Birthday Fun

R turned 3 a few weeks ago, and I planned a day of fun, with a lot of learning thrown in! We had a great day together and the addition of M&M's made R's day. :)


From Homeschool Creations, I laminated the tracing sheet. R loves doing these sheets, and we have not done it for a while, so he was happy to do it.

We also ordered the balloons by size, from the same pack.

I used some birthday pictures found on Google to make a cutting sheet for R. He has been into cutting lately, and can now cut independently. 

I printed a couple of M&M's sorting mats from Making Learning Fun. R loved this activity. He wanted to do it several times, and asked for it over the next few days!!

I let R ice and decorate a cupcake. He was looking forward to this, he helped me make the cupcakes. I let him loose with some 100's and 1000's, M&M's and some cachous. This is what he created:

Lastly, we did a Roll and Graph activity from 2 Teaching Mommies. R like doing these, and usually we only go to 5, but this day, he wanted to keep going. R used Christmas pom poms with tinsel through them as the markers. We recently got the photo cubes, and we both love them. They make this type of activity much easier for me to prepare. R loves throwing these dice and running after them to see what he rolled. It is also a great way for us to involve M (aged 1) in our learning activities. He rolls the dice and R adds the counter to the graphing sheet.

R also filled in the Cupcake Observation sheet as he ate the cupcake he decorated. I really like the this idea, and R did to. We discussed each section, and R decided and marked the sheet.

All in all, we had a fun day with lots of learning!

Thanks for reading.

Elmer Birthday Cake and Crafts

R has really taken a liking to the 'Elmer' series of books since we borrowed "Elmer and the Rainbow" from the library a few months ago. I asked at the library if they had any others, and the kind librarian put some on 'request' for us, so we have had a steady stream of 'Elmer' books for a while now.

When R was choosing his birthday cake, he asked for Elmer. So I got my husband to sketch a picture of Elmer from the book cover. I made a round cake and used the drawing to cut out the pieces we did not need. I could not make gray icing, so I added plain icing to the cake and made a grid with an icing pen. Then it was a matter of 'simply' colouring in the squares with the different coloured icings. I say simply - because, once I found a method, it was quite simple to do. It was time consuming though, taking about two hours to ice the whole cake.

It turned out quite well, I was really proud of my efforts when it was finally finished.

We have also done a few craft activities:

This is a picture I found on Google and R painted it with Do-A-Dot markers (which R has fallen in love with in recent times)

Another Google picture find, collaged with small coloured squares.

We have done a couple of other things, but I cannot find the photo's. I will update if/when I locate them.

Thanks for reading.