I was so thankful to have a 2 week Christmas break for our family, but we were all glad to be back in a routine this week. 🙂 I wanted to share with you the snowy things NJoy (3 years old) did along with a few shots of MBug (19 months) in action. Although we didn’t do a letter of the week, we did integrate a few S activities. Next week, we’ll do W is for Winter and zero in on things we wear for winter, so those activities were not included this week.
Warning: There are a lot of pictures and activities. I didn’t do this to overload you, but to show you how much FREE and really good stuff is out there for your child. It really is mind-blowing.
snowflake number matching (ALuv did the same activity with number words instead)
Snowman Do-a-dot painting with his new set. He was so excited to get to use his new colors.
HERE’S THE SNOW FREEBIE: “Shape”men Size Sorting This activity reviews some shapes (circle, oval, triangle, square, rectangle, & hexagon). He particularly liked mixing up all the shapes and creating crazy looking snowmen after he was done. Click on the title above to download.
Snowman Sticker Time: This activity is so simple, yet packed with learning. To prepare, cut a large piece of construction paper in half (hot dog style), then fold into four sections. Write a number on each section and the child puts that many stickers on the section. Peeling the stickers off is great for fine motor and it reinforces 1-to-1 correspondence with numbers.
One of the things I love about the activity is that it can be adapted easily. For example,
this is how ALuv did the activity last year as a 5 year old.
Snowflakes Stickers on the Letter S
S or not an S snowflake sorting
Snowman/Snowflake Pattern Block Puzzles
Snowman Color Words: This was one of his favorites of the week. He worked it a few times on different days. He matched the snowmen by color, then spelled out the color words on this mat. I wish I knew the source of these snowmen and the color word tiles!! I printed them off last year and used them with ALuv and I don’t have them saved on my computer. Anyone seen these before?? I’d love to give credit where credit is due!!
S is for Snowman coloring. I asked him to color the scarf on the snowman, walked away for a moment and came back to this. His explanation? “It’s a green snow storm.” Who am I to argue with a 3 year old??
Count and Clip Snowflakes: This is the first time he’s been successful at using the clip! Yay!
Cutting the Snowflakes: I cut the paper a little shorter because I didn’t think he’d be able to cut a line as long as what was on the printable.
Boy, was I wrong! He went to town cutting.
And last, but not least, we made our own play dough again…white for snow with some really cool snowy glitter mixed in. We used our pattern blocks to make snowflakes in the “snow.”
Snow Crafts:
We stamped a snowman on the page, peeled and stuck snowflake stickers on, then cut out clouds from glittery scrapbook paper.
This turned out to be a great literacy craft because it’s such a fun way to touch on phonics and print awareness! I’m going to have to do more of these. I cut out the words to the sentence: Look at my beautiful snowflakes. He glued them down on the paper, then he sprinkled glitter on the snowflakes I drew with glue. We ran out of room to glue the rest of the sentence down; that’s why we had to put beautiful on top of snowflakes.
MBUG: This little girl also had some fun with her rotated toys, teaching mat manipulatives, and attempts at painting. Here are a few snapshots of her this week:
She’s just learned how to get the right shapes in the right holes this past week!
placing snowman erasers (found at $1 store) into the snowman jello molds (found @ Target last year)
This is a mini M&M container from a stocking stuffer. They work very nicely for fitting in coffee stirrers.
Coloring: one of her all-time favorite activities
“Spelling” words with magnetic letters, just like big brother. 🙂
Although she did get the paint everywhere, I was impressed with her first attempt at do-a-dot painting! She actually dotted in most of the circles.
And she tried her hand at some snowman pre-writing! She whined the entire time it was NJoy’s turn with this until she got a chance.
On Monday, I plan on posting the snowy things that were integrated into ALuv’s week (K level) with a couple of FREE printables, so stay tuned!
Thank you for joining This Reading Mama on a literacy journey!
~Becky
Thanks! Just a correction: the snowman/snowflake are made with pattern blocks, not tangram pieces.
Thanks. Fixed it in the post. 🙂