Tuesday Week 3

Introducing...LETTER BOXES!  Here's some action shots of our E letter box:

 

We watched Signing Time volume 4: Family, Feelings, Fun in the morning.  We also went to the library's story time where we learned about the letter "J" and jungles.

After naptime I brought Monkey upstairs and let him explore his "E" letter box.  I need to get upper and lower case letters done and laminated so I can put them in so he can have exposure to both.  I also wanted to add a few more things to it but didn't have the time to get stuff printed and laminated (or sewn-I want to make a felt eggplant).  So now for a break down of what's in the E box!

-Alphatales E book: The Enormous Elephant Show

-The eel picture found here (ocean animals ABCs)

-Excited (the one from the matching and from the feelings book)

-Exhausted  (the one from the feelings book)
-Ear (we're using it for our senses folder)
-Eye (we're using it for our senses folder)
-Foam E (see materials-it's from the mat)
-Eight (one is from the LDS file folder book I found from the "Noah's Numbers" game and the other is from here see the counting one)
-Monkey's "Green Elephant" that my cousins gave him when he was born (it's a Carter's brand)

We read:
Alphatales E book (right after we opened our box)
Over in the Ocean-this book was really fun, it was like the Jungle one we read before it's supposed to be sung/read to the tune of Over in the Meadow.  It was really fun.
Ocean Babies-this one was really fun to introduce the babies in the ocean
Octopus, Oyster, Hermit Crab, Snail: A poem About the Sea (we read this before)

And not related to our theme:
Diary of a Worm (we requested this one when we talked about worms but it FINALLY came through)-this one is great to learn about the lives of worms and what they do-written in diary form. Fun for kids!
Spot Loves His Grandma
Spot Loves His Daddy
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

We also looked at the tot book we made (for details see this post)

Before bed we read Plenty of Penguins (we got this one from the thrift store).  It's a beginning reader to teach about penguins.

Friday week 2

We didn't get a ton done today because I'm not feeling well.  We watched Signing Time volume 2 (Playtime Signs) in the morning and read a book and went to the library in the afternoon.  We plan to do the rest of our activities tomorrow as well as some reading (I am going to make a letter D box).

The Octopus-a story a grandpa tells his grandson (both are dogs) when he has the chicken pox.  It's about an Octopus that rains down on him in the bath tub (the grandson at this point is in the bath tub).  After the story they find an octopus in the tub!  Can they shove him down the drain?  This is a beginning reader (I Can Read!) level 2.  We read this one because it was due tomorrow (got it before we planned out our themes for the year-actually we requested it when we were reading about them for the letter O)

Funny thing though...we go to the library to return all of our books for the last two weeks.  I requested all of our books last night for the next two weeks since we all know how fun it is to search for stuff with toddlers!  Some others came through that I requested quite a while ago with those and we got a bunch of board books to keep Monkey entertained during church (our library has a wonderful selection of board books and since Monkey loves to "read" we've found that if we pop different ones in my purse to go to doctor's offices and several in the diaper bag for church he stays entertained and somewhat quiet).  We left with probably close to 100 books/videos/cds!  I have a huge cloth bag full plus a smaller one (that one has all the board books plus several that we requested) and a plastic bag that I double bagged that the handles ripped off on the way out to the parking lot!  Needless to say Monkey isn't going with me to pick up our books every-other-week.  We plan to start going to story time weekly though so he'll still get to go to the library.  I was so embarrassed to walk out with so many books but I know we'll get through ALL of them at least once (we have 3 weeks-we'll read them in 2)!

Octopus books!

We read two books about octopuses:

Octopus Oyster Hermit Crab Snail: A Poem of the Sea by Sara Anderson
A good book for beginning readers. Simple text and bright illustrations. We liked the flow of it and learning about different animals in the sea/ocean.

An Octopus Followed Me Home by Dan Yaccarino
This was a fun book about a child that brought an octopus home and asked if she could keep it. It wasn't her first animal she brought home to keep as a pet though! My son loved the bright pictures and thought it was a fun book.