I thought it was so cute and I love handprint and footprint crafts!

I put together a simple sensory bin with rainbow rice and a few containers. I later added a scoop and a few toys.

This was played with A LOT. I finally just left the vacuum out so I wouldn't have to keep dragging it down. It was worth the mess, Luv Bug had a good time with this.

Every week is fun, but this was one we both especially enjoyed. I've got some things coming up in the next week, so I definitly won't be posting next week. The week after may just be a brief post, but we'll see how time goes.

Tot School: Littlest Pet Shop theme

Luv Bug is 37 months old

Recently Luv Bug has been so into her Littlest Pet Shop animals. She has several and plays with them daily. I decided I'd try to build our theme around them this week. I created some printables for her, but since I don't have any special program (I use Word), they are very basic. I use Google Images for the clipart, so I cannot share due to copyright laws. I am interested in doing more things as Luv Bug gets older, so if anyone knows of good program for creating, please let me know.

As always, she has several trays (not all theme related). This week she had 6:

 I mentioned in my last post about wanting to set out a science themed tray each week. This week I set out her magnets. She only played with these for a few minutes which surprised me. She usually likes them.

 Luv Bug's Melissa and Doug's magnetic doll

 I bought these sequencing puzzles from Scholastic.

 This has always been a favorite tray. Luv Bug uses the melon baller to scoop marbles and transfer them into the ice cube tray.

 These butterfly pre-writing practice cards are part of Confessions of a Homeschooler's letter B unit.

I've been trying to get Luv Bug interested in playing board games. This is the first time she played the whole game and followed the rules. We played with Daddy one evening which made it more special.

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Below are the printables I made for Luv Bug.

 I chose 16 of her Littlest Pet Shop animals, then made a 4x4 grid. I inserted a real photo of each animal, then had Luv Bug match them up.

 She enjoyed this a lot. I'm going to laminate it and keep it with her LPS animals.

 She especially loves her Triplet Kitties. I inserted an image of them, then drew 3 food dishes. I had her draw a line to the dish that matched each kittens bow. She said the pink one had to go the long way:)

  Size sequencing.

 I chose 6 zoo animals and 6 farm animals, and created sorting mats for them. I made the animals into strips for Luv Bug to cut before sorting and gluing.

 More cutting practice strips.

I gave her some glue so that she could make patterns.

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Other Littlest Pet Shop play

 I set out her Melissa and Doug blocks. She made a house for her animals.

 And a hospital.

We both had a very fun week. I think it was especially enjoyable because I chose something that is interesting to her. I hope to do more things like this.