Letter of the Week - M

 Another week another letter!

This week we have been doing M, I chose this letter as we had a trip already planned for this week (see later on!) that fitted perfectly.

We began with our letter M, it gets hung up in our living room and referred to all week, and created a Mountain M complete with cotton wool snow on the top. I googled some images of mountains and Aidan came up with the bluey colours based on these images.

Concentrating!

Adding the snow

This was followed by making a things beginning with M poster where Aidan sticks pictures I have already cut out of magazines in anyway he wishes to make a pretty poster. I like to try and do this as much as possible as I think it gives him a real concept of how the letter fits into life.

On Wednesday I made a Sensory play activity for Aidan using cheap rice I had dyed to be colourful and pretty! It was so easy to do, just add rice to a tub a few squirts of alcohol hand gel a few drops of the food colouring and shake! Once you are happy with the colour, just add more colouring until you are, leave it to dry in a cooling oven or in a sunny place. In this batch I added Glitter and its not something I will repeat!! Whilst it looked lovely the glitter made it really difficult to clean up at the end, even though I had placed a plastic mat down to catch the worst the glitter seemed to have drifted but the rice itself was simple to sweep up.

In the tray I placed some metal objects such as a spoon, keys, a car, coins as well as some non metallic ones like a leaf, rubber letters, fir cone. I then gave Aidan a magnet and we spent time seeing which were magnetic and which were not, I also had him turn his back and shut his eyes whilst I hid a metal object in the rice and he had to locate it just with the magnet.  Once this was finished I let him just play with it! Spooning it into a tub, pushing it, piling it up, pushing the car through it.

Of course it wasn't long before Feet played a part in the play too!

He played for such a long time with this activity, I was so surprised, and I will definitely be repeating similar in a few weeks time.

We had fun playing with Moustaches on Thursday! I made some cardboard moustaches and cut them out, Aidan found it funny to model them and then look at himself in a mirror, we then played a matching game with them.

Music was also represented on Thursday when we listened to LOTS of different types of music. I asked Aidan to dance in the way the music made him feel and guided him to it being fast or slow, happy or sad sounding etc. Now when I say LOTS of different music I mean LOTS! Amongst others we listened to Classical, Bangra, Irish, Pop, Rock (Daddy was thrilled to hear his Son being schooled in the ways of Motorhead!), Reggae, Salsa and I even threw a bit of censored rap in there too! I found all the music on good old youtube and just sat with lots of tabs open, once he had strutted his stuff we talked about which was his favourite and why he liked it.

 

On Friday I printed this wonderful Mickey Mouse Pre-School pack from 1+1=1, Mickey is VERY popular in our house so the opportunity was not to be missed. The pack includes, colouring, counting, cutting practice, tracing and others all in a fun way.

Aidan liked the tracing and I think he did really well, you can definitely tell what (most!) of the shapes are. 

I perhaps misunderstood one of the counting activities but easily made some mouse head stickers which Aidan then placed on the sheet to represent each number, eg 5 stickers in the 5 column.

We watched a few funny Magic tricks on Youtube and then made Magic Wands using rolled up card, stickers and colouring pens, Aidan liked practising his new magic words, abracadabra!!

On Saturday M was for Magic! Ages ago I booked for us to go to Birmingham to see Mickeys Magic Show, we all really enjoyed it. We kept it as a surprise for Aidan all the way there and even managed to convince him that the surprise we had driven for an hour for was actually Fish, Chips and beans in a pub! There were the usual Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald, lots of the Disney Princesses and also the Mad Hatter, the characters were helped by 2 "REAL" magicians. Our favourite trick was when they sawed 2 ladies, one in red one in blue,  in half and put them back together with different legs on! There was also levitating and several others that left Chris and I wondering how it was done, let alone Aidan! No photography was allowed in the show so just click on the link and enjoy the video :-)

Waiting for the Magic to begin!

I couldn't do M week without some Monsters being involved! So we created crafty Monsters on Sunday and then watched Monster Inc together.

We ate:

Marshmallows

Mushrooms

Muffins

Milk

Mangoes

We watched:

Monsters Inc

Curious George (well he's a Monkey!)

Other Activity's I had planned but didn't get round to:

Make Musical Instruments

Make a Medal (might do this during Olympics)

Visit a Maze

Sort Large and Small Marshmallows

Look at the Moon each night, observing colour and shape

Measure Things

Use a Magnifying glass

Make a Monkey Mask