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

As much as I love science I am bad at remembering to do science projects. Lucky my dragons love science and are always asking questions, so when the opportunity presented itself Little Dragon asked if we could do a science experiment on evaporation. He had been learning about the water cycle in preschool which is what brought this on.  We were outside doing our shape science when he asked if we could do another experiment.   He had it all planned out.  He wanted to fill up a container with dirt add water and watch it evaporate.  For some reason Little Dragon thought you had to have dirt for water to evaporate.  I explained that water needs nothing but heat to evaporate and demonstrated this by showing him the cement drying in the heat of the sun from our earlier experiment.  He seemed to understand and gave me a few examples of water evaporating without dirt.  Such as:  after it rains rivers puddles Although he now understo...

I am blessed to live in a state that is very community based and provides many activities for families. We took the opportunity to visit the event provided and both the kids and I learned a lot. The Kinder Realm provides a craft, small informational class time, and a hike.  We have been to two Kinder Realm classes, blue birds and foxes.   As the kids arrive there is a coloring page for them to do while waiting for the class to fill up. Then the information about the animal was given.  These were fun facts that I enjoyed hearing too.  Real fox fur was passed around for us (even the adults) to discover.  The claws, teeth, and ears were also still intact for observation. After class was a game or activity.  Picking up worms as a blue bird or playing/jumping with food as a fox.  Next was craft time. The kids made caterpillars and puppets Last there was the hike.  ...

Week 5 our focus is music!  This is not something I take enough time to explore.  The noise makes me very anxious and am usually ready to hide all noise making toys 5 minutes in. For this activity I had a couple hours to prepare myself.  I also had The Dragons expend a bunch of energy before hand so all of the energy didn't turn into noise. Discovering Instruments We have a box of instruments that include:  maracas harmonica tambourine whistles I also took out some pots, wooden spoons, and lids for more instrument variety.  These made drums and symbols.  I set out the instruments and The Dragons kind of looked at them for a moment then looked at me.  Like I said, I don't like a lot of noise.  I could tell they wanted to bang on them but were being polite to my anxiety. After all of the instruments were lay out I gave the go ahead for discovering. Noise, noise, noise!  But I was prepared. ...

This is our last week of preschool.  After this there will be no more folders only summer fun activities. For our last week our theme is the universe.  I am very excited about this theme and got a bit carried away on space books at the library. :) Bible We read the story of Jesus ascending to heaven behind a cloud. Bible Verse: He was taken up before their very eyes; and a cloud hid Him from their sight. - Acts 1:9   We will get more into this story as the week progresses but today we mainly focused on what Jesus asked of us before he ascended. He asked us to tell the world about Him! He told his apostles of the holy spirit and sharing what they learned with the world. To keep this message in mind we used play dough.  I started making an earth with play dough while we talked about what Jesus did for us.  When I was closer to being finished I asked The Dragons to guess what I was making.  I gave them a hint that it had to do with the job Jesus g...

When learning about bugs what better way to close the week then hunting for them? This was our first bug hunt and my were The Dragons thrilled to be out looking for creepy crawlers.  They were so excited they ran around calling for bugs.  After a couple minutes of excitement I explained to the kids that bug catching was a semi-quiet activity.  We are big, bugs are small.  They are afraid of us especially when we come bounding at them. This slowed things down. The hunt began!  Summer Dragon wanted to look under bricks for bugs.  Little Dragon looked on the patio. Doll Dragon looked in the garden.   I had the jar and kinda looked around with each of them until I realized being split wasn't going to work. Why? Because The Dragons wanted to pick up every bug they saw!  No bug fear Some bugs shouldn't be picked up, so we stayed together so the bugs could be pointed out then scooped with the jar. Together we quietl...

The snow dumped on us a couple weeks ago and the kids were begging to play outside.  The forecast said the next week it was going to be very low temperatures (in the negatives) so we decided to take the opportunity to play in the snow. The dragons wanted to build a snowman but the snow was so powdery it fell right out of your hand our through your fingers.  Snowball fights were also out.  We needed something to do. We were all in snowsuits so I grabbed some cups and containers and we scooped and dumped snow pretending to cook. Spontaneously I filled a container with snow and dumped it out.  It kept its form and the kids were excited about it.  They stomped and crushed the first few with giggles.   Then I was able to get a few stacked and they asked for more and more. Then daddy joined us outside and together we stacked up a wall brick by brick. The kids ran around us as we worked jumping in the fluffy snow and throwing it at us. We...