It was time to start on letter E. I told my son we could watch a Wolf Eel video tomorrow if he did his worksheet today, and he kindly obliged.
So it was worksheet first, then onto a craft. I knew we didn't have much time today, so I found a quick elephant deal on the "first-school" website, which is pretty much the source for any and all preschool stuff. I'm not always a huge fan of the style of ideas found there, but sometimes it's just what I need in a pinch.
The elephants look like this when you're done:
The little head part is glued onto a CD you don't mind donating to the project. The website gives you all the stuff to print out, then you just cut and assemble. Thankfully, we managed to get some shape recognition and a little bit of size differentiation in there. And of course, you do get some practice with the ol' glue stick. We attached our elephant to a craft stick and used him like a puppet for awhile. But the kiddo got pretty sick of it, real fast.
SO, we read a book. It was a crappy book. Don't get it or read it. It's called The Elephant Wish. I'll even picture it for you so no one wastes their time on it's worthlessness.
I tell you what, sometimes I cannot believe what they publish in children's literature. Some of it is completely...a waste of time. My son, an avid story lover, lost interest in the book after the FIRST page. That's saying something. So, yeah, don't bother with it.
I didn't want to spend too much time on dinosaurs because I will be teaching our preschool co-op class about dinosaurs in a few weeks--gotta leave a few surprises for then. So instead, we focused today on Dracula. It's getting closer, every day, to Halloween; so, I figured it was ok.
During my internet search, I had seen much reference to a "Looking for Dracula" activity that has been done in various preschools and kindergarten classes. I had to look into it a little further to find the best medium for introducing the activity to my own family. What I finally decided on was a youtube video:
It's pretty much--AWESOME! We had such a blast doing this activity. It feels a little strange as an adult, acting out a story while watching a youtube video. But you just have to let yourself go! The kids went crazy for it, and have been singing/chanting the song everywhere we go, every day since. We actually waited until everyone was home to break out this doosy. The story calls for props, too, which I would highly recommend. Improvised blanket capes, cheap glow-in-the-dark fangs, and binoculars aka swimming goggles was what we used, but one could get all fancy and go for the real thing too.
SOoooo....backing up, since we couldn't do this one during the day, we decided on another activity that was also a hit. Dracula lollipops. Yes, you read that correctly. And here's what they look like:
Sure, there's a witch in there too. These were pretty fun. Mostly, for my son, it was just a chance to do some assembly. He did break out the scissors and try cutting a few dracula heads. He tells me he only knows how to cut straight lines, so...some of the dracula heads are square. It's all good. We did some experimenting to try and figure out a good way to make his body/cape. We never really decided which method we liked the best, so I guess they are all equally cute/pathetic :-) Mostly, this was just a pleasant activity; it wasn't teaching too much, but that's ok sometimes.
I was getting sick of underwater animals, so we took a break for letter D. As always with a new letter, we first completed a worksheet:
I'm actually really happy with doing these worksheets. My older son learned to write letters just out of curiosity, but my younger son seems to need a little more parental push. It's fun to sit down and work on these worksheets together. It's not like I just leave him with it--we talk about the letter and what it looks like, we draw it with our fingers, and often I hold his little hand in mine and we write some letters together; then he might try a few on his own. I don't know why I enjoy this time together as much as I do. It's just fun to see the glimmer of recognition come into his face...it makes me feel like we're getting somewhere :-)
Next, I drew a big letter D and gave my son dinosaur stickers. Of course, we talked about how "dinosaur" starts with the letter D, and the sound of it and all that too.
I thought he would just decorate the letter D and be done with it, but he surprised me by making up a big dinosaur story as he went along. The letter D became the land and the middle became the water. The dinosaurs grouped together in packs and either protected each other, or helped each other hunt for prey. Some of the dinosaurs jumped across the water to escape their predators, and some of them just liked to swim across. Mostly, I played the role of listener...a welcome change :-) We had a great time. It's amazing what a simple piece of paper and a few stickers can do!
It was time to do some art-ish-ness for our letter C stuff. A google search helped me out with an idea: handprint crabs. Honestly, I thought it was pretty adorable, but I never expected our own version to turn out as totally cute as it did, pictured below:
I got the idea from the link, but I used a few variations of my own. We just used blue construction paper for the background, as opposed to making it out of watercolor paints. I let my son make "pinchers" and a smile, etc. with a Sharpie. Finally, we painted on some glue with a kid's paintbrush and then sprinkled corn meal over the top to get a sandy effect. That's the part little guy liked the best. He loved watching the corn meal stick to the glue and he's way impressed that it "weely DOES yook just yike SAND!"
We had to work on this craft in stages throughout the day as we were waiting for things to dry--but it was a big hit!
Once upon a time, I introduced the idea of having to earn an underwater-animal-related video by completing a worksheet. I think it is becoming the way of things around here.
That's why, when we went to start our discussion of letter C, my son said, "what worksheet can I do to earn a crab movie?" Ve-ry nice. Therefore, I found a letter C worksheet and he practiced some writing skills.
I think the author has many brilliant ideas on this site if one is looking for more ocean stuff, but I was pretty much just interested in the video.
After watching the video a few times (it's only about five minutes or so), we had just enough time to go over a few facts about crabs. I ended the discussion talking about the way crabs move. It seemed only natural that we then move to the ground and practice the crab walk. Kids are so much better at this than adults!
I had found some little ditty about crabs that we chanted while acting like and walking around like crabs. It was ok, but honestly, my kiddo wasn't too into it. The ditty part. I wish I would have thought to have a crab race. That would have been way more fun. Oh well--coulda, woulda, shoulda.
To round out our discussion of beluga whales, and to teach a little in the way of standard measurements, my son and I decided to represent the size of a beluga on our floor with painter's tape.
I found some rulers and we talked for a very brief moment about what a ruler is and how it works. Then we started marking off 15 feet (according to my research on the size of an average beluga whale), foot by foot, on my floor. For every foot we put a small piece of tape, and when we got to 15 we stopped. I was thrilled that my son was counting the increments as we went, and that it gave him lots of practice in counting up to 15. Next, I had to spend some time making an outline of a beluga whale that encompassed all of the 15 feet we just marked off. Good thing it didn't take that long. Less than five minutes.
It was impressive to see how big a beluga would really be if it was swimming around in our house and my son was pretty excited about it. I made him lay down next to the whale and I measured him with tape and we looked at the difference. We then found other things to measure ourselves and the whale with--for example, we have a wooden gravestone as one of our halloween decorations, so we used that for measuring. We learned that the whale is 7.5 gravestones, and my son is about 2.5 gravestones. It was pretty cool to get some non-standard measurement ideas in there too.
I'm happy with this activity. The method of measurement, in various forms, has been successfully explored. AND, it was a lot of fun!
Believe it or not, there isn't too much out there when you search for "beluga preschool activities" on the web. Imagine that. So I did the best I could. I found a website that offered some printouts you could use to put together a whale mobile--and one of the whales just so happens to be a beluga. Good enough for us.
This is what the completed project looks like:
*Can I please just make a small note here, that I realize the whales are supposed to be colored, yes, but my son doesn't do much in that arena. Also, yes, we have a very randomly "decorated" house--which is another way of saying that our home is very messy. And, yes, we have already put up many of our halloween decorations, including some pumpkin lights and a strange orange sparkly spider that hangs from the ceiling in an odd place. Furthermore, I realize this isn't a very good picture, but it's all I had so it will just have to do.
ANYway, this is where you can find the printouts and instructions if you so desire: Whale Mobile.
It was a fun project; took us about 30 minutes from start to finish. Here are the pluses that I've seen of it:
the child can do most of the work himself
it's different from the usual coloring or painting sort of craft
it serves as a great refresher course whenever the child sees it
So yeah, we love it! In addition, the whale mobile has really jazzed up our decorations with a highly desirable animal-eclectic look that I'm sure will soon be all the rage.
My mother-in-law sang a song to my husband (as a child) about a baby beluga. My husband now sings it to our kids. SOOOooooo, when I needed a sea creature to focus on for letter B, I had a clear choice.
I did a little research and found the best youtube video of the song that I could: Baby Beluga Song. It even has a cutsy, cheesy little video that goes with it. Today we opened with watching this song a few times. We then tried to sing with the video--but my chico wasn't too into the actual singing part. So we just watched it again.
That's all we had time for today. Some days are like that. Too bad I have that dang song stuck in my head now.
For our third day talking about letter A, I decided we should just make one. One that looks like an alligator. I got the idea here: http://preschoolalphabet.blogspot.com/2011/07/alligator.html. Ours looks a little less professional than the author's because...well, the pictured teeth below are the kind of teeth my son really wanted for his alligator. I'm just proud that he cut them out all by himself.
We then went to the couch to read a Mercer Mayer favorite. This book is truly a great read!
When we were done, my son wanted to use his recently constructed alligator to act out the story. It was awesome--we hid our alligator under the couch and used our play food to lure him out to the garage, where we left him. We wrote notes for the door and taped them up. When our daddy came home, little guy was beside himself with excitement for dad to discover our little trick.
To finish off our Letter A stuff, we decided to focus on alligators for a couple of activities.
Alligator Activity #1:
First we talked about the sounds letter A makes to reinforce from yesterday: a-a-anemone & a-a-alligator.
Then we sang "5 Little Monkeys" and did some coordinating hand motions/actions. It's the one that goes: Five little monkey swingin' in the tree
Teasing Mr. Alligator, "can't catch me!
Nope! You can't catch me!"
etc. etc. etc.
My son loves that song--especially the chomping bit.
Alligator Activity #2: After the song, we read a book: A Frog in the Bog, by Karma Wilson and Joan Rankin (take a look at the book.) It's a great story and one of my kids' favorites. It also deals with the number 5 and alligators, so it dovetailed with "5 Little Monkeys" quite nicely.
We were going to do Alligator Activity #3...but we ran out of time. So it will have to wait until tomorrow.
Well, my oldest has gone off to kindergarten and left us. Boo-hoo. But the show must go on. The younger son and I will be venturing into the world of the ocean for the next few months as we (hopefully) learn some letters--and get them to STICK!
My younger son (hereafter referred to as "my son" seeing as the other one isn't in the picture anymore), is interested in the ocean. He's also interested in bombs and superheros. But I figured an ocean theme would be a little more appropriate for the learning environment. Anyway, his favorite videos on earth, currently, are from the Jonathon Bird website: http://www.blueworldtv.com/webisodes.
On the other hand my son is NOT interested in writing, coloring, reading, numbers, or anything else that even resembles learning in a conventional manner. So, I've had to get tricky. Motivation is the key to getting any little kid I've ever known interested in something they are not naturally interested in, so all I had to do was find a motivation for my son. If his motivation just so happened to be Jonathon Bird, well, then...so be it. I'll have to write a thank you note to that man someday.
So I told my little guy that I would let him watch the Jonathon Bird webisode about anemones if he would practice writing letter A's on a worksheet. I know. So pedantic. But that kid. I'm telling you. He's got to at least learn how to hold a pencil one of these days. Anyway, it turned out to be a cinch. We spent a good 10 minutes writing letter A's and talking about how to hold a pencil (ha ha), and when he was done, we talked about the sound letter A makes--you know, as in a-a-anemone. Then he got to watch the Jonathon Bird webisode entitled "The Real Nemo," which he loved! So everyone was happy!
When we finished that, it was time for a craft. I think I've mentioned this before, but crafts are not my strong point. This particular son of mine, though, sometimes I worry about his small motor skills, so I think crafts are a good way to go for us to let him gain some dexterity and coordination in his little hands.
I found this anemone craft on "The Crafty Classroom" website and I liked it. The official instructions can be found here: http://thecraftyclassroom.com/CraftCoralReefSeaAnemone.html. All you do is cut a styrofoam ball in half; I just so happened to have one on hand from another time when we were making planets. Then you twist up pipe-cleaners whatever way suits your fancy and smash them down into the syrofoam. It pretty well represents what an actual anemone looks like. And it used lots of finger work with all the pinching and twisting and smashing it required.
When we had completed our anemones, we got out some toy fish we have and pretended our anemones were stinging them and catching them and eating them. That was pretty fun. Eventually our story turned to superheros using bombs to fight off the alien anemones attacking the earth...but hey, who says you can't mix business with pleasure? Huh?
My youngest son is completely UN-interested in numbers--this frustrates me, slightly. Therefore, I've been trying to find something to interest him that will help expose him to numbers and hopefully get some recognition going on. We've done this activity three times this week, but I've yet to determine it's effectiveness. I'll let you know.
It's easy to prepare. I draw a parking lot on black construction paper with a white crayon and label the parking spots with numbers 1-10 (you could certainly do a different set of numbers, whatever you want to work on). Then I tell the kids to get 10 cars and line them up in "traffic."
The first time I did this activity, I just called out a number and the kids would park their cars in that number's space.
But it somehow evolved into my telling 10 little stories, with 10 protagonist drivers that are trying to get to various places represented by 10 different parking spaces.
Examples:
A man trying to get his sick dog to the vet in space #3.
An old person forgot their pills and had to run home to space #5 to get them.
A mom and all her kids were going to the grocery store in space #10.
You get the drift. Anyway, the kids both enjoy this one, and I'm hoping it's helping.
First we read a book that we LOVE! This is the one:
It's adorable! Really. Really!
Then we made bath paint. I forgot to take a picture of our home-made bath paint, and now, of course, it's all gone. So here is a picture of the bath paint from the website I got the recipe from
Next we were off to the bath to paint our own bodies, just like the kid in the book.
AND finally, we got all washed off, just like the kid in the book.
This was a good activity! I highly recommend it!
Next time, when I get really ambitious, and when we purchase a black light some fine day, we're going to do this glow-in-the-dark idea from a different website-- Glowing Homemade Bath Paint:
My kids love to tell stories. Today I presented them with 2 story starters (the first few sentences of a story) and had them each tell the rest. I wrote down their stories for them and we've been reading them over and over all day. They love to hear their stories; they laugh like it's the funniest thing EVER!
You could use any story starter you want, or come up with your own. I just so happened to have come across a few on the website I referenced a few weeks back from my friend's school district, so I just used those ones. But anything will work.
Here are my kid's stories:
One day, a boy woke up early in the morning. As he got out of bed, he noticed a very strange seed lying on the floor. It was a strange color and a strange shape...it was red and shaped like a diamond. Then he picked it up and then he planted it in a pot. Then it growed and growed and then it turned out to be a strange plant. It growed a strange kind of food. It actually growed and it growed treasures on it and rubies was the treasure! And diamonds! And gold! And the boy was SO surprised! He cut them off and he showed them to his mom and his mom said, "Holy COW!" The end.
Warren the worm lived in the dirt. He loved dirt! It was cool, just a bit wet, and quiet. But he was very curious about what was above the dirt. So one day, he decided to poke his head up above the dirt and grass. He tunneled through the dirt, straight up to the surface, and poked his head out. Just then...he heard a loud noise; it was a wookie. He goed like this: "woarrrrrrr!" But the wookie was a good guy. Then a ghost comed and put a sleep on him so he can't find Warren the worm. Then the ghost did a puzzle and waited. Warren the worm writed letters on the ghost's body and the ghost said, "that is NOT pretty!" Then the ghost grew up to be a cow!!! Then he turned back into a ghost. Then he took those two-the worm and the wookie-away and then he locked them down in jail and they died. Then Batman comes and he was killin' the ghost and then the ghost came back to life. He killed Batman and then he singed a song, the Darth Vader song. Then Luke Skywalker comed and poofed him away and then he sang his own Luke Skywalker song. The end.
Today we put duct tape, sticky-side-out, around our wrists (like bracelets) and went on a walk. The idea was that the kids had to find items of as many different colors as they could, then attach the items to their bracelets.
It was great fun, and interesting to see what things the kids picked up--petals, leaves, pinecones, rocks...etc. The sky's the limit!
This was a very basic activity that I decided to use today in order to help my younger son try to become somewhat motivated to learn his numbers by sight. It was vaguely successful, although any non-success can be attributed to my son's lack of interest, rather than the effectiveness of the activity.
Either way, it's easy and fun and yummy.
I just so happened to have some leftover sour gummy worms (left over from making that recipe where you create dirt out of oreo's...you know the one). ANYway. I had some leftover and I thought it would be fun to use them in a counting exercise. So after a little thought, I grabbed my scissors and green construction paper and cut out 10 leaves. I wrote numbers 1-10, one on each leaf. Then I dumped a big pile of the gummy worms on the table and rounded up the kids.
It didn't take much imagination for them to believe that the worms, previously used as worms, were now caterpillars. Hungry caterpillars--no less--who wanted to be put on leaves. I told them that the leaves were picky and only wanted a certain number of caterpillars on them. So they had to put the amount of caterpillars on the leaf that would match it's number. Savvy? "Savvy" they said.
My older son was done with his leaves (I gave him 6-10) in a flash and ran away until I told him he could come back and gobble some of the caterpillars. But my younger son, who needed much coaching from myself, struggled to comprehend the idea of corresponding amounts with numbers. We worked on it for quite a while. Repetition works...right?
Finally, I told them they could pick a leaf and eat all the caterpillars on it, "so which one would you choose?" I asked.
Also, a friend of mine sent me an excellent link from her school district's website. The school district has come up with enough awesome activities to fill up the whole year. The purpose, as much as I can gather at a quick look-see, is for families to use the activities to help prepare their preschoolers for kindergarten. Maybe every school district does this, I'll have to check mine and see what they have to offer. Anyway, the one from my friend's district is really very amazing. So lately, whenever the kids say, "what can we do now?" I pull out one of these activities from this website, print it out, all easy-peasy, and we have a great time.
Oh man! A month has gone by and I haven't posted...and why? Hmm...I'm not SO sure. I think the best explanation would be that it got sunny here. Yes. That about sums it up. So, instead of doing preschool activities and writing about them, we just spent time outdoors. Also, somewhere in there we all got sick. At some point we went on a vacation. And for awhile I just didn't feel like posting.
There you have it.
Anyway, here is a bit of a recap of some things we did that I never posted about:
We finished our butterfly unit, which was a lot of fun. We used pipe-cleaners as caterpillars and made butterfly rings to use as props while learning a few songs and fingerplays. We also did that activity where you wrap a kid all up in toilet paper and let them break out, you know, to simulate the cocoon effect and all. That was probably the part the kids will remember the most :-)
After learning about butterflies for about a week, we moved onto a rock unit. I know I found a lot of preschool geology information on the web, but honestly, I didn't keep track of where I got it very well. There are 4 activities from this unit that I remember best: making a rock collection, using the rock collection to practice sorting (as follows in the photos),
further using the rock collection to test the rocks for living matter (all you do is drop the rocks in vinegar; if the rock bubbles that's an indication of some sort of living matter that's leftover in the rock and reacting with the vinegar just like baking soda would. I mean, obviously it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's kind of what I told the kids we were doing: checking for BONES in the rocks! Honestly, the idea of bones kept their attention pretty well--"Mom! This one is bubbling! It must have bones in it! Do you think that a giant t-rex was walking a long time ago and then he died and then his bones got all crushed up and stuck in this rock and now we're holding it?!" "Yes son, I'm pretty sure that must be exactly what happened." Don't judge me--at least they're thinking about it.), and finally we did this deal where you take white paper outside and crayons and make a crayon-rubbing of the concrete.
That last one was a big flop. Don't do it. It's pointless and dumb.
So that's us. It's been a fun month spending most of our time out of doors. But don't you worry, I'm sure we'll be back to the ol' grind pretty soon.
I love this site because it includes whole weeks worth of preschool lesson plans based on science themes. The lessons are great because they already include the science and background information you need to tell your kids what's going on, multiple craft ideas, gross motor activities, even snack ideas. I love it--so much so, in fact, that I'll tell you what I do...I print out a lesson plan and do everything in it! Ha ha! It's the best.
So for the rest of this week I printed out the lesson plan called "Butterflies" and we got to work. To start us out today, I chose to give the kids all the introductory information from the first part of the lesson plan.
The intro information was really fun to impart to the kids--facts like (the words in THIS color have been copied straight from the scienceforpreschoolers.com website):
Why do we need butterflies? Butterflies are the second largest group of pollinators next to honey bees. We spent some time talking about pollination at this point. I talked about butterfly legs as being sticky like tape and it picks up the "flower dust" and when the butterfly lands on the next flower, some of the "flower dust" comes off as he rubs his legs on the petals and such. The flowers need each other's "flower dust" to make their fruit. We didn't really get into the why and how of all this stuff. Just some really basic basics.
• What is the difference between a butterfly and a moth? Most butterflies fly during the day (diurnal). Moths fly at night (nocturnal). Butterflies have small bulbs on the end of their smooth antennae. Moths have “fuzzy” antennae.We pulled out the ol' google image search at this point to visualize the differences.
• What is the life-cycle of a butterfly? egg, caterpillar, pupa (cocoon), butterfly. While we were on the internet, we found a couple of excellent youtube videos that capture the life cycle of a butterfly in that kind of filming where they speed up the time...I can't think what it's called right now, but they were really awesome to watch!
• Where do butterflies live? In every continent except Antarctica, with the majority in tropical zones.
• What do butterflies eat? Sweet nectar from fruits and flowers. Butterflies don’t have a mouth. They drink nectar through a straw that they can roll up and down, called a proboscis.We pulled out some straws to talk about the butterfly's mouth-the proboscis. The kids curled them up and went around the house trying to uncurl them and then drink out of stuff. It was hilarious!
They taste with their antennae.
Butterflies can see the colors red, yellow and green. We looked around the room and I had the kids point out the objects they would be able to see the colors of if they were butterflies.
They don’t have lungs, but breathe through holes, called spiracles, in their abdomen.
My kids were pretty tripped out about this "spiracles" part...so I just touched on it briefly. All in all, it was a really great discussion. The kids loved learning all about butterflies and went about the rest of the day pretending to be butterflies themselves. Adorable :-)
After a few days growth, our bean plant was ready for a traditional planting. Namely--in a pot. So today, the boys planted it. I made them do it all by themselves. They went outside and got handfuls of soil. Then they gently pulled the plant out of the plastic baggie and placed it and the soil into a little pot. A dosing of waterage and we were ready for a sunny windowsill. Check out our bean plant now!
Isn't he so cute? We named him Benny. Benny the bean plant. Grow, Benny, grow!
This is what our bean/seed looks like today--you can see its little tap root reaching towards the water and the beginnings of a sprout emerging from the seed. So awesome! It's been fun to check it out every day, or a few times a day and note the differences we see, which are sometimes drastic.
Today we moved onto some more in-depth knowledge about seeds and plant growth.
I found a lesson plan online that I used to supplement what I wanted to teach the kids--it can be found here: bean plant lesson plan.
First, I must tell you that I quite accidentally broke one of the seeds/beans we had been trying to grow. It was falling down into the water and I was trying to pull it back up to the middle of the plastic baggie, when the bean just fell apart. Nevertheless, I was able to use this minor set-back as a positive experience. Since that bean was mid-growth, it served as a great opportunity for us to take out the seed and observe what was going on with it. I showed the boys how beans have two sides, and a skin-like structure surrounding the two sides. They were able to feel these things with their hands and see them up close. There was also a teensy, tiny little root that had begun to grow and so we got to hold that and inspect it as well.
When I was pretty satisfied the boys understood the parts of a seed, we went on to discuss the lifecycle of the bean plant. I had printed out the lesson plan I mentioned before, which includes a cut-and-paste style worksheet that illustrates the phases of life for a bean plant. I precut out a set for each boy and I allowed them to color the pictures while I explained each one. Then I drew a big circle on the middle of a piece of construction paper and asked the boys to glue the pictures onto the circle in the order they go in. As they guessed at, and tried to remember, which picture went where, I helped them along and reinforced the knowledge for them. I then had them draw arrows to indicate the the progression of the lifecycle of the bean plant.
I think my boys would tell you this was a more tedious activity and not as enjoyable as some of the others, but hey, they can't all be fun and games, right? I was very happy when, at the end of our time together, the boys could tell me about how a bean plant grows from seed to plant, and then from plant to seed. They could identify how this created a "cycle" which was a word they didn't previously fully understand. They knew vocabulary terms like "seed, root, shoot, stem, leaves, flowers, fruit" and could correctly apply them to the pictures we discussed. More excitingly, they could then take a look at our own, real life, bean plant in the window and accurately determine which phase our plant was in. That was pretty cool.
Sometimes I'm such a nerd. Like...all the time. I just love it when these kids know stuff!
While we waited for our seed to grow and grow, I decided to switch things up a bit and play a game today. Last year, actually, I printed this board game template off the net and put it together, but we never had a chance to play it. In fact, this year, Easter went by as well and I still had forgotten to make time to play this game. So I brought it out today, just to say we've finally played it...and surprisingly, it turned out to be pretty fun. We all enjoyed it. Maybe next year I'll remember this good experience and bring out the game before or on Easter.
I found the template at the kaboose website. If you click on the link it will take you right to a page where you, too, can print out this game. Anyway, I'm not really sure how the website says to play it because it's been awhile since I was actually on there reading it. So I'll just tell you how we played.
This is what the board looks like:
It's kind of a candyland sort of set-up. Except that the random pictures don't really mean anything to the play of the game, which is a tad disappointing.
All I did was get together plastic eggs that matched the colors of the eggs on the game board. I was lucky to have them on hand. After putting the four colored eggs in a buckety, baskety deal, we took turns dumping them out on the floor to determine each person's turn. We had to agree on a method of deciding which egg was the "one," so our rule was that the egg that ended up the farthest away from you was the "one" that determined your play on that turn. So, for example, if I dumped out the eggs on the carpet and the green one rolled the furthest away from me, then that meant I got to move my game piece to the next green on the game board. I'm hoping this makes sense; it wasn't very complex to play, but somehow I'm feeling like it is overly complex to explain. So anyhoo--that's all we did. It was fun to watch the kids rooting for certain eggs to roll the furthest from them so they could get a particular color, or trying different methods of bucket dumping to get the eggs to perform in a manner that they were hoping for. We also had to make up something to do with those random pictures on the board, so we kind of just made them into a little story that we told as we went along. Like this:
Me (making my game piece talk): "Hey guys, I'm way ahead of you and playing in this little brown house! It's so fun! Hurry up and come play with me in here. We'll play hide and seek."
Kids (making their game pieces talk): "Ok, here we come! I have to get a blue to get over there so wait for me, ok?"
And so on.
It really was a lot of fun. It's always fun to use our imaginations together and make up stories. Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy the simplicity of story-telling with my kids. They come up with the BEST stuff and I never come away without a good dosing of belly-laughter.
To follow up our discussion of capillary action, the boys and I decided to grow a bean on our sliding-glass door. It's a pretty easy thing, we got some directions off the internet--a simple google search will bring up tons of sites that tell you how to do it. Generally, it works like this:
Find a bean, any old bean, from your pantry. It can't be one that's been cooked in any way. We used a navy bean.
Get a paper towel or two all wet.
Place the paper towels in a ziplock bag and wedge the bean between the plastic side of the bag (so you can see it and watch it grow) and the paper towels.
Add a little water, approximately 1/2 inch, to the bottom of the bag.
Zip the bag closed tight.
Tape it (or attach in any manner) to a sunny window or door (keep the seed where you can see it, you don't have to face it towards the light).
Watch what happens over the next couple of days.
Here's what happens: the seed/bean will swell as capillary action draws the water from the paper towel into the bean; the bean will sprout a root that will grow downward reaching towards the water at the bottom of the bag (it will be white or light colored); the root will utilize capillary action to pull water up to the seed/bean where a green shoot will begin to grow upwards from out of the seed/bean (it may curl); eventually the two sides of the bean/seed will split and baby leaves will emerge and the plant will continue to grow.
You may have to replenish the water if your bean/seed drinks it all up.
So that's what we did today. It was pretty fun and very simple. I think the kids were a little let down that we didn't do more, but they'll get more excited as they watch the seed/bean grow and to eventually pot it in a little pot. Growing plants can be such a satisfying experience. I hope they feel this way too.
I did take a picture, but my camera is giving me fits right now. So I'll post one after a few days of growth.
Ok, Day 2 of capillary action-ness was awesome! I have to say that with a big exclamation point to compensate for the failure of my carnation experiment. Which, at this point, we were still watching and waiting for evidence, doing a hopeful check every few hours with expectant graph in hand. Blah!
So...while we were waiting, I found this other idea that I loved. I got it here: http://www.chromebattery.com/battery-kids/projects/capillary-action-experiment on a website called Battery Kids--turns out they have a lot of cool stuff, I'll definitely be checking it out some more on a day when I've got some time.
Anyway, this is what the experiment looks like when you're done.
This one really works AND you only have to wait about 2 hours as opposed to 24 or more AND you can really watch it working. AND you only need to have a paper towel and some water. How much better can an experiment get, huh?
So, first you fill up a glass with water--mostly all the way up to the top. Then you get another glass and leave it empty. Twist up a paper towel into a rope; I had the kids do this part and they worked together to get the paper towel wound up really tightly. Submerge one side of the "rope" into the glass that is full and bend the other side into the cup that is empty, creating a rainbow-ish shape of the paper towel between the two glasses. That's all you have to do. The water will soak into the paper towel and climb from one glass to the other. Over the course of a couple hours, it will fill the empty cup until the two cups have an equal amount of water in them.
I loved this experiment and the kids were way more excited about it too because they could see it happening. Sure, it's pretty slow, but it's obvious that the water is climbing up the paper towel. Even if the kids can't see it with their eyes you can have them feel the "rope" with their fingers and tell you where it's wet and where it's dry. My youngest son kept track of the water this way. They were both very interested to know why water wasn't dripping off the rope and onto the table. This question led to a great discussion about how the "rope" acted like a bridge. Necessarily, I had to delve into the concept of molecules and how they work in water. Once again, we used lots of dumbed down drawings. Pictures of big circle smiley-face water molecules holding hands and pulling each other up a rope, and big circle smiley-face water molecules going across a bridge while telling each other to hold hands tight and not let go. In this way, my kids came to understand some of the nature of water, why the table didn't get wet, and had the topic of surface tension reinforced (we've worked on it before) in their little brains.
Therefore, I'm very happy about this simple experiment. Although the flower one is a little showier, I think this paper towel one is a little more interesting.
For whatever reason, unknown even to myself, I had the hankering to talk to the kids about capillary action. Maybe it's because I know spring is here and there is much of capillary action happening in the world around us. Maybe not. Either way, I snagged an idea from this website: http://jadaroo.blogspot.com/2011/03/carnation-science-experiment-rainbows.html and decided to give it a go. Here's what Jada Roo (from the website) did: get white carnations, slit stems, submerge in colored water, wait for the water to travel up the stems and into the petals causing the flower to "change color."
It's a pretty swell idea. We tried it and we followed all the directions to the letter. Here's what Jada Roo's experiment looked like:
and here's what my less than perfect approximation looked like:
Here's what Jada Roo's flowers looked like after waiting a day, (pretty cool, huh?):
Here's what happened after I waited 5 days: I didn't take a picture. That's because I was so mad at this stupid experiment. Only 1 of our flowers changed color, the blue one. We even made a graph to chart the progress of the flowers and everything, but it was all in vain.
I don't have many hypotheses for why my flowers didn't work. I guess they weren't thirsty. My husband suggested maybe my stems were too long. I don't know. I've talked to various people who have reported that they've seen this work, so I know it does. It just didn't work for us--for some reason. Whatever the reason is, I'm mad at it.
Well, at least the flower in blue water worked, allowing the boys and I to have a small discussion about how the blue water travelled up the stem and got into the petals. I ended up drawing a few pictures, as is usually necessary for us. I think they got it. And even if they didn't, they have another chance tomorrow because I found another idea that I like.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we have the opportunity to watch a thing called General Conference on TV or stream it on the internet every six months. Not all people know all about General Conference, as my sons found out the hard way a few days ago.
We happened to be in the store looking for a new car seat and ran into a family in the car seat aisle who were willing to sell us their old one for cheap. So we followed them to their car to check out said car seat, which I then decide to purchase. As I was doing the looking-over, my sons were sitting in the cart talking to this family and I hear my oldest son yell to me, "MOM! They don't watch General Conference! Can you believe it?! They don't even know what it is!" This proved slightly embarrassing to myself, because...really...what am I supposed to say to that? So I got the chance to explain to this nice family what religion we belong to and the basics of General Conference. Nice. I'm always astounded at the knowledge that seems so obvious to us as adults. That not all people belong to the same church as we do was, apparently, a novel idea to my young offspring.
Back to the point. The point is, that General Conference is 8 hours long, spanning 4 sessions and 2 days. This is a problem for parents of young children. Parents like myself. How the heck do you get your kids to sit through all that? Or even some of it? Or even be quiet for a short amount of time so you can listen? There are TONS of ideas on the internet that one can implement, so for the past few conferences I have been doing this deal where we have activities in baggies. Each baggie gets a face of one of the conference speakers taped to it. Then, when that person comes up to speak, we pull out the activity in that baggie and do it, hopefully quietly. So far, it's worked ok. Here's what it looks like at our house:
But I have to say, after attempting to sit through all these hours and hours of general conference this weekend, and doing all these prepared activities: it's a lot of work. And I'm not exactly sure it all pays off. Next time, either I will be modifying the activities that go in our baggies, or choosing a new idea to implement. An easier one. An idea that takes WAY less planning and WAY less effort.
Since I haven't been creating very many egg-ceptional preschool activities lately, I had to ask myself what on earth I have been creating. The answer is, I've been absorbed in making a countdown activity for Easter. I've seen a few variations out there on the web and I've wanted to make one for my own family. Therefore, I've been spending all my time finding the ideas I like the best and compiling, morphing and adding to them to make a grand total of 12 days of Christ-centered, meaningful, and fun activities to do every day from now 'til Easter.
Today was our first day, so I can't speak for the rest of the activities planned yet, but I was really happy with how it went so far. This is what we've got planned to do.
Materials:
6 large plastic eggs (I wanted to use all large eggs to fit more stuff, but 12 large eggs won't fit in a carton)
6 regular-sized plastic eggs (to off-set the large ones)
an egg carton
the stuff to go inside the eggs
It's the stuff to go inside the eggs that makes this difficult. Difficult because a). it has to fit, and b). it has to relate to your activity and message.
Day 1: lifesaver candies Review the Easter story. I used 14 of the pictures found in the LDS Gospel Art Kit depicting the last week of Jesus' life, starting with His triumphal entry and ending with the resurrected Lord. Talk about how the word "lifesaver" applies to the story.
I got the next idea straight from this website: shauna-lynn.blogspot, and tweaked it just a little. Day 2: mini playdough Discuss the name of Jesus. Read the story of the angel coming to Mary in Luke 1. Talk about what the name of Jesus - Immanuel, “God with us” - means. Review the many names of the Savior. Play appropriate selections from Handel's "Messiah." Talk about the meaning of our own names. Have meanings of our names on slips of paper in bag. Take turns pulling out a meaning and guessing who's name it defines. Use the playdoh to spell out the name(s) of Jesus.
Day 3: bells Sing an Easter song. Choose an Easter related song from the LDS Children's Songbook to learn. I chose "Hosanna" because it seems the easiest. I made plastic eggs into shakers with bells inside for the kids to accompany us as we learn and sing the song. Have the kids come up with hand/body actions to help learn the words.
Also directly from shauna-lynn.blogspot. Day 4: 2 Swedish Fish & 5 crackers Learn the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. Try to break the bread and fish. How many times can we do it? Read the story in Matthew 14, Luke 9, or John 6. Talk about how everyone go enough to be full and not just tiny pieces.
This idea came from a book I have titled: A Christ-Centered Easter, Day-by-Day Activities to Celebrate Easter Week by Janet and Joe Hales. Day 5: leaves Celebrate Palm Sunday with a play. Janet and Joe Hales call it the "Triumphal Entry Play" and suggest a cast including narrator, disciple(s) sent in search, Christ, donkey, donkey's owner, disciples shouting "Hosanna." Events unfold as follows:
Disciples are sent in search of donkey (Mark 11:1-3).
Clothing is draped on donkey; Jesus sits upon it and rides into Jerusalem (Mark 11:7).
Many disciples cut down palm branches and shout "Hosanna" while waving the branches and spreading them and clothing in the path of the donkey (Mark 11:8-10).
Don't forget props and costumes.
From shauna-lynn.blogspot. Day 6: toy boats Experiment to accompany the story of Jesus calming the storm. Read the story in Matthew 8, Mark 4, or Luke 8 and discuss. Make a storm in a bottle with a toy boat for each child. Recipe found here: Recipe for Storm in a Bottle. Have the kids try to calm their storms instantly (obviously, it can't be done). Discuss. *note: we just did this one last night and it was a pretty big flop, in my opinion. the "storm in a bottle" idea is pretty lame and not very dramatic. which, consequently, makes it difficult to discuss. we even tried a couple of different recipes. next year we'll be making storms in the bathtub instead.
Adapted from shauna-lynn.blogspot. Day 7: fun bandaids What does it mean to be healed? Read the story of Jesus healing the blind man in John 9. Blindfold the kids and lead them in a few activities with it on. Discuss what it would be like to be blind and then be healed by Jesus. Let the kids tell of a story when they got hurt and place bandaids on their bodies. Talk about how Jesus could heal these hurts too. Lead kids into discussion of other kinds of hurts, emotional, spiritual, etc. and discuss how Jesus heals these wounds as well.
From shauna-lynn.blogspot. (p.s. I love this one that she came up with so I'm pretty much just copying it word for word.) Day 8: time coupons rolled up (1 per kid for me, and 1 per kid for my husband) Read the story of how Jesus loved the children in Mark 10. Talk about adults in our lives that obviously love children. How do you know and what do they do to show it? How do we think Jesus showed it? How would you like me to show you that I love you and value spending time with you? Fill out the coupons together and let the kids keep them to redeem as they wish.
Day 9: clue to find Smarties and Nerds Learn the parable of the 10 virgins. Before opening the egg for today, have the kids help trim and fill an oil lamp and explain how it works (we happen to have one from Jerusalem that my mother gave us), turn off all the lights in the house and proceed to the activity using only the light from the lamp (and maybe a few other candles). Open egg and follow clue to the candy. Read the parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25 and discuss with reference to who was a Smartie, and who was a Nerd. Eat candies as we talk about what happens in the story and what it means to us.
Day 10: piece of pita, Hershey kiss, piece of silver money, piece of soap, sour candy, pretzel Use symbols to learn about Jesus' last day as a free man. Read selections from the events of this day in Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22 or John 13-18. Talk about the main things that are happening: Judas conspiring to betray Christ for 30 pieces of silver, the last supper, Jesus washing the apostles feet, Jesus was sad and asked his friends to watch/tarry with him, Jesus praying in Gethsemane, and the betrayal. After we learn the story, have the kids try to sequence it correctly using the symbols as helps. It should look like this: money (30 pieces of silver), pita (last supper), soap (washing feet), sour candy (sadness of Jesus), pretzel (prayer-like two folded arms), kiss (Judas' betrayal).
This one is, again, from the book by the Hales, A Christ-Centered Easter. Day 11: pecans Review the story of Jesus' crucifixion while making cookies before bed. I found this recipe and activity in the book, but I have also seen it on the web, so I'll just post a link: Easter Story Cookies. It looks like a great activity!
Day 12: empty Today is Easter--celebrate the resurrection of our Savior! Eat the cookies from yesterday's activity-discuss how they are hollow. Both the empty egg and the hollow cookies are wonderful symbols of the empty tomb. Go on to celebrate with our usual Easter activities.
That's what I've got. Hopefully each day will be a positive experience and serve to focus our family on our Savior and His Atonement.
After St. Patty's I was feeling a little bit burnt out and I just wanted a break. Plus, it was really nice weather. So all this past week the kids and I have been playing outside and foregoing our usual schedule, including our preschool activities.
One day we played hide and seek. That's like a preschool activity.
Another day we went to our local museum. That's also like a preschool activity.
But other than that, we've just been hangin' out. Sometimes that just what we need.
This is kind of a Part 2 to yesterday's post. Whereas yesterday was mostly all about dad working with the kids, today's activity was more my contribution.
About a week prior I had found a scavenger hunt sort of idea on The Crafting Chicks, that I really liked. So I printed out the shamrocks and laminated them and came up with clues of my own (written in an Irish accent, of course).
On Friday night, after the kids went to bed, we sprung all the traps, took the gold, and left this shamrock to start off the fun.
The Crafting Chicks have very graciously provided shamrocks in all the colors of the rainbow for your printing convenience, so it was super easy to put this activity together. At the end of the hunt (the purple shamrock) the kids found a pot of golden candies to share. I would have liked to make a more elaborate "treasure" for the kids to find, but time and budget didn't allow. Thankfully, my kids are always pretty excited about candy :-)
We had a lot of fun starting out our day this way. But I have to admit that the traps were WAY more exciting to the kids than the rainbow hunt. It's true that they enjoyed the hunt, but all they were really interested in was how those dang leprechauns got away. And why didn't our traps hold them? And, they must be a lot smarter than we thought. And, NEXT year we are going to build WAY stronger traps that they can't get out of.
Apparently, parental cheating of the experiment isn't the best idea. Eventually I had to break it to them. The truth about the leprechauns--and daddy's and my deception. They were good sports. They laughed. Then they started on their plans to make the trickiest leprechaun trap EVER.
Oh how I wish I would have taken a picture of the leprechaun traps we made. But sometimes you just get excited about what you're doing and you forget to take a picture. Ah well.
The fact is, though, that we did make leprechaun traps this evening (we wanted Daddy to get in on the fun) and it really was hilariously fun! As we've been talking about Ireland, leprechauns, rainbows, pots'o'gold, and all that good stuff this month, my kiddos have been unsure as to the reality of leprechauns. I keep telling them they aren't real and it's just a story, but they seem to hold onto this secret hope that maybe the little people really do exist. So I told them we would do an experiment to figure it out. I didn't think the idea would take hold as it did, but they were SO excited...as in jumping up and down, couldn't wait for daddy to get home, asking me every 2 minutes how many more minutes until it was time, EXCITED.
I had called my husband at work earlier in the day to let him know what to expect when he walked in the door, so, thankfully, that good man came home prepared. I had also prepped him for the fact that I wanted the boys to come up with their own ideas for how the traps should work--because them thinking about the cause and effects of it all was kind of the purpose of the whole thing.
So the hubby grabs a box and starts out with, "how are we going to use this box to catch a leprechaun, huh?" Which I thought was the perfect lead-in question to get them thinking. Our younger son was mostly just along for the ride, happy to help construct whatever creation the others thought of. But my older son's brain-wheels were working in overdrive. He was adamant the trap be some sort of device where the box fell down from the ceiling. This is where husbands with a science background come in handy. Before you knew it, I got to sit on the sidelines and watch contentedly as father and sons delved into a discussion about levers and pulley systems and tripwires and other things that I'm really not that interested in.
About an hour later, we had two working traps in our home, one that even fell down from the ceiling when the leprechaun grabbed the gold. We set the traps with gold and told the kids that the traps were an experiment. If the leprechauns were real then one would get caught in our traps, if not...then...not.
You've never seen kids so excited to go to bed in your lives. Or kids so excited to wake up in the morning. At 6am I awoke to my oldest son's face, two inches away from mine, loudly whispering about the state of the traps which he had taken the liberty of checking. Twice.
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