Introduction to 2012.

How about those holidays! I hope everyone had an awesome time. I know I did! I just finished a week off work, which means I was working all week on preparing new lessons and activities for the next few months. I also planned out the rest of Babe's Kindergarten. Tentatively, her last day of Kindergarten will be Friday, June 1st. Does that seem right? That's with almost a lesson a day for the rest of the manual.

For 2012, my new aim is to include Bubs and Z as much as possible in "school work" during the day. My sister is a trained Montessori educator and having her home for the holidays sparked a new interest in how I will go about planning lessons. For the first month, Bubs and Z will be working on name recognition. I made five different activities for them.

With this activity, they will be using MegaBloks to "build" their name. I glued together a "bar" of blocks with their name already on it. They each have individual blocks with one letter on each. All match up accordingly. In this picture, Hannah's is complete. Zachary's is what the activity will look like when first presented to them.

In this activity, I wrote each letter of their names on water bottle caps. I then traced each cap onto a

sheet of paper so it matches exactly. The water bottle caps will be in a tub of water for each and Hannah and Zach will scoop their caps out one at a time to match the lettered bottle caps onto their sheet of paper.

With this one, each of their names is on a sheet of paper. Each letter is also cut out for easy matching of color/letter.

Using the same named sheet of paper from the previous picture, instead of using lettered pieces of paper, Hannah and Zach will be using clothespins to match the letters in their name.

In this activity, Hannah and Zach will be stringing the letter beads. They each have a completed one to look at for help.

I do realize that most, if not all, of these activities are very challenging for a three- and two-year-old. But with a month of constant name work, I think they both will be pros at each activity by the end of a month of two. Then we can get into individual letters.

As for the rest of Bubs' and Z's work, they will have ten different activities to choose from. The first is a sensory tub (that I also made for Babe). January's theme is Community Helpers, so the sensory tub is very related.

Each sensory tub includes cotton balls, aluminum foil, trash bags, cotton swabs, letter beads, erasers, a sticky stretchy fish, construction cars, wooden service cars (ambulance, police cruiser, fire truck), tongue depressors, miniature dog, and a toothbrush. I may have missed a few items, but each item is related to the theme somehow.

The rest of the work is as follows:

Threading beads onto corresponding pipe cleaners.

Twisting nuts onto corresponding bolts.

A Pinterest idea - sticking PlayDoh in between the bumps on the MegaBlok, then "flossing" it out with yarn.

PlayDoh play with cookie cutters and knife.

Pouring/Scooping dry rice.

Kid K'Nex for building.

Matching (real) wrenches to their corresponding shadows.

Stuffing colored envelopes with corresponding sheets of paper, adding the corresponding stamp (with Velcro).

Matching puzzle. Community helper -> tool.

There you have it. Ten different activities for Bubs and Z to work on while Babe does her own work. I'm so excited to start.

Tomorrow, after a discussion on New Year's Resolutions, I will be introducing the new activities and explaining how each one works. Tomorrow will be a non-Calvert day for Babe, but the blogging will continue.

Any feedback will be appreciated. Thanks!