Preschool Life

I feel like I haven't written a long post about ED's preschool work in forever. That's because she's been such an integral part of all our latest activities. She did all the owl crafts in our forest unit, did the dissection of the owl pellet. She takes notes and writes out her letters when the kids are taking notes on their science activities. She gets her own lapbook pages and carefully cuts things out.  (I'll be posting about our astronomy unit over the next couple of weeks.) She's right in there doing all our experiments and INSISTS (I say with a smile!) on being a part of everything!  She is right there snuggling with Mom to read during independent reading time. We tend to go over letters and letter sounds while snuggling (not as a separate activity at the moment) because we're spending a lot of time "SMASHING" sounds together (with a dramatic clap... "kuh..."--"Aaaa...ttttt"" "CAT!") All that makes for very dry posts I suppose!

So here is ED diligently writing out the answers on this science page. I tell her the letter (sometimes remind her what it looks like) and she writes them down!

Some of the time ED just finds her own things to do.  At this moment I was playing  Bump-Division with LD.  ED took the erasers and carefully separated them all into different categories!

ED also has her own black notebook. She LOVES coloring pages and I keep that topped up (as much as I can!) with new pages. So, when the others grab their spelling, science or math notebooks, ED also runs over to check out what's new in her 3-ring binder! I love the bright colors she uses. Below is a collage of some of her latest creations.  In fact, just this morning she was coloring the two new "pokemon" coloring pages in the bottom  left of the picture!

Theme Time: Dinosaurs

Two weeks ago, I read The Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark to ED.  This inspired a short themed unit on dinosaurs. Here are a few of the things we did, plus other dinosaur books and dinosaur puzzles that I don't have pictured below.

Last week we were lucky enough to top our theme-time unit off with a visit to the Gray Fossil Site in east Tennessee on our trek to visit Auntie C, Uncle T and the cousins for Thanksgiving at their farm.

Upper - Lower Case Letter Matching from Making Learning Fun.

Time for a scavenger hunt!! I hid dinosaur themed letters all throughout the basement.  ED found the letters and had to find the matching partner (pictured below). I often go to communication4all, Early Learning tab or sparklebox for letters with a certain theme.

The other kids came running and demanded their own scavenger hunts! DD had to find cards and find the card pairs that added up to 12.  LD had division problems and their answers to find and pair up. (Below)

 

General dinosaur play, of course!!

Triceratops Leaf Counting -- from Making Learning Fun

Sight Word Letter Tile Cards from Making Learning Fun. The tiles are from our spelling program -- All About Spelling. We love, love, love that curriculum for DD (6) and LD (8).

Dinosaur Counting Cards from 2 Teaching Mommies.

Dinosaur Egg Counting Cards from Making Learning Fun.

LD pulled out some of his fossils and did some reading.  He found this amazing brachiopod fossil in Grams and Gramps' neighborhood in Missouri.

On our way to Nashville, we happened upon this museum at Gray's Fossil Site. It is about a half-hour off of I-81 (along I-26).  When they were building I-26 construction workers noticed some fossils. It turned out to be a fossil bed rich with fossils from about 4 1/2 to 5 million years ago. It is an active fossil site and has a wonderful interactive museum.

They have lots of displays  like this saber toothed tiger.

They had so many interactive activities and please-touch areas. Here the kids are trying to figure out what types of bones these are.

Uncover the fossils (with paint brushes and your hands).

Bone-puzzles

The kids spent lots of time at this activity, hunting through a tray of pebbles looking for shark teeth specimen.

The kids were impressed by this triceratops.

You might be interested in our 60 page Dinosaur Packet with activities for 3-7 year olds.

Forest Animal Sort Cards

ED's next habitat study is on the forest. I made a set of cards for the kids to sort through. We'll be sorting them by
   vertebrates-invertebrates
   and also into the five animal kingdoms:
  ( fish), amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

Since we live in the woods I used a lot of the photos I've taken in the past year or so and supplemented them with some from wikimedia commons.

Oh and by the way, I didn't include any fish in this sort--I did include a photo of crayfish that LD found in the creek that runs through the woods behind our house. They are crustaceans (related to the lobster) and would obviously be sorted into the invertebrate group.

If you would like a copy of the Forest Animal Sort Cards that I made, just click here.

P.S. I realized when I sorted these with the kids today that I didn't have the three frog and toad pictures I had intended to include. I added those in this afternoon and there is now a new file link above.

Learning Letters: Clothes Peg Activity (preschool)

Back a couple of years ago Honey over at Sunflower Schoolhouse made a collection of clothes peg activities. I brought out this alphabet matching activity for ED last week. The plain letter matching was a bit too easy for her.

Here's the link to the Clothes Peg Alphabet, volume 1 (lower case letters) that you see in this first picture.

Honey also made other volumes for letter matching:

Here is the link to the upper case to upper case matching clothes peg cards.

And here is the link to the upper case to lower case matching clothes peg cards.


ED was much more engaged by the cards which entailed finding the vowels in the words.

This is volume 5. She had to find the word that had that particular vowel in it.

And this is volume 4 -- find the vowel that is in the word.

Thanks for sharing, Honey!

Morning with ED

ED and I always get up an hour or two before the others.  We cuddle up in front of the fire first thing and read books. We often do a craft to go along with it. I loved this picture because Crystal, the kitten, was so hands-on with this activity!!

We've also been playing lots of games together in the morning; Uno is her current favorite (though we usually play a couple of board games as well). It's great for number recognition. She got this mini-Uno card set at a friend's birthday party. Another current favorite is Blink.

The kids all enjoy playing this game, Old McDonald Had a Farm, with ED. They take turns choosing a Mommy animal and choosing a baby which is hidden under the haystack. They try to match the animal noises.  They press the Mommy down (and it makes the animal sound) and then press the haystack down to hear the baby animal sound. It's kind of like Memory by sound.

Science Sorts -- Our Montessori Science Work, Fall 2011

Over the past few years, we have done a lot of Montessori science work.  This year I compiled a review notebook and will let DD and LD work on this as they are interested (ED will be introduced to these for the first time this year).  Mostly I expect the older ones to cut out pictures from magazines and write on these sheets (pages 5 and beyond in the pack).  At the very least, it's organized for my own benefit!  There are lots of free 3-Part cards 'out there' that go along with these. I'll share a few links below and will share more as we work through these this fall.

Montessori science sorts -- there are 30 pages or so
This just helps me organize the many activities we've done so I have it compiled in one place... things like
     living-not living
     vertebrate - invertebrate
     solid, liquid, gas
     and so forth...

Again, here is the Animal Discovery Notebook pages that goes with all this. I added to this -- adding in some ocean invertebrate research pages since ED will be studying oceans (so there's appropriate new work to give to DD and LD if they're interested).

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And here are a few links to some cards I have used. Thank you to those who've shared their work with us!

Free Living and Non-Living 3-part Cards & Animal Kingdom Cards

Free Living/Non-Living Montessori Cards from ETC-Press

Nocturnal - Diurnal Animal Sort from Spell Out Loud

Nocturnal - Diurnal Power Point Presentation

Solid Liquid Gas Sort by Montessori Tidbits


Desert Toob Animal Matching by Montessori Tidbits

These were $2.00, but I absolutely love these Natural Disaster cards.

Domino Math -- PK, K and 2nd Grades

DD took a domino and created an addition problem writing it on her recording sheet.

We used the domino recording sheet from Mathwire. You can find more domino math ideas on the investigating dominoes page and on  this Mathwire page.There's a cute activity also for addition called the domino parking lot with use with regular sized dominoes.

ED simply counted the dots and put her wooden numbers on top of each side of the domino.

I changed the addition sign to multiplication for LD.

You can extend these activities by printing out the double-nine domino set from Mathwire.

Green Eggs and Ham Preschool Activity

I made this a while ago, but never got around to introducing it to ED.  It was a big hit the yesterday.  Then DD came over and wanted to play.  I had a number of extra eggs and ham without a letter on the reverse side, so they took turns trying to find the letter for their plate. If they got a blank egg or ham it was the other person's turn.

I don't remember where I saw this idea, but it obviously goes with the book Green Eggs and Ham. I don't remember why I chose the letter R--we were probably doing rainbows at that time (as I recall).

You might be interested in this post Preschool at Home: Learning Letters 

Other books-and-activities we did when the kids were little:

• Chameleon Craft (Animal Habitat Unit) based on Eric Carle's book

• Seahorse Art–Based on Eric Carle’s book

• Theme Time: Eric Carle Books
• The Mitten – Free Animal Printable Activities

• 15 Children’s Books Your 4-7 Year Old Shouldn’t Miss!

• 20+ Board Books Recommendations

See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page. Don’t forget to sign up for our Homeschool Den Newsletter! ~Liesl


Don't miss our other preschool posts. This page has links to dozens of our Preschool Activities!!
You will find all of these posts over at our new location (homeschoolden.com)

Don't miss our HUGE List of Things to Do with Your Toddler or Preschooler with 100+ Activities (It's a free printable)

Here are a few of our more popular posts:

Preschool at Home: Activities You Can Do with Your 2-4 Year Olds (Fine Motor Skills)

Preschool Math Activities for ages 2 1/2 to 3 1/2

Preschool at Home: Science for 2-5 Year Olds (and Up!)

Your kids might also enjoy the activities in our Dinosaur Packet.

See you again soon over at our new location homeschoolden.com or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! ~Liesl