July Activities Part One: Of Shopping and Home grown foods

Lets go Shopping!  - Dramatic Play / Money / Community Helpers / Math

Needed Items:

• Saved boxes from old groceries
• Saved bags from previous trips to store
• Tables (already had)
• Shopping cart *optional* (already had)
• Pretend Money ($1.00 at Dollar Store)

How To:

• During Nap I placed all of the boxes and empty jugs that I had saved and lined them up on three tables pushed together.
• I placed the money tray and his toy computer with mouse at the front as a register and scanner.
• Placed his toy car at the door and the shopping cart at the entrance of the shop.
• I went shopping first to serve as a basic guide then stepped back and let them take their own trips!
• They had so much fun! 

Here we see Chandler getting into his car with Cassie, his baby. He was careful to buckle her in her car-seat first. He waved and told me he would see me when he got home from the store.

 He had his toy money in his pocket and he showed it to Cassie after he got her in the shopping cart. 

 He took his time picking out all the items he needed from the store. 

 Then it was time to pay for his purchase. 

 All bagged up and ready to go. 

(I know bad green momma! But all my reusable bags were in use!)

 Next it was time for him to be the cashier. He started using the mouse as a scanner on his own. What a great use of creativity!  He also got his art smock to be used as a vest to show he worked there.

 Making change.

 Thank you have a great day!

Where does food come from?  - Science / Community Helpers / Cooking

Needed Items:

• One ear of unshucked corn
• A few pieces of uncut okra
• A few pieces of uncut squash
• A handful of unbroken pole beans.
• A can of each food mentioned above
• Total expense. $3.64

How To:

• I set up the table you will see at nap time. When they woke up we discussed what they thought each thing was and where it had come from. We used our senses to smell, touch and taste the uncooked food and later do the same once our meal was cooked. It was a great chance for open ended questions.

This was the table I had set up. It was a great chance to talk about where food comes from.

 Cutting Okra under -VERY- close supervision.

 I cut the squash since it doesn't give easy like okra. He laughed as some of the squash was smooth and other portions were very rough. He said he liked the smell of it but it felt slimey.

 Shucking Corn! He was so tickled by the silk. He kept asking why the corn grew hair.

TADA! He found the corn! 

 He helped me wash the food and we had all that we prepared for lunch that day! YUM!

Here is my favorite picture of the 4th of July

June Activities - Part 2, of Pet rocks and Project based learning

What a wonderful way to end out our first month doing a home preschool! Chandler has had so much fun and to tell you the truth - So have I! It has been a delightful challenge to come up with something new and exciting for each new day as we learn and grow together. I wanted to share our activities for the rest of the month of June with you. If you try them with your children, please - LET ME KNOW! I would love to know how they enjoyed it! 

PUFFY CLOUD LETTERS - LITERACY / SENSORY / SCIENCE!

Needed Items:

• Large bowl
• Can of shaving cream
• Scrapbook letters
• Bottle of glue
• Popsicle sticks
• Square of poster-board or card-board.

How to:

• Mix shaving cream with glue in bowl. I use a 3 to 1 ratio when mixing, with three parts shaving cream.
• Use the Popsicle sticks to mix them together into a foamy froth.
• Use sticks to make little poofy piles - they will spread a bit so give some space.
• Gently put the stickers on the 'cloud'  and let dry over night.
• They should feel like a marshmallow in the morning, but don't wait to long or they will fizzle away.
• Grab your kiddo and make a game of calling out or drawing letters and letting your kid poke or smash the cloud. NOT a messy activity, because the glue keeps it all together! We had a blast!

Finished project

Chandler touching the clouds!

 I think he enjoyed himself, don't you?

MAGNADOODLE ART - FINE MOTOR / ART / LITERACY

Needed Items:

• Magnadoogle
• Child
• Creativity!

How to:

• Just let them draw! 

He drew Batman and Robin. I love the detail beginning to show up in his art. How batman how cowl ears and robin has a 'mask' over his eyes. Notice they both have capes!

 FROZEN EGG - SCIENCE!

Needed Items:

• Egg
• Container, just in case it explodes

How to:

• Place an egg in the back of your fridge if it gets cold enough to freeze or the freezer.
• Make sure its in the carton in case it explodes before the contents are completely frozen.
• When you see the shell crack, take it out and examine it. Let the kids look at the yellow inside through the cracks and discuss why nothing is oozing out.
• Gently peel the shell back from the egg and invite the children to touch or hold the frozen egg. Look at it closely. Can you see the yoke? Is it all just gold? What happens if you leave it out?

Chandler poked it with his finger but did not want to hold it because it felt slippery.

He was amazed and tried to crack the egg before the shell came off.

He also liked the smell ... 

not sure why :-)

MY VERY FIRST PENPAL - FINE MOTOR / SCIENCE / TRANSPORTATION!

Needed Items:

• Paper
• Markers
• Envelope 
• Stamp
• Address of a place to send your letter.

How to:

• Allow children to draw a picture or a story for their penpal
• Write out what they would like to say and if they are writers, let them address it.
• Make children part of the process. Let them take it to the mailbox.
• We also made a chart and sent out a few letters to guess how long it would take for each letter to arrive. The letters in our state took 2 days. We are still waiting on the one to his cousin in Florida.

 Drawing a picture of MacKenzie

This is his finished picture. He informed me that she had on a pink dress, pink shoes, pink arms, pink hands and a pink head. Her eyes are blue, her ears are blue, her belly is blue and her neck is blue. Her teeth are grey and she has blonde pigtails. She is also wearing one of his shoes as well as hers because he wanted to share with her.

Because he couldn't draw himself beside her, but wanted them together - he drew himself on the back.

Signing his name at the end of the letter he dictated to me.

His letter. He wrote her name and his!

Licking the envelope - he didn't care to much for the taste :-)

And into the mailbox it went! This was also a great time to work on road safety!

LOW COST MAGNETIC - NUMBER AWARENESS AND LITERACY!

Needed Items:

• .99 cent ABC magnets
• .00 cent Number magnets
• Cookie sheet from the kitchen
• little bowl with ABCs and NUMBERS drawn on it - I used upcycled bojangles containers.

How to:

• You can do various lead activities, but since he has a good awareness I just offered him the option and stepped back and let him set his own path to discovery. He didn't let me down!

We haven't  really written out any addition but we have been talking about it while adding food to the cart at the store, or feeding the animals. 2 scoops plus 1 scoop means  Snowflake gets three scoops etc. I was in the kitchen when he came to me all excited and wanted to show me what he had done. This honestly blew my mind, I am not sure where he got the symbols right as I only scribbled it out a few times to show him what they looked like - but here this was! I was one proud Momma!

Next he put all the numbers in order.

And sorted them by color.

PAINTED PAPER PLATE TURTLE - ART / SCIENCE / LITERACY / FINE MOTOR!

Needed Items:

• Green paint (and white if you want a lighter green)
• Green construction paper
• Scissors
• Bottle of glue
• Paper plate
• Googley eyes.

How to:

• Let children cut up green paper into small pieces
• Gather the pieces into a small bowl to one side
• Let children paint half a paper plate green.
• Let children glue the green pieces onto the shell and talk about the plated design of a real turtle shell
• Let children glue pre-cut out legs, tail and head to the back of the plate.
• Glue googley eye onto the head
• Write out the letter T or have them write the letter T and add it to shell.
• Enjoy!

We found this little guy during outdoor play. 

They were very excited to look, touch and talk about him.

This is what I mean by learning on their excitement.

We hadn't planned anything turtle related - but upon this discovery they loved

the idea of making a turtle!

Painting the shell

Adding glue

Gluing down the paper he had cut earlier.

Finished turtle!

TIE-DYE MILK - SCIENCE!

Needed Items:

• Tray or plate with raised sides. You can also  use a pie plate
• Milk - Room temperature works best
• Liquid food coloring
• Drop of dish soap

How to:

• Pour milk into container - let stand til milk is room temp
• Let children add drops of food coloring to milk - Don't mix them.
• Then add one drop of dish soap and watch the colors swirl!.

The set up. Next we added drops of food coloring.

Then with one drop of Dawn - SWOOSH! The colors swirl together! 

If you are wondering how or why this works by the way - Its the power of dawn :-) 

Basically the soap breaks up the fatty acids in the milk causing the movement. 

PET ROCK - ART / FINE MOTOR!

Needed Items:

• Smooth River rocks (ours came from the dollar store with lots left over for other activities)
• Acrylic paint
• Q-Tips
• Googley eyes
• Cardstock

How to:

• Invite the children to paint with the Q-Tips.
• Add eyes when done
• Make a three sided house with cardstock and invite your child to decorate it
• Name the rock and let them enjoy their new house!.

 Getting started

Painting our new pet

Just add eyes, I drew the smiles on with a sharpie.

Design a house and give him a name!

 The smaller rock he made for his pen pal and we will mail it on our next letter.

BAG SORTING - MATH / SCIENCE / FINE MOTOR!

Needed Items:

• Grouping cards (I got these for a dollar at walmart or you can print your own)
• Brown paper bag

How to:

• I taped the word of the group and an example on each bag.
• I did the first few cards with him and then let him run with it. 
• Simple or as hard as you want to make it - Absolutely an activity that can grow with your child!

He had a blast doing this, and started turning them over to create his own matching game.

I heard him sounding out the words while he worked,

 so maybe next time I'll skip the pictures on the bag to add an extra challenge.

 SORTING BY COLOR IN EGG CARTONS - MATH / FINE MOTOR!

Needed Items:

• Old Egg Carton
• Acrylic paint
• Pom poms
• Tongs

How to:

• Paint the inside of each space with acrylic paint to match the color of pom-poms.
• Use Tongs to pick up each pom-pom and place it in the matching space.
• I can not stress how many times I have used these tongs and these pom poms I got for .88 cents at the store. It is all about thinking outside of the box! You can teach your child for next to nothing don't get tricked into buying the high end materials in teacher catalogs - lets face it, kids are creative - we should be too!

He nudged a few together that were the same color.

He wanted to pick up more than one at a time.

Got it!

We ended our month of June with a water day!

This is my muscle man showing off how strong he is!

I also created a really cute job chart for him this week but I think I will make another post for that. This one got a little long! Remember to check back each Tuesday to see what learning activities we have done that week. 

June Highlights - Part 1, of Bird-feeders and Breakfast

Since our first official start of our Pre-Kindergarten / Kindergarten program started on June 1st,  I thought I would just share a few highlights of our few weeks and start posting weekly updates in July.

 I try to include Chandler is as many of our daily activities as possible. I find he delights in playing the important roles of animal keeper to chef. Here he is cracking eggs for breakfast. He was so delighted when he managed not to lose any bits of shell into the bowl!

One of the favorite toys has been our magnadoodle. His drawings of people have come a long way from a circle with 2 legs and 2 eyes. This is Batman and Robin. I loved the amount of detail he put into this from memory. Notice that Batman has pointy cowl ears and a cape while Robin's cape is shorter and flows behind him?  I had never see him drawn circles with dots for eyes like he did for Robin so I wonder if this was his attempt at a mask or a new style of drawing eyes? Either way, its very cute!

When we were outside in our classroom garden he noticed that some of the leaves had holes in them from bugs nibbling away at the leaves. He asked what we could do about it and I said we could make something to keep the bugs off,  but birds would help to eat them too.  He leaped at this idea and made it his mission to help bring birds to our yard. To do this I found a wonderful bird feeder craft. I cut out  a large hole on the side of the milk judge and let him paint the jug with acrylic paint.

Then we went outside to gather leaves and small twigs

He glued the leaves, and a few star stickers to the jug and I covered the jug with modge-podge and and secured the lid with duct-tape. I took a simple spoon and wrapped it with the same tape before sticking it into the jug below the hole for a perch. He loved counting the scoops of seeds to put into his feeder.  Now we draw all the birds that we see come to the feeder! Its an on going project and a lot of fun with many chances for expansion.

 I normally HATE ditto sheets or worksheets of any kind but Chandler found this in one of his coloring books and wanted to do it, so I welcomed his desire to have a place to practice his letters. I always keep out plain paper, construction paper and coloring books for any option in our art center. He did a wonderful job and I am very proud of him!

We love a good chance to get a little messy and finger painting was that option today! I started out with four dots that I created and then put six paints out for him to figure it out and finish the pattern. He didn't struggle with this at all, so we may start moving to 4 or 5 sequenced patterns next.

Even though he only needed four fingers he insisted on using a new finger each time because he wanted to give me a "colorful high 5"! Messy but so worth it!

He had so much fun with this project I know we will be doing another very soon with paints and patterns!

 We have had a lot of rainy days so we decided to do some "science-magic". I took five empty containers  and let the kids pick drops of food coloring for each bowl. Some just had red, or blue while others put different colors in the same bowl. We marked on the bowl what was in it an set it out in the rain.  As the rain water gathered the colors mixed. Suddenly, our bowls marked red  and blue - HAD PURPLE WATER! They were so amazed we had to do lots of other color mixing that week!

He haven't gotten to do to much sorting so I decided to create a little learning try. It was super simple and absolutely free as I just compiled stuff from around the house.

• Three containers of various size.
• Paper and marker to mark the sizes of the bowls.
• Tape to put the label on the bowl
• Kitchen Tongs.( Mine had holes in in so I covered them with tape to make catching things easier at first)
• Pom-Poms 
• Tray (easy transport and a place for Pom-Poms to be sifted through.

He had a blast! This tray wasn't much of a challenge for him, but the tongs were. He had never used them before. For parents who are scared to give their kids scissors, tongs are a great way to practice that pincer motion with out risk of cut clothing or hair. He was very proud of his accomplishment and is looking forward to tomorrow when we sort by color and create patterns!

Thanks for reading our first blog of activities! Let us know if you like one you see or have any suggestions for further our discovery!