Preschool Corner: Leaves and Apples

This year I am teaching the K-4 class at our homeschool co-op. My Father's World kindergarten curriculum is used for this group. Every week there is a new theme. The other preschool teacher begins the lesson on Tuesday, and I wrap it up on Thursday. There are suggestions for books, discussion ideas, and activities included in the curriculum. Here are some of the activities I added myself during our Leaf and Apple weeks:

I had asked my own kids at h0me to gather dry, brown leaves outside for me to take to school. I let the kids make a big mess on the table crumbling up the leaves. (One even told her mom after class, "We got to make a mess!" I drew the outline of a leaf with glue on a piece of construction paper and let them fill in the inside with glue.

Then, they used their crumbled leaves to cover the glue. After they finished covering the glue, they gently shook the paper to remove the extra pieces of leaves.

I also gathered all different shapes of leaves from my house. I made outlines of several of the leaves on a piece of paper and asked my students to find the matches. We also talked about "largest" and "smallest," leaves, etc.


They picked a couple of their leaves to make leaf rubbings. I wrote their "words to remember" (which are something they learn each week as a part of the MFW curriculum) on their paper and asked them to each hold up their paper and recite their words.

They all got a straw to blow a leaf across the table. We had several races to see who could get a leaf across the table the fastest.

Our last leaf activity: I bought wooden (2/$1) leaves at Hobby Lobby, and they had fun creatively painting their leaves.

One activity for apple leaf used their cutting and coloring skills. They colored their apples (which I found at kidssoup.com), then cut the apple along the wavy lines. They had to glue the pieces of their apple back together on construction paper. Again, I wrote their "words to remember" on their apples and asked them to recite them.

I printed off another page of a tree scene. The kids got to stick their fingers in green, red, and yellow paint to make apples for their trees. This was also used as a counting activity.

I also brought my fall sensory tub to school with me. Tornado, Dash, and Sissy have been busy at home, playing with it.


The tub included dry split peas and various other dry beans (FYI: raw kidney beans are toxic so you have to watch out for those), cinnamon sticks, wooden leaves & acorns, plastic leaf and pumpkin buttons, felt owls, tin buckets in different sizes, peat pots, pine cones, and a miniature rake, hoe, and shovel from the dollhouse section at Hobby Lobby.

During Apple Week, I also added the red, yellow, and green craft pom pons to be used as apples.

I asked the kids to sort the items by type into the muffin tins. Then, they played store and restaurant for half an hour.

Linking up to Preschool Corner!

&

The Sunday Showcase

More Than You Wanted To Know About Our School

I haven't been posting everything we've been doing lately because we've been out of town a lot, had out of town company, and I got a little obsessed in a facebook competition with my friend. Hopefully, now I'll get back into the swing of things...well, maybe next week as we have a pretty busy week going on right now. This is the kind of life that drives my hubby crazy. He is in much need of a little down time.

Our home school does not follow the school year, and we pretty much have school all year round. We're actually more along the lines of "unschoolers," if you've heard that term, although I have too much elementary teacher inside me to shed ourselves of all typical schooling. I have an addiction to curriculum and books. I could spend all day in Mardel or any other teacher store. Plus, the boys love workbooks and all things "lessons." They are constantly asking to do "lessons," which couldn't be a bad thing. I've been in a bit of a slump since we had our third child. Everything is so much harder now, but I've been really trying lately to get back on top of my game.

It also helps that Sissy is 18 months old now and a little less clingy. It's still not easy to work at the table with her - or to play games or put together puzzles - all of it she pretty much wreaks havoc upon. I went to the toy store the other day and bought some gimmicky, noise-making toys in the hopes that would occupy her while we do our thing. They really haven't helped like I was hoping they would. We also try to do a lot of our activities while Dad is at home, at night or on the weekends.

I have really tried lately to get us on a schedule. It is so far away from my nature to have a schedule. I can't seem to remember to stay on schedule. We never had to have a schedule with the two boys, and it seemed to work out just great. I thought maybe it would help to pull together some semblance of a schedule since we have three now to manage. Wish me luck.

One of the things we are using right now is the free online curriculum at http://www.letteroftheweek.com/. There are different sections for babies and preschoolers, as well as ideas for older kids, which will work for Tornado. We have started with the preparatory curriculum. It has a weekly theme with suggested book list and related poems, a letter and number, and a color or shape. It includes a gross motor and fine motor activity. It also has a suggested nursery rhyme.

We will use that along with A Rhyme A Week activities found at http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/wil/rimes_and_rhymes.htm and ideas from the nursery rhyme unit I did with Tornado a few years ago.It seems to be working out well for us so far because I can use it for both of the boys to do at the same time. While Dash is practicing recognizing and writing a "1," Tornado can practice that, along with spelling the word "one," and reviewing his 1 addition facts. While Dash practices recognizing and writing an "A," Tornado can also practice it, along with writing additional "A" words. When Dash drew a square, Tornado practiced a 3-D square. We put our own touch on things, as well. For example, we watched a Michael Rosen "We're Going on a Bear Hunt," video on youtube, which they both LOVED, then we turned it into our own "We're Going on a Square Hunt" as we pointed out squares around the house. Tornado also worked on the "ow" sound like in "cow." Next week, we will switch over to the "sound of the week" section.

To begin our Cow week, we went to the free summer movies to see Barnyard. It was a really cute movie, even if the male cows did have udders (I have no idea). Above, the boys worked on gluing (huh, I always thought it was "glueing") their cow pieces together.

Over in the Meadow

This morning we read "Over in the Meadow" to begin our next habitat study. We brainstormed and gathered materials for our meadow shoebox diorama. The boys included trees, grass, moss, flowers, turtles, bees, ducks, insects, a mouse, a squirrel, and a stream with fish. After they finished, they continued playing with clay for another 45 minutes or so. While I made lunch, Dash watched "Dora Saves the Prince" while Tornado played around on a new website we found - literactive.com. After lunch they both watched "Bill Nye the Science Guy: Marine Animals." I was surprised Dash watched it as well as Tornado alway does. He kept pointing out things we had talked about during our ocean studies - like he thought it was amazing they were talking about beluga whales just as we had. Now Tornado will do his Reader Rabbit lessons on the computer while the other three of us will head off for a little nap...

A Little Bit From Our Ocean Unit

Ocean Party

We culminated our ocean unit with a Family Fun Night ocean party. We (when I say "we" I don't necessarily mean Dad, although he thinks it's great, too) are all about any opportunity to decorate and celebrate. We ate "Finding Nemo" shaped pasta and seaweed with rocks (really spinach with beans). I meant to buy real sea vegetables, but I forgot. For dessert, we made fish and starfish shaped cookies, and we also tried the seaweed candy I bought. I didn't buy it thinking it would be delicious - but just a fun experience. It really wasn't bad. It was kind of plain and VERY tough to chew, like very tough taffy. Tornado was hesitant at first, but he came back for seconds. Dash took a bite, and Sissy even enjoyed her piece, although it took her awhile to finish it.

After supper, we finished our *Rainbow Fish, and then the boys watched "Finding Nemo," of course.

*(idea from http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/rainbowfish/coffeefilter.htm