Movin' On Up!

I will have a kindergartner starting this fall. I am going to continue to home school him, so this should be a fun challenge doing two different levels. I will still be posting mostly preschool activities with a few kindergarten activities thrown in here and there. I'm planning to purchase kindergarten curriculum, so it won't be as exciting as the stuff I put together for my 3 year old. I am planning lots of fun stuff for both kiddos though, so stay tuned.

Chocolate Bird Nests

We made these as part of our Easter activities, but they make a fun activity for spring in general. They are very easy to make and the kids had fun helping put them together.

Here's how to make them.

•1 cup chocolate chips ( 6 oz. pkg.)
•1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
•2 cups chow mein noodles
•Jelly beans (or any other egg shaped candy. We used malted robins eggs.)

Put chocolate chips and peanut butter in a microwave save bowl and heat until melted. For best results heat for about 30 seconds at a time stirring in between. (should take about 2 minutes.) Once melted add chow mein noodles and mix until completely coated. Plop by the spoonful onto wax paper lined cookie sheets. Form into the shape of a nest and add "eggs". Put in fridge for an hour to set.

Enjoy!!

(I've also seen recipes that leave out the peanut butter and a couple that used pretzels or coconut. The possibilities are endless. :-D)

Ll is for Ladybug

Lots and lots of Ladybugs. Again, I got most of these ideas from Make Learning Fun. All of these activities are made from felt and are soooo easy to make. You can find all the templates from the website. This helps with counting and recognizing numbers. J has counting down, but we are still working on number recognition.

There's also a rhyme that goes with this activity.

(Tune: The Muffin Man)

Ladybug has 1 black spot, 1 black spot, 1 black spot. Ladybug has 1 black spot, Pretty ladybug. continue counting up with each verse.

This next activity was mostly for Lulu. We are really focusing on colors with her. She is doing a lot better. This is a game. Have the kids close their eyes (or turn around, since my kids like to peek) and hide the small lady bug under one of the frying pans. Then sing, or say the rhyme,

Ladybug, Ladybug. Fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children all gone. All except one and that’s little Ann and she crept under the frying pan.

They then have to guess which one the ladybug is under by calling out the color they think it's under. My kid LOVED this game. I did make the pans about half the size of the template though, and they were still plenty big enough for the smaller lady bug to fit under. It saved me a lot of felt. :)

The third activity is a practice in subtraction. I ended up using the same template for the baby ladybug in the previous game (again, to save felt), and just left of the wiggly eyes.

Here's the rhymes for this one.

Five Little Ladybugs Five little ladybugs by the door, one flew away and now there are only four. Four little ladybugs climbing the tree, one flew away and now there are only three. Three little ladybugs crawling near the shoe, one flew away and now there are two. Two little ladybugs having lots of fun, one flew away and now there is only one. One little ladybug all alone, he/she spread her wing and he/she flew home.

Ten Little Ladybugs Tune: Five Little Ducks Ten little ladybugs flying all around, they flew very high then they landed on the ground. The last ladybug said have a nice day, then he spread his wings and flew away….

Continue…

One little ladybug flying all around, it flew very high then it landed on the ground. The last ladybug said have a nice day, then he/she spread his/her wings and flew away….

And finally for our arts and crafts activity, we painted ladybug rocks. First coat red. When it's dry, paint on the head and spots. I was going to do eyes, but decided it was good enough. :)

K is for Kite

This week we are on the letter K. I have been putting this one off for a while because I wanted to do some kite activities and it's been too cold to actually fly a kite outside. I finally decided that I needed to move on with the alphabet before the kids forgot what we've learned. (Okay, they probably wouldn't, since I review all the letters with them during circle time, but still.) Since it's been raining for a few days and will continue to rain for the rest of the week (and possibly snow) I found some cute kite activities to do indoors. I found them at http://www.makinglearningfun.com/activ.html , which is quickly becoming one of my favorite website for preschool activities.





This is a cute circle time activity. This will be perfect for L, who needs to learn her colors. She knows a few, but most she doesn't know. I didn't glue craft sticks to the back. I think they are sturdy enough after I laminated them. Since there are only 2 kids I will give them each a colored kite and read the poem, calling out one of the colors. Whoever has the color will stand up and fly their kite around. We will repeat this one enough times to get a few colors in. For instructions and links for the printable go here.
For our Think and Do activity, I decided to take this activity and put a little spin on it since I didn't have any mini clothespins, but I have PLENTY of felt. Plus, I just thought it would be fun to make it into a flannel board activity. I used the printout kite as a template and cute out 10 kites. Then cut out several felt bows. I don't really have a flannel board, but I have plenty of fleece blankets which work fabulously. :)

I found the instructions for this cute, and very simple little kite on familyfun.com

The kids are very excited about this kite. As soon as there is a break in the rain (possibly tomorrow afternoon) we will take it out and give it a try.

There are a few more cute activities I will try out for our day two of the letter k/kite week and I will try to remember to post pictures of them as well. :)

Christmas Matching Game

My kids love this matching game. We did this one last year as well. Last time I just printed it out on card stock and it worked great. This year I am all out and keep forgetting to buy more. So, I printed it out on regular printer paper and laminated all the pieces to make them a bit more durable. Card stock would have been a bit less time consuming, but hey, ya work with what you've got. :-D

There are a few different ways you can use this game in your curriculum. You can do it the traditional way. Turn them over and each take turns trying to find a match, or if you kids aren't quite at the level of being able to figure it out, (Like L) you can spread the pictures out face up on the table, pick out one picture and ask them to pick the matching picture from the cards. Or, you can do the "one of these things" game. Pick out 3 cards at a time. Two matching cards and a odd one. Ask which two are the same and which one doesn't belong.

On a related note, I also found this cute advent calendar from familyfun.com.

Countdown Time

Time to break out those advent calendars. I made one last year, out of felt. It has pockets to put slips of paper in, with different activities to do. There are so many cute ideas for advent calendars out there. I wish I could make them all. Here is the post I did last year, with a list of activities and here are more pictures of my advent calendar. I'm gonna add a few different ones this year. Such as...

• Make an ornament out of beads and put it on the tree.


• Get out nativity set and talk about each piece.


• Make and send a gift to grandparents. (picture ornament maybe)


• Go caroling.


• Make a snowflake chain.
  
• Snowman dress up craft.
  
• Make picture frames out of craft foam and take Christmas pictures to put in them and hang on mantle.


• Go to a movie as a family.


• Make a cardboard train with boxes. Put pillows and blankets in so kids can sit comfortably and watch Polar Express in their train. Then drink hot chocolate.


• Hang stockings then read Christmas stories. (on Christmas eve)

If anyone has some other fun ideas, please feel free to share. :)

Fall

We've been doing this one for a couple weeks. I've gotten behind on my blogging and I don't have time to post my daily curriculum, so I will just focus on the projects we did.

First I introduced all the seasons. We made a seasons poster. I found clip art pictures for the kids to glue on, but you could also have the kids look through magazines to find pictures to cut out and glue on for each season. We talked about the different activities we do in each season, what kind of clothes we wear, etc.

After that we focused on fall, since that is the season we are in. I will do the other season as they come. We started off with a nature walk to collect fall things. We ended up with a bag full of sticks, rocks, acorns and leaves. I eventually plan to do leaf rubbings and possibly make stick people with the acorns and sticks. I also found some other cute things to do with them. I will post them when I do them.
I incorporated shapes (and colors for Lulu) into my most recent lesson plan and did this Autumn Family Landscape.


A word of caution when working with acorns. Evidently they can be filled with weevils. So you either have to bake them on really low heat or freeze them. I've heard stories about acorn/bug explosions from the baking method, so I am opting for the freezer method. :)