Alligator Antics

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.

It was a fun day!

A-A-Alligator Fun

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.

Ocean Alphabet

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!

Here's the link to the worksheet I used, but there are a ton of great choices out there.

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?

Car Counting

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.

Gonna Paint

Today was all about painting. 

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 

(Homemade Bath Paints):

We only made 4 colors...

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:

Story Starters

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.

Nice, eh?

Rainbow Walk

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!