Preschool at Home: Caps for Sale

With the arrival of cooler fall temperatures in Cental Iowa, increased exposure to GERMS has naturally begun as well.  The last two weeks, both of my sweeties had a miserable, drawn-out upper respiratory cold that resulted in sinus and ear infections.  Truly, this made me pause and realize that our family has enjoyed a long HEALTHY stretch for some time and I am so glad that we made it through the summer and most of the fall with virtually no sickness (at least none that I can remember) and this is indeed something to be thankful for.

We stretched out our next Before Five in a Row unit, Caps for Sale, over the course of two weeks and enjoyed reading, learning and playing in between coughing, sneezing, washing hands, doctor visits and slurping down medicine.  

I am so glad we had such a fun and spirited book to learn along with, as Lucy and Collin were often needing cheering up.

This is the classic story of a cap peddler who makes a poor decision to sleep on the job and ends up losing his wares to a treeful of monkeys!  As the story goes, the peddler unsuccessfully tries to get his hats back by making angry demands of the monkeys and ends up accidentally getting them back when they mimic his frustrated act of throwing his own hat to the ground and storming off.  I remember this book capturing my attention as a young child in elementary school and it did the same for my two little "monkeys". We definitely enjoyed multiple readings and it was especially fun to "act" out the story together.

We enjoyed lap book activities from Homeschool Share as well as the trusty printable pack from Homeschool Creations. Notice that the majority of our school times in this unit were spent in our PJs and with rumpled hair (mommy was no exception!).  Yep, that's how we roll on sick days. : )

This little activity from Homeschool Creations was a great exercise in fine motor/cutting skills as well as sequencing.  They did a great job with the task of ordering the caps just the way they were in the book. I expected them to need more of my help, but it turns out they didn't need my guidance at all with this little project.

Simple fun trying different hats on our monkey "paper doll".

We of course, had to try our hand at balancing a stack of hats on our heads, just like the peddler.  That's no easy task!  No wonder the guy was tired and had to take a nap. : )

Poor Lucy, you can tell by her face that she felt miserable that morning!

My hat-loving boy loved this activity the best.  No surprise there.

Despite being sick, these sweeties were happy and engaged with our Caps for Sale unit.  I think it definitely helped that we stretched it over two weeks and took a very relaxed approach.  This week they are back to their normal, healthy selves and we are currently taking another break from Before Five in a Row to enjoy a Thanksgiving-themed unit.  More on that to come. 

xoxo,

Preschool at Home: The Big Green Pocketbook and The Runaway Bunny

The month of October has been a wild one in our world including wonderful visits from out-of-town friends and family, a garage sale, a weekend trip out of town for my beautiful cousin's wedding and the addition of FIVE new pets (that would be two chickens and three bunnies-more on that later!).  Thrown in were some technical difficulties with my printer (which I depend on for planning and putting together lessons for each school week) and we had some real threats to our little homeschooling routine around here.

Despite the changes to our schedule and lack of normalcy, we still managed to fit in some decent learning times with the next two books in our Before Five in a Row series, so I'll recap both of those weeks in one post here:

The Big Green Pocketbook

This sweet book easily became a new favorite for both kids!  It is the story of a day spent between a mother and daughter riding the city bus to accomplish several tasks and errands.  The main character starts her day with her mama with an empty green bag and fills it up with various bits of ephemera and trinkets from each stop.  Perhaps it was the simplicity of the tale that made Lucy and Collin connect to it so well, or possibly the emotions experienced by the girl when she loses her bag at the end of the day were relatable but they NEVER got tired of reading and connecting with the story.

Here's just a quick look at our activities together with this book:

Letter "P" collage with pipe cleaners:

 Practicing writing the letter "P".

We had some great fine motor practice with cutting and story sequencing with this lapbook activity from Homeschool Share.  They each created a paper "pocketbook" pouch and then cut out pictures of each item that the girl in the story placed in her book.  Both Lucy and Collin enjoyed listening to the story and filling their pocketbooks along with their "friend" in the book.

Perhaps the highlight of the week was getting to experience an afternoon of riding a bus and making stops around downtown Des Moines with our sweet play group friends!  This week was my turn to plan our activities for our get together, so I arranged for us all to meet downtown where we read our book at the sculpture garden and then hopped onto a free shuttle bus for an adventure. 

Each child brought an empty backpack to fill with treasures from our stops, our final and most productive stop being the public library where each enthusiastic little one picked out a stack of books to take and enjoy at home!  How fun!

The Runaway Bunny

The Runaway Bunny is a story about the enduring love between mother and child.  No matter how hard the little bunny in the story determines to run away from his mother, she is doubly determined to never let him far from her sight. This is another book that has special meaning for me as it was also one that was a part of my childhood.  It definitely ranks as one of my mother's all-time favorite children's books and our copy was a gift from her and my dad when Lucy was a newborn!  It just so happened that my parents were visiting from out of town during our week with this book, so it was wonderful to invite my mom to participate in our school time while they were here!

The kids with my parents, "Mama Gail and Grandpa!"

Here's some highlights from our week:

The recent addition of BUNNIES to our household made the book's subject matter particularly meaningful.  Here Lucy and Collin share a moment with little Cottontail:

We used paper straws to blow pom poms across the table, just like the mama bunny said she would become the "wind" and blow her baby bunny where she wanted him to go should he "become a sailboat  and sail away from her."

We also made the bunny masks which you see on their heads.  This was an activity from The Runaway Bunny "Fold and Learn" printable pack which is available for purchase from the Five in a Row website.  (Sidenote: the fold and learn packs are fun but a little pricey, so they are not something I can afford for every unit!  But it was fun to give it a try and we did make use of it!)

We also enjoyed various activities from the wonderful Runaway Bunny printable pack from Homeschool Creations:

This ended up being a fun and fairly relaxed learning week. It was also nice to let my mom and dad have a little peek into what our learning endeavors are like, which was a rare opportunity as we only see each other about twice a year. I love the memories we made together this week!

xoxo,

Preschool at Home: Goodnight Moon

We spent this week of preschool with the classic book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown.

After a tough time in preschool land last week, I went into this week with a bit of a more relaxed approach, planning activities that weren't so heavy on letters and numbers.  Instead we spent more time with creative story-telling, music, fine motor skills and crafts.  I wanted to just bond with the kids with some intentional PLAY this week and if, while we were enjoying each other's company, we also got in some good learning, then great!

To keep the flow going, we did continue with a letter for the week: "M" and made our weekly collage with macaroni and "do-a-dots" in the main colors from the illustrations in the book.

One morning I made our version of "mush" for breakfast - pumpkin pie oatmeal!  Yum!

In addition to our readings of the book this week, we also enjoyed the story by watching this sweet Goodnight Moon video.  It was very calming and fun to watch before bedtime in the evenings.

Going along with the "M" theme, we did some simple counting and matching exercises with our "M &M Counting Books".  Suffice it to say that there were very few protests with this activity!

Since the book references the nursery rhyme, "Hey Diddle Diddle" and the fairy tale, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", we thought we'd have some fun with both of these classics! 

 I found a simple version of, "Hey Diddle Diddle" set to music in iTunes and we used this multiple times for some music fun.   During some listens, we used rhythm instruments to join in with the beats in the music.  We also built on that by adding a "marching" element to our merriment with each of them having several opportunities to be the leader for the duration of the song.  We also had our fair share of dancing to the music with ribbon wands and sashes.  They SOOO got into this and I saw that it inspired them toward more creativity-after one of these music sessions, they created their own game of "jumping over the moon" with a balloon.  Pretty cute. : )

We enjoyed the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" by reenacting it with finger puppets and doll house furniture that we already had.  This encouraged lots of creative collaboration and fun!

I used their hands to trace out "mitten" patterns on foam craft sheets and had them cut them out, decorate them and pin them on to a length of yarn I strung up in our school room.  This was a great fine motor and creative activity.

I find that when we are practicing cutting with scissors, it's better to use something other than plain paper, because often they will just rip right through the paper when their efforts with scissors aren't going their way!  I have found that using craft foam sheets, felt fabric sheets and heavy card stock seem to facilitate better cutting practice for them.

We also enjoyed a picnic and a trip to the zoo with our playgroup friends! Taking inspiration from the red balloon in the story, we thought it would be a fun surprise to bring one for each kid.  That was also a big hit!

This week (like any week) had its highs and lows.  I had my moments as a mommy when my patience ran thin and I caught myself thinking that I just wasn't cut out for this "homeschooling thing".  I ALSO had chances to observe their creativity blossoming, see their satisfaction when they grasped a new idea and watch their affection for each other grow.  And getting to be present in THOSE moments, makes the perseverance through the difficult ones worthwhile.  All in all, our week with Goodnight Moon was a meaningful and memorable one.

xoxo,

Preschool at Home: Blueberries for Sal

So I went into this week of preschool with lots of personal excitement, mainly because of our book for the week:

Blueberries for Sal

This particular book wasn't one that I had read before, but the book One Morning in Maine (also by Robert McCloskey and with the same main character) was a special part of my childhood. So being the sentimental soul that I am, I was eager to connect my children to "Sal", her mother and their delightful day of picking blueberries on a hillside. Also, between the suggested ideas from the BFIAR manual, the online resources available and a few original ideas of my own, I *may* have gone a little overboard in my preparations and visions for all we would do this week.

However, the week we've had could hardly be characterized as having the same "storybook charm" that we see when we open the pages of this book.  Due to some changes in our normal routine including several more outings and appointments than we have in a typical week, we as a family were just a little bit "off".  The kids' bedtimes did not go as smoothly as they normally do, resulting in sleep deprivation for most of us.  To top it off, Miss Lucy seemed to be experiencing more sensory challenges than normal.  This all resulted in irritable children and a grumpy mommy who all had to apologize to each other on several occasions.  

Despite it all, I think we still managed to have some meaningful learning experiences with Blueberries for Sal and I'll share the highlights here:

Naturally our letter for this week was "B". We made our own blueberry and leaf stamps  and used them to fill our letter "B" pictures with blueberry prints.

Last week, Lucy's Speech-Language pathologist and I talked about how we could work on her vocabulary expansion goal at home.  She made the suggestion that we work on a small set of vocabulary words each week that corresponds with the books we are using. This is a really easy approach, especially since the BFIAR printables available from Homeschool Creations include readymade cards with words and images from each unit.  I wanted to find a fun way to work on this, so I decided to use this magnetic fishing game that I originally found through Pinterest.

 I decided to print out the pictures from the cards provided by Homeschool Creations and attach them to our metal circles (frozen juice concentrate lids!) with a repositionable adhesive so I can easily swap in and out each week's vocabulary set.  This proved to be a truly fun activity that the kids enjoyed doing every day despite the general grumpiness and inflexibility that reigned for most of the week! By the end of the week they could accurately "label" most of the pictures by recalling the words from memory, which is the goal.

Both kids really enjoyed counting out pom pom "blueberries" and "feeding" them to the bear.  I used a template found here (another Pinterest find) to make the bear face for this activity.

After some good counting practice with the "Feed the Bear" game, we attempted to introduce the concept of addition with this printable, also from Homeschool Creations. This activity was one that didn't go over so well given the week we had, but they tolerated at least one round before that morning's meltdown occurred!  We'll keep it around and try again in the future!

On one morning we took a break from the more "academic" activities and after reading the book and practicing our verse for the week (Ruth 1:16),we  enjoyed a game of memory with our Ravensburger  "Teddy Mix & Match" game.

Here Lucy is holding up a match she made: the two grumpy bears. How fitting!! : )

One idea I came across for this unit was to can our own blueberries, just like "Sal" and her mother did in the story... yeah that wasn't happening. Instead we went to one of our favorite local coffee shops and shared a blueberry scone. That went alright until they started rolling their napkins up into balls and throwing them all over the place. They also ran a few laps around our table for good measure.  Wasn't long before I got the "can't you control your children in public?" stares.  Ehh... the scones tasted great anyways.

Despite the less-than-perfect, real-life nature of our week, I still felt like there was value to our learning times together, and I do think they formed an attachment with the book.  Plus, the extra practice in loving each other despite grumpiness and showing forgiveness when it was needed was perhaps a more valuable learning experience than what I planned and prepared for. Here's to the theme of this blog: a NEW day! Looking forward to a new day... or rather a new week with our next book, Good Night Moon.  : )

xoxo,

Preschool at Home: Ask Mr. Bear

The kids and I spent about a week and a half with the second book in our preschool endeavor: Ask Mr. Bear by Marjorie Flack:

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 This sweet book was first published in the 1930s and is about a little boy named Danny who is searching for a gift for his mother's birthday. He asks various farm animals if they have something to offer as a gift for his mother's birthday and they each offer something (an egg from the chicken, milk for making cheese from the goat, wool for a blanket from the sheep). Danny thanks each animal for their offering but declines because his mother already has each of those items. The final inquiry ends up with a recommendation to go into the woods and ask Mr. Bear. Danny ventures alone into the woods, finds Mr. Bear and asks him if he could give something for his mother's birthday. Mr. Bear is the first animal that says he doesn't have anything to give but gives a suggestion for Danny to give his mother something he could have given all along: a BIG birthday Bear hug! :)

With the various printable online activities available as well as all the suggestions found in the BFIAR book, we just couldn't get through everything in one week, so we kept going into this next week. Here are some highlights:

Our letter for this unit is "G", highlighting the "goose", "goat", and "gift" from the story. In this picture, Collin is making another letter collage with bits of green paper and glitter.

We visited a brand new local bakery on our second morning where we shared a cinnamon roll and brought "school" with us! They really enjoyed  using this little counting wheel found on Homeshool Creations. Using the little clothes pins also addressed fine motor skills.

We used some farm animal lace up cards to further work on fine motor skills.

This little printable from Homeschool Share was by far their favorite activity!  They chose an animal and then lifted the flap to reveal what type of animal walk they should do: hop, skip, gallop or trot.  They did each animal "walk" up and down our backyard once and as we went through the animals, I would test their memory by asking if they could tell me the items that each animal offered to Danny in the story.

This was such a good way to give them an enjoyable outlet for physical activity... so helpful to have them do something physical before expecting them to give their attention to "sit down" lessons.

One day, we visited a wildlife refuge that is located in one of our local MALLS of all places! I chose to take the kids there to be able to see a live bear and other "forest animals".  This helped facilitate to a meaningful discussion about what types of animals live on farms vs. in the woods.

In this picture, Collin pretends that "Mr. Bear" is whispering a secret to him just like he did for Danny in the book!

We took advantage of some coloring pages provided by the wildlife program.  Lucy colored a picture of a fox and Collin chose a cougar.

Lucy poses along with Mr. Bear and shows her fox picture.

Another morning, we colored these "Animal" and "Product" cards and made a little game out of matching the animals to the things they can provide. This was another free printable from Homeschool Share.

We finally ended our time with Ask Mr. Bear by taking a field trip to a wonderful apple orchard that also has lots of other attractions, including farm animals to interact with. It was fun to see more live animals that were in the book, like this sweet little goat! It provided more reinforcement in differentiating the farm animals from the forest animals. 

We were able to share this field trip with some dear friends who also home-school. It was such fun to share this experience with friends. We have plans to get this group of kiddos together twice a month for meaningful play times.  This field trip was something of a "kick-off" for our playgroup.

What a special time we enjoyed with this book!  The story has become so dear to Lucy that during bedtime tonight, she created her own version of the story, inserting the names of her grandparents' dogs and cats as new characters in the story!  I love to see that type of creativity blossoming alongside the formal lessons we've been engaging in... I think that learning and bonding with quality literature has a way of producing so much more in the way of learning than I would otherwise expect to see in my kids!  

xoxo,