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...)

Preschool - Week 4 - Ask Mr. Bear

We spent the past two weeks covering Ask Mr. Bear. We were busy and not able to do preschool everyday, but managed to include a lot of fun activities.  This book is an antique.  Our copy had an old library check-out pocket with stamped dates that were older than me!  But the story is timeless, and the little boy was very polite, which I liked.

We did a mix of BFIAR discussion topics/activities as well as a few of my own. She especially liked acting out the way the little boy skipped, galloped, etc. from animal to animal.

On Mondays, E and I have started a habit of going to the library story time after we drop C off at school.  This week they had "anything goes," so E made this wonderful work of art. Notice the chairs the bears are sitting on and the rain storm over the little bear:

We did a clothespin "bear" card:

I got out the Animal Habitat cards I made last year, and had E pull out the animals that live in the deciduous forest:

We also did a number activity. I feel that she knows her numbers 1-10 very well, and can recognize the numerals as well as count them. We may move on to some very simple addition next. This activity she had to put them in order:

We also did a Hen magnet page,

 and printed out these great Ask Mr. Bear cards from HomeschoolShare.com.  

With these, she had to match the "gift" to the animal who offered it, and then I had her put the animals in the order that they appeared in the book.

Preschool - Week 3 - My Blue Boat

This week we read My Blue Boat. It has a lot of nautical vocab words that we talked about, and talked about using your imagination.:

This was a fun week, as there are many boat related activities around. E found and colored this entire color-by-number page by herself! Her coloring skills are very much improving, as is her patience with it.

I made some tangram pictures of boats for her to work on. Of course we used the blue tangrams! She did well with this. Unlike C, I had the pieces outlined on the paper, so hopefully next year she will move on to the solid colored ones.

I wrote uppercase letters on a set of clothes pins, and printed off a lowercase "boat" card for her to attach them to.  She liked this activity:

Then, (thanks to our PF Changs dinner in St. Louis) E used some kiddie chopsticks to sort out the blue cubes into a container. We also counted the cubes:

This was one of my favorite activities.  I dug out some of my good watercolor paper and used a black crayon to draw a simple boat scene from the book.  Then, with a white crayon, we filled in the moon and sails.  E attached some foil star stickers to the sky.

Then I helped her paint the scene with her watercolors.  First, you wet the page with clean water. Then, blend blue and green for the water, pure blue for the boat and black and blue for the night sky.

The white crayon keeps the moon and sails pristine.  Don't you love how it came out?