Giveaway- My Two Happy Homeschoolers

My Two Happy Homeschoolers is giving away this dry-erase wipe-off alphabet book. I am going to start working with D on the English alphabet soon and I think that this would be a big help!

Hurry up and enter because the giveway will end Friday December 11, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.

Feliz Navidad- D's Christmas Show

This morning D had his Christmas program at his preschool. The two year olds cried, the three year olds kids danced and sang to Christmas songs (en español of course), and Santa even made an appearance. I was very proud of D. A year ago I know that there is NO way that he would have stood in front of the crowd at all, let alone sang and danced. This picture is of D dancing to the song "Los peces en el rio" (The fish in the river) which is a very traditional Christmas song in Spanish. I have more cute pictures of the program but they include other kids in his class and I do not want show their pictures without their parents permission.

This is the first picture of D with Santa since he was 11 months old. He has refused to sit on Santa's lap since. Today we told him to ask Santa for what he wanted. He asked Santa for Legos and Transformers.
This is M's first picture with Santa. Since D was so against last year, we just skipped it for both of them. He did pretty good but I do think the concerned expression on his faces says a lot.

Christmas Math- Shapes

One of the Four Preschool Math Goals is to identify at least four shapes. D knows more than four so I used this activity more for cutting practice (something that D loves to do.) I drew the shapes on different colors of construction paper and D insisted on doing EVERYTHING himself after that, from the cutting to the gluing. D will be four at the end of the month and I am amazed at how much he has grown and matured in last year.

Christmas Math- Counting up to 8

One of the Four Preschool Goals for Math is counting up to 8 objects. I first cut out a Christmas tree from construction paper. Next, I covered the tree with Christmas stickers. You need several of each type of sticker.

Next, I made an "answer sheet" with one of each sticker represented on the tree. D's challenge was to count the stickers on the tree and tell me how many there were. I wrote the numeral on the notecard. So that we could do this activity more than once, I covered the notecard with contact paper and I wrote with a dry-erase marker.

Toys my children ACTUALLY play with.

Today's Toys my children ACTUALLY play with post is dedicated to my son's love of all building materials. Given a choice my son would spend about 50% (or more) of his waking hours building something. I try to provide him with a variety of different materials to make his towers, castles, boats, spaceships, and, of course, robots. Some of his favorites are megablocks, wooden blocks, and Legos. My husband is in the process of building him a Lego table for his birthday. Here are a few pictures of some of his creations.

Do you have any toys that you would like to suggest? If so, please link up or leave a comment below.

12/10 Last regular toy post

12/17 Recap of suggested toys

12/31 Last post. What did your kiddos get for Christmas and do they ACTUALLY play with it?

Christmas Math- Number Matching

This is our second Christmas math activity. To see our first activity and to learn about the Four Preschool Math goals, go here.

I found this printable at DLTK's website. There are several versions of the "Dauber Coloring Pages." You can choose below the present, a Christmas tree, wreath, angel, candle, and elf. You can do MANY different activities with these printables. I used ours to practice number matching. I filled in the circles with numbers from 1-16 and wrote the same numbers on small plastic squares. D then covered the numbers on the paper with the number blocks. It was a very easy activity for D so I was surprised that he wanted to do it three times in a row. He was busy working alone so I started doing the dishes. When I came back to check on him, he was using the blocks to make a tower. That's my boy.

Any other ideas of what to do with these? Please leave a comment. I made several copies. :)

Christmas Sensory Tub

My nineteen month old is driving me crazy by pulling off the ornaments from the Christmas tree. To satisfy his desire to touch the pretty, shiny ornaments, I made this Christmas sensory tub today. First I filled it with a TON of cotton balls and then added some of the ornaments from the tree. I still had to sit with him as he explored since some of them are breakable, but he loved being able to touch them. I plan to change out the ornaments each day. Hopefully, this will prevent me from having to buy all new ornaments next year!

For more great ideas check out the posts that I am linking to: Adventures of Bear, Activity Mom, and Our Worldwide Classroom.