O is for owls

This week at Mommy School was so much fun!  I admit I wish that O is for owls could continue for another week or so!  Owls are perfect for the beginning of the fall season, and I chose the theme partly for me and partly for Little Man.  He knows owls and loves to "hoo" his little heart out!  And what can I say?!  Owls just make me happy, too!

Plus, I like to fit my themes and concepts based on what Little Man knows and loves.  He recognizes the letter O.  (Funny enough, I would always tell him the "O is for olives", and that kind of stuck!  He finds an "O" and says "olives!")  He also recognizes the color green... not sure why.  But this is why I chose the concepts for the week.  I love the flexibility of adapting to Little Man's interests!

Before I show off all of our fun this week, I wanted to show you how I structure my lesson plans.  Each day, I try to be sure to hit all of my concepts:  The letter of the week, color/shape, number, nursery rhyme, theme activity, and some kind of story.  You can download my plan by clicking here.

We started out our week reading lots of books about owls!  We practiced flying around the house with our finest "hoo's"!  We also watched videos of real owls hooting on You-Tube.  Some of our favorite owl books were:

* White Owl, Barn Owl by Nicola Davies

* Cock-a-Doodle-Hoooo! by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom

* Good Night, Owl! by Pat Hutchins

* Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace.

* Owl Babies by Martin Waddell.

* The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear.

* We made an owl lunch using lunch meat, cheese, crackers, and olives.  This was a hit, and we made it a couple of times during the week!

* We made owl cookies.  (Stay tuned for a post about these next week!)

* We made owl s'mores.

* We created this O is for Owl craft.

* Little Man and his cousin made owls using pine cones.

* We made an owl puppet.  We collected leaves outside to use for the owl's wings.

* We used different colors and shapes of buttons to form eyes of an owl.

* We used felt shapes to create an owl.

* We practiced "One Little Owl" flannel board story throughout the week.

* We did an owl counting game using Easter eggs and a basket as a nest.  Different owls had different numbers on their bodies, telling us how many eggs to place in the basket.

We did some other activities with the letter O, too!

* O is for ocean.  We read ocean books, did our ocean I-Spy bag, watched Finding Nemo, and played with our ocean in a bottle.  (You can make your own by filling a plastic bottle with equal parts of water, oil, and add blue food coloring.  I also added a bit of sand to my bottle.)

* O is for octopus.  We made an octopus craft using a toilet paper tube and some blue paper.  We sang "In an Octopus' Garden."

* We found other things that were the same shape as the letter O, like this exercise ball holder.

* O is for olives.  We made English muffin pizzas with olives, Little Man's favorite ingredient!

Also this week...

* O is for oranges.  We ate oranges for a snack!

* O is for opposites.  We learned about opposites using opposites cards.  

* We made an "O" on the floor with painter's tape and played Ring Around the Rosies on it.  Little Man LOVED this!  We also did a bean bag toss on the "O" on the floor.

* We used window crayons to practice writing the letter O on our windows!

We had A LOT of fun with the color green this week!!!  

* We went on a nature walk and made a box full of green things we found.

* We used our Five Green and Speckled Frogs to sing the song all week.

* I made lime slime jello, and let it set up with matchbox cars inside.  Then, Little Man had a sensory experience with the lime slime jello!  I had the hardest time convincing him to get dirty here!

* We talked about how Apple Jacks looked like the letter "O."  Then, we sorted them into green and orange and made a bracelet with green Apple Jacks.

* We played Red light/Green light.  I think we need some practice with stopping on red!  :)

* We graphed all of the green cars we saw during the week.

I think Little Man's favorite green activity was having the entire family dress in the color green!  He also enjoyed his green-themed Muffin Tin Meal!

* We traced the number one and placed one pompom on the one.  We used index cards to count just "one" car.

* We used green glitter glue to color the numeral one.

* We did several fun "one" songs and games, including a train rhyme, helicopter game, and castle song.  In the picture above, Little Man is enjoying riding to the train rhyme.

Thanks for the fun e-mails and comments!!  I am thrilled to hear that some of you are starting up your own Mommy Schools at home.  Awesome!  I bet your kids are loving it!