What's in the 4th of July Pack-Part 2

**If you downloaded the 4th of July pack yesterday, please note there was a small error with one of the games, I have updated the pack and it is right now. Sorry!**

As you probably read yesterday, I made up a few 4th of July printables to use with my kiddos, and share with you. The pack can be downloaded here and the first post about the pack (and pictures of some of the contents) is here.

The free pack includes:

*US flag cards 1-10 and star counters
*4th of July themed 3 part cards
*Patriotic kids matching game
*Counting puzzle
*S is for star sorting mat
*Beginning sound clip cards
*Uppercase/lowercase group matching game (4 game boards)

As you can see, the activities vary in skill level so that all of my children have a few activities in the pack. I have links to each activity in this post and the last if you prefer to just download one or two. Hope you enjoy it!

Uppercase/lowercase group matching game (4 game boards and letter stars)



We played this together during school yesterday and it was a HUGE hit!


Each player takes a mat that has stars on it. Each star has a lowercase letter.


When it is the player's turn, they take a star from the bowl/box/etc, and see if they have the matching letter on their mat.

The loose stars are all uppercase letters, so this helps with lowercase/uppercase matching.


I did find a huge OOPs on my own board while we were playing. I was only able to use 24 of the 26 letters of the alphabet, and got confused which ones I had chosen to use, so I had an x on my board and a Z in my hand, neither of which had a match lol. I have since fixed the file to have 2 X's :). Sorry about that! I was thankful that I got the messed up board because the kids loved filling theirs up.



Mini Cooper was the surprising winner, even though Mustang had a clear lead throughout most of the game. I hope your kids like this one as much as mine did! It can be played as a group, or as an individual filling all 4 mats.

Patriotic Kids Match Game



This game is much easier then any others in the pack. I made it specifically for Mini Cooper. It includes 8 matches-4 girls and 4 boys. For this one, I simply presented the game to her. If I were laying it out for a group, I would put self checking stickers on the backside.



She really loved finding the matches, but turns out that 8 matches were a little overwhelming for her. So, I narrowed it down to 4. First the girls.



Then the boys, then I mixed up 2 girls/2 boys etc and we played about 5 times before she was ready to move on.

S is for star sorting mat




No one has taken this off the shelf yet, so no action shots. It is a simple sorting mat for uppercase and lowercase letter S.

Counting puzzle


And this last one is a puzzle. Have your child put the flags in number order and it will create a picture. You may want to print this one on landscape, it seems to have cut off the side of mine when I printed on portrait. (Sorry still pretty new to this printable making thing).

I wanted to thank you all for the great response to the pack, I'm so excited that many of you are enjoying it! I hope to bring you more like this in the future.

Happy 4th of July!! and God Bless You!

Preschool Letter S & Letter M

This is our first week linking up with Preschool Creations and we are very excited. Up until now Mustang has been in Tot School, but she 'graduated.' Charger is still in Tot School, and we have a one room school house here, so you may see some repitition in the two posts. I didnt get a chance to post our learning for Mustang from last week so I though I would combine last week with this week.

Last week our letter was S and our theme was Snow.

I drew a capitol and lower case S and Mustang first placed snowman, snowflake, and star stickers in groups of six. Then she colored her S's. She doesnt always like to stay in the lines when she colors and I was so excited that she did this time.



She made an S collage by searching magazines for S words and then cutting them out and pasting them to the paper. She did all the cutting and pasting herself, and needed only a little help with the pictures. I was pleased!



We read Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton-One of my favorites!



Mustang transfered snowballs from one egg holder to another. I gave her a take and toss spoon to use and it was really too small. Check out the concentration-tongue and all!



We drew on our new Aquadoodle that Grandma got us for Christmas-thank you Grandma! It was covered very quickly, but both kids really loved it.



Santa found this awesome make your own calendar at the Dollar Tree. We put together January.




We played with snow in the sink, which you can read about here.



We made snowflakes, ate snowmen, and practiced our S's in our ABC book.




This week our letter was M and our theme was Monkeys, though we didnt do all that much monkey stuff.

For family game night we played Tumbling Monkeys that Mustang got from Aunt Becky for Christmas-Thank you!




On Tuesday we did our Montessori Trays.

Mustang practiced patterns with pipecleaner beading



She practiced lacing with this shoe I found at the dollar store a couple years ago



and then she practiced beginning sounds for letter M and S. I got this idea from Itty Bitty Love.




Wednesday we read 'The Mitten' by Jan Brett



We played a mitten toss game that I found on Totally Tots



I gave Mustang pairs of mittens that she had to clip together with clothes pins, another idea from Totally Tots.




Mustang painted with our new Dot Paints. I found the worksheet on Making Learning Fun.





Then we made our mouse craft which you can read about here.



On Thursday we read 'Five Little Monkeys' by Eileen Christelow



I used the retelling graphics from the 1+1+1=1 Five Little Monkeys Tot Pack on our flannel graph as we read the story. Mustang really liked putting the pieces up.



Then she practiced her spelling and word recognition with her new Melissa and Doug See and Spell



She also did her seat work and practiced her M's with our ABC book (shown earlier).

Friday was our fun day

We read Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton. Mustang really liked this story and I'm glad because it's one of my favorites!



She made a mitten which you can read about here.



And then we had a Masquerade complete with costumes, masks, music from our Veggie Tales DVD and musical instruments from our new Melissa and Doug Music box-thank you Aunt Aimee & Uncle Tay!





Over all, it was a great two weeks. I hope you enjoyed reading it. For more awesome preschool ideas check out the Preschool Corner from Homeschool Creations.

Tot School S is for Snow

Charger is 25 months, Birthday 11/07

After nearly a 2 month break, we are so excited to be back to school! We have made a few changes. We moved to a new house and a new area. We also graduated Mustang out of Tot School and into Preschool, so we will only be featuring Charger in our Tot School posts. I will be doing a seperate weekly post on Mustang. We do have a one room school house here, so many things are done together with different results being expected from each child. So if you read both posts you may see some repetition.

Our letter for the week was S


Our Theme was snow


We covered our letter S in stickers of snowmen, stars, and snowflakes. I pulled the sticker off the paper and then handed it to him to put on the S. Then he colored the S.




Charger transfered snowballs aka cotton balls from a bowl to an egg holder and then from one egg holder to the next. I gave him a spoon, which he used sometimes. He picked up the cotton ball and put it on the spoon and then just gave up on the spoon all together.




We read the book Katy and the Big Snow



Then Charger used his own tractor to shovel snow




We made a collage of S items. We looked through magazines and I helped Charger find pictures of S items. Then I cut them out and he helped me glue on the pictures. Then we went back over the S pictures. We found sweater, smile, seashell, sheep, sunglasses, snowman, snow, socks, skirt, and shoes.



We played with our new Aquadoodle. Thank you Grandma! And though the kids liked it, it did not take long at all for the entire mat to be blue.



That left us with a lot of extra school time on our hands and I had to come up with something quickly. So, I gave them a couple of empty moving boxes and let them play. They filled one box with our ball pit balls and had a home made ball pit. Pretty creative ;)



We played in the snow which you can read about here.





And ate snowmen for lunch which you can read about here.



We also made snowflakes that you can read about here.



Our sensory tub was full of seashells hidden in oatmeal. Charger got a shovel and bucket to look for the seashells, but the shovel was quickly taken away. He was using the shovel to shovel oatmeal onto the floor. Once he found all the seashells he spent a lot lof time hiding the shells in the sand. He kept saying 'hide hide.' It was pretty cute.



Charger put together Mini Cooper's new Sound puzzle from Melissa and Doug. Thank you Aunt A & Uncle T!



He also found matches that were the Same by playing Word World Memory from the Word World Tot Pack on 1+1+1=1.



I found Charger doing this Space puzzle on his own a lot this week. I was very surprised that he could handle a puzzle this complex. He got a number of puzzles like this one from Mrs. K and he LOVES them-thank you! Its all he does when he is left alone to play.

For more great ideas from Tot Schools all over the world check out 1+1+1=1. Thanks for checking us out!