The Tot Lot - Play with me

This week we "rowed" the book Play with me by Marie Hall Ets. It was perfect because we did alot of playing this week. We were super busy with activities outside our house but we still managed to work on some of our BFIAR stuff at home too. 

She actually loved this book and although simple, I thought it was cute. As soon as we got to the frog though, she became obsessed with doing the sign for frog and I had to keep re-focusing her. 

She is working on cutting squares for her lapbook.

They had so much fun last week with the sensory bin, I made one for this book too. I went to the dollar store and picked up what they had that went with the book. I bought floral moss and vanilla potpourri for the base. They liked it because it was a way different texture than the rice and beans I normally use, plus the vanilla smelled nice. Then I bought snakes, flowers, a grasshopper, turtles, frogs, and a bunny. 

They both played together nice for a while. Then they started flinging the moss at each other with forks. Oh well, it lasted for a little while :)

This face is just too cute not to share!

Because she seemed so into the frog, I bought this thing at the dollar store. It's a frog thing that lays eggs. She loved this! Here she is filling it up with water.

We checked it after a few hours and the frog had laid one egg. So cute how she was so excited.

Here it is after a day, with lots of eggs. 

One of our homeschool groups has a seasonal party to celebrate all the kids birthdays for that season. Reanna was one of the Fall birthdays so we went to celebrate. Well actually I hosted the party. :) She had the best time because her birthday was on September 13th, it was like she got to have another birthday! 

Here are the birthday kids waiting to be sung to.

Here she is playing with her friend Emma. Like I said the book was perfect for this week because she did alot of playing!

Every other week she takes a music & movement class at one of our favorite places in Vegas...Pinkpeas. Miss Anatasia is so much fun with them and this is her favorite class. One of the best things about it, at $5 a class it doesnt break my budget. If you live in Vegas, you should come!

How fun is this!

By Thursday night, the fun had caught up with her. She said she didn't feel good and had to miss her preschool co-op class on Friday. I dont feel bad though, because she did plenty this week! 

The Tot Lot - Goodnight Moon

This week we "rowed" Goodnight Moon. I have seen and heard of this book many times but never actually read it. I had the expectation that this book was going to be awesome because many people I know just love it. I am not one of those people. Maybe my expectations were too high. I didn't hate it, I just found it to be simple and boring. The nice thing about Reanna is she pretty much loves everything. So she did enjoy the book.

This weeks lapbook printables found here.

A while back I pinned an idea for a goodnight moon sensory bin found here. I ended up making mine with what I could find at home and a trip to the dollar store. I used a moon shaped cookie cutter, 3 bears and a spoon from home. Then I found a cow, the chairs, brush, mouse, and a bowl from the dollar store. What I couldn't find I made from foam sheets. Im not the best artist but she didn't care. She and Nick both played with this all week.

This week she had gymnastics. She is still needing to work on following instructions but this is helping.  It's one of her favorite things.

We finished off this week with a field trip to the Planetarium. Daddy even got to go. Here she is putting pennies down the "black hole".

Waiting for the show to start. It was pretty cool. They geared it for preschoolers, so it was a cartoon about what you could see from your backyard. She listened and watched to the whole thing.

So although the book was not my favorite, we did get to do a lot of neat things because of it. For that Im giving it a good review :).

The Tot Lot - Blueberries for Sal

This week's book was Blueberries for Sal. It was the longest book so far but super cute and held her attention. 

We made a lapbook from worksheets found at Homeschool Share. Below she is matching up baby animals with their Mammas.

On Daddy's day off, he helped her put her bear puzzle together. He is SO much more patient then me :). Oh and dont judge me on her hair this week. It was one of those weeks.

She played a counting blueberry game with her sister. It is such a blessing to have older siblings that like to help out!

Then she made blueberry biscuits with Graisan.

There wasn't much to this week's lapbook so I let her cut out some pictures and glue it in her book. I have no idea why this pic is black and white.

This was a Lower and Upper case blueberry alphabet. I laminated the pages and had her match them up. At first she was mad because she didn't understand the concept, but she had fun once she figured it out.

Our BFIAR group didn't meet for a field trip this week. We started our home school group co-op today  and she and Nick both had a blast. Sorry I didn't take any pics of that, it would be another blogpost anyway. I actually felt like I didn't do that much with her this week, however looking back she did a lot. That's is the nice things about prepping ahead of time. I highly recommend atleast printing out the worksheets well in advance. Then when you have a lazy week, you can still be productive. 

The Tot Lot - The Little Rabbit

 This week we "rowed" The Little Rabbit. It was quite a different book than the last two we did. The first couple of days it was harder for me to hold her attention but towards the end she was enjoying it. 

We always start the week off by working on the lapbook from Homeschool Share. She just loves cutting! 

 Tuesday she had her first gymnastics class. She loved it and did pretty good, only frustrating the teacher a few times because she didn't exactly follow his directions :). Sorry the pics are so blurry, I had to take them behind the glass.

Wednesday we were back to work on bunny stuff. Below she is making a bunny mask I found Here. I told you she loves to cut!

I found a Mommy & Baby animal matching game here. I laminated the pages so I can keep and use again. These turned out to be the biggest hit of the week, she requested this activity the most!

We ended our week with a field trip to the Springs Preserve. She got to see a couple real life bunnies just like the wild rabbit in the story. 

The Tot Lot - Caps for Sale

 We just finished our second week of preschool and Im still loving it! This week we "rowed" Caps for Sale. Reanna loved this story! I am loving how it kept her attention. This week we used Homeschool Share for their lapbook printables and Homeschool Creations for extra printable activities.

Here she is stacking caps. This is from the lapbook, I laminated it ahead of time and put velcro on the back of each hat. She played with this a little bit each day. 

The caps in the story are 50 cents a cap, so I found these piggy banks in the dollar section at Target. I gave her a baggie of quarters so she could put her money in the bank. I was actually surprised at how long she sat their doing this. She put it all in then took it all out, over and over and over. 

Even Nicky got in on the action!

This is a counting mat also from the lapbook. I laminated it ahead of time too. She loved this activity! I would put a number on the mat and she had to place that many monkeys in the tree. 

This week she was really into doing paperwork so the extra printables from Homeschool creations came in handy! Here she is trying to write her name. 

Our big finale of the week was meeting with our BFIAR co-op group and re-enacting the story. Great idea from one of our mom's and it was so much fun! Here she is taking her turn as the Peddler. 

And here are the monkeys stealing her hats. :)

Another great week at the Tot Lot!

The Tot Lot - Jesse Bear What will you wear?

We just finished our first week of official pre-school! I can honestly say I am so looking forward to the rest of the year. I chose to use Before five in a row curriculum. It's a perfect fit for us! Reanna and Nick both love to hear the story and Reanna has her own schoolwork to do while the older kids do theirs.

We start off every morning with calendar time. I go over the month, seasons, weather, days of the week (we even sing the days of the week song), and number of days we have been doing school. This month happens to be Reanna's birthday month so we countdown the days to her birthday, which happens to be her favorite thing. I bought our calendar from Lakeshore Learning. This is our set-up.

Next is storytime. This week we "rowed" Jesse Bear what will you wear. You can see by the smile she loved it! The story was obviously about what Jesse wears, so after we read it the first day, I had her help me clean out and organize her closet. We picked out her clothes for everyday of the week to make mornings go smoothly. 

The rest of the week she worked on her lapbook I printed from Homeschool Share. Here are some pics of her working on it.

I also found a cute blog on pinterest that had Jesse Bear printables. Click Here for the blog. I printed and laminated the bear and clothes and attached velcro to the back. She loves dressing her bear over and over again :)

Even Daddy got in on the fun during his day off. He played the laundry matching game with her, which is in the Homeschool share lapbook printables. She helped me color them, and I laminated them so she can use over and over. 

The best part of our week was ending with a field trip to Build a Bear! Reanna and Nick got to make their very own Jesse Bears. Our host was so awesome she even read the story to the kids. Below is a pic of Reanna listening to the story. 

Here is kinda a group pic :). All the kids didn't make it in this one, not even Nick, who by this time was walking around the mall with his sister. His attention span is about 3.2 seconds and he hadn't had a nap. 

I would say the first week of preschool was a Huge success! I cant wait for next week, we are doing Caps for Sale.