Penguin Unit

Sheesh, I love Penguins! I had so much fun planning this unit. We are going to read Mr. Popper's Penguins and a few other gems. We will also study Antarctica. We live in MI so snow will be here soon. We will launch this unit after the Christmas crazy!

Other Books
The Life Cycle of an Emperor Penguin
Penguins (True Books)
Penguins: Level Four (Usborne First Reading)
Antarctica (True Books: Continents)
Penguins (Animal Information)
Counting Penguins!

Other Penguin Unit
Mr. Poppers Penguins Book study (Funny, I found this after I did the rest of this post...nothing like reinventing the wheel. Oh well!)
Mr Popper's Penguins Lapbook

Science
Penguin Lapbooks Lifecycle and many other amazing resources. (ht- My Montessori Journey)
Penguin Puzzle and cards/book
Antarctica Website
Ice Melt Fun Game

Language Arts
Many Simple Penguin Literacy Ideas Dot to dots, easy reader book, name recognition, abc activities.

Math
Printable Penguin Counting Activity (scroll down for penguin activity link)
Penguin math Ideas Varying levels!

Geography
Penguin cards (Beautiful Cards from A Bit of this and that)
Cool Antarctica Website

Art
How to draw a penguin
Penguin art

Crafts
Penguin puppets
Handprint penguins
Potato print Puppets
Felt Penguin w/ printable directions

Misc...
Penguin song etc... cute ideas!
Penguin Memory Game
Save the Egg game

October Seasonal Activities

I was looking for some ideas to make this rainy miserable Fall a little more fun and thought I would share what I found with you! We will not get to even half of these!

Crafts (mostly Halloween)
Paper Strip Pumpkins We did this! It turned out great and was fun and easy!
Tissue ghosts We made these and strung them on a plastic glow lace!
Color, cut & glue Jack O'lantern or Cut & glue Jack O'lantern or Jack O'lantern person (not scary!)
Lantern Orange or Black would look cool!
Bat Mobile
Cute paper Bats I would like to use these bats to make the above mobile!
Adorable Craft stick Mummy
2 liter bottle ghost
Fall Ideas
Felt Board Pumpkin Faces Thanks Melissa!
Fall Silly Putty
Easy yarn Apples and Pumpkins!
Spider Web Spin Painting
Fall Window Hangings We did this last year with wax paper, leaves, crayon and an iron!

Misc. Activities
Printable Halloween Games
Halloween Color Pages

Art
Line Art Leaves

Online Activity
Build your own Jack O'lantern

Recipes
Pumpkin Shakes
Ghost Sandwiches
Spider Pizzas
Ritz Spider
Witches Hat

Language Arts
Pumpkin Book
Several Links to Fall Poetry

Science
Fall Window
Skeleton from bottles Plan ahead for next year?

Math
Fall Tree Dice game

Pumpkin Ideas
Star Wars Pumpkin Stencils Links to other themes too!

Afterschooling

...or in our case beforeschooling, since Josh attends PM young 5's. School is going great for him. He is enjoying it, LOVES his teacher and is actually learning quite a bit! He knows more about frogs then anyone would ever want to know! However, we still feel the need to enrich his learning with more. He is way ahead of his class in both math and reading. They are currently learning to count to 20. He could do that at 3 years old. So here is what we are doing...

Science- (as previously posted!) We have chosen several areas to study and are doing one a month! (September Biology plans, October Physical Science plans)

Geography- Landforms and the Continents using Continent Boxes, Continent books, and any other resources I dig up!

History- Story of the World We are enjoying this but I am having a hard time preparing ahead. I just need to sit down and get things ready for the month in a basket or something so I can just grab!

Music- To our dismay, due to scheduling, Josh does not attend Music at school this year! Therefore, I ordered Story of the Orchestra : Listen While You Learn About the Instruments, the Music and the Composers Who Wrote the Music! and am really excited to get started. We plan to begin tomorrow. (Just got it Friday!)

Practical Life- Remember these? I plan to start back up working on Josh's cookbook. Today was my b-day so I am thinking of having him help make a cake tomorrow (good excuse, right?). We also want to continue working on skills such as...

• tying
• cutting with scissors
• cutting with knife
• pouring

Math- Our main focus right now is on addition and heading toward subtraction. On our shelf you would find...

• Addition Strip Board (info)
• Addition Snake game (info)
• Hundreds board (video)
• Other manipulatives such as counters, dice, etc...

Language- This is the easiest and most natural! We have a reading night planned for Tuesday where we all pile into my bed and read to each other until bedtime. However, he reads to us or we read to him every night before bed normally. So I am not really planning anything extra...yet!

Art- Want to work on a few drawing skills and of course we will do seasonal crafts. We are happy with his school's art program so just having fun here for now!

Really though, this seems like a lot. But we have the entire school year and all summer to accomplish these things. Some weeks we do a ton and some weeks (like last week!) we get NOTHING done. Either way, we are not stressing. Our intention is to have school for an hour 4 days a week before lunch. ...but sometimes...the Lego's just need more attention than the dining room table...ya know?

New School Supplies

I have a list of all the items I "need" for Josh's afterschooling for Fall. It is probably a bit longer than is necessary for a child who is going to school! But, well, I guess I am not quite as on board as I am pretending to be...

So anyway, I had a 20% off coupon for my favorite local toy store! We stopped in Wednesday in the midst of our very long day of super boring errands (blood tests, DR appts, pharmacy, etc...) to give Josh a break.

I had no real plan for the coupon but I brought it along just in case...wink,wink! And look what I got Magnetic Poetry: Kid's Kit!

I am so glad I finally bought it! We have been having a ball making sentences with this kit! I threw the magnets on a LARGE cookie sheet (there are a ton of words!) and we have spent hours writing and playing games with the words.

Butterfly Study

Josh received a Live Butterfly Garden for his 4th Birthday and somehow I am just now, about a week before his 5th, getting around to ordering the caterpillars!

So I want to be ready for their arrival! I plan to just drop everything and totally do everything Butterfly as soon as we get the package.

General Information, Lapbooks and Activities

• Insect Lore
• Kid's Butterfly
• Kinderteacher Butterfly activities
• Monarch Information and activities
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar Tots lapbook VERY COOL!
• Butterfly Lapbook LOTS HERE!
• Butterfly wings info.

ART/Craft Ideas

• Watercolor Caterpillar!!!
• Tissuepaper butterfly
• Dryer sheet butterflies
• Handprint butterflies TOO CUTE!
• Caterpillar crafts
• Butterfly craft ideas
• Clothespin butterfly with beads!
• Hungry caterpillar Ideas
• Butterfly ideas

Lifecycle/Science

• Lifecycle
• Lifecycle
• Lifecycle Cards!!!! YIPPPEEEE!
• Feeding butterflies!

Practical Life/Fine Motor

• How to draw butterflies! Loving these right now!
• Maze
• Butterfly recipe
• Button Caterpillar
• Do a dot butterfly stamping
• Eric Carle Color Page

Culture

• Days of the Week activity

Math

• Roll a caterpillar game
• Butterfly Math Ideas
• Butterfly symmetry painting

Language Arts

• Butterfly Language Ideas
• Felt Board Idea
• Sequencing activity
  

Earth Day Activities

Plans for the coming week!

• Maze
• Earth Day Activity Book
• Jigsaw puzzle Practice coloring, cutting, and assembling!
• Earth Day Word book Handwriting practice
• Word search Might be fun to try since there are not too many words!
• Super simple Earth suncatcher
• Environmental Color pages Book???
• Color page
• Simple cut out style Sudoku Nice first attempt!
• Another Simple Sudoku
• Many Earth Day Craft Ideas
• Bird feeder Directions
• Crayon Melt Earth Craft (Better direction and template)
• Songs
• Create your own Dominos
• Create your own Memory game
• Earth Day Song I used last year

St Patrick's Day Planning

I am planning our next couple of weeks and thought I would share it with all of you! We are going to do a fun Leprechaun/Rainbow unit! Besides, if I post it here, I can plan on my laptop and print easily at the desk top computer...since we still do not have my laptop "printer ready!"

As always, this is just the list of activities I will pick from... not a list of everything we will do. There is no way we could do everything on this list! Besides, we will probably add other activities on days we are not "feeling it!"

Circle Time

• Poems and Songs for St Patrick's Day
• Chapters from Shoefull of Shamrock by Mary Francis Shura (Prob. at bedtime!)
• The Night Before St Patrick's Day by Natasha Wing

Coloring Sheets

• R is for Rainbow
• Shamrock Hat (My Fave!)
• rainbow color sheet

Practical Life

• Shamrock trace and color
• Fuse bead rainbow!!! (oooh, definite!)
• Hole punch activity
• Lacing Shamrock (If I get to making! But we really need to take this further...real sewing?)
• Maze (Josh enjoys mazes...remember do finger solve first!)
• Handwriting a-z

Sensorial

• Dominoes
• Make a book of colors
• Patterning

Language Arts

• Minibook (Silly Leprechaun story! Not sure about this one)
• St Patrick's Day Riddles book (Josh loves riddles right now!)
• ABC dot to dot
• Sight word spelling with tiles
• Sight words
• Word book

Maths

• Roll and color dice game !!!!!
• 1-30 dot to dot

Crafty Ideas

• Dancing Leprechaun
• dot painters rainbow
• Rainbow mobile Definitely will do this one!
• Tissue Paper Shamrock

Science

• Milk food coloring activity! (Science Journal results!)

Please, let me know if you find something on here that you use! Or if you find a great activity you will do with your Children!

Wednesday's Website

Go to this site right this minute if you want to find great "teacher approved" educational websites for your kids.

http://www.topicbox.net/index.php

Montessori Monday

Taken from Montessori Read & Write by Lynne Lawrence

The question game for ages 3 and up.

After you read a book to your child or he/she reads it themselves ask questions like...

• Who was the story about?
• What do you know about them?
• Why did they....?
• How?
• When?
• Where?
• With What?
• What happened in the end?
• How did everyone feel?

This activity is great for language development, as well as checking for comprehension. Josh and I need to be more diligent about discussing books in this way. Especially now that he is reading them. It is easy to get caught up in the decoding of the words and forget about if he is actually "getting" the story!

Wednesday's Website

http://mrsriley.com

This is an amazing site I just stumbled upon in which you can create your own sets of 3 part cards by just dragging the picture you want onto the format you choose! Super easy. I have already made 3 sets!

Warning: This site is in a beta trial so is free for now! I say use it before we lose it!

Embracing Winter

We are doing a Winter theme right now. I guess I figure if you can not do anything about it you might as well embrace it. (However I did just see it will be a HIGH of 12 next week sooo... we will be embracing it from the indoors!)

Anyway here is what I planned...

LANGUAGE

• Winter clothes book http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/downloads/winterclotheswritingfillin.doc

http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/downloads/winterclotheswritinghatscarf.doc

http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/downloads/winterclotheswritingcoatboots.doc

• Mitten reading puzzle http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/phonics/downloads/mittenpuzzleCVC.doc
• Shelf work

MATH

• Symmetrical snowflakes http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/downloads/symmetrical%20snowflakes.doc


• Bit more symmetry work http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/lines-of-symmetry/


• Snowman Grid Game http://www.prekinders.com/gridgames/snowman20.pdf


• Snowman addition fun http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/SnowmanAdditionFun.htm


• Calendar activity http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/downloads/Fill%20in%20Calendar.doc
• Shelf work(present tens and teens boards finally!)

CULTURE

• Animal Tracks http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/downloads/Animal%20Tracks.doc


• Astronomy Cards http://www.sherriallen.com/learningcentral/


• Snow info http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/
• Shelf work
• Experiment with melting snow

ART/CRAFTS

• Tealight holder


• Complete the snowflake http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/SnowflakeCompletetheDrawingPages.htm
• Watercolor work! (http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2008/07/watercolor-resist-snowflakes.html)

SENSORIAL

• Fake snow!


• Sequencing cards http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/SnowmanEaselArt.htm


• Visual Discrimination Cards http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Monthly%20Centers/January/downloads/snowflakememory.doc
• Shelf work
  

PRACTICAL LIFE

• Tracing practice ~great for developing fine motor!http://www.makinglearningfun.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.makinglearningfun.com/Activities/snow/SnowmanTraceandColor.gif


• Of course other trays that are already on shelves and maybe a few snow/winter themed for fun!

MORE IDEAS

• http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/topic/season/winter.html


• http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/SnowSnowmen.htm


• http://www.prekinders.com/winter.htm

We will work on this for probably the next couple of weeks or until our interest is gone. We will also continue to use our basket of workbooks that he is real "INTO" right now!

Montessori Monday

My sweet Cousin-in-law sent me a new Montessori book Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook by Maria Montessori at Christmas this year. Needless to say I have been pouring over it since it arrived.

I just love Dr. Montessori's description of the 3 period lesson (a way to teach a Child terms):

She says:

• Period 1. Naming. "This is thick. This is thin."
• Period 2. Recognition. "Give me the thick. Give me the thin."
• Period 3. The Pronunciation of the Word, "What is this?" (Montessori, 58)

I, personally, need to work on incorporating the 3 period lesson into my style of teaching with Josh. I often forget but I love the clean way it expands his vocabulary.

Montessori Monday

Idea borrowed from Montessori Play and Learn by Lesley Britton~

We are working on sight words with Josh right now so this idea from Lesley Britton's book really caught my eye!

Words Around the House (recommended for ages 5-6)
This is another easy to set up game for language and reading development. All you need are index cards with the names of household objects written on them. You read the word with the child (or have child read it) and they place the card near the object. I thought this might also be fun to do with sticky tack, having the child attach the word to the object.

A fun extension for this one would be to do the same activity but with the name added in a different language under or instead of the English label.

You could also make this for younger children by adding a picture to the card.

Montessori Monday

An oldy but a goody...

I keep forgetting to do this but it is a "must do" this week!

The Command Game

Supplies needed

• index cards
• list of verbs (action words)
• child
• marker

Write a different verb on each index card with a marker. Make sure they are verbs that your child can perform, such as run, jump, walk, spin, etc...

Child reads word and performs action. An extension could be to write a sentence on the card for the child to read and perform, such as touch your nose, find a red ball, etc...

Montessori Monday

Idea borrowed from Montessori Read and Write by Lynne Lawrence~

I do not know about you but I CANNOT get Josh to do the Mystery Bag activity without cheating. So when I stumbled upon this idea I knew my problem was solved.

Lynne Lawrence suggests, at around age 4, to play a game called Guess the Object. All you need is a drawstring bag filled with small objects and 2 willing participants. You have one person reach into the bag and describe an object. The other person may then guess what the object might be. When guessed correctly the 2 may switch roles. I love this idea because it provides for a wonderful language exercise teaching the child a wonderful lesson on adjectives while also having a sensory experience.