Christmas Day 2012

I want to apologize upfront for how blurry these photos are;  Christmas morning with a toddler moves pretty fast!

The next few pics are from our house in the morning.  We rolled out of bed at like, 9:30.  It was great:)

 

 

 

  

I thought this was really cool:  Our cousin's future wife was sweet enough to leave a note from Santa on the plate of cookies we left out out for him:)  Cameron and I made a ridiculous amount of glazed sugar cookies on Christmas eve, it was so fun.  And messy.  
 

 

Next we move on my MIL's house.  They always go all out for the holidays, this is a great family to marry into, lol

 

 

"Oooo!  Mommy, look at all these Legos!  I better pick them back up!"

 

Lastly, we all congregate at the Great Grandparents' house for food and presents.  It was well past Cam's nap time, but he held it together like a champ:)

At the end of the day, I think Cameron's favorite toys were the Playmobil sets that the MIL got for him.  One is a farm and the other is a firestation.  I was worried a little about losing pieces... and not really looking forward to putting it all together!  But I have to admit, I truly enjoyed building these with Cam and he has played with them constantly since they were set up.  Still, he struggles with using a soft or intricate touch for extended periods, so these are great for him.  

I was tired of playing on the floor (I'm old) so I put the lid on Cameron's train table and set his Playmobil stuff up there.  I had a few sheets of that super firm felt leftover from previous projects, so I put those down, too.  I have had an absolute blast watching him play with these!  He will dress up in his fire gear and play fire station, and sing the FireMan Sam show song.  He gets all concerned about his little people and tells them to be careful and wear their helmets:) 
 

Transportation Unit

 This is a unit I was *really* excited to put together for Cameron, he is sooo into anything that has wheels!!  I have been planning this one for kind of a long time, so it took up 2 shelves, lol:)

 

If there is anything that I think Cam might remember from these activities, it will be this sensory bin.  He's had these great little tractors for about a year (thanks, grandpa Curt!) and he still treasures them.  Against my better judgement, I stuck them in a bin with play sand and few other little construction-y toys.  He has *loved* this tray; he takes it all over the house and is super careful not to spill:)

 I found these little vehicle erasers at Target's dollar spot, and had to get them and do something with them!  There weren't really enough of them to do much, so I thought maybe we would try erasing pencil marks.  Cam has done ok with this, he would be better if the paper didn't move around. 

 

Stickers!  Here are 2 packages from the dollar store and some construction paper.  He loves stickers, and has a great time telling me what the different vehicles are:)

Washing James:)  I had this same one set up with a different train a while ago, and he loved it!  "I wash his face, his back, his bum.."

This kid loves his Do-A-Dot stampers.  Now that he kind of understands how to use them, he colors with them often.  Here are a few different printables for the stampers.

Our transportation books.  This pic makes me laugh because his tractor book with wheels is rolling away as I'm taking the pic:)

More patterning activities.  This one is probably a little difficult...  The dominoes came from Target's dollar spot, and they really are cute.  I lined them up into different patterns on my scanner, and them printed them off and taped them down to this tray.  I only set out the exact tiles I used, so he's got a Control of Error. 

Cutting Practice!  He is doing great with scissors, and I should probably switch out the toddler ones for big boy scissors:) 

Below are some pictures of his transportation binder.  I cannot remember where the printables cam from... Oopsey Daisy?

Here is a pic of our transportation puzzles.  The one on the right is his absolute favorite!  He talks about the pieces, takes them out and plays with them, etc.  

Remember this one from Chicka Chicka?  He liked the big pin poker, so I set up another one with some cute printables that I laminated.  

Shadow Matching.  This one is really too easy for him, but they weren't too time consuming to put together:)

Coloring!  I printed off several car coloring pages, and he has actually really spent some time on them.  He usually just draws a few lines and is done, but not these:)  I got the little cars and truck cup from Target forever ago, and I put his crayons in it.

Tweezing Vehicles:)  These are buttons from HL and Walmart, I think.  I am having trouble keeping them in their tray, lol.  I like that they are all different:)

Another Pinterest find, this one is supposed to be done with magnets or Play Doh.  But I'm a rebel, so I just threw some rocks in there:)

Another Do-A-Dots page, but I used our magnetic Pom Poms instead.  I love putting these pages on cookie sheets, they work really well.  

 Oooo, I am proud of this one!  Spooning river rocks into a dump truck.  This one is hard cuz the rocks are bigger than the spoon and really heavy.  You probably can't see, but I put a piece of packing tape across the back to keep the rocks inside the truckbed.  Cam really likes this one, and has come back to it a few times:)

Stamping.  I kind of despise stamping activities... my carpets, his clothes... everything is red or green still from Christmas:(  Whatever, he is getting much better.  I found these stamps a long time ago, too and am glad I finally get to use them.  But I had to run out and get a Jumbo sized inkpad from Michaels!  The little ones were a joke, I feel silly I didn't notice that before I set them out!

Another Pinterest idea!  Some amazing Mommy had cut out 'roads' out of stiff felt for her kiddos to play on.  She even put little white dashes in the middle.  I didn't go that far.  So I cut up some felt sheets from HL and set out a variety of his nicer trucks (except for the mixer truck.)  I just eyeballed it, so they don't fit perfectly:)  I also ordered those awesome road signs off Amazon, for like $3 or something.  I really wanted this unit to touch on road safety; Cam should know stop signs and traffic lights at the very least.  He does, we are working on the others now.  

While we are on the subject of traffic lights, I made this one for his classroom.  I try to have relate-able posters up over the shelving units but I didn't have any available.  So now we talk about colors and traffic lights:)  "Green means go, Mommy and red means stop! Yellow means go faster.."

Here's a shot of his magnet board.  There is a matching activity, and the train and firetruck came from a M&D set that we stickered and glittered up.  The big die cuts are from a 'colors' pack, but I figured they were appropriate:)  There are also most of his Thomas the Train magnet characters for him to play with.  He keeps taking them out and putting them back in his room (that's where they came from) lol

Montessori Christmas 2012

 Merry late Christmas! 

My computer was having some technical difficulties, so I wasn't able to post anything for a while.  Luckily, Christmas came, and my amazing hubby got us a new laptop.  So now all is well:)

For the holidays this year, I wanted to set up Christmas-inspired activities for Cameron's classroom.  I hadn't done a Christmas theme before, and Cam really had a great time playing with them.  He's 2.5 now, and starting to get some understanding of Santa and Christmas and all that fun stuff.  He kept saying, "Santa is going to bring me lots of presents!"  Also, my MIL has a big Santa in her front yard, and Cam would go up to it and say, "Santa, are you coming to town?"  :)

 

 Below are a few shots of Cameron's Christmas bookcase.  If you remember from previous posts, this is the one that I try to keep only traditional Montssori activities on, but I suppose I made an exception!!  I finally got his calendar hung back up; I had taken it down to move it a loooong time ago, and just never did.  Um, guess which calendar card is missing, lol!

I am embarrassed to admit it has taken me this long to finally put an Open and Close activity out!!!  This isn't the best example of a Christmas work, but I did put little red and green pom-poms in the containers.  Mari Ann on Counting Coconuts always puts little treasures in her open/close works, so I thought I would try it, too:)  
 

Here is a sticker and stamping activity that he really had fun with.  It's all from the dollar store, so it's not the best quality, but I'm ok with that.  He was really able to pull off and apply the large, glittery present stickers without any help.  He still needed me to pull off the smaller foam ones, but I'm still proud of him:)  
 

I was running out of shelf space, so this is two-works-in-one, lol.  The top pieces are just a 6 part puzzle printable that I found online and glued to thick cardstock.  I think the printables all came from Pre-Kinders.  The candy cane is a threading activity... and his favorite!  He has not been into threading at all, and I introduced them at like, 20 months.  The shoelace came from and Melissa and Doug bead threading kit.  He calls it his Lucky Lasso.  We have no idea why:)
 

Card-making basket!  I wanted to do homemade Christmas cards this year... mainly because I was too late to do the photo ones.  So here are some stickers from HL and the dollar store, some markers, and a pack of plain cards and envelopes.  He had a great time with this!  I later found some Christmas stamps for 40% off at Michael's, and we played with those, too.  

Whenever we do any kind of matching or pairing or anything like that, Cam has to be able to 'stick' the object to where it goes.  He can't just set the counter on top of the paper or whatever, it has to click or stick.  So I magnetize everything:)  And it's getting old (and pricey) so I thought I would give my Velcro stickers a chance.  This is another printable from Pre-Kinders, but instead of Do-A-Dots or magnets, I put Velcro on the dots and the pom-poms.  It went over ok, but it wasn't one he re-visited very much.  But it was fun to make:)

Tonging!  I found these cute erasers from the dollar store, and set them out with those learning chopsticks/tongs for added difficulty.  I wanted to put them into a different container, but they fit perfectly in the muffin tin.  He did great with these, the only thing was he kept trying to pair the erasers (I had to use 2 sets to have enough).  Since that particular tray isn't really useful for pairing, I grabbed an ice cube tray and we did that for a while:)

This kid *loves* Play Doh!!!  I try to put it into every lesson.  So for this one, we rolled out the dough, cut it into Christmas shapes, and decorated the tree.  I laminated it, of course:)  

 Here are a few action shots:)  Sorry so blurry, I really need a better camera than my phone!

Pouring!  My love/hate relationship with pouring works is improving, I guess because so is the kiddo:)  He can pour these beans and not spill a single one!  And he doesn't throw them all over the room, lol.  I found these watering cans from Target, they are *perfect* for pouring.  And they are Christmas colors, so they work just fine.

Patterning.  Yes, I know it's not a Christmas activity, but I really want him to understand patterns.  I bought another one of those Kindergarten prep/activity books, and there was patterning all through it.  So this is a printable from Pinterest and some of my bear counters.  He hasn't shown much interest in this one, although he did do most of it with me.  He thinks it's funny to ask me what the colors are... I guess he's just parroting what I do to him all the time, lol.  

Hobby Lobby, I love you!  Look how cute this little Christmas tree is!  It's solid metal (and heavy!) so I can do a magnet work if I wanted.  But I thought I would try some threading/fine motor to start with.  So we cut pipe cleaners into short lengths, and bent them into hangers.  The star ornaments are from Target, and they worked really well.  Cameron loved this tree, and had a great time decorating it.  He was very concerned that we didn't have gold star to put on top of the tree (it came with one attached).  He also tried to open the little pretend presents at the bottom of the tree :)

 Yuk, this picture is horrid, but I cannot seem to figure out how to take pics of the lightbox!  There is one of the many window gels we accumulated this year.  Don't laugh, I still have my palm tree up from the Chicka Chicka unit:)