Giraffes and Ghosts

Letter G- Making giraffes out of a hand print

All You Need:

• Paint
• Paper

My kids love paint.  It's not my favorite item to be played with, but sometimes I allow it so they can be happy.  Cody's favorite animal is a giraffe so I thought this would be a perfect activity for them.  We got some paint that we wanted for the giraffe and dipped our hand in it.  Put the hand print on the paper so the fingers turn into the legs of the giraffe.  For the the neck of the giraffe we just drew with the index finger a line and put our thumbprint as the head.  Then we got the dots and dipped the tip of our finger in gold paint and made dots all over the giraffe.  Finish it up with some eyes, ears, and let it dry.

Cotton balls and Ghosts

All You Need:

• Paper
• Cotton balls
• Glue

It's Halloween time so we made ghosts.  The kids loved these and they played around the house for a long time with them.  I cut a ghost shape out of white paper and the kids glued cotton balls all over the paper.  Then we took black foam paper, but regular black paper could also be used and we made eyed and a mouth and it turned into a ghost.  Such a simple activity that kids will love making and playing with.  

Fish and Finger Puppets

 Letter F

All you need

• A letter F 
• Little fish

We just cut out a bunch of little fish and glued them onto the letter F.  After they were all done gluing the boys colored the fish to make it look nice.
Monster Finger Puppets

 All you need

• Pipe cleaners
• Pom poms
• Plastic eyes
• Glue gun
• Scissors

We just wrapped the pipe cleaners around our fingers and then glued the pom poms on the tip of the pipe cleaner and glued the eyes on.  When everything is dried put them on your finger and play.

Elephants and Counting Candy Corn

Letter E
Elephants

All you need

• Paper Bag
• Blue, white, and brown construction paper

We did the letter E today.  We started out tracing the letter E and then we made these elephant puppets. I cut out the ears, trunk, and eyes for the elephant.  The boys glued on everything and it was done.  A hand puppet elephant that the kids love to chase each other with.

Counting Candy Corn
All you need

• Orange and white paper
• Candy corn

Since it's October I wanted to do a simple Halloween counting activity.  I just cut orange pumpkins out of paper and glued them to the white paper.  Then I decorated it so they looked like pumpkins and put numbers on them.  We just did 1-6, but next time I think I will do 11-20.  Cody is really good at 1-10.  I just wanted to see how they liked this activity.  They loved it especially since there was candy involved.  Candy Corn Men
All you need

• White, orange, yellow, and brown paper
• Glue

I cut a big candy corn shape out of the brown paper and drew 2 lines on it to have an outline of candy corn.  Then we ripped up the yellow, orange, and white paper.  the kids glued the little pieces of paper all over the brown paper to look like candy corn.  I cut out 2 stripes of brown paper and folded it like and accordion for the legs and arms.  Then I cut out some hands, feet and eyes that the kids glued on.  With everything all glued on it they turned out like candy corn men.

Donuts and Dinosaurs

Letter D Donuts

                   

The letter D is one of the funniest letters for my kids.  We worked with donuts and dinosaurs and had a blast.  We got a bunch of donut holes and put them all around the letter D and then we ate a few after we were done.
I let the boys pick out their favorite donut and on the way home they couldn't help but to eat them.  Cody took bites out of his so it formed the letter D.
Dinosaur Footprints

All you need:

• Paint
• Paper
• Dinosaurs

We just dipped the dinosaurs feet in paint and put the feet on the paper.  The kids got too much paint on the feet so there are some big footprints, but after putting the dinosaurs feet on the paper a few times they formed some good prints.

I forgot how much they like dinosaurs so now I want plan a trip to the Dinosaur Museum that is near us.
Shapes, Stickers, and Dinosaur Cards

We also did an activity on shapes.  They just stuck stickers all around the different shapes.  Cody wanted some shapes to have more stickers then other shapes.  While we were doing that I got the dinosaur cards and read them all of the fun information about the different dinosaurs to them.

Letter B

Today the kids learned about the letter B.  They made a bee from the letter B which the kids loved.

 We just glued wings and yellow and black strips of paper onto the letter.  I just let them use their imagination and put the strips wherever they wanted too.  They loved this since it was a little more creative then just putting strips of paper onto a paper bee.
The next activity was making caterpillars and ladybugs.  They love bugs and these two bugs are some of their favorites.

 We cut out a bunch of different colored circles and they glued each on together and put legs and eyes on it.  For the ladybugs we just cut out two red circles one big and one small.  Then we glued the little one to the big one making a head connected to the body.  We then drew a face and the wings on it.  The caterpillar activity was fun cause Cody kept telling me how caterpillars become butterflies. He remembers everything he hears on Wild Kratts.

  We also did a shapes activity.  I had some pieces of papers with different shapes on them and the kids went around the house looking for items that match those shapes.

The boys had a lot of fun and when they were all done we went outside and looked for bugs which ended up them playing in their sandbox.

School Starting

Last year I put Cody in a co-op preschool organized by some friends.  Cody liked it so much and I liked watching him learn and grow.  The only problem I had with it was I felt like I couldn't give all of the kids attention so when one kid was done they were all done.  This year I have decided to do preschool with just my kids.

Today was the first day of school and the kids loved it and so did I.  I could just sit there with both of them and give them all of my attention.  I thought after each activity they would want to play since that is what they did in the co-op school.  To my surprise they just sat and wanted to move onto the next activity when they were done.
On the first day of school we traced the letter A.  I got some tracing sheets from guru parents and the kids traced and colored for a few minutes.  I also got some preschool and kindergarten workbooks from Costco that they worked on for a little bit.
My boys love legos so I found a numbers worksheet and got a bunch of legos and helped them count from 1-10.

This was their favorite activity for the day.  After they were all done they wanted to play with their legos and show me everything they made.
The kids then glued fruit loops onto a letter A that I drew for them.