Book Basket

Just popping by with a book recommendation!

Joshua borrowed Art Auction Mystery from our local library this week and it is A M A Z I N G!!! It is a game, a book, math and a fine art lesson all in one. The premise is that some art has been stolen and copied and you need to find out who did it. There is a search and find aspect to identify the fake paintings from the originals which is a fun challenge. But I also really love how they incorporate a math lesson by having you figure out how much the theives got paid and graph all the information to solve the crime.

Remember please that Josh is a "special" Kindergartener so I would NOT recommend this book for children so young. Amazon is saying 4-8th grade, I might go down to 2nd with help. Josh can read it just fine but I am helping with the writing aspect of the graph.

Wednesday's Website

I stumbled upon this cool site a few days ago. http://mathwire.blogspot.com/
It is the blog associated with the website. http://www.mathwire.com/
They are both filled with terrific math activities. The blog however highlights a timely item available on the website. Which is helpful since mathwire is jampacked full of activities and I for one find it very overwhelming to weed through!

Check them both out!

Montessori Monday

Between playing with new Christmas toys...

Practical Life
Baking Bread
Easy Embroidering


Tray ideas
Popsicle stick Snowflake
beads/straws Stars
Free explore with Fraction circles

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?

Wednesday's Websites

• Continent Map Demo
• Addition Snake game Directions! ~ I need to read through this everyday until I can actually remember it. Me and math are not friends!
• Fine motor tree craft ~ Josh would have LOVED this a year or so ago... may still!
• Recipe for Homemade NUTTERBUTTERS!!!! ~ ooooooh!
• Solar System book
• Paper plate stegosaurus
• Bacon Bowls ~ hmmm, sounds fun!

Check this out!

I know I usually do this on Wednesday but life is a bit CRAZY right now. We currently have about 4 events to attend for Josh's new school, I am still planning our before school "curriculum", we have a neighborhood function this coming week, our new flooring is going in this coming weekend, we are pulling up old flooring, more family birthdays and apparently our home has been infested with tiny elves that just walk around behind me making messes and using vast amounts of dishes!

So anyway, I was checking out a NEW Montessori inspired blog yesterday and she replied to my comment with a super helpful website, packed full of math activities.

The new blog is Sunrise Learning Lab!

And the math website is http://mathwire.com/!

Check them both out!

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

Everything Easter

I was thinking of doing an Easter lap book this year but I am going to just print out and prepare everything and see how it goes. I am hosting, so things might get a little rough that last week!

CRAFTS
Bunny Napkin Rings These are adorable!
Transparent Eggs This is a great creative, do what you want activity!
Egg Carton Tulips To decorate the table, centerpiece!
Peek a boo Eggs

POTENTIAL LAP BOOK IDEAS
lap book cracked egg template
Easter Basket Grid

SCIENCE
Eggshell Plant Pots

PRACTICAL LIFE
Jell-o Jelly beans directions I already bought Jell-o, not dye free, so....
Maze

MATHS
I bought tiny Easter eggs to use for counting, adding, graphing, etc...
Rabbit dot to dot Josh just loves these right now!
Color by number and count eggs

MISC...
Blank Egg Shapes
Printable Egg Card Maybe he could write cards to a few people and send them out for a Writing activity?
Easter Egg Coloring sheets

CHRISTIAN ACTIVITIES (LAP BOOK IDEAS TOO!)
Christian Preschool Printables I teach Josh about Easter using the Resurrection Eggs every year so this has a ton of fun/useful activities...esp. the res. egg printables, cross math, etc...

BOOKS WE USE AND LOVE! (These are not showing up on your readers! Sorry for the hassle! You can see them if you click over to my blog.)



I highly recommend you checking out Benjamin's Box if you use the Resurrection Eggs (Parenting)! It goes perfectly!

My New Felt Board Activity!

Making our Felt Board Addition Activity

Materials needed

• Thrift Store Felt Board! or any felt board


• Felt


• scissors


• paper
  
• pen


• stencils

All you need to do is cut out at least 2 sets of simple shapes. I picked orange felt fish, lime green turtles, and yellow stars. (I will probably do a few more sets just to add some variety!) I used stencils for tracing shapes and made a few patterns myself just to keep the shapes identical.

Next, I cut out 2 sets of numbers 1-9 but will need to add 0's, and a few more 1's, and 2's for addition work. Also a + - and = symbol. See the picture below to get an understanding of how the board is used.

Just for fun I am planning on cutting out other shapes and pictures for quiet time activities to get more use of the board.

Some more ideas...

http://www.archjrc.com/childsplace/felt.html

http://www.childcareland.com/feltboard.html

http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/brownbear/index.htm

http://www.funfelt.com/

http://chasingcheerios.blogspot.com/2008/11/felt-snoman-activity.html

http://chasingcheerios.blogspot.com/2008/12/felt-gingerbread-boy-activity.html

http://4crazykings.blogspot.com/2009/03/travel-felt-mat.html

Montessori Monday

Well, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day so we are planning on celebrating with style. One easy way to make holidays special is by doing a little cooking with your kids.

We will be creating a few fun treats! Including Magic Leprechaun Pudding! and Sweet Shamrocks! We are leaving off the green sprinkles...let's not go crazy... but do what you will! (wink, wink!)

As always, cooking is a great Montessori Practical Life activity and make sure to include a bit of science and math if the opportunities arise.

Shannon

Shop at Amazon.com!

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!

B-I-N-G-O and more games I love!

I just love finding fun ways to reinforce skills we are working on. I have found Bingo to be a great way to do just that. It really is a great game that can be played in a variety of ways depending on your needs! We own 3 different versions but have been able to use them since Josh was quite young and will be able to continue with just a few alterations to game play!


The first Bingo that I used with Joshua is the Colors and Shapes Bingo!

• The first use is just to work on colors, "put your dot on a red shape!"
• Next, working with shapes in the same way but still only using one parameter, "put your dot on a rectangle!"
• Finally, to work on both skills and as a great LISTENING activity, "put your dot on a red rectangle!"

We also own Alphabet Bingo!

• First use would be to just reinforce the letter you are learning, "put your dot on the letter t!"
• Next to work on sounds, "put your dot on the letter that says /t/ or tuh!" (Montessori style would have you do these 2 activities the other way around learning the sound before the letter name.)
• Another activity could be to help child to isolate sounds in words, "put your dot on the letter at the beginning of turtle or end of pot!"

Finally, and possibly the most flexible is Number Bingo!

• First for number recognition, "put your dot on the 16!"
• Addition, "put your dot on the answer to 8+8!"
• Subtraction, multiplication, easy division....
• Place Value, "put your dot on the number made from 1 ten and 6 ones!"

Also do not forget how easily the numbers, shapes and colors could be converted into a foreign language game, "put your dot on ocho, or verde, etc..."

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

Getting Back on Track!

I have so many crazy schemes up my sleeve right now I feel as if I am drowning in half finished projects and not really accomplishing anything! uhhh well, it will get done!

Anyway...thought I would give you a preview of what we have been up to and where we are going. (actual blog entries pending!)

• Science Journal~ Josh and I have started a science journal. We do a science "experiment" and fill out a journal entry with drawings and writings.
• Writing Workshop shelves~ almost finished but have been more of a challenge then expected.
• Art Shelves~ see above
• Cooking Mama and me~ Planning to try to do more of these again, it was such a fun time for us!
• Fine Art inspired learning
• New work on the math shelves!
• Love unit

Stay tuned!

Montessori Monday

Well, I do know the day, but for organization sake let's just go with it! Been a crazy week or so...

We are working on addition right now! Along with the traditional Montessori Addition works like the Addition Strip Board and Snake Game, I created a more traditional classroom work for Josh. Since we are planning on sending him to a traditional Kinder. I am easing him in Montessori style. The blue items in the dish are just the glass rocks you can find at any store in the garden area. I picked ours up at the thrift store. I then printed the adorable flash cards off from 1+1+1=1. (a great blog by the way! Especially for Momma's of toddlers!)
Here is a quick pic of the work set up. Have you all put together any new trays lately or done any cool Montessori inspired activities? Feel free to leave your link in the comment section and join Koko's Mama and I for Montessori Mondays!

Wednesday's Website

http://www.squidoo.com/math-manipulatives

Check out all the really fun ways to create natural math manipulatives!

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!