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!

Caterpillar Counting

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.

That last part was not the best idea I ever had.

Another Update

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.

Here's the link: Vancouver School District Family Packets

Check it out!

Month Update

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.