Letter M

Letter M was lots of fun because I used these M&M printables which are so much fun! How could he not enjoy it since he got to consume the M&Ms at the end of the session!


Here he is sorting M&Ms according to colour. We did many other M&M activities like sorting and sequencing but I haven't captured them on film. You'll find all the other activities on the M&M printables link above.

I printed out a letter m template, laminated it and drew squares with a white board marker. I then provided him with unit cubes to place along the letter and I tried to encourage him to alternate colours along the way.

I printed this Capital M, laminated it and punched holes all along and started him off on lacing a string through the holes.

     

This was Adventure-man's favourite! I printed out a sheet of things that begin with the Letter M and laminated  it. I then hid those items in a box of pasta. He had to search through the pasta to find the monkey, motorcycle, money and letter M. He wanted to do this several times over.

You can download the sheet from here. 

I like to download the alphabet sheets from this site. I'll either give him his Do a Dot paint pens to dot the circles or in this instance, I gave him circle stickers (available from any stationery store) and he stuck them on.

This is his M for magnets tray and this was a big hit too.He loved playing with them.

This is my favourite activity. I printed off these hanging monkeys and wrote numbers on their tummies and had Adventure-man match and peg the monkey to his number hanging on the line.

Hanging monkey template  - I got the template from www.makinglearningfun.com, however, their monkeys have alphabets on them, so I copied the picture of the monkey without any writing on it and printed that off myself and wrote numbers on them.  

I used the numbers from one of the M&M counting printable here.

There were many other things we did like sing Five Little Monkeys Jumping on a bed. I made my own puppets and we retold the story. If you want a few related activities to do with your tot, this free downloadable activity pack from 1+1+1 is great.

I also read Goodnight Moon to him and you can get a lovely free lapbook activity from Homeschool Share.

Letter M is a great letter to do because there are so many different things you can do. I look forward to coming back to it!

Click below to see what other mums are doing with their Tots.

The first post: What we did today

"Where to start?" is running through my mind as I try to decide on my first post for this blog. There are lots of resources and ideas I want to share but maybe just sharing what we did today would be a good start.

Each day in our homeschooling life often starts with the competing needs of teaching my two older girls and occupying my young adventurer who is not quite three yet.

I have in the past few months decided to be more intentional in organising activities for him but truth be told, I haven't quite got to the point where we have a regular time together. There is the ideal plan and then there is reality! Focused playtime tends to just happens in the midst of the day when I can catch time with him, usually when the girls are working independently or involved in other lessons like piano or Mandarin (which I don't teach).

So what did our morning look like?

We woke up, stumbled half asleep to breakfast and then eventually, after chores were done, we congregated on the sofa for devotions. During this time, adventure-man insisted very loudly and persistently that he wanted the  "boogie worship". So, in tried and tested fashion, the loudest got his way. We played his favourite rowdy worship song (which we all love!) and danced around the living room while he used our big footstool as a trampoline shouting triumphantly at appropriate intervals. The only problem being that when we wanted to quiet down and start our devotions, he continued to insist on "boogie worship" and a large amount of my time was spent explaining why we need to be quiet and read our bibles together. By this time, my two older girls were  rapidly slipping into a state of sluggish stupefaction. ( Sigh. This was not how I pictured it would be when I first started homeschooling - but to be fair, this is not every day - we do have good days too!).We did eventually get to our devotions after concerted efforts to distract him with his trains.

It is a Monday morning and I actually had a weekend to dream up some ideas - so what you see following is a pretty productive day on our part in terms of play and learning.

I have been slowly working through the alphabet with him over the last few months. We started by reading Letterland stories and using their flashcards to familiarise him with the letters. It worked well with my two girls when they were in their nursery schools (long before we started homeschooling) and I decided to give it a go with him.

He loves the flashcards and we play lots of games with them - his current favourite game is one where I lay a variety of  cards out at the end of the room and we have to race to get the right one. He feels very sorry for mummy who never seems to win! ;) 

So this week we are up to LETTER N. All the printables I used here were from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Adventure-man started off with sticking "N for Noodles" on our letter Ns and then proceeded to dump glitter all over it. And why not!

He then sorted out Big N's and little n's in this activity.

And He used Do A Dot paint for this.

He practiced his fine motor skills sticking straws into small holes punched into a cereal box. (I got this idea from some of the Tot School blogs - sorry I can't remember where.) And he matched the number of beads to the numbers in his trays with some help from me.

The other things he got to do today were:

  Tossing bean bags onto numbers called out by me.                  

                               Playing with coloured ice (A BIG HIT!)
                                                      
I got these ideas out of The Toddlers Busy Book.

The rest of the day was taken up with general play with trains, reading before nap times, going to the playground and yes, (head hung in shame) watching some TV. It was a happy day.

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