Treasure Basket: Blue, Green, & Purple

More colorful treasure baskets! Here are blue, green, and purple:

Here's what's inside:
:: Circle shaped cookie cutter
:: Bristle block
:: Baby brush & comb
:: Foam cylinder
:: Mama-made knitted bird
:: Tiny cup with handle
:: Wooden sphere (from our geometric solids set!)
:: 3 nesting cups

Here's what's inside:
:: Textured links
:: Measuring spoon
:: Foam number
:: Duplo lego
:: Soft piece of fabric
:: Nesting cup
:: Sphere
:: Small silky pillow
:: Large square lacing bead

Here's what's inside:
:: Foam triangle
:: Links
:: Wet felted wool egg
:: Stacking bowl
:: "Hidden" brush - that's the purple thing with the black center - you open it up and there's a mirror and a pop out brush inside.
:: Large mirror
:: Squishy block

Click here to read my very first treasure basket post for details on the how and why behind treasure baskets. Click here to view my treasure basket slideshow on the Counting Coconuts Facebook page.

~Thank you for your comments!~

Treasure Basket: Red, Orange, & Yellow

You know me and my love of themes. :) I couldn't resist making a treasure basket for each color - here are red, orange, and yellow. . .

What's inside:
:: Small (new) hairbrush
:: Mama-made knitted ball
:: Apple shaped cookie cutter
:: Silicone texture teether
:: Wooden disk
:: Piece of silk
:: Squishy block
:: Oval clip ring

What's inside:
:: Two oval clip rings
:: Knitted sample
:: Silicone spiked teething toy
:: Thick foam letter G
:: Squishy block
:: Textured bowl
:: Castanet

What's inside:
:: Two cups
:: Bit of ribbon
:: Tiny book
:: Wooden screw
:: Oval clip ring
:: Crochet flower
:: Triangular container

Click here to read my very first treasure basket post for details on the how and why behind treasure baskets. Click here to view my treasure basket slideshow on the Counting Coconuts Facebook page.

~Thank you for your comments!~

February Sensory Tub & Playdough - Valentines Day

Like last February's tub, I created this one with Valentine's Day in mind, except this time around I went with all red.

What's inside: I won't detail everything that's in the tub since, as you can see, there's quite a lot. I pretty much tossed in any red thing I could find!
:: LOTS of pony beads (these were the same I used for our 4th of July tub)
:: Pom-poms
:: Popsicle sticks
:: Fruit erasers
:: Various beads
:: Felted balls
:: Water filled stars (these are reusable ice cubes)
:: Buttons
:: Feathers
:: Silk flowers
:: Knitted apples

I made some I Spy cards to go along with it. We did this same thing in August with our yellow sensory tub and it was a huge success.

Chocoloate Playdough
With some real cocoa added to it, this playdough smells nearly good enough to eat! I made chocolate playdough last year, too, but this year I've added an empty chocolate box for James to make pretend chocolates. I have to confess, my friends, a great sacrifice went into doing this.... I had to eat all of the real chocolates in order to provide this fun extension for my son. Sigh... the things we do for our children. ;)

~Thank you for your comments!~

On Our Shelves - November

Here are our activities for November - some are fall/Thanksgiving theme related, some aren't. These activities are for the entire month of November. I should note that I don't put them all out at once, but rather I rotate them around.

Practical Life

Button Turkey. This is the same one I made last year, the idea came from here.

Pouring Corn Kernels. Always arrange transferring work so it begins left and moves right (it simulates the direction of reading). I've made an exception to that with pouring and I arrange it with James' dominant hand in mind.

Snap Dressing Frame. I got this from Kid Advance and I can't say I'd recommend their dressing frames. They're a bit tight and hard to work with. I had to cut and alter them in order to make them usable.

Sorting Beans

Tonging Pom-poms

Transferring Marbles. The little suction cups hold the marbles perfectly, but it does require some careful handling. Excellent fine motor activity.

Transferring Fruit. These fruits are actually little erasers, which I found locally. James will use a strawberry huller to transfer these from one bowl to the other.

Lacing Wooden Spools

Sensorial

Harvest Sensory Tub

Turkey Playdough

Color Tablets... with a twist. These were starting to collect dust, so I put some flashcards out along with the box. It worked! James worked with these a few different times last week.

Language

In our book corner:
In November by Cynthia Rylant
Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant
Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White
This First Thanksgiving Day: A Counting Story by Laura Krauss Melmed
A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman
Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes

Poem & Poetry Basket. This fun idea comes from My Montessori Journey and the poem, which I found in one of my poetry books, was written by John Updike.

Thanksgiving Vocabulary Cards. I found these on abcteach.

Reading Cards. Now that James is sounding out words, he's anxious to practice his new skill. These cards are great because on one side there's the word and corresponding photo, and on the opposite side there is just the word. James and I went through these once using the photo side and then again using just the word side - he read them all quite easily.

James is definitely in a sensitive period for language. He's reading a lot and this week he's taken to spelling out tons of random words. It's pretty cute because he'll be talking and he'll say, "Mom..." and then he'll pause to spell out the word m-o-m and he'll continue on with his sentence stopping to spell this or that word as he goes along. :)

Math

Fabric Numbers

Cards & Counters. I used some cornucopia calendar inserts for the cards and leaf sequins as the counters.

Pumpkin Pie Game. This is just like the one we did last year, only this time I used larger numbers and small plastic pumpkins (which I found at Hobby Lobby while I was in the states - I highly recommend them). This work was a huge hit with James and we ended up doing much more with it than I originally planned. We worked on the concepts of less/more, bigger/smaller, some/all/none and also addition/subtraction.

I also printed out a couple dot-to-dot activities from abcteach.

Culture/Science

Leaf Rubbing

Anatomy of a Bird Puzzle

USA Puzzle

Discovery Tray. Lots of fun things on this month's tray: a seed pod, some acorns, a geode (which we'll crack open next week) and those sweet little husk dolls were a precious gift from Beth of From the Hive. Thank you again, Beth!

Plant or Animal Cards. These are from Montessori For Everyone. These were super easy for James and he kind of looked at me like, "why are we doing this?" Ha! But while he knew for sure what was or was not an animal, he seemed a bit surprised by what was a plant. Like the grapes or flowers or trees - we've never really referred to them as a plant before.

Art & Music

Stamping. I had this out for October and James LOVED it.

Build A Scarecrow. For this activity I simply cut out little bits of clothing which James can put together to make a scarecrow.

Cutting Stickers. I spaced out these little fall stickers along a strip of paper so James can cut in between them.

We're singing some of these songs this month.

Instrument Nomenclature Cards. I made these myself. I'm sorry, I tried and tried, but I wasn't able to format these properly in order to share them as a PDF. You can find the images on Google, save them to your hard drive, then collectively print them.

Nearer to Thanksgiving we'll be doing a "thankful turkey" activity. James will think about and tell me what he's thankful for and we'll then write it down on little feather shaped pieces of paper and add them to a cut-out of a turkey. I've remember doing this when I was in grade school and I'm excited to do it with James now.

I also printed out some color pages from abcteach.

~Thank you for your comments!~

Muffin Tin Meal - Yellow

After putting together our yellow sensory tub, I decided to make a yellow themed muffin tin meal for James. He loved it! Muffin tin meals are so much fun to eat out of (and to prepare! - the individual cups really appeal to my OCD tendencies organized nature)! :D

Here's what in it:
::Baby corn
::Kix cereal
::Jell-O
::Pepper sticks
::Scrambled eggs
::Pineapple
:: A cup of lemonade

Here are some more yellow food ideas:
::Bananas
::Lemons
::Corn kernals or cobs
::Macaroni and Cheese
::Grapefruit
::Summer squash
::Yellow wax beans
::Pears
::Cheese
::Crackers
::Mustard
::Lemon flavored yogurt
::Cornbread
::Rice mixed with saffron or turmeric
::Cupcakes

~Thank you for your comments!~

Sensory Tub - Yellow

Surprise! It's another sensory tub! Actually, it's probably not much of a surprise since I did mention in a previous post that I was going to make two tubs for August. But, if I'm honest, this isn't that 2nd "outdoor" tub - I never got around to making it (note to self: don't blog about doing something until you've done it!). This one is just as fun though - take a look!

I was inspired when Maggie, from Redtedart, very sweetly reached out to me about her upcoming "Get Crafty: Yellow" blog carnival. Be sure to check it out for some crafty ideas!

Tia (my niece) and I had so much fun putting this together. There are LOTS of goodies in this tub, and really too many to list in full, but here's a sample of what's inside:
:: Star shaped pasta (we dyed only some of it yellow to give it that mottled look)
:: Various types of pom poms
:: Buttons
:: A bean bag
:: Google eyes
:: Beads
:: Mini erasers
:: A wooden egg
:: A Rubber ducky
:: Number beads
:: Popsicle sticks
:: 2 cups for scooping or sorting
:: A strawberry huller for picking out objects

I've added a little twist to this tub. I photographed some of the objects and created a "bingo" card. The idea is that James will use the photos on the card to hunt for and find the corresponding object. Sort of an I Spy kind of thing. Instead of a bingo card, another idea I had (but didn't end up implementing) was to create individual cards for each object, laminate them and then put them together on a ring.

James used his magnifying glass (his most favorite thing at the moment) to investigate the tub. :)

My very creative niece, Tia, is here visiting us and she has been brainstorming with me about some new sensory tub ideas. Oh my goodness did we come up with some good ones - I can't wait to share them with all of you!

I'm linking this post up to Montessori Monday, Tot Tuesday and The Preschool Corner.

~Thank you for your comments!~

Rainbow Activities - Part II

Some more rainbow fun - Montessori style! Click here for Part I.

Practical Life

Pouring colorful buttons...
Scooping "alphabet soup" from one container into two...
I used food coloring and dyed this pasta in batches. I'd be happy to do a tutorial on how I dyed the items in this post if anyone is interested - let me know!

James always enjoys spooning work and with this one he came up with a surprise grace and courtesy lesson - he carefully scooped "soup" into each bowl, and then he brought one of the bowls over to me and he said, "Here's some soup for you, Mama. It's delicious!". To which I replied, "Thank you, James!" and then he in turn said, "You're welcome, Mama!" Oh how I love good manners!

Transferring flowers with tongs...
I cut these flowers from a lei I purchased at the dollar store. We did this same activity for St. Patrick's Day only in that case we used green and white flowers. James handles tongs with such ease now, whereas a few months ago he either couldn't or wouldn't. He also named the colors of each flower as he transferred it.

Sweeping rainbow rice...
James l-o-v-e-d this work and has done it several times. I found the little crumb brush and dustpan here. The rainbow rice is homemade with food coloring.

Matching jars and lids...
Ok, so not a rainbow activity, but I was anxious to put this out on our shelves. I've been saving up glass jars of various sizes for the past few months and I finally had enough to create this work. The lids are inside the homemade bag. James was really into this activity. It has come off the shelves many times. Love when that happens!

Buttoning with the button snake...
It's been a while since I put this out, and I'm pleased to say James was really interested in it this time. Unfortunately, I need to re-evaluate the design of my snake. I think the button is too small because it was tricky for James to get a good grasp on it.

Color mixing...
This is a classic Montessori activity whereby the child uses a dropper to transfer the colors from the (baby food) jars into the cube sections of the ice tray. They take notice of the color change that occurs when certain colors are mixed together. We love this work - anything involving water is usually at the top of the list for James. :)

Rolling/unrolling a mat...
Again, not rainbow (sorry!), but I snapped this shot of James and wanted to share it. We use a mat for all of our floor activities. For those not familiar with Montessori, the reason for using a mat is because it delineates the child's workspace. It's best to use mats/rugs that are light in color and free from distracting patterns or designs. This allows the child to focus on the work, not the mat. Anyway, rolling and unrolling a mat is one of the very first things a child learns in a Montessori environment. James is a pro at this and usually knows which activities are intended for a mat and which are meant for the table.

Sorting

Sorting gems by color...I found these fake crystal looking gems at the pet store of all places! I found the citrus bowl at our local thrift store and the small pepper looking bowls (I think they're supposed to be apples) came in a kit which I purchased here. Just a side note, if you do decide to order this kit please note the quality of the small fake food is quite poor.

Sorting wooden beads by color or pattern...I love these beads. I found them at a store called Daisy & Mac. They came all bound together on a long elastic string. No clue what the intended purpose was for them, but I thought they'd make a great sorting tool.

Placing colored beads into the suction cups of bathtub mats (you can find the mats here)...
Excellent activity for improving fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and color discrimination. The cute little clay pot is from Mexico, a gift from my dear friend, Dana. James is SO careful with it - he knows it's special and treats it with great respect. I know a lot of people don't believe this, but children can (and should!) be trusted with breakable things. They just need to learn how to handle them first. There's sense of pride and accomplishment they inherit from knowing they are being trusted with these kinds of things.

Sorting itty bitty fruit by shape and color.
James got such a kick out of these! He loves tiny things. Of course he counted the fruits as he sorted them. :) I found these at our local craft store.

Click here and here to see our other rainbow activities.