Big Energy-Little Learners...Can I do it all?

I am going to do my best to follow and post a theme of activities each week to do during the summer.  These activities will include fun outdoor activities, crafts, reading/storytelling, and other learning ideas. It is important to keep the mind fresh during summer break so kids are ready for school when it is time to go back. I am not taking it too heavy on the learning side, I want summer to be a fun time for exploring and play.  I still want the kids to look forward to summer break. This is the first year I am trying a 'plan' during the summer.  I will be posting our activities here and other activities on my Facebook page  Big Energy Little Learners. I hope you get inspired! Here are our activities for week 3: Week 3-QUESTS AND ADVENTURES This was a spectacular week for imaginative play!  There were many story starters for our adventures and sharing of ideas.  These adventures were limitless.  We traveled many places and saw ...

This busy bag went great with both our space theme and our adventure theme.  We took many adventures through space together while reading some fun books and this was another way for The Dragons to visualize what is in space. Before I brought out the busy bag we read a book called About Space .  It was a nice read for children, not boring, and full of info about our galaxy and solar system. This busy bag helped further the understanding of some new words we learned this week.  Such as meteor, asteroid, comet, planets, space station, and satellite. This busy bag includes:  various pictures of planets asteroids stars space shuttles space stations satellites telescopes and more!   The main part of the busy bag is a sheet of paper that has two columns; Planets and Not Planets.   The Dragons sorted all of the pictures into one of the two categories.  I left The Dragons to this activity while prepping a snack. ...

This is the next step to our Rock Quest.  Now that all the rocks were found it was time to paint them! Because of time we had to wait to paint the rocks for a bit longer then expected, but The Dragons were all very excited to get to painting. We gathered all the supplies: paint rocks paint brushes paint trays I found the paint trays (6), along with many other painting supplies, in a pack at Walmart for $10!  The trays were perfect for this project because we were able to paint the rocks while they were in the tray eliminating some hand mess.  Once the paint was in place The Dragons were ready to start painting!  The painting turned into pretend.  There was frosting cupcakes, magic stones, and dragon food being made.  It didn't take long for all of the colors to be mixed, we have a ton of purple rocks :)  The painting didn't take very long either.   When they were done we set them out to dry.  ...

Letter s is for servant.  We will be going over how Jesus served us, how we can serve Jesus,  and community helpers. Bible Day one we read about Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey and how people reacted.  It was necessary to establish how important Jesus was/is before continuing on to the other stories.   To further this understanding The Dragons reenacted the story.  I had some leafs saved from past dramatic play props that we used as palm branches.  The Dragons took turns playing Jesus.  As the others in the reenactment, we tried to make "Jesus" feel special. Day 2 we read of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. We took some time to discuss Peters reaction. The Dragons washed each others feet as an act of service and a lesson in doing for others what they do for us.. Bible Verse:  The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to be serve.  - Mark 10:45 Alphabet Our motion this week is hooking ...

Kiwi Crates are a family favorite and this week the theme in the crate was perfect for theme in preschool!  As usual the Kiwi Crate comes with all of the supplies needed to make the craft, you just follow the directions and put it together.   This craft did not take long to make and was easy for my 3 year old to complete with very little help.  There is a rubber band across the bottom of the rocket which causes the resistance between the rocket and the launcher.  Holding both taps you have to pull the rocket down onto the launcher.  As you are pulling you can feel the resistance.  Little Dragon kept thinking something was going to tear and wasn't quiet getting how to launch the rocket.    Doll Dragon on the other hand had no problem pulling her rocket onto the launcher with force.  :) She tried to show Little Dragon but he just ended up retrieving the rockets that I launched and flying them around.  It is easier to ...

When we got back from our quest to find rocks it was time to wash them. We can't have dirty rocks for our project it is also a bit unsanitary.  This wasn't so much an adventure as it was a necessary activity. I set a bin of warm water, rags, and soap next to the bag of rocks.  They pulled out 1 rock at a time for washing.  They dipped the rocks then scrubbed them  and scrubbed  Little Dragon liked to watch the rag drip onto the rocks  When they were finished the rocks were all lined up for drying (as you can see to the right) and the water was brown with dirt.    As boring as this activity sounds to me The Dragons enjoyed it.  They liked washing the rocks and running to put them in line then picking another rock to wash.  They made it very active, I watched while getting some lesson planning done. As you can see in the above picture the whole area is wet.  After the rocks were all washed The Dragons...

For the end of our reading/alphabet adventure week I am having the kids do a project.  I like this project because I have already thought of many uses for it outside of this activity. The first step was a quest.  We had to find 26 medium sized rocks.   I didn't tell The Dragons what we needed them for I just told them we were looking for them. Doll Dragon said they were special stones and we had to find them for the sorceress.  We went with that for now. We couldn't find these stones in the neighborhood on a regular walk we had to go on a hike in the woods to find the special stones. Not to far down the trail we started to see rocks.  Many, many, rocks!  The Dragons wanted to show me each rock before they put it in the bag.  They were so excited!    We quickly lost count of the rocks :) After the first 15 or so rocks The Dragons started to get interested in examining the area's around the rocks.   ...

Most adventures can be given as a quest that is an adventure to complete. Reading can be such an adventure as we learned this week but to learn to read you must first take a quest to learn the alphabet.   This activity is a aimed at a younger audience. You can make it more challenging by having the child find sight words and adding more letters. This was a couple step process.  I had The Dragons start it in the morning and we finished it later in the afternoon. I gave them a small case of alphabet beads to go through and pick out 1 of each letter.  They had to work together on this project.  We only needed 26 letters and I didn't want doubles.  So to complete this they had to discuss and communicate which letters they were taking out and make sure they had them all. Once all the letters were found The Dragons put them in order. Later in the afternoon we grabbed our alphabet beads and our other supplies to make the discovery bottle. ...