Mailing Letters

This week, we took the cards we made last week and mailed them to family members.  E had made five cards so we picked 5 people to whom we wanted to send the cards.  

We (I) wrote a note thanks to each person and then E worked on signing his name.  He then stuffed the cards into envelopes. 

I wrote the names and addresses of the people he picked on address labels.  I also wrote return address labels with his name on them.  We worked on placement of the labels and talked about their purpose.  E loved seeing his name on the labels and had fun trying to find his loved ones names as well (practicing those pre reading skills).

Finally, E put a stamp in the corner, sealed the envelope (he loved licking it), and walked them to the mailbox.  We got several calls of appreciation throughout the week and E loved it.

Theme - Thanksgiving

This week, we continued doing some fun Thanksgiving activities.

We worked on patterning with a handmade felt board. The "feathers" are actually colored craft sticks and stuck surprisingly well in between the pieces of felt.

I would make a pattern on the right side of the turkey head and then he would replicate it on the left.

I have a felt board on my Christmas list, but made do this week by making my own.

I flipped over an old resume paper box to make it stand. I took velcro tab and attached it to the box and then stuck a large piece of felt to it.

I cut out a large circle for the body of the bird and and a smaller oval for the head. The details from the turkey face were cut from scraps.

The following is a color word activity I found on Making Learning Fun. E did well with this one. He recognized a few color words and then looked at beginning letters to help guide him in selecting the others.

We got the print out for this number book (called turkey sticks) from childcareland.com.

I brought in craft sticks to help make counting above 10 more concrete. I counted out 10 sticks with him and then bundled them together.

After that, we would lay the bundle down and say "Here is 10, let's keep counting. Another stick makes 11, then 12...". I will be doing this much more in the future.

This last activity was one made up by E. I brought in nesting blocks to use during our Tray Time. The first day, E played with them as expected. He built a tower, took it back down, and worked on putting them back inside one another.

Day 2, E asked me to get the turkey from his Little People farm set. Maybe he was bothered by the fact that I had added a tray that did not go with our Thanksgiving theme. Whatever the case, he had a blast creating new ways to play with the blocks and the turkey.

He hid the turkey...

and he made "houses" for the turkey to sleep in...
and he made stairs for the turkey to climb.

To see all of our Thanksgiving activities click here.

E is currently 29 months.

Thanksgiving Cards

We decided to get a bit messy the other day and make some Thanksgiving cards.

I painted E's hand and he stamped it onto a few blank cards I had at the house.

I took markers (after the paint had dried) and added details to one turkey and then let him finish the rest.

E asked if he could use some eye stickers that we had left over from an old project. These turkeys make me smile.

Theme - Thanksgiving

At the end of this week, we started a couple of Thanksgiving activities. Instead of focusing on anything historical, we simply talked a lot about being thankful.

We began by reading the book Give Thanks to the Lord: Celebrating Psalm 92.

We did an activity using Mega Bloks (inspired by a previous activity) to build sentences about being thankful. I let him tell me what to write and I would add it to a block.

He played with the blocks for a while making new sentences by changing out the last block. He also added them all together in a long chain. I liked that E could visibly see how blessed we are.

I had a couple of old photo albums that have long gone unused and I decided to take and make them into books for E. This is one I made for Thanksgiving.

It has a family members photo on the top part and an index card with a repetitive text on the bottom. There was also one page with his picture and the text you see in the picture below. E was so excited about the book when I brought it out for him to read.

E is currently 28 months old.