Digging for Dinosaurs

Our first activity yesterday was another sensory bin. I wanted to do it in our new sand bin but Vada wasn't too fond of the sand, so I thought that I would do it in the rainbow sand that I made a few months ago. She really likes this bin and later this week I may try playing in one of our raised beds that hasn't had anything planted in it yet.

For today's sensory bin I had an archaeologist dinosaur dig in mind. I actually had this sensory bin in mind since the beginning of last month! I told you, I have really been looking forward to letter 'D'!

I brought out a bunch of kitchen utensils that I had bought last summer from a dollar store especially for these occasions. Vada seemed to enjoy using them.

Along with the "dinosaur skeletons" (which I found on Amazon and it was the best $6.58 that I have spent in a long time!), I also added in some "dinosaur fossils" -you know, for authenticity. *wink*wink* I also ordered the fossils from Amazon as well. I do a lot of my shopping through Amazon.

I also threw in some paint brushes to use as our cleaning brushes. Again, I was trying to keep it real. (Never mind the rainbow rice.)

After Vada had her first job as an archaeologist  we took some of the dinosaurs over to one of the desks and got with play-doh we experimented with different impressions that we could make, including the tracks.

While Vada was entertaining herself with this project, I was warming up some Crayola Air Dry Clay. I wanted Vada to help me make one more impression. In a couple of days, when the clay has fully dried, I will bring out the paint and let her paint this "fossil".

We worked on some of the curriculum from Letter of the Week starting with the Do-A-Dot letter 'D' page.

Vada is getting much, much better at getting the sponge tippers into the circles!

Check out how centered she was able to get the dotter below!

Obviously, there is a lot of progress to be made but hey, she is only three years old, so I would say that this is pretty great! And maybe I am being biased (and that's okay) but I happen to admire those who think and in this case, color, outside the box (or circles).

The end of the school year is always busy around our house. My older two girls are public schooled so they have a lot of "end of the year" activities to go to. Therefore, this week has been pretty busy. Yesterday, Vada had OT therapy in the morning which is when we typically do classes because I don't like to not be unavailable to my other girls when they are home from their schooling times. However, yesterday they got out of school early and also had chores to do and I didn't have to prepare dinner because of a family activity at our church so while the older two girls were doing their chores, Vada and I went down to the classroom to do some letter 'D' learning. 

We were in the middle of another craft when Kiliegh came down to tell me that she had finished with her chores and asked if she could help Vada -for a minute. (Literally, her attention span was only that and then she was off doing her own thing again!) 

Together, they started coloring a letter 'D' that Vada and I had just cut out together with her loop scissors.

After coloring seemed to no longer hold Vada's attention we moved on to pasting.

I usually have our classes prepared a week ahead of time now, for crafts such as this one, its not unusual for me to prepare it the night before. I actually had the pieces of construction paper precut and ready for Vada to grab and paste as she was going for this activity (other than the letter 'D'). For now, at her skill level, I felt this was a good way to begin doing a project of this size with her. We will continue to work on cutting more each week and pasting and eventually she will be doing it all on her own.

I would start by putting a piece down, such as a "green triangle" and then ask her to do the next one, after placing a gob of glue down, she would use her pointer and push the triangle into its place. She did the same thing with the googly eyes.

And then after completing her dinosaur picture she proudly walked it over to her I Did That Wall to show me where she wanted me to put it.

We ended our class time with some dino math.

This is an activity that we do at least once a week, usually in theme, this week being dinosaurs. Vada is getting really good at the process and knowing what it is that I want her to do, so today I added an extra step at the end. Everything was the same as usual, I would Say the number, point to the numeral on the dinosaur, count the clips out loud and then hold the card for Vada so that she could take off the clips and place them into the bowl. The final step added was that I would then hand her the dinosaur and she would put it into a new pile, upside down.

We did the process with the new step for the first few cards like it was no big deal and then Vada began getting very upset with me. I thought it was because she wanted to take more than one clip at a time and I am a stickler and make her do one at a time, for now. She was smacking her hands on the desk, raising her voice and over all just mad. My tolerance level with her is something I am pretty proud of (then again, she is just really an easy going child). She doesn't overwhelm me in her "moments" and I am typically able to quickly figure out what she wants when she is unable to vocalize it because I am able to keep my cool and just read her. 

Today it took a couple of minutes for me to figure her wants out but I finally did, it was a moment that told me that I must be doing something right because she was learning. 

She was trying to tell me (or so I assume because once she got this she was content) that she could do all of the steps of this counting activity on her own and without my assistance. I handed her a fully loaded dinosaur and one by one she pulled off the clothes pins and placed them into the bowl and once they were all on the bowl, she flipped the dino upside down and put it into the correct pile. then she signed more! All I did was count out loud while she removed the pins!

What a great way to end our lessons! I am one proud Mama!

'D' is for Dinosaur

Our Letter of the Week this week is letter 'D' and the theme is dinosaurs. Secretly, or maybe not so secretly, I have been eagerly awaiting this letter. I have some really fun activities planned for this week! 

Plus, and this is a huge plus, we're back in our classroom, which makes everything all that much more better!

Our day was pretty much "normal" and we stayed on track to our basic scheduled days. I Introduced our letter for letter of the week. I Read the memory verse. 

I read read from our Big Thoughts For Little People book.

And then we began to work from our Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

This was our first time using our alpha letters on these particular disks. I once used them on milk caps, which I think are a wonderful idea if you have the extra storage space, which we don't so I had to make a change and this is what I went with. They. Were. Perfect!

Next, we worked on color matching with a file folder game that I made a couple of months ago.

And then we checked out what was in the Learning Resources Alphabet Soup Sorting Can.

I think that learning to pretend is a vital part of being a toddler and adolescent. So, I try to teach every last detail of everything I know of everything. One of the items in the letter 'D' can was a dragonfly. I talked about what a dragonfly was, what they looked liked and what they did. One of my descriptive words was that they flew. Below, Vada is making the dragonfly fly around and then into the can. I LOVE that she is beginning to really get into pretending! Love it!

We then worked on using scissors and cutting. With each letter in the Letter of the Week curriculum we get a cutting practice sheet which we can print out as many times as we need. I usually print out the sheet only once a week but I have recently decided to print it out more than that throughout the week. She needs the practice! Or so all of the age appropriate guide lines tell us that she does -need the practice. ("Typical" toddlers who are Vada's age, 3 years, are able to use scissors or are becoming very familiar with them. Vada is becoming familiar with me having a hand over hand grasp while using the scissors and cutting and while I am okay with where she is currently, the therapists and the guidelines are not calling scissor usage in the "typical development range" so together we will work a harder on cutting but I will make sure to it fun.)

I first gave Vada the sheet that we would cut together and the scissors and let her try it out on her own. After a couple of minutes we cut the paper together.

Because I like to try and save money wherever I can I actually copied pages from this book. I paid like six dollars for it and to use the pages only once seems like such a waste! So, yes, I copied the page and then had Vada do some practice cutting.

'D' is for dog, don't you know?

As I was cleaning up some of my mess I let Vada look through Danny and the Dinosaur book that we happen to have had and that I decided to read throughout the week at nap time for our Letter of the Week theme of dinosaurs.

We finished up our day by reading our Kids Like Me alphabet book. Then we added our letters 'C' because we were upstairs and unable to do so last week and then letter 'D' for this week.