Library Corner

Every other week we go to the library and fill our big library bag with as many books as can fit. There's no rhyme or reason to what books we pick, we just make sure to grab some that look relatively age appropriate. Enjoy our reviews of our favorites from each trip!

Dooby Dooby Moo by Doreen Cronin - This was definitely our favorite.  This is a hilarious book that follows a group of barnyard animals who enter a talent contest at the county fair.  I found M "reading" this several times to her dolls - this basically consisted of her saying "moo" the entire time! :)

The Cow That Was the Best Moo-ther by Andy Cutbill- This would be a great book for a family that has adopted.  It follows a cow who enters her unusual calf (it's a chick!) into the baby cow contest.  I loved the lessons of empathy and unconditional love that it taught.

I Don't Want a Posh Dog! by Emma Dodd- This was a cute book about a little girl trying to find the perfect dog for her.  M likes anything with dogs, so this was a winner for her.  I liked that she picked a mutt over all the other pure bred dogs.  (Not to offend you if you have a pure bred, I'm just a huge supporter of rescue dogs!)

Pumpkin Eye  by Denise Fleming - I don't think M remembers the past 2 Halloweens so I'm trying to explain to her what it's all about.  I think this was a great rhyming book to start getting us into the Halloween spirit.

The Cow who Clucked  by Denise Fleming- I guess we picked alot of cow books this week!  This particular story is about a cow who woke up one morning and could only say "cluck"!  It has a fairly similar patter to Are You My Mother, which is one of M's favorite books, so this was a great pick for her.

 I Can't Talk Yet, But When I Do...  by Julie Markes - This was so adorable!  It was about a baby boy who absolutely adores his older sister.  It lists all the wonderful things he want's to tell his sister once he can finally talk.  This was the perfect book for our little family because R really does adore M!  M was so excited to be reading a book about her and her little brother!

The Everything Book - This really does have everything!  Letters, numbers, colors, shapes, seasons, body parts, rhymes, animals and more!  I would seriously consider buying this book; it would be great just to have on hand, and would be wonderful for the car or to keep at the grandparent's!

Some other library books we enjoyed reading this week:















This post is being linked up to What My Child is Reading at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns

Disclosure: The links for the books are connected through Amazon Associates and I may earn a small revenue if you click through and purchase any book listed.

Basic Water Transfer

This is another one of those Montessori inspired activities that are great for fine motor skills.  As you can tell by the massive amount of water spilled, we need a lot more practice with this.  Next time I'll give M a sponge as well so that she can easily clean up her messes!

Basic Water Transfer

Theme: Practical Life/Motor Skills

Materials: Ice tray, medicine dropper, small container filled with water, sponge

How to: Have your child transfer the water from the small container to the ice tray using the medicine dropper.

Listening to Directions

I saw this great activity a couple of weeks ago, and recreated it by tracing a few puzzle pieces on a piece of paper.  After working on this with M, I realized that we need to work a little bit more on some of our descriptive words (above, below, inside, outside, etc.).  She really liked doing this and even started making up some of her own directions!

Listening to Directions

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Printable, manipulatives of some sort (blocks, toys, etc.)

How to: Place the manipulatives in front of you and then have your child follow a series of directions.  (Put the red block above the circle, put the green block inside of the rectangle, etc).

Source: A Mommy's Adventure's

Playdough Size Classification

I thought this would be a cute way to incorporate a lesson in our regular playdough play.  It was a little bit hard for M because many of the pieces were fairly similar.  I think if I were to do it again, I would start with only a couple of balls with a huge difference in size and then work our way up to more balls.

Playdough Size Classification

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Playdough

How to: Roll some balls of various sizes and have your child line them up according to size.  M also decided to stack them in size order.

Source: My Life on a Taffy Pull

Tot School - Week 6

M is 31 months old

Official Tot School
Popsicle Stick Balancing
Wet Pouring
Cardboard Tube Leaves
Color by Number
Beginning Letter Sound Flash Cards

Extra Learning
We did tons of school this week, but I didn't manage to get any pictures!  This video of her reading Polar Bear, Polar Bear to me is the only thing I have for you!


Teacher Lessons
Don't throw away past activities.  M was pretty insatiable for "school" this week, which normally would have been fine, but was really really hard on me this week.  My husband worked late most of the nights this week and I came down with the flu (or something like it) late in the week so I was not on the top of my game.  I was very thankful that I had stored several of our past activities in plastic baggies because I was able to pull them out quickly every time she begged for school.

Beginning Letter Sound Flash Card Printable

I made these little cards just using clip art from google and Microsoft Publisher, printing them, and then coloring them with colored pencils (the color part of our printer is permanently on the fritz).  They have the uppercase and lowercase letter, as well as 3 or 4 pictures of objects that start with that letter.  If it was a letter that had various beginning letter sounds I tried to include examples of each.  (For example: Ii - ice cream and iguana).  For now, M has been using these just to review, but I'll be printing a second set soon and we'll use them for matching activities also.  If you find another way to use these, please let me know!

Beginning Letter Sounds

Wet Pouring

A few week ago I did a post on dry pouring.  M's been getting better at it, so I decided to try wet pouring with her.  Well, as you can see in the pictures it was a huge mess!  She definitely needs more practice until she gets to the point where she's no longer spilling.  I think next time I do this, I'll give her a little sponge to clean up her messes because the paper towels just weren't cutting it!

Wet Pouring

Theme: Practical Life/Motor Skills

Materials: Small pitcher, several containers with increasingly smaller openings, water, sponge

How to:  Fill the pitcher with water and have your child practice pouring them into the containers and back again with as little spilling as possible.

Color by Number

 I've seen a few color by number or letter activities around the blogosphere, but I knew M wouldn't really go for them.  Her coloring skills or not fantastic, so I knew trying to get her to color small spaces with crayons would be impossible.  I decided that separate pictures would be much easier for her, and they were!  She really liked doing this!  It took her a couple of tries to get a hang of what we were trying to do, but by the end of it, she was enjoying herself and parroting me ("Lets see...what color is the 5?  Purple?  Do you see the 5 mama?  The circle!  Good finding!").  She cracks me up. :)

Color by Number

Theme: Preschool Skills

Materials: Paper, pen, crayons

How to: Draw some shapes on a piece of paper and write either 1 number or 1 letter inside each shape.  Then draw a key with a different color to correspond to each number or letter.  Have your child color the shape the corresponding color.


Cardboard Tube Leaves

Our leaves haven't really started changing colors yet, but I thought this would be a fun art project to get us into the fall mood.

Cardboard Tube Leaves

Theme: Art/Music

Materials: Cardboard tube, paint (yellow, orange, red), paper, paper plate, paintbrush

How to:  Squeeze the cardboard tube slightly to create a more ovular leaf shape.  Have your child dip the tube in some paint that has been squeezed on the plate and 'stamp' on the paper.  If they are interested, you can also help them paint the veins inside the leaf with the paintbrush.

Source: Frugal Family Fun

Updated 10/8/11: I'm linking up to One Artsy Mama!

Popsicle Stick Balancing

M enjoyed this activity, but kept getting a little frustrated because every time she placed a pebble, she would accidentally knock another one off.  She was determined to do it though!

Popsicle Stick Balancing

Theme: Practical Life/Motor Skills

Materials: Popsicle sticks, glass pebbles

How to: Have your child balance the beads on top of the popsicle sticks.

Source: Shannon's Tot School