Mommy's Little Helper

Blogging End

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 18:03:00 +0000

I've been thinking about this blog for several months now and have officially decided to stop adding new posts to it. I plan to leave this blog up for anyone who might find it useful in the future. I have really enjoyed blogging in the years I have done it, but my preschooler is coming to the end of his preschooling days. I thought in September that I would finish out the year, but to be honest I have lost the motivation to do it. My son and I still are doing preschool things, but it has been a nice break not having to worry about taking pictures or making sure I have links to share with every little thing we do. I do hope that my posts over the years have been helpful and will continue to be helpful. :)

Reindeer

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 20:32:00 +0000

Today we talked about reindeer. My son named his hand print reindeer "Cutie" and "Goodie". Be sure to check out www.reindeercam.com to see live footage of some reindeer and Santa stops by sometimes as well.

I know my posts this season haven't been overly interesting, but around Christmas time we pretty much do the same things each year so to keep my focus on the activities and not blogging so much I will give links for my previous posts. :)

2013

2012

2011

Candy Canes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 20:26:00 +0000

Today we talked about candy canes. My son was really excited about this topic!

He enjoyed hanging some on our Christmas Tree.

He also enjoyed painting a candy cane green and red.

I didn't take pictures of the rest of our candy cane activities, but you can look at previous posts for the activities and links to them.

Gingerbread Baby

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 20:36:00 +0000

We enjoy reading "The Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett around this time of year and doing gingerbread activities.

This year we used graham crackers, frosting, mini candy canes, and sprinkles to make a gingerbread house. Our houses never work real well with this method unless I use a glue gun to put the pieces together before hand, but I was going for things we already had in our house. I didn't use a glue gun before hand and we opted for a flat top house once it kept falling apart on us. My son still had a blast with the sprinkles (as you can see).

Another different activity we did is making a large gingerbread boy. I actually wanted to make one just my son's size, but we were a little short on the brown butcher paper so he is a bit smaller. You could use construction paper to glue or tape eyes, nose, buttons and so forth on. However, anytime that I can get my son to color or draw and do it happily that is what we go with.

All of my other Gingerbread Activities I have shared before. You can check out loads of links from posts I have done in the past.

As you can see I have been doing gingerbread stuff since before my current preschool was around. :)

Thanksgiving Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 20:29:00 +0000

Today was our Thanksgiving Preschool Theme. We enjoyed reading this printable booklet that you can color as well called "The Story of Thanksgiving".

I have not been taking many pictures lately, but I do have a great list of resources for a Thanksgiving Theme to share with you. Here are some wonderful printable packets:

3 Dinosaurs Thanksgiving Pack

1+1+1=1 Thanksgiving Pack

Our Little Monkey's Thanksgiving Tot Pack

Homeschool Creation's Thanksgiving Pack

You can also check out previous Thanksgiving Posts of mine (with more pictures)!

2010

2011

2013

We most likely will be taking a preschool break next week, but will be back for lots of December fun!

Gratitude Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 17:17:00 +0000

Today we talked about gratitude. We read "Bear Says Thanks". Then we talked about all the things we are thankful for. We had fun making a long list and then I pointed out that when we are thankful for something we should thanks especially to our Heavenly Father when we pray. We sang some church songs, "Children All Over the World" and "I Thank Thee, Dear Father". I encouraged him to sometimes say prayers where he just says thanks for things.

This Gobble Gobble Pack has a Thankful printable booklet. Here is one of the pages my son was working on. He has his brothers and blankets on this page.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 20:34:00 +0000

Today we had a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving! We enjoyed making the things that the characters make in the movie to serve as their Thanksgiving feast. Then we watched the movie (3 times). This is our second year doing that and we've had fun both times.

You can see our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving from last year here. We did more activities last year.

Turkeys

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 20:39:00 +0000

Today we talked about turkeys!

I actually didn't take any pictures today other than the one above with my son and his paper plate turkey, but I have lots of links to share with all kinds of turkey activities. We did some, but not everything. There are a lot of fun ideas to go along with this theme.

A Teaching Mommy's Turkey Pack

Lawteedah's Thanksgiving Tot Pack

Lovely Commotion's Thanksgiving Pack

Kindergarten Fever's Thanksgiving Printable

All Our Day's Thanksgiving Printables

This Reading Mama's Cut it Out turkey printables

Confessions of a Homeschooler's T is for Turkey Printables

Here are some more turkey crafts:

Paper Plate Pop Up Turkey

Turkey Puppet

You can find over 170 turkey crafts at this link

Pattern Block Turkey

Paper Plate Turkey Wreath

You can also check out my turkey post from 2013.

Mail Carrier Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:11:00 +0000

Today we talked about Mail Carriers!

Confessions of a Homeschooler has a Mail Carrier Unit that includes the hat above, the activities pictured below and some others as well.

We watched this video that describes what a typical day for a mail carrier could be like and issues that they may have to deal with. This topic is also a nice time to talk about writing letters, your address, and what it takes to mail a letter.

My son helped write a letter for someone and put it in the envelope. Then when it was stamped and ready to go he dropped it in our mail drop box.

My son hasn't felt so great the last few days so even though there is a lot more you could do with this fun theme I kept it basic and he had a good time. Another idea I think is fun is to is to have children sort mail and set up a little post office. They could sort letters by color or shape or number.

Family Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 17:39:00 +0000

Today we talked about one of my the best things in the world, family.

I helped my son go through pictures of our family members and pick some out to make a collage with. He enjoyed gluing the pictures onto the small poster board we had and then we hung it in his room. As we did this we talked about the different members of our family and how each family is different. Some families have lots of kids, some don't have any, some only live with one parent, some are mostly boys (like ours), some our mostly girls, and so on.

The Little Critter books are a great place to look into books about families. We read a couple of the ones we own.

We also sang a lot of songs. Our church's Children's Songbook includes lots of songs about family. They learned a new song at church this year called, "The Family is of God" and we enjoyed singing that together. My son knows the chorus pretty well and I helped him on the verses.

Last year we made a family tree and did some other family activities as well. You can check it out here.

Last night we did this little family craft to hang up for Thanksgiving time. It is a nice time of year to focus on being thankful for our families.

Monster Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:23:00 +0000

Today we had fun talking about monsters!

Here are some favorite monster type books that we own and enjoyed reading.

"Go Away Big Green Monster!" is a fun book. Making Learning Fun has great activities that go along with this book.

"One Hungry Monster" is a great counting book. A few years ago I made some different activities myself to use with my boys. I don't have them available, but I copied the monsters from the book and used them as I wanted. You can find out more about it in my 2010 post here.

Another book that is fun to read when talking about monsters is "Where The Wild Things Are". Making Learning Fun has great activity ideas to go with this book as well.

There are some really fun printable packs to go with monsters. 3 Dinosaurs has a huge pack with lots of great activities to go with monsters. I like her packs because she has easier stuff for tots and harder things for kids around kindergarten age.

Little Monkey Printables has a Not So Scary Monster pack filled with great activities as well.

If you are looking for some math activities check out this blog post that has links to 25 math ideas.

Some of our favorite monster movies are "Monsters Inc" and "Monsters University". Check out Monster Universities home page for fun ideas.

My son wanted to make another Mike Wazowski paper plate monster like last year. He was more involved with the process this year aside from just gluing on the pieces I had cut out. It is fun to watch kids grow and learn. Of course, he had to demonstrate his monster face.

Scarecrow Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 15:44:00 +0000

Today we focused on talking about scarecrows. The book we read yesterday had a scarecrow at the end so it is nice to do the two themes back to back or joined together.

There are several fall packs that you can find for free to print off.

Autumn Themed ABC Printable Pack

Scarecrow Tot Pack

Fall Pack

Scarecrow Freebie Activities

I made these scarecrow cards many years ago. I wrote the body part that the arrow is pointing at on the card. Have your child point to each body part on their own body with each card.

This is a fun little scarecrow book called Scarecrow Loves Fall.

We had a great time doing some scarecrow themed songs and finger plays. You can see many ideas to use at this website.

My son also enjoyed making a shape scarecrow. I had many shapes cut out and he chose which ones he wanted to use to build his own little scarecrow.

You can also check out my 2012 post and my 2013 post about scarecrows.

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 16:10:00 +0000

Today we read "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything". This is a fun book to read a loud and have fun with.

Making Learning Fun is the best resource I have found for this book. There are flannel board pieces like above and activities like the ones pictured below, plus more.

Here is my son's very own scarecrow. He actually colored some which is great considering he tries to avoid coloring as much as possible!

This is a free printable that is a fun way to review the book.

This Roll a Scarecrow is a fun game to play a long with this story.

You can see previous posts about this book in the links below:

2011

2012

2013

Leaf Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:46:00 +0000

Leaves are a fun topic this time of year with them changing colors and falling off the tree!

We always enjoy going out and collecting leaves when we have this theme. Here is our collection this year. It is fun to sort them in many different ways; size, shape, color, and so on.

We also enjoy doing leaf rubbings. My son did a good job all by himself this year. If you put a leaf under the paper and use a crayon you can get this fun look.

There are also several sources that have fun leaf activities. Making Learning Fun has leaf and Fall activities like this counting one below.

There are several free printable packs worth checking out. I have used them all throughout the years.

3 Dinosaurs Leaves Pack

This Reading Mama Fall Pre-K Pack

A Teaching Mommy Leaves Pack

Homeschool Creations Fun Fall Printables

My son wanted to make little leaf men so he glued googly eyes on some of his leaves and gave them mouths with a marker.

For more ideas from my previous Leaf Themes you can check out the links below.

Pumpkins Preschool Theme!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 20:08:00 +0000

My favorite Fall Theme is pumpkins!

We went to a pumpkin patch as a family last night so we were all ready to talk about pumpkins the rest of the week. My older children will be out of school Thursday and Friday so we won't have formal preschool then, but we will be painting our pumpkins.

Here is my son at the pumpkin patch. He found a cute little pumpkin that he thought looked just the right size for him.

We measure the pumpkin in all the ways we could think of. How tall it was, how wide, how long the stem was, and so on.

My son wanted to roll the pumpkin across the kitchen floor and measure how far it rolled so we did that too. :)

We love to do "Five Little Pumpkins". I usually do it once with these visuals and then again and have them do the finger actions and roll around like a pumpkin at the end.

We talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin using sequencing cards. I have not been able to locate the link I found these cards at years ago, but this is a fun idea we actually did last year with the pumpkin life cycle.

There are some really great Pumpkin Packs out there. Here are a few Confessions of a Homeschooler's Pumpkin Printable Pack.

1+1+1=1 and A Teaching Mommy has a pumpkin printable pack.and also have Pumpkin Printables.

Lawteedah has a Halloween Kit with pumpkin printables.

3 Dinosaurs also has a free pumpkin printable pack.

My son also enjoys visiting Starfall's website and building his own pumpkin. We also watched this Super Why clip that shows how to spell "pumpkin".

You can check our more ideas from previous years.

(there are three parts for 2013 year so be sure to check out the links after this post)

Ghost Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 19:26:00 +0000

Today we talked about ghosts. Sometimes you have to embrace the time of year it is and do silly little themes like this just for fun.

Three Ghost Friends is hand down the number one place to go for all your ghosting activities. Seriously, it is awesome. Here are just a couple of the awesome activities in the picture below. Dressing up your ghost in costumes and ghost shape matching.

I also told my son the story of the "Five Little Ghosts" they disobey their mother and eat things that aren't white and turn different colors. Here is one version of the story.

My son traced around a ghost template and made eyes and a mouth with a pen. I helped him a little with the cutting around of the ghost. We poke a small hole on the top and put some fishing line through it and we now have a little ghost hanging up. We used some vellum since it is sturdy, see through, and I had some on hand. You could use tracing paper or regular white paper. My son does good imitations of things, doesn't he? ;)

You can check out our ghost theme from 2012 that I did with my middle son.

You can also check out what we did for our ghost theme in 2013.

Spider Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 16:58:00 +0000

Today we talked about spiders!

A Teaching Mommy has a fun spider printable pack that includes activities like this life cycle puzzle.

This pack also has a fun game where you "swat the spider" when a letter is named. Always a hit in our house.

This is our spider that we put together when talking about how many legs a spider has.

Of course, you have to sing "Itsy, Bitsy Spider" and do the actions. These are also fun visuals to use with the song.

This is a fun, free printable with a little poem to go with it.

This is a little spider matching game I made a while ago.

I have a hard time getting my son to do arts and crafts sometimes so today I just encouraged him to draw a picture of a spider. I think it turned out pretty cute.

We don't own "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle, but I found this video for my son to watch where a child reads the book.

Posts about spiders in the past can be found in the links below.

Bats Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 16:10:00 +0000

Today we talked about bats!

My favorite book about bats is "Stellaluna". I read this book to my son and then we used these printables to figure out the order that things happened in.

This bat flyer is a fun printable that you cut out, fold in the right spots and put a paper clip on it.

The picture at the top shows the bat unfolded and here is my son with him all folded and ready to fly. He wanted bat ears which is why he has his fingers on top of his head. :)

3 Dinosaurs has a Bat and Spider pack. I used some of the bat activities with my son.

He had to get his bat in on some tracing action.

Here are some rhyming cards that end in -at.

Check out my bat themes from previous years.

2013

2012

2011

Owl Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 19:51:00 +0000

Today we talked about owls for preschool! I find this a fun theme to do in the Fall.

I find this Owl Tot-Pack so cute and it is filled with great activities as well.

Here is one of the activities, matching the shape in the tree with the bird that has the same shape on it's stomach.

I decided to see how my son did with a simple word search for something different. It went well. He found it challenging, but not so difficult that he gave up. You can print it off for free here.

We had fun counting to 100 by 10's with these cute owls.

My son is not big into coloring, but he does enjoy making puppets. I think he really likes playing with them once they are made. He glued on pieces to a paper bag to make a cute owl and colored a little bit on it.

The paper bag owl was inspired by this idea.

We also enjoyed some videos about owls. Here is a video with a song called Ten Little Owls. This video called Lovely Owls shows different species of owls.

You can check out our 2013 post about Owls and my 2012 post with my middle son.

Totally Tots has a collection of fun owl ideas with the letter O.

If you are looking for more owl craft ideas check out the links below.

Paper Plate Owl

Another Paper Plate Owl Craft

Here is a third Paper Plate Owl Pattern Craft

This site has a few owl crafts

Lego Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 16:34:00 +0000

Today we had a Lego preschool theme. All of my children love Legos so when I was asking him for ideas of themes he wanted to do this year I wasn't surprised he said this one. It is a great theme with a wide variety of learning opportunities plus it is just plain fun.

Here is a template of Lego figures so your child can create their own on paper.

1+1+1=1 has a kindergarten printable Lego pack and some other ideas for using Legos for learning.

We had fun playing "Roll a Lego Minifigure".

I put sight words on Legos and let my son build sentences. If your child is still learning the alphabet you could just put a single letter on it. Check out this website for ideas along this line.

My son requested I write words so he could build a sentence that said, "I like Legos a lot."

I had my son sort his Legos by color. You could also sort them by size. Then we counted how many we had of each color and figured out which we had the most of and which we had the least of.

We spent the majority of our time playing with Legos. We built cars and raced them around the kitchen and living room.

We also enjoy The Lego Movie.

Dinosaurs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 19:45:00 +0000

Today we talked about dinosaurs!

Preschool Express has a cute story called Dotty the Dinosaur which also is a color story.

There a several dinosaur packs that are free and fun to use. The picture below is some activities from 3 Dinosaurs pack.

These activities are from Over The Big Moon's Dinosaur pack.

Confessions of a Homeschooler has a fun Letter D/Dinosaur printable pack.

We made these finger puppets with my Cricut and had fun playing with them again.

File Folder Fun has a cute Dino Color matching game.

We love to read books about dinosaurs. Pictured below are some that we own, but there are lots of other great dinosaur books out there too.

Angry Birds Playground Dinosaurs

Dinosaurumpus!

How Do Dinosaurs Say I'm Mad?

Little Dino's Egg

How Do Dinosaurs Eat Cookies?

RAWR!

We got out our plastic dinosaurs and played with them too. My son also enjoys playing Dinosaur Train games on pbskids.org.

You can check out what we did in 2013 here, 2010 here and here.

Airplane Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 16:54:00 +0000

It's been two weeks since I posted about preschool. That's because it has been two weeks since we have done it. My oldest son had eye surgery and I got a cold around the same time so preschool got put on the back burner, but we are back now. Today we talked about airplanes.

Our Little Monkey's has a fun and cute Pilot Pack for free. I really like the activities she includes in her packs and the graphics she uses.

A Mommy Talks also has an airplane pack. I liked using the activity below to teach my son different parts that are on an airplane.

Instead of making a paper airplane I decided to have us try something different and make a straw airplane. I found the idea here.

My son had fun flying this around. It flew better than I was expecting it to actually.

We also enjoy watching the movie Planes. My son has lots of plane related toys as well which are always fun to get out and play with especially when it goes along with our preschool theme.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 17:36:00 +0000

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle is one of our favorite books so of course we were both excited to have a preschool theme about it.

We read the book and watched the movie. You can find it right now streaming on Netflix. It is a short little movie, but fun. I also retold the story using these felt board pieces.

You can find cute printables to go with this story like "The Hungry Caterpillar Cards and stick puppets below.

These sequencing cards are great to have your child help retell the story.

Here you will find a really cute Caterpillar Pack for free (again I hadn't replaced my colored ink cartridge which is why they are strange colors).

Here is a picture of my son doing one of the activities above. It is a great way to go over the days of the week and retelling the story.

You can find this idea for feeding the caterpillar and a whole lot more here.

You could also watch Eric Carle reading the book himself here.

You can check out what we did for this theme in 2013 here and in 2010 here.

Check out more caterpillar ideas in my 2013 post here and at Confessions of a Homeschooler here.

Here is another printable pack for The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

This link has over 60 crafts to do with this theme.

Ant Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 19:06:00 +0000

Before we began preschool this year I asked my son for ideas on which themes he would like to do. I am trying to stick with that list for the most part. One thing he wanted to talk about was ants. I think because we talked about ants last year when talking about the letter A so today we talked about ants and a little about the letter A as well.

A Teaching Mommy has an ant pack with some great printables included in it.

Confessions of a Homeschooler has a Letter A/Ant pack that is also full of great printables.

My son loves the song "The Ants Go Marching" as well as this cute video that has the song in it.

My son really doesn't like to color (I haven't figured out why), but I can usually get him to paint. Today I gave him a plastic fork to dip in green paint to make grass. Then he used his finger to make red ants. He also made an ant hill.

You can check out my 2013 post about ants here.

Apples Preschool Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 20:48:00 +0000

Today we did one of our favorite preschool themes, APPLES!

There are so many great apples activities for preschoolers. I am just going to skim the surface today.

3 Dinosaurs has an apple pack with tons of great printables (my colored ink cartridge was low).

Confessions of a Homeschooler has a letter A/Apple pack.

A Teaching Mommy also has an apple pack

Big Apple Little Apple is a fun file folder game matching up the large and small apples.

Making Learning Fun has all kinds of activities and ideas with apples including sequencing apple tree pictures.

My son's favorite activity was taste testing apples. I kept it pretty basic this year, but you can see what we did last year for our apple theme here.

I was surprised to find that he really enjoyed the Granny Smith apple. I thought he'd think it was too sour, but hear he is giving me a thumbs up.

My son also did apple prints. Dip half of an apple in paint and stamp a blank piece of paper.

My son read "Ten Apples Up On Top!" by Dr. Seuss to me.

We also had a good time watching the cartoon of Johnny Appleseed.

Here is a link to what I did in 2010 with my older boys.
Here is a lapbook about apples.
Kidssoup also has several apple activities.