P Stuff

Activities

Three Little Pigs. Another flannel board success. I found these coloring pages online. I got the pages here.

I cut them out and Talmage watercolored them. Then I faux laminated them, sandpaper on the back and voila! Three Little Pigs story.

Insert video here.

Paintings at UMFA. I was going to do this for M Stuff (museum) but then ran out of time. We went to the Utah Museum of Fine Art to look at paintings. I got on their website before hand to pull images that they had on display (I called their education office to verify). I then made a chart. Charts are all the rage at our house right now.



We then looked through the displays for these works. It was much more successful than I imagined and he did his art historian Mama proud.

Pomander Balls.

One of the best things about ABC Stuff is that we are festive at all the wrong times of the year. What's more fun than Christmas in June?

These are pretty easy. Citrus fruit. Poke with a pencil and insert a clove in the resulting hole. Other instructions involve ribbon and cinnamon, but we stuck with simplicity.

Treasure hunt. paint, pencils, puzzles, panda bear, pants, piano, popsicles. The treat was a Push Pop.

O Stuff

This week I did a specific library catalog search again. I searched octopus, ostrich, and otter. Cowboy and Octopus by Jon Scieszka was probably our favorite. Okay, it was my favorite. I kept trying to get Talmage to pick it at night.

Activities

Octopus Windsock



Piece of paper. Talmage chose blue. I glued two together so that it would be long enough for eight legs each a ribbon width long. I trimmed the paper width-wise and then let Talmage color it. We glued on googly eyes and then attached 8 ribbons for the legs. I tied yarn at the top so we could hang it.

At the end Talmage was very clear on the fact that octopi have eight legs.

Ostrich

We printed off this coloring page. I thought it looked a little cleaner when we cut it out and glued it on colored paper.



Orange Painting




I mixed three shades of orange. Then we painted.

Treasure Hunt. octopus, omelet, otter, ostrich. The treasure was Oh Henry bar (nobody makes treats with short vowel sounds).

N Stuff

The Napping House by Don and Audrey Wood worked well.

Activities

Nose Stuff. When we did this, Talmage let us know that this was his Sunbeam lesson in church last week. We talked about noses and what noses do. Then we talked about different smells. We gathered various smells from around the house (vinegar, cinnamon, rose petals, soap, dirt, lemon zest) and then we blindfolded ourselves and guessed which smell was which. When daddy got home we tested him. He got 4 out of 6.

Numbers. Talmage knows how to count to ten, but beyond that, he takes random stabs at numbers, and thirteen and eleven come up several times. Gail (award-winning mathematics instructor that she is) suggested we learn how to count beyond twenty and even up to one hundred so that he can catch the pattern.



I made numbers in "families"; 1-9 in white, 10-19 in green, 20-29 in blue, etc. Then we counted to ten and lined the subsequent numbers up in rows underneath. That way he could see the patterns numbers make.

I don't know that I'm explaining this well; hopefully the picture will make sense. We got through the 30s and that was about all his toddler brain was ready for.

Nest. We printed off this coloring page. Then we cut out the eggs, put them in the nest, and glued the whole thing on green paper so it looked like it was in a tree. Then we talked about what nests are and how birds make them soft with sticks and feathers. Talmage then wanted to add sticks and feathers to his nest.

I thought it was a nice touch.



Treasure hunt. nail clippers, napkin, neck, necklace, nest, noodles. The treasure was nerds.

M Stuff

This week was FABULOUS. The creativity was flowing rivers. RIVERS.

My favorite childhood book, Mother, Mother, I Want Another by Maria Polushkin Robbins, was a perfect M book.

Activities

Mosaic.





Our neighbor, Ida, who is wonderful in all things toddler, gave us a big bag of small colored squares. Talmage and I used them to make mosaics. Then we looked at images from the Mausoleum of Galla Placida in Ravenna:



Talmage looked for a while and then said "I'm all done, Mom."

Mailboxes.



Woah. I didn't forsee the wild success of this project. We took three boxes, wrapped them in different colors and then decorated the outside. You know, old school elementary Valentine's boxes. Then we put one in mommy and daddy's room, one in Talmage's room and one in Asher's room. Now periodically throughout the week, I write mail to various people. Not frequently enough for Talmage, who checks his mailbox for new mail roughly fifty-seven times a day.

Map Hunt. Talmage loves looking at maps at the zoo, so for this hunt I made four maps of the floorplan of my house (something tells me that isn't something I should post on the internet). Then we found the star that marked where we were and the star where we wanted to go to find the next map, and followed the map. Talmage was shockingly good at it. The last map guided us to a treat.

Masks. We didn't actually do this, but when I do this with Asher, we should decorate masks.

Treasure hunt. milk, microwave, mirror, macaroni, mom, and mailbox. Treat was M&Ms.