I Scream - Nursery Rhyme Time

It's been ... a while.  But I love when others share their hard work and want to give back.  So I'm trying again.  This year, my pre-K and kinder kids are working together on learning some nursery rhymes.  We'll focusing on rhyming, memory work and FUN!  So the plan is: each week we'll have a new nursery rhyme to learn and have fun with!

Our first week of school we're doing "I Scream".

Monday: We'll read through our poem and find words that are the rhyme.
Tuesday: We'll read through our poem and then make a tissue paper ice cream cone, using a cone from this page as a base.
Wednesday: We'll read through our poem then put it together using large words.
Thursday: We'll read through our poem, then practice it from memory, then make ICE CREAM!
Friday: Practice our poem from memory and then recite it during Recitations.

Tot Spot

We've had a crazy couple of weeks... or more.  J's school boxes haven't been changed in a while.  But here's what's been in them...

An alphabet puzzle.  She recognizes her letter, as well as though of her siblings and parents.  And she's begun to say the pictures that are under the letters, so it's helping her vocabulary and speech as well (which I totally hadn't counted on, but greatly appreciate).

This wasn't in her boxes, but N was using salt to write her spelling words in one day and J wanted a turn to draw and play.  She loved it!  We now have a bag of used salt to pull out and play with!

J had a box with self-inking stamps.  They weren't used as much as I thought they would be...

She also had some beads (you can see them in the box in the pictures).  They were probably her favorite activity.  

Tot Spot... for Last Week

In one box "J" had our velcro sticks (craft sticks with velcro dots on the ends).  At first she wasn't sure what to do with them, but after a little guidance, she had fun!  Triangle was her favorite shape to make...

I picked up this shape puzzle at Target's dollar spot a while back.  I knew it would be on the easy side for her, but put it anyway so that we could work on some speech ("J" doesn't talk much.  She has a speech therapist that comes every other week to work/play with her).

A while back I saw these cute clips at IKEA.  I should have bought two sets!  "J"s task was to clip them onto the bowl.  She loved it when I first introduced it, but only pulled it out herself once.

"J" loves beads and stringing!  We've used these spools (thank you, DI!) many times and every time she loves them just as much.

"J"s last box had a paper doll.  This was definitely her favorite box of the week!  She would dress the doll up and then take her on outings all over the house!

Here's "J"s box all packed.  At the end of school, we pack it up and put it up on a high shelf.  She has four smaller boxes, her pencil box and a white board (and this week she had a puzzle, because it was incredibly flat and fit in!).

On Monday's I try to sit with her and show her what is in each of her boxes (one at a time), and how she can use them (but of course she's welcome to come up with her own ideas!).  During the week, at school time, she chooses a box, does the activity, then puts the pieces back in the box and chooses a different box.  (REALITY CHECK: that only happens about half the time.  The other half, she has boxes scattered all over our table and I have to remind her to clean them up before she can choose a different box.)

This is her pencil box.  She has a bingo marker (the orange lidded container), a dry erase marker, crayons, scissors and playdough.  The dry erase marker is for "drawing" on her white board, and also for different activities that I've laminated.

Tot Spot

I've renamed this weekly feature.  "Tot Tuesday" was so limiting... okay, okay!  It was very much misnamed!  "Tot Spot" is much more... flexible.  :)

So this week, "J" hasn't been much interested in school.  She starts with us, but doesn't last much longer than 10 minutes.  That's okay.  At least she knows the option is there for her.  Here are a couple of activities in her box this week:

This one was her favorite (as in, she spent 9 out of her 10 minutes doing this activity).  She first put the tees into the triangle, then balanced the marbles on top.  She was a bit distracting to "N" and "A" when the marbles went rolling all over...

This is the activity that took up the remaining minute of her interest in "doing school".  Stacking cubes on top of each other.  

Not pictured, but also in her box this week, she had an animal bingo game, but instead of playing it right, I had her match the cards to the pictures on the bingo mat.  Her other activity was gluing foam shapes and letters onto paper.  She did actually like that one, but I didn't get any pictures of it.

Tot Tuesday?

Maybe I should title this post "Tot Sunday".  At least it's here, right?

One of #3's boxes this week had pipe-cleaners, shoelaces and yarn, along with a canister of beads and a bowl.  I showed her how to pour a small amount of beads into the bowl, then then thread the beads from the bowl onto the item of her choosing.  The first day she really enjoyed stringing the beads.  After that, she enjoyed pouring the beads into the bowl, then back into the canister.  Over and over.  Very carefully.  Works for me!

Another box had a number puzzle in.  After the first day she didn't choose this box again.  I can understand why.  The pieces don't fit really well.  I haven't liked it since the first time I used it (with #2).  I think I'll yard sale this puzzle...

This activity wasn't in her boxes, but was one that we did together.  #3 can sort by colors like a champ, so this time we did it by shape.  When we came to a shape that didn't have a place, I would ask her what we should do with them.  She would then designate a spot.  She thoroughly enjoyed this activity.  We'll probably see it again in the near future...

Tot Tuesday Beginnings

I have a goal to post what "J" is doing, so that when "S" gets to be the age she is now, I don't have to figure it out all over again.  So, this hasn't been all we've done, but it's a start...

Clothes pins on a cup.  These were mini-clothespins, so they came apart more easily.  She like the activity, though.

I put a bunch of containers with lids in one of her boxes.  She loved it!  It was her #1 choice all week.

Jenga blocks.  She sorted, stacked and built.  Not a favorite, but it was chosen a few times during the week.

Transferring Water...

with medicine droppers.  The kidlets had been carrying them around, playing all morning.  When J went to down to nap, I set up a quick activity for transferring water, adding food coloring for fun.

When the kidlets started mixing colors, we expanded a bit to allow for more color mixing and not so much fighting, as well as maintaining a true container for each color.  They had a great time and only stopped because J was waking up and I didn't want her to get involved this time.  When we do it outside (next Spring/Summer) she will love it!

These ice cube trays (from the Target $ spot) were a great size, having lots of holes for a lot of color mixing.  The only down side was that because of the colored bottoms, they were hard to see what color had really been mixed.  

Sidewalk Paint

I saw this idea over at Shannon's Tot School and, since our girls have had similar interests in the past, thought I'd give it a try.  

I mixed up a double batch (2 cups water, 2 1/2 cups cornstarch, and a few drops of dish soap), then separated it into the our craft muffin tin.  Using our 8 colors of food coloring, I was able to make 12 different colors for the kiddos to paint with (one I left white).

It was so pretty!  I found some of my less favored paint brushes and let the kiddos have at it.

"A" told me this was a fish and the spots above it were the bubbles.  I love that he's started to create and not just scribble!

"N", who I thought would love this, since she loves all things art (as long as it's open-ended), lasted 10 minutes (maybe).  Not a big hit with her.

However, "J" loved it!  We were outside for well over an hour and she was constantly painting - though not always the sidewalk!  After washing she had some color left on her legs, but it only lasted a day or two.  And most importantly, she had fun!

Overall, we will definitely do this again, if only for "J"!  And maybe next time I'll bring out some paper.  The texture of the paint when it dried was chalky and that would be fun to feel and rub into paper.

I'm not sure how it washed off.  We went out of town the next day and apparently it rained A LOT during the 5 days we were gone.  What I do know, is that there was no sign of paint on the sidewalk (or children's legs) when we got home.

Birds

We've been learning about birds.  In a very laid-back, easy going way.  We've read books and done fun activities.  We took some things from the Bird Packs found here.  I pull out 3 activities a day and we rotate through them.  Some are too easy for N and others are too difficult for A, and J doesn't really have a clue about any of them, but she likes to be included.

We had fun with the bird watching idea found here.  I laminated the birds and the guide, so that we could do the activity multiple times.  The kiddos had fun making the binoculars, but didn't really use them.  The had fun trying to find all of the birds though, and marking them off on their guides.

I made them a new felt board, but forgot to put it up until today.  J has taken to just taking it all off and scattering it around the house.  We'll see how it goes...

We've read a lot of books about birds and the kiddos are all noticing the birds around the neighborhood.  A can recognize robins and finches, and N is especially excited when she spots a quail.  It's been fun to get back to doing school, and have some fun together learning.

Grow Capsules

I recently purchased some grow capsules (I'm not sure that's what they're called, but I hope you know what I mean) at the target dollar spot, thinking they'd be fun to use with our animal school we've been doing.  Today we had some antsy kiddos, so decided to use them.  

I showed them the capsules and told them that they were going to turn into sea creatures, and then we made a list of possible animals they could be.

We then placed each capsule in it's own muffin tin filled with warm water and watched to see what they were going to be.  All the kiddos loved watching it!  Afterwards, we revisited out list to see if we had guessed/predicted any animals correctly.  Fun, quick, frugal and easy!  N has already come up with several plans of how we're going to use the sponges!

Our New System - Week 2

"N" recently started kindergaten at a local homeschool coop.  She goes twice a week, with me teaching her class (k-2) one of the days.  The day that I teach, "A" goes to the preschool class.  On the days she stays home, we still have work to do, so I came up with this workbox-ish system that has been working well for us (for all of 2 weeks).  "N" and "A" both have their drawers with activities.  Before "N" can do her drawers, she needs to write in her journal and do a math lesson with me, and then do her math workbook (the co-op uses Saxon, and she's in the math 1 book).

"N"s drawers are on the left.  This week she has: 

• Tens and Ones
• I made up some numbers onto squares of paper and gave her a tens and ones chart, along with 4 rods of tens and 10 ones.  She chooses a number, then illustrates it with her manipulatives.
• stamping words
• she's not doing spelling per se, but I have old spelling lists from when I taught first grade that I gave her so that she can choose words to stamp.  She mostly just does the family's names, which is great!
• chalk
• We have a chalkboard that we made out of a cake pan and chalkboard paint.  "N" loves all things art, so this is just a drawer for her to have fun with.

"A"s drawers are on the right.  This week he's doing 

• Find My Name
• Last week in the preschool they were working on recognizing their names, so I wanted to tie it with his home "school".  I printed 5 of his name and one each of the rest of the family's names and he puts them into 2 columns.  He needs a LOT of help with this activity.
• circle stickers onto dots
• This is good for practicing fine motor skills.  "A" loves stickers!
• magnets
• I put some magnets on a cake pan and he plays with them.  So far he's lined them up by color, put them around the edge of the cake pan, and figured out that all magnets don't hook to each other!

When they get done with their drawers, they get to use the sensory bin.  This week (and last) they have wheat, with a variety of scoops, funnels and containers.  The red tablecloth underneath the bin is for containing some of the spilled wheat.  It's worked really well.  And both kids enjoy using the brooms to sweep up what doesn't land on the tablecloth.  A child-size broom is on my list to buy...

 Here "A" is doing his circle stickers onto dots activity.  I figured he would do on page a day and move on.  Not so!  The first day he did all four pages!

This is the sheet "A" used for his stickers.

Sponge Play

Sponges and water make a great combination and there are probably a thousand different ways to play with them.  Here are some of our ideas:

• Transfer water from one container to another, squeezing the water out of the sponge.
• Throw them onto the sidewalk to make "Sponge Paintings"
• "Paint" the sidewalk
• Wash your bike

Please tell me what you do with sponges and water!

Ponds

N wanted to school about snails.  I took the liberty of expanding our topic a little (mainly for my benefit. I didn't want to do snails for an entire week.  And it's good I did, because we got a little busy and this unit stretched into 3 weeks!)  Part-way though she requested a "binder" (folder, as a lapbook), so we ended up putting some of the stuff in there and the other stuff didn't get in.  Oh, well!

Snail Lapbook

• Snail enemy wheel
• Snail fact graduated book
• Story starter

Pond Preschool Pack

• Word tracing
• find the word in the story
• Graphing - N really enjoyed this.  We said that the animals were racing to get to the top.

Pond Facts Cards - N is crazy about facts.  So I made these cards, printed them on cardstock and cut them apart.  We lined up the animal cards, then N read the facts and decided which animal it was talking about.  I told her that each animal had 2 cards.  She used these herself on other days, so I'm taking that as  a 'like' activity!

Snail Art - This does require live snails.  And baby powder (or talc powder or flour), and black paper (I cut ours to 4x6 and it was a great size!).

 Place your snail(s) on the paper and wait for them to crawl off (or use A's method and move them off).

 Shake powder of your choice onto their trail.  Remove excess (we were outside so we just let the wind take it away).  Place snail back onto paper and repeat.

A loved this project!  I think it was mostly for the shaking, but hey, I'll take it!

Didn't get to but planned on:

Duck Painting

Penguins

I know that penguins are a slightly odd thing to learn about as summer is beginning, but N was interested and wanted to learn, so I said, "Why not?"  We ended up (both of us!) learning a lot and having some fun.  Here's what we did and used:

Library books - again, not any specific title, we just took all that looked interesting and on a level that N could understand.  We even found a few that she could read herself!

Lapbook Lessons -

• penguin life cycle - really good!  N liked to turn the paper around to see one part at a time.  We glued the bottom part into her lapbook.
• math file folder game - I have to admit, this was not my favorite.  The subtraction fact pictures were hard to understand and really confused poor N.  I should have looked a it a little better, especially for a kiddo who has done very little subtraction. The addition part was great, though, so maybe next time I'll just do that part.
• penguin label - Very good.  It was a good way to introduce new vocabulary (beak and bill being the same, webbed feet and why penguins would need them).

My Penguin Book - We used this as a first day, introductory, see what you know activity.  It didn't have much in it.  Sadly, we haven't finished it (and probably won't) to write what we learned.  

Penguin Poems and Songs - We didn't do the puppets, but the songs were a hit!

Word Search - N loves highlighting, so she loved this!

Easy Crossword Puzzle - this was our first crossword puzzle, and it was a good one to start with.  N had a hard time at first with the words sharing letters, but she seemed to catch on.  We'll be doing more crosswords.

Penguin Fact Cards - I made these up.  Some are true and some are false.  N read each one and we sorted true/false.  Then, we threw away the false ones and made a pocket in her lapbook for the true facts.  She enjoyed pulling these out and re-reading them.

We also made fingerprint penguins!  They turned out so cute!  A had fun making the fingerprints, and I drew on their body parts.  N had fun for about 10 minutes, then she was ready to make fingerprints with A.  Apparently we need to do more fingerprinting....

We (okay, really the kiddos) slid like penguins down our couch cushions.  They did it every chance they could!

We waddled like penguins!

Things we didn't do, but planned to:

Penguin from an Egg

Penguin Maze

Penguins

Butterfly Week

N is REALLY, INCREDIBLY interested in butterflies.  So I planned a Butterfly Unit.  We did a lapbook for the first time and I was impressed.  I really liked having it all in one place.  Not everything we did went into the lapbook, but a lot of it did.  And I've seen her looking through it still, even though we're done with the unit.  I originally planned it for one week, but she was having such a good time and loving school so much, that we did it for two weeks.  N could have done more, but I was out of ideas!  So we've moved on.

We checked out a million some books from the library about butterflies.  Some were books for N to read, and others were Mommy Read books.  The titles don't really matter, but having a lot of books does!  See what your library has and use them.

We did our art projects in the morning, while A could do them with us.  Then we did our school activities while he and J were napping.  It was the first time that I incorporated A in N's school, and I really liked how it worked out.  He didn't learn nearly what N did, but he was exposed to a lot of it.  Maybe something will stick.

Homeschool Share had a lot of material.  We used the Butterflies Eat Shape Book, Butterfly Math, Butterfly Defenses, Butterfly Shape book, and Butterfly Diagram.

Rhyming Butterflies - Download and print this file, cut the butterflies out (I did squares around them with my paper cutter.  It was incredibly easier than cutting out each one), then cut in half.  N had fun finding the rhymes, then we played a "Catch a Butterfly" (A butterfly version of "Go Fish").  Then we put them inside a pocket in her lapbook, so that she could have them when she wanted them.

I used the amazing handwriting worksheet maker to write some butterfly words (butterfly, caterpillar, egg, life cycle, chrysalis, legs, wings), then N traced them.

We did a painting activity.  I cut out butterflies, and N was instructed to only paint them on one side, then fold it in half (it was already scored, since I folded them in half to cut them out) and rub it to get the paint onto the other side.  We called it, "making it symmetrical".  We learned that you really have to blob the paint onto the first side, or there won't be any to rub onto the other side.  

We watercolored "butterfly" pasta, then let it dry.  Then, we glued our butterflies onto blue paper to let them fly in the sky.  I was impressed with how well the pasta took watercolors.

Butterfly Life Cycle - I couldn't find a fill-in-able Butterfly Life Cycle that I liked, so I made this one.  The words are there, but N drew the pictures.  We glued it inside her Butterfly Folder.

We made a handprint butterfly.  It also had a TP tube chrysalis, but the chrysalis didn't really work.  So we took our butterflies and flew!

Tool Time

We had a great week talking about TOOLS.  It all started when I found Turtle and Snake Fix It and the library, and, having absolutely no plan for school, I crash planned around this book.

The first day N read the book and I helped her.  I was surprised to see how little I had to help.  She has become an amazing reader!

The next day, after reading the book, she did a worksheet that I made (which has since disappeared from the computer!), that had pictures of the five different tools used across the middle, with the sound they made in a line across the top and the tools names in a line across the bottom (I hope that makes sense!  I'm still looking for the file.  If I find it, I'll add it).  She drew a line from each tool to it's sound and it's name.

The next day we read the book again.  Then, I had made tool picture cards, which included all sorts of tools - a stove, a screwdriver, a vacuum, a blender, a loofa, a blowdryer, lawn mower, etc.  I covered them in contact paper and we sorted them, using yarn circles.  We actually ended up doing a Venn Diagram, because she thought that few needed to be in both circles.  Our sorts were used a lot/not used much, inside/outside.  N isn't much of a sorter (she does well, but has zero fun.  And school's supposed to be fun).

Our final day on tools, we read the book (of course), then used our tool pictures to play Tool Charades.  N and I took turns pulling a tool picture of a container and pantomimed using it.  N loved it!  We need to work on her skills (it's good that I knew what all the tools were!), but she had a lot of fun.

I'm really sorry that I can't find my pages.  I'll add them if I find them.  Here is another book that we read during our week of tools.

Happy Tooling!