one two three

Mason is a counting machine but relating those numbers to objects is another story so here I just made posters to work on our one to one correspondence.

Bird House

Building a Bird House
Great little foam Bird House from a craft store, very easy pop in and peel and stick features:)

Mason the Science Kid!

Mason, is currently obsessed with two shows on PBS one is Super Why, which is a cartoon about a super hero type figure who goes into story books and helps the storybook characters spell words to change their situations (sorry terrible explanation) Anyway Super Why has a "super duper computer" that helps him spell. Mason made his own "computer" out of a calculator. Taking his cue I went in one of my teacher boxes and got out some letter cards hid them around the room and he found them and put them in his Super duper computer. A spontaneous letter lesson I loved. The other show is Sid the Science Kid, which I myself find fascinating the other day Sid made juice pops and talked about observation of the making and melting, cold, hot, etc... So we copied Sid and did this as well. Mason drew a picture of his observations and then of course we enjoyed the treat.

Reduce Reuse Recycle...Mason is all about the Garbage Man coming to get our Recycle Bucket that he gets to put out all by himself. So we have talked a little about how we can re use our trash. Here we did so by making postcards out of old cereal boxes.

Indian Headband

Pine Cone Turkey

Handprint Turkeys...a classic

Handprint Bats



Just a few Halloween and Thanksgiving Projects we did love the pine cone turkey but definitely for older kids. On to Christmas!

The three little pigs

My favorite project we have done this year has to be this The Three Little Pigs! Mason is all about pretend play right now so we made the three little pigs mostly construction paper and clothespins then constructed their houses which was so fun to do. We picked sticks out of the yard and the "straw" I had on hand as well as the brick fabric a friend gave me a while back. The best part has been the acting out of the story over and over its so adorable and I think a great learning activity on many differant levels. If anyone would like supplies to make this project with their child let me know I have enough to make two more sets:)!

Fall Reading

What you need: A pile of Leaves

Autumn Books

A few Snacks!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Literature Based Learning.....Plugging away at learning are letters through one of Mason's favorite books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. After years of not being able to find them (I think I've looked since I got out of College) Walmart finally started carrying them! We did this project with my kindergartners and it was a big hit. Was true for Mason too....I made the coconut tree and then as we went over the different letters we pulled/spilled out of the box Mason picked which ones he wanted to put up in his coconut tree. We of course read the book a few times learned a few letters and ate a lot of cereal!

The Very Busy Mason

Literature based learning.....
Busy Spider by Eric Carle, supplies to make a spider web and spider stickers. Very Spooky!

Mason is one of those kids who does his best learning while ACTIVE. So we went on a nature walk at a local park and found "Nature's Treasures". If you look/think there are many different things to learn about in nature. Just a few we discussed on our walk were the obvious ones like colors (trees, leaves, flowers,etc...) But we we also talked about how you tell how old a tree is by counting its rings, how and why they fall, how their leaves turn color, their bark, why the ground gets muddy when it rains, how birds talk and make different sounds. You get the point. What helped us notice these things and get the conversation started was once we got to the middle of the woods we sat down on a log and I told Mason we had to sit and not talk so that the woods could talk to us.
....Try it and listen they have a lot to talk to your little ones about. Plus you gotta love the quiet time:)

"M" is for Mason and Maccaroni!

Our big goal this year is to write our name. Since Mason has little interest in this I have tried to come up with a variety of ways to not only write it but learn it. This is a little game you just need to write the letters of their names along with a few that aren't cut the letters up individually and put them in a baby food jar. He chose letters one by one and if he got a letter that was in his name he glued it down and if it was just a random letter it went back in the jar. We did this till he had his whole name glued down.

Counting Cars

Lightning Mcqueen and friends have HAD to come to (ghetto) school with us every morning therefore Mommy's big challenge is incorporating cars into actual learning as much as possible. Here we worked on number recognition and counting skills. Mason actually asked to play the "car game" later so I totally pulled one over on him that he was actually learning.