Tot School / Sensory Activity: Alphabet Rice Table Hunt

On a whim yesterday, I came up with this great idea that not only occupied both Dews for a good 10 minutes solid (!) but was such a good mix of things: sensory input, OT involving big muscles and work, alphabet identification, OT work using the magnet board standing up, and team work.  You can bet we'll be doing this again.

Materials:

1.  Alphabet Letters - from the Dollar Spot at Target, currently one of our Activity Packs.

2.  The Sensory Table - currently filled with Rice.  From Lakeshore Learning.

3.  The Magnet Board - a DIY from a blog suggestion.  I can't find the link now, but will post it as soon as I do.

4.  The Alphabet Strip - I made it from a word document - it matched a foam magnetic letter set that a friend passed down to us, and Dew1 loves to match the letters.  I should say Loved because many of them have, sadly, been chewed to a lettery death.

The Game:

1. Hide the letters in the Rice table.

2. Encourage the Dews to dig and hunt for the letters.
3. When they find one, they have to say which letter it is, and then run it across the room to the Magnet Board and match it on the Alphabet Strip. 

At this point, I asked Dew1 what sound the letter makes, because he knows them.  Dew2 doesn't know the name of his letters yet, so I told him which letter he had found, but he's getting really good at matching them so we cheered him on big time for that.

4.  Continue until all letters have been found.

This activity is excellent as an OT Sensory activity because they really have to dig for them, and then run across the room.  Then add the letter recognition, and letter sounds!

Next time, maybe I'll make them drag themselves on the scooter board!  I also intent to share this with Dew1's OT because he really liked it and it might be a good one for them to do together.  He enjoys his letters and he needs to do some good OT activities at the beginning of his session to chill him out.

Pretend Play: Freecycle Score! A Kitchen!

So, a few weeks ago I was casually scanning through our local Freecycle Digest email.  And I saw a post for a Wooden Play Kitchen.

Wait ... What?  Let me re-read that.
I can't deal with the volume of emails Freecycle generates so I get the digest, which sometimes means you miss out on stuff because of the delay. (in fact, it might have been a day later even when I read it.)  So I fired off an email to the poster.

Well, of course the response was that someone else had already emailed about it, but had failed to show once already.  One more no show and it was mine!

The next morning, bright and early was an email telling me that the kitchen was all for me!  I jumped into the car and off I went.

I wanted to get a kitchen for Dew1 last Christmas - his speech therapist suggested it as a language and pretend play developer - and we actually got a Little Tikes one in November from Toys R Us on one of their weekend doorbuster sales.  But three days before Christmas when I went to put it together, I discovered that there was no way it was going to assemble.  I was really annoyed with both it and myself for not believing the mixed reviews.  So it was boxed back up and returned to TRU.  And we never did find another one.  I think that we wanted to get something Super Cool like the 50's Diner from Step2, but knew in our hearts that it wasn't in the budget nor do we realistically have the space.

So this Freecycle Kitchen was perfect!  In our budget as well as nice and compact in size (and not Pink!).  She had mentioned that it was originally from Target, and that door fell off regularly, so that wasn't a surprise.  The post had said wooden, but in reality it's a laminate.  I had visions of refinishing it, but that's not going to happen.

So my plan is to clean it up (it was sitting on her front porch for 4 days waiting for a pick up), touch up the red wood parts that need a bit of paint, and possibly replace both front doors with a curtain - probably in black broadcloth as I have an armload of it in my fabric stash.  My Dad (PapaDew) is going to make us a faucet for the sink - I didn't really realize it was missing until I noticed the hole in the counter.  I'm going to get some baskets from the Dollar Store to store the play food we have.  The clock hands are broken, so I have to decide how to fix that - new hands?  a whole new clock mounted on top of the old one?  And I'm going to make a bunch more felt food for them so they can do a little more pretend play than what they can do now.

And once it's dressed up, it will be their Christmas Present!  Yeah, maybe sounds like I'm being cheap, but it's new to them, and in a way will be handmade by PapaDew and I.  And there is something fun about the story behind this.  One of my fondest Christmas memories is the year I got my new purple bike.  My parents will deny it to this day, but I knew it was my sister's blue bike spray painted purple for me.  But I loved it just the same - and what kid doesn't want to find a bike under the tree!  It took up the whole living room!

So this is my Freecycle find!  I'm so very excited.

(And if you haven't checked out Freecycle before, check it out now!  there are some very generous people out there sharing neat stuff - all in the name of keeping it out of the garbage.  And when I get around to cleaning out my clutter, I plan to Freecycle some stuff too, to pay forward the generosity others have paid to me.)

Ooh!  As I'm writing this, I look over and the Dews are playing with their play food right now!  Dew2 seems to be making a stew and Dew1 is making ice cream sundaes.  They are going to Love their kitchen!

I'll be sure to write about my progress, as well as 'after' pictures when it's done.  I'm so excited!

Language - Thanksgiving / Fall Cards

Ok, so I lied.
As I was cutting out the Christmas / Winter cards, something just felt wrong.  It's a sunny, warm day, the sky is blue, the grass is green, and I'm going to start teaching Dew1 about snowflakes and candy canes?  It's just not right.

So I did make a Thanksgiving / Fall card set.  They came from the same place as the Christmas / Winter ones ... Montessori For Everyone's Free Download page.

However, when Dew1's Verbal Behavioural Consultant was going over the cards, we realized that there were several that were missing that would be good ones for him to learn.

So I hopped onto Google Images and did some quick searching, into Microsoft Word, and as fast as you can say cut and paste, I made up some cards to add to the deck.  There was only one to add to the Thanksgiving cards, so it ended up in the middle of it.



You can download it here:
Christmas _ Thanksgiving Extras

Language - Christmas / Winter Cards

It's that time already.

Well, not quite.  But between my Canadian stubbornness to deal with the fact that Thanksgiving wasn't a month and a half ago, and my procrastinative skills, I just haven't wrapped my head around Thanksgiving yet, and it's a week away already.  So I figured I'd get a jumpstart on Christmas.

I have spent a lot of time googling Christmas 3 Part Cards, and I'm just not finding what I'd like to find.

But this is what I did find.

A great set of Christmas/Winter Matching Cards at Montessori For Everyone, in their Free Downloads Section (even better!).  They are not 3 Part in that they don't have words labelling the cards, but that's ok for now.  I like the fact that they are photographs, multi-cultural, and nice, large, clear images.  They are meant to be used as cards as well as a matching game, so once he's set with what they are, we'll start matching.

I also found a set of Christmas flash cards over at Free ESL Flash Cards.  I think that once Dew1 masters the Montessori set, we'll move on to these ones.  The images are iconographic, and when it comes to the ABLLS that he is doing, I know they prefer photographs to images.  But that doesn't mean that I don't want him to be exposed to both.

I know that some people don't love cards, but Dew1 really responds well to them and enjoys them, and I figure that it can't hurt to expand his vocabulary any way we can :-)

So, I guess ... It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas over here...


Update:

Well, Dew1's Verbal Behaviour Consultant looked through them and we decided that there were several cards missing (and 1 missing in Thanksgiving) so I did some quick Google Images searching and came up with the following file.

 

Christmas _ Thanksgiving Extras

Activity Bags - Travel Coloring Book

So starting tomorrow, Dew2 and I have 30 minutes to kill every Monday morning while Dew1 has his speech therapy at a local school.  Eek!  Time to make more Activity Bags!

The other day while I was browsing through a store, I found a great little travel coloring book kit - it was a small, thick pad preprinted with a character (the one I saw happened to be Dora) and with it was a pack of crayons.  $8!  Um, not in our budget right now.  But I knew I could figure it out.

After a little research, I figured out how to use Adobe Acrobat to print Multiple Pages per Sheet.  Perfect!

So I went on a hunt, and found lots and lots of coloring pages for things I wanted.  I then printed them to a PDF using Bullzip PDF Printer.  Then, in a Very old but Full Version of Adobe Acrobat 5 that I bought a hundred years ago, I consolidated all of the PDFs into one large document.  At this point, I pulled up the Print Menu and selected the Multiple Pages per Sheet option - I selected 4.  And off we went.  If you don't own or have access to a version of Acrobat that will allow you to do this, you can print them individually - it just takes up more paper.  Or, there are various Free PDF creators online that may let you merge different files into one.

How To Print Multiple Pages per Sheet in Acrobat:
1. Select File, Print
2. Under Page Scaling, select Multiple Pages Per Sheet
3. Choose how many pages per sheet you'd like to print.
4. Click Print.

It's that easy.  And I printed on the back of some old scrap paper, so I was somewhat Green about it all, too.

And here's what happened next.

My printouts.  I selected 4 pages per sheet.

 Using my favourite Fiskars paper cutter, I chopped them up into their small wonderfulness.

Stacked in their themes.  There is Dora, Spongebob, Blue's Clues, Little Einsteins, and a whole set of Shapes.

I cut a piece of cardboard out of a shipping box that was headed to the recycle bin.  I also selected a fun blue binder clip from a pack I picked up on clearance at Staples over the summer.

The Completed Activity Bag!
Clipped together, the pictures and cardboard make a mini-clipboard.  Add a small pack of crayons, and toss it all in a pencil pouch (yeah, hard to see it on the black table ... sorry ...)

And you have a Travel Coloring Book Activity Bag all set to go.  I can't wait to try this out tomorrow.

Activity Bags

I was first introduced to Activity Bags through This Post at Chasing Cheerios.  Instantly, I was hooked.  As time evolved, they decided to use pencil pouches instead of ziploc bags - and while I liked this idea, I quickly realized that fabric and zipper pencil pouches are just not in our budget.  During the summer Back To School sales at Target, I found vinyl zip pencil pouches on sale for 50c a piece.  Hmm...  I'm sure they won't be as durable as the fabric zipper style, and hopefully in time we can move over to those.  But for now, this is working for us.

So far, they have traveled to Canada with us on vacation, to numerous doctor appointments, and on day trips to see family. 

As time goes on, I'll be sharing them.  I love to see what others make for Activity Bags so it's only fair to share ours, too.

Quiet Book - Shape Puzzle Page

My first page!  You'd think I'd have chosen an easier one, but the inspiration to it looked easy ... and then I started to modify it a little and then trouble began.

I used a Discovery Toys Progressive Puzzle as the pattern.  Traced it onto the white felt, then cut it apart.  My first mistake.  Were I to do it again, or help anyone else do it, I'd do this.

1. Trace the puzzle onto the felt.

2. With the felt still in a square, sew the velcro onto the white pieces.

3.  Arrange and sew the shapes onto the white felt.  Be sure to watch how they overlap the piece lines so there are not any little pieces hanging around or left behind.  Each shape will require two separate sewing lines - around one half and then on the inside of the jigsaw shape, and then around the other side and on the inside of the jigsaw shape.  When sewing the shapes on, be sure to follow the jigsaw lines on the pieces. 

4.  Take your scissors and carefully cut along the jigsaw lines.  you will cut through the shapes, but because of your careful sewing, the pieces will separate perfectly.

I, on the other hand, cut the pieces apart, then had to fit them together and pin the pieces on.  And then I cut again.  Doh.  Then I had to sew the open jigsaw parts together (I should have done it by hand at this point) and everything was sliding around and it got very messy.

The bottom.  I traced the paper shape patterns onto the background, and stitched around it with black thread.  Also, sewed on the velcro after matching it up to the pieces.

All in all, I'm very happy with it.  Doing it a second time would be so much easier ... but isn't it always?

Quiet Book - Simplicity Patterns

So I found these two patterns in the Simplicity Pattern Book.  I bought them both one day when JoAnn's had a 10/$10 sale on them.

Neither have left their envelopes.  I meant to make the Christmas one for Dew2 for his first Christmas, and then didn't.  Financially, the fabric was just a little too much at the time.  But hopefully for this year?  The more I look at it, the more I realize that the fabric doesn't have to be that fancy - all on felt would be just fine.  Next time felt goes on 20/$1 I'm all over it.

And the regular one - even though I no longer plan to make the book this particular way, I plan to make these pages using the patterns.

Simplicity #3709 - Baby's First Book

Simplicity #2726 - Holiday Soft Book

Quiet Book - The Project Begins

I'm not sure how it started.  I believe it was when we decided to drive to Canada to visit my parents.  I knew that it was a 9 hour drive, but at the time we didn't realize that we'd drive it overnight, so all I could think of was ways to keep the Dews occupied. (of course, once we decided to drive overnight so they could sleep, my time constraint to get it done was gone ... so the project has lingered ...)

I had already fallen in love with the idea of Activity Bags (oh I'll post more about them as time goes on.)  But I was fascinated with the idea of a Quiet Book.  I think that I wish I'd had one when I was little.


About a year ago, I googled it and all I really found was the link to the Simplicity Pattern (which I picked up one time when JoAnn's had a 10/$10 sale.  I also got a Christmas Quiet Book pattern that day.)  Both patterns remain unopened.


So then I googled it again a few months ago.  Wow!  What a difference!  Links galore!  I was so happy to see such a wealth of information.  But, of course, with such information comes decisions.


Do I make one that is stitched together and done?  Do I make one in a 3-ring binder?  Do I just make loose pages and put them into a folio of some sort?  Do I put grommets in the edges and use binder rings?  Everyone has a different approach, and I love them all.


So I just decided to start sewing and see what happens.

My Decisions:

1.  Page Size:  I decided to use 12x12 (before sewing.)
2.  Page Fabric:  I decided to use muslin, but then scored a huge hit on Freecycle - a woman had purchased the contents of a fabric store and was giving away everything she didn't want!  I am not kidding when I tell you that I could have filled my car.  I had to be careful b/c we don't have tons of room, and a lot of it was knits, but i did find a good amount of medium weight fabric that will work well for the backgrounds on these pages.
3.  Binding:  I decided to go with the buttonhole on the edge / bound with binder rings.  I will make cover pages at some point.  I have yet to actually buttonhole and bind any, but then again, I've only made about 4 pages.


I will try to include patterns when I can.  I have found myself to be frustrated by blogs that I am inspired by but don't have patterns, so I've tried to stop myself and scan when I can.


My pages are few and not bound, and, in fact, my book is well in it's infancy.  I've been distracted by one of thousands of other projects.  By the time I finish this, my grandchildren may be the ones playing with it.


I will do another post with links to my inspiration blog pages.

Coupons - Nabisco Coupon Book Find!

Coupon Book Find - Nabisco Keep the Jingle in your Holidays Party Planner booklet with $40 in savings

I found it at ACME (Albertsons) in a display with Ritz Crackers - Snowflake Style.

Inside are the following coupons:

$5 off Clue Secret and Spies game (1.31.10)
$5 off The Game of Things (1.31.10)

All other coupons expire 1.15.10
$1.50 off any 1 starbucks coffee 12 oz bags
55c off any 1 nilla wafers, any variety, 11-12 oz
$1 off any 2 maxwell house 10.5 oz or larger
$1 off any 2 general foods international packages
$1 off any 2 toasted chips varieties (pictured wheat thins and ritz) or easy cheese
$1 off any 2 honey maid grahams 10 oz - 14.4 oz
$1 off any 2 ritz crackers (13 oz-16 oz) or easy cheese
$1 off any 2 triscuit crackers prodcut (8 oz - 9.5 oz) or easy cheese
$1 off any 2 wheat things crackers (7.5 oz - 10 oz) or easy cheese
$1 off any 2 planters nuts 9.25 oz - 21.25 oz
$1 off any 2  of the following:
- Nabisco stoned wheat thins
- sociables
- better cheddars
- chicken in a biskit
- easy cheese

TWO different $10 Mail In Rebates:

Save $10 when you buy 10 participating Nabisco crackers, easy cheese, planters nuts receipts dated 10/1/09 - 11/30/09.
Save $10 when you buy 10 participating Nabisco crackers, easy cheese, planters nuts receipts dated 12/1/09 - 1/31/10.

Giveaway - Katie's Nesting Spot / Green Toys Inc

Katie's Nesting Spot, along with Green Toys, is giving away a Green Toys Dish Set.  Seeing as how I just scored a Play Kitchen for the Dews for Christmas (more about that later), this would make a great addition to that.

Upon checking out their site, I discovered that Green Toys has a bunch of really nice play kitchen accessories, and next to the Dish Set, we really liked the Chef's Set.