Shining Our Lights: January 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

Our Sensory Table

Life has been so hectic lately with traveling and birthday fun that I haven't had much time to do alot of preschool activities or blog. But I miss it so I made sure to take a few pictures today!

For his birthday, we got Little Thomas a sand and water table. Of course since it is still cold outside, it will be a little while before it will be filled with water. Sooooo...we poured the contents of our Valentine's Sensory Box onto the table and the boys spent over an hour playing with the table while I made dinner.

So until summer arrives, we have renamed this our Sensory Table :)

And of course little boys have to use their dump trucks and diggers!

(Check out my blog post on our Big Machines Unit)

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Big 3!

My baby boy is 3 years old now!

We celebrated his birthday with a long weekend trip to our favorite hotel that has an indoor water park...perfect for mid-winter fun!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the trip.

My big 3 year old!

Tinkerbell crawled ALL OVER the condo :)

Mommy getting in a few minutes of quiet time on the balcony :)

Little Thomas chose his own birthday lunch and laid it out himself on counter. His choices: sausage biscuit, strawberries, "circles" and PB&J

Little Thomas slept through his ENTIRE birthday dinner...

Notice Little Thomas hiding from us singing Happy Birthday and Daddy covering Captain Rex's mouth so he wouldn't blow out the candle

More Mommy time on the balcony while the kids watched Toy Story inside. I could get used to this!

I didn't get many shots of the pools but they had a blast.

I even went down the really big slide that is like free falling!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Our Valentine's Day Sensory Bin

As I am totally over winter and it actually hit 60 here yesterday we decided to move on to Valentine's Day fun!

Frist up...putting away our Winter Sensory Bin and creating our

Valentine's Day Sensory Bin.

Inside we have...

Pink rice

colored with a few drops of red food coloring and a few drops of rubbing alcohol

We put it on paper towels to dry for a few hours

Pink Beads

Red Beads

Red Pom Poms

Glitter Hearts

Red Foil Shreds

Heart Shape Containers

Valentine's Theme Sight Words & Phrases

Little Thomas was ready to dive right in. Sensory Bins are one of his all time favortie activities and aside from cleaning up all of the rice, they are my favorite too :)

Counting Coconuts & No Time For Flashcards have cute Valentine's Sensory Tubs also. :)

Do you have a Valentine's Sensory Bin you want to share?

Post your link here...

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Fun With Ice

I saw this idea for frozen fun on Counting Coconuts recently and thought it would go perfectly with our Preschool Winter Unit.

I gave each of the boys a plastic cup and asked them to fill it with little plastic toys. Little Thomas chose toy dinasours and Captain Rex chose his toy men.

Captain Rex's toys had to be quickly "rescued" from the water and I was told these were his "best men" and he didn't want them to freeze ;)

We added in a few drops of food color and then in to the deep freezer it went for 24 hours.

I dumped the ice block onto a beach towel and gave the boys each a spoon to rescue the dinasours from the ice....

There was a small pocket of water in the middle where it hadn't frozen through completely which actually made the excavation a bit easier.

After about 15 minutes of little bits of ice flying at my face, we finally took the block to the bathroom sink and rescued the dinasours under warm running water.

The boys loved this activity and we will definitely do it again in the summer!

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Our Winter Preschool Unit

I wanted to share all of the materials and printables I have gathered for our Winter Preschool Unit. I am not always great at capturing the boys actually working with each part of our preschool units so I thought I should takes photos before it all gets mixed up and spread out!

Snowman Wooden Letter Disc Matching

from Confessions of a Homeschooler