Preschool - Week 15 - The Red Carpet

This week was another fun, vintage children's story about a hotel that rolls out the red carpet for a special guest - except the carpet takes off and leads the police on a chase all around town.  We did another lapbook from homeschool share this week, throwing in a few worksheets from a workbook for variety.

We made a title page by only coloring the carpet red, like many pages in the book:

We talked about traffic signals and what each color meant.

 The police officers spent a lot of energy chasing the red carpet in the book. We talked about what police officers do in their jobs and made stickers to put together this little book:

We also added another sight word, "red":

E has been amazing me with her handwriting these days. We haven't been working on it together, but she will just copy words on her own. So I decided to add a little handwriting to our homeschool week:

The homeschoolshare lapbook kit had a map you could print out that includes the stores and path of the red carpet from the book.  I taped it inside a plastic page cover and added it to the lapbook so E can draw and "erase" her own paths through town:

Finally, I printed out a t-book template for E to make her own "red" book. She wrote the word "red" on the front and then cut out magazine pictures of red things to glue inside.

Preschool - Week 14 - The Snowy Day

After all the excitement of December, I was ready to jump back into homeschooling E with another fun week of "rowing" The Snowy Day.

While reading the story, we talked about how the artist didn't need a lot of detail to make his illustrations. We made another lapbook this week. E really enjoys this and so do I. I was thrilled to have a couple snowy days here, which we took advantage of by playing outside and doing a snow experiment.

First, we reviewed our previous sight words and added a new one: snow. 

We added a "What is White?" element to our lapbook from homeschoolshare.com:

and E colored in the title page:

We went outside to try to catch some snowflakes on our snowy day.  We talked a lot about how each one is unique and related that to how big God is to have created them all!

We went out to the deck to make tracks in the snow like the boy in the book.  (She cannot walk with her toes in or out, however! Strange...) She even found a stick to drag!

The stick worked well for writing her name in the snow:

Next for an experiment. We made two snowballs and put them into containers.  One we left on the counter and one we put into the freezer.  E predicted that the snowball on the counter would melt, but the freezer one would not.  After her rest time, she discovered that she was correct!

We also made a snowman for our lapbook, with a craft kit leftover from C's Winter Party:

We also made a paper snowflake. We had to use grown-up scissors for this, so it was a heavily "mom-supervised activity":

Lastly, I printed out a worksheet with eight animal tracks.  I also printed out the matchbook template from homeschoolshare and glued the tracks on the front. Then I printed out the eight animals' photos from Google Images and had E cut them out.  Together, we researched the animal tracks and matched the (hopefully!) correct animal to it's track:

Finished Lapbook, with felt scrapbook snowflakes glued on for decoration:

Lastly, we used the snowflake technique to make cinnamon snowflakes as a snack:

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. :)