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

This entry goes along with our shape unit.   Art Journal I recently found out about art journals and thought it would be a wonderful experience with the kids for preschool.  There are so many possibilities with art journals and it is a nice way to express yourself with another person through art.  This activity can look many different ways for many different people.  Art is open, as is journaling. We will be adding 1 entry a week to our art journal.  The themes, topics, or prompts may be random or may go along with a theme we are learning about for the week. For this art journal we used Ruler Pencils Crayons Erasers Before we got started journaling we took some time to get to know our rulers.  Little Dragon had not used a ruler before so we went over the basics. He was excited to use this new tool.  I told him we were going to make a city. There are many shapes in a city. You can focus on one shape or make your c...

We did this activity during our Shape theme week This was a game I made up on the fly that Little Dragon really enjoyed.  I  have shape buttons and I wasn't sure what I was going to use them for aside from standard sorting.   We started there.  After all the shapes were sorted by shape I asked Little Dragon to name all of the shapes.  There were a couple of more complex shapes such as hexagons and octagons.  These needed a bit of practice.  To get the practice in I made up this game.   I told Little Dragon that he was a shop owner.  I asked what kind of shop he wanted to run.  He picked car shop.  I said all of the shapes were different car parts and I was going to come in as different customers to buy the parts I needed to fix my car.  He agreed, of course.  I would use a different voice for each costumer and ask for mix matched things like 3 octagons and 5 yellow triangles.  This incorporated co...

This activity went with our shape unit.  It took me a little while to think of a shape science experiment. I had many ideas but I wanted it to be an experiment, not just an activity in the science category.  I went with a shape container experiment.  Materials A circle container A square container Water  For this experiment the two containers will have to be similar in size.  I asked Little Dragon which container he thought held more water, the square or the circle.  Before we made our hypothesis Little Dragon wanted to fully examine both containers to make his guess. I was impressed with his desire to make an educated guess so I helped him examine the containers.  After checking the size difference, putting the containers inside eachother, and seeing which is taller he was ready to make his choice.  After writing out our hypothesis we took our containers outside with a cup of water.  We poured...

This activity went with our shape unit.  I was very excited to do this activity and was very happy that Little Dragon really enjoyed it.  Materials  Large pot Shape buttons Large spoon Shape song I made up this song to go along with our soup making.  I am gonna make soup soup soup How about you you you You can make it too too too Let's make soup soup soup First we need broth broth broth make it froth froth froth stir the broth broth broth slow like a sloth sloth sloth I put (shape) in the soup soup soup How about you you you You can do it too too too Put (shape) in the soup soup soup Continue through the shapes that you have.  We sang it together while we added the shapes one by one. We did this a few times over a few days. I left the pot out for Little Dragon to play with whenever he wanted to make shape soup.  This activity was great for remembering shapes because we were singing th...

In pre-school Little Dragon has been learning about mail men for the last two weeks. When his teacher first told me the topic and letter I told Little Dragon we would learn more about mail men. Now we have gone over mail men and community helpers twice so when I told Little Dragon we would learn about m is for mail man he was was disappointed and asked if we could learn about something else. I can't say this upset or surprised me.  I get bored teaching the same things. So when we got home we brainstormed letter m topics.  I thought he would go for monkey, maybe mommy but he went with meat eaters.  Which he came up with on his own during our brainstorming.   This topic was a bit difficult for me to plan at first.  I would like to expand on this more but there are only so many hours in a day (and so many when mommy's are not being pulled in every direction) to make a impromptu plan.  This Week  Keeping with our theme we did a few me...

Twist and Turn is a game for outside play This activity was suggested from education.com summer activity lesson plan. It is a two part activity, which is cool. Part 1: you draw with chalk .   This ended up being great for review. I asked the kids to draw a variety of shapes and symbols, they offered up some ideas too. Part 2: Gross motor skills practice Next I had them pick a number 1-10 I did this for number practice.  I also didn't know what shape to choose or what action to have them do. I had a small list of things but no order or shape to put with the action.  This was very spur of the moment.  I had them pick a number so I could count out the shapes then count down my list that matched the number they picked. It worked. I had them do random things.  Such as spin in circles, jumping jacks, touch the shape, skip, hop on one foot, sing the ABC's, and other simple activities.  Doll Dragon d...

I am very happy I decided to continue the letter K into this week.  We have had a great time keeping our focus on the letter K. Bible Our curriculum is based on bible stories but not every activity talks about the bible.  We study the alphabet, numbers, shapes, etc. The past few weeks in addition to our daily bible story that I read to the kids we are spending quiet time with the bible.  The kids each have a bible and I have mine.  We sit together and read to ourselves, writing down things that stand out or interest us.  Since we have been spending more time getting to know God through the bible I have noticed he comes up during our other daily activities. Last week we read about King David. This week we read about King Solomon.  There is a list of wise sayings of King Solomon in our bible.  We read them together and talked about how we can use these sayings in our life. We focused on a couple from Proverbs: There is one who is free in giving...

I feel like my blog posts have been very long of late.  I have been trying to play catch up and it is easier to write a whole week at once.  This time I am going to attempt to split up the week so I will have 2 posts about the letter r.  Monday I should be back to my regular schedule with my blog and posting twice a week again. That is what I am hoping for anyway. Bible David and Goliath was our story this week.  R is for the rock that David throws at Goliath. The kids had a lot of fun with this story.  There were a lot of activities to do and most of them were interactive.  I was also feeling better this week and had the energy to set up more activities. The first day I read the story to the boys from the Bible. After the story each boy drew a Goliath face on a paper plate.  We took out the tape measure and measured 9 ft from the wall and taped the face there.  (I was going to tape the plate on the wall so the boys could have a better vi...