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...)

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?

Preschool - Week 2 - Yellow Ball

Week two - on to a new book! E was sad to see Jesse Bear go back to the library. But this was a neat book, too.

This story is more pictures than words, so there is a lot to talk about. We discussed perspective, and opposites (near/far, above/below) and I made some little flash cards to go along with that:

E loves to paint, so one day I helped her recreate the cover page of the book:

We did another magnet page, although I realized that I only have one of each letter so, "BALL" didn't work out so well... I have a plan to use clothespins as a backup. Wait and see!

I also had some small, colored foam blocks that I was using to make patterns for E to complete.  She really didn't understand anything more complicated than ABABA, but we'll work on that.  Just another reminder that she is only 3 and that I can't expect her to do what C did last year.

Preschool - Week 1 - Jesse Bear What Will You Wear?

As C was off to the exciting land of Kindergarten, E was eager to start her preschool.  As I mentioned before, we will be using BFIAR as the main "curriculum" for her first year of preschool.  This basically involves reading a book each day for a week (or four days, as I have planned) and doing little activities along with it.

Our first book of the week was "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?"

E loved this book.  We read it through many times, to the point she pretty much had it memorized by the end of the week.  In addition to this, we did some "look and find" activities as we read the book, and talked about some of the things in the story.  A couple days I just ripped out a page from one of our many workbooks and had her do that after our story. 

She wanted to do a science experiment "real bad" so we made a sun-fade picture.  You find some objects and place them on a sheet of construction paper in the full sun.  Later in the day you can see where the sun has faded the paper:

Each week I plan to make a "magnet page" for E that will highlight a key word in her book.  Maybe this will turn into some sight words?  I bought a pack of letter magnets for $1 at Target and scanned them in. Then I used those images to make a page that she can match the magnet letters to and color in.

As another fun activity, I cut out a "Jesse Bear" from cardboard and E helped me make him some "clothes."  We went through my scrap fabric and I cut out some boots, shirts, pants, etc.  Then I'd say: "Jesse Bear, what will you wear, what will you wear to.... (insert made up location here)" and she'd pick out what he would wear.  She really loved this, despite how simple it is. Although she *really* wanted to make Jesse Bear  a girl bear. Uh - No. I am a realist/mean mom. He's a boy, dear. Let it go.

Since the story is a rhyme, we did some rhyme puzzles the last day to reinforce that concept.