Preschool - Week 13 - The Quiet Way Home

We actually spent about 3 weeks doing this book! With Thanksgiving and all the busyness of December, homeschool has not been a priority.  We'll get back into the swing of things in January. :)  This book, The Quiet Way Home, is a story about a girl and her grandpa who decide to take quieter routes home in order to hear things they would otherwise miss.

I decided to use this story to focus on the "sound" sense. We talked about what loud sounds the pair were missing out on and what quiet sounds they did hear.  We took the opportunity throughout the day to stop and listen and identify sounds.  There are also some "look and finds" that we did in the book. E loves a good "look and find!"

I made another sight word card for "home:"

and also a magnet, coloring page:

and we did a "same/different" worksheet:

One really fun activity was a listening game that we played on the computer.  The FindSounds website had a ton of different little sound bytes recorded.  I would pick one to play and E would guess what the sound was.  I was seriously impressed with how well she did!

Finally, E and I went to the Nature Center and spent some time in the bird watching room. They have little switches that you can turn on and off to hear sounds from around the exterior of the building. We saw quite a few birds and heard a waterfall and other bird sounds.

Preschool - Week 12 - ABC Bunny

This book had very little words. It progresses through the alphabet with a vague storyline of a bunny who gets lost. There is actually a song that goes along with it, too.

We managed a few activities, but not many as this was the week that we had my niece, Em. :)

The ABC Bunny Activity Card was fun, though incomplete. If I had spent more time looking into it, I would have added a picture for C and Y. But it was excellent cutting practice and E was able to look through the book to make sure she got the right picture for each box.

Since the "topic" was ABC's, I let E practice writing her letters in some shaving cream. I have often seen this activity mentioned in homeschooling blogs, but have never tried it with the girls. I know C has done it at school, too. But E did NOT enjoy it. I pretty much forced her to write her name and that was it. Too messy for her! Who woulda thought?

(the caption for this photo should be, "Now, the sooner you smile nice for Mommy, the sooner I'll wash your hands and let you be done.")

On a more fun note, E wanted to sort buttons, so I gladly let her have some fun with that:

We also did some pages from a preschool workbook.  Later, I found the ABC Bunny song on YouTube and we watched that together on the computer.

Preschool - Week 11 - The Big Green Pocketbook

This book had a lot of fun possibilities to go along with it.


Since the story was about a "green" pocketbook, we used blue and yellow paint to mix some green for a worksheet:

On the second day of rowing, we did our craft first and made a cute paper pocketbook from homeschoolshare.com.  It also came with all the items that the girls finds throughout the book.  We read the story and E enjoyed putting the items into the pocketbook as we came to each of them.

We made another sight word card, "green":

We practiced our addition with some buttons and equation magnets:                              

We also attempted a lollipop pattern activity, but she only made it through a few of these. I think she was getting tired. I plan to pull these out again sometime, though. Very cute!

Preschool - Week 10 - Angus Lost

Last week we read Angus Lost. This is another sweet book that provided many opportunities to talk about how life was back in the "olden days." And since E really loved the Katy No-Pocket lapbook we made (and has been using it to teach her monkey's in "monkey school"), I decided to make another one this week.



We made a new sight word card, "dog":

Most of the resources for the lapbook were taken from HomeschoolShare.com.

I just printed out a black and white copy of the book cover for E to color in as our lapbook cover:

We talked about the letter D sound and made a fun element with some "D" words:

There is a Collie and Scottie dog in the book, which led to talk about different dog breeds. I was very excited to see that the lapbook element included a Doberman, the best of all breeds! (Of course we colored it as a red Dobie, like Sadie...)

We talked about the "milk man" in the story, and this was a neat activity to help learn about how we get our milk today.  E cut out the pictures and we ran them through my Xyron machine. Then as I read each page in "Steps in Making Milk," she put the correct sticker on each page.

The cave animals idea I got from Lapbook Learning. I just found some cave animal pictures on Google Images and printed those out. E colored them and glued them inside the "cave."

Preschool - Week 9 - Blueberries for Sal

This week was a short week - but we still covered a lot of fun activities for our book of the week, Blueberries for Sal.  This book was written in 1948 and we had a good time just talking about the 40's kitchen pictured on the inside of the front and back cover.  Which things were different or the same as our kitchen now?

This book was good to do some counting practice.  Sal puts blueberries in her bucket and then takes some out (to eat!).  

We made our own "berries" by painting some beans blue.  I found the best way to do this way to put a large glob of paint into a plastic cup, drop in a small handful of beans and let E "mix" it all up with her paintbrush.  Then we dumped them out onto wax paper, spread them out a bit and let dry.

Then I printed out a fun counting mat and had E place the bean/blueberries into either the bucket or the bear tummy as I read the story aloud.  

We also used the bean/blueberries for a counting game, where E would draw a card from a pile and the count that number of blueberries and place them on a bucket counting mat. 

One other fun activity we did was a little experiment. (Lisey LOVES experiments).  I got a metal bucket, glass jar and wicker basket.   We dropped the bean/blueberries into each container and listened to the sound it made.  Then I had E close her eyes, listen and guess which container I dropped a bean into, based on the sound it made.  She had me close my eyes and guess, as well, which was even more fun for her.

Lastly, we did a "blue" sight word card.  We've been reviewing the cards each week and then I cover the picture and quiz her on them.  She is enjoying that part, as I make a big deal when she gets them right. :)

Preschool - Week 8 - Katy No-Pocket

This week we read Katy No-Pocket. A classic story of a pouchless mama kangaroo looking for a way to carry her joey.  What a great science lesson in disguise! We talked about marsupials, many different animal habitats, and names for daddy/mommy/baby animals.  There are also opportunities to do some counting, some "find its" and even talking about not crying and giving up when you face a problem. (She's a very emotional mama kangaroo...)

This week, I took a departure from the now standard magnet/clothespin/etc. activities. This week we did something new - we made a LAP BOOK.  A lap book is a file folder that you decorate with things that pertain to a subject that you are studying.  HomeschoolShare.com has a ton of these that are free to print and use.  We did most of the activities from their Katy No-Pocket lap book pdf.  I just printed these out on cardstock, except the title page, which I printed on regular paper.

 E colored the title page, then we glued it to half the lap book front, cut it along the edge and glued the other side on.

She did lots of cutting:

Gluing:

Sticker-making:

Sticker peeling:

Matching:

Coloring:

(This is not part of the lap book, but was a cute coloring page. 

The joey fits into the mama's pocket! )

Sounding out K words and inserting them into a cute K pocket:

Enjoying the fruits of our labor:

Preschool - Week 7 - Jenny's Surprise Summer

Last week we read this great book - Jenny's Surprise Summer.  I loved the illustrations. It was a simple, but sweet story with lots of great opportunities for discussion and learning.  We also did some "find it" activities on the pages, counted things on other pages, and talked about beach/ocean animals. E loved this book!

There were several kinds of birds in the book. I recognized the robins and seagulls, but had to ask my mom to identify the others: "The birds in the air are Terns.   They fly over the water and dive into the water to catch fish and eat them.   The birds on the ground are Sandpipers.    You find them on the beach and they peck in the sand to find little creatures that live in the sand and eat them."

As usual, I found some activities to go along with our daily reading.

 A cat magnet page: (Lisey ended up cutting out her cat)

A cat clothespin card:

A math game from homeschoolshare.com. You are supposed to draw a "body part" card and then select the correct number of "cat cards" that fits the body part card. (Not a big hit with E. So far she does not show the excitement and love of math that C had at her age. But that's ok.)

This was a VERY fun activity. In the book, there are pages that the artist has drawn so that you can see both on top of and beneath the water's surface. I drew a similar background on some white paper, and then searched Google images for pictures of the animals we learned about in the book. For example: hermit crabs, mussels, sea stars, sandpipers, seagulls, etc. I printed them out and ran them through my Xyron machine to turn them into stickers.  E helped me cut them out and then placed them on the scene.

She also drew some seashells underwater (not pictured below) and the green glass bottle, just like the book.

Preschool - Week 6 - The Little Rabbit

This week we read The Little Rabbit.  You may or may not have noticed, but I am not doing these in the order of the BFIAR book.  Basically, it's the order of what I can get from my library at what time! :)  E liked this book a lot. Not too long, informative and with a cute story.

Here are some activities we did over the week:

We did a rabbit clothespin card (we've also been reviewing the previous weeks cards as a preparation for sight word memorization):

I made this simple math worksheet to do together, to introduce addition:

I pulled out the deciduous forest animals from our Animal Habitat cards (plus a few other random animals) and I had her pull out the animals that lived in the woods.

I know we did some other activities, but I lost my camera for a few days and now I can't remember... :)

We talked about camouflage (since the wild rabbit was brown and the pet rabbit was white) and I found a ton of really cool pictures on Google images of animal camouflage.  However, E really could care less about it.  I however, thought they were amazing. God is a master creator! 

Preschool - Week 5 - Caps For Sale

This week we covered the book "Caps for Sale." Another retro, but timeless story. We went through some of the BFIAR discussion suggestions to talk about things like new vocab words (cap, peddler), counting the number of each color and total # caps, etc.  She liked imitating the peddler's actions as he grew angry with the monkeys (shaking a finger, stomping foot).

We did a number of fun activities this week as well, including:

A Monkey magnet page. (I took a hint from ConfessionsofaHomeschooler and put the sheet on a metal baking pan so the magnets actually stuck!):

A cutting practice page (also from Confessions) was great to work on her cutting skills (thumb up!) and afterwards, it made a good puzzle to piece back together:

She did another uppercase/lowercase clothespin card for the word monkey:

I found a Caps for Sale worksheet with colored caps to count.  I wrote the numbers for her, but she had to do the counting:

We got out the button box, and E had to pick out the same number and color of buttons as caps the peddler had on his head. Then she made a line in the same order as he wore them:

Friday we did some sequence cards. I scanned, copied and cut out some pictures from the book on cardstock.  Then, I asked E to use her memory to put them in the order of the story:

If anyone wants to borrow these to use, let me know! That goes for anything, actually...

Lastly, we made a fingerprint monkey tree. I printed out a tree outline I found on Google images, E colored it and made some thumb prints on the branches.

 I added the monkey features with a fine tip marker, and she drew on a cap for each monkey.

(and that autograph is all E! I love how she makes a lower case i...)