Preschool Tot Activities

Sissy: age 3 1/2 and Dash: age 5 1/2 (not their real names),

with occasional Tot School/Preschool Corner appearances by 10 year old Tornado

Our biggest excitement this week was attending Veggie Tales Live! at a (huge) local church. They were giddy before the show began.

And if you're wondering about Dash's "fancy" necklace (made even fancier while worn with his tie-dyed homeschool co-op t-shirt - it's like he's copying my style from 1994), that's an old Lion King necklace I had gotten at Disneyland in...well, 1994. Dash just immediately latched onto it when he saw it and has insisted on wearing it everywhere lately. I love his sincerity.

I think Sissy was the first person to start dancing in the aisles. Many soon followed.

There was no stopping her. She was rockin' out. She was feelin' it. I had this vision of her dancing on tables at a club when she's 20...

And I was actually proud of Dash because he (gasp) was dancing, too. He wasn't too cool or embarrassed.

It was a fun show!

Dash angrily declared in the car, "I didn't have a good time!"

Me: "You didn't?"

"I didn't have a good time because I didn't want to leave!"

On to school/play time...I wrote in my post Friday a little more about Dash's kindergarten homeschool life...here is more about some of his activities but focusing more on Sissy's side of things:

This was her first day (a few weeks ago) attending the homeschool program at a local (fabulous) arts academy. One day a week, she goes to art, music, and ballet back-to-back.

She also goes with me one morning a week to the baby/preschool room while I teach at Dash's homeschool co-op. She thinks of this as going to school, as well, because she gets to play with the other kids and also do little activities.

She wanted me to take a picture of her very special arrangement of toys she worked on. And I also love this picture because of how cute she looks in her panties, with her arms by her sides.

There were a couple of sidewalk chalk days. They enjoyed discovering what a nice effect the wet driveway had on the chalk. It made it almost like paint. I think I'll tell them to take water out with them next time it's dry - or hose down the pavement first.

They did some other painting...

using these finger stampers.

I love it when they come up with activities on their own. (Takes some pressure off of me!) They found these extra pigs I'd printed off accidentally and took it upon themselves to make their own art projects out of them. (That's Dash's glued to the white paper.)

She practiced name recognition (I deleted her names.) by using the stamp that my friend Annette from Live, Learn, Love made when Sissy and M were blog swap partners last summer. Here is her post about how to make your own personalized name stamp.

On the outside of the back door, they drew pictures...

using window markers.

Brother Tornado helped Sissy figure out how to play her Spot It! game. (You have to figure out which cards have "things in common.")

We did several workbook pages. She still struggles with her color and shape recognition. I'm afraid she struggles because I think she couldn't care less. I think she'd rather dance on tables.

This is a animal memory game made out of wood tiles. Sissy is matching up the pictures to the corresponding spots on the colored sheet that came with the game.

We had a couple of cooking projects this week. We made chocolate chip cookies one night (but were only able to make half a batch because we only had that much Earth Balance margarine - how sad is that?). We also made two batches of muffins for Papaw's birthday - Banana Oat Walnut and Pumpkin Carrot.

My darling, darling daughter has been giving me headaches lately. She is going through such a whiny/crying phase. She might fall apart over the smallest thing. If we try to discipline her, she comes unglued. She'll throw herself on the floor and kick and scream (and has bumped her head a couple of times doing this lately). She's such a typically pleasant, sweet girl. If things are going her way, you'd want to be with her all day. But if she doesn't understand why she's not getting her way, especially if she's tired, look out.

I know this phase is not unique so if anyone has any ideas on how to get through it (and overcome it!), I'm all ears!

Of course, she had to smile when she realized I was taking her picture.

She doesn't want to disappoint her public.

If you get stuck for ideas to teach or even simply occupy your baby, toddler, preschooler, and even kindergartener, check out the fine ladies' links at 1 + 1 + 1=1 and Homeschool Creations.

Playing with Ice Blocks

We haven't been doing a lot of "schoolwork" the past month. This is one activity they enjoyed recently, however. I froze plastic toys in bowls of water. (I had to freeze them in layers since most of my toys floated.) I gave the kids spray bottles of water, squirt guns, eye droppers with a small bucket of water, and little hammers & chisels, etc. This kept them busy for a good hour and a half! I got my house clean, and they had lots of fun. When I do this again, I think I will use new toys to add another exciting element to it.

Toward the end, they resorted to crashing their remaining chunks of ice against the driveway. Which was enough fun in itself. Read about what other families are doing with their "preschoolers" and siblings at Preschool Corner, hosted by Homeschool Creations.

Preschool Corner: Princess Unit

All month we had been going through our Princess Unit. I picked a theme suited for Sissy because I considered this the "official" jumpstart to her "preschool" at home. I wanted to do something that would get her excited about homeschooling. And it's funny that not once did the boys ever say, "Ugh! We're doing a princess unit!" They never even questioned it and asked each day when we were going to do our princess activities. (They did, however, do Prince activities.)

I got the idea of a Theme Box from Kristi at Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice (update: my dear, precious friend who sadly passed away). I liked the idea of having everything together in one spot, and she always made it look so fun. I purchased this box at The Container Store. I filled it with everything-princess. I gathered all of the supplies we would need for all of the projects I had planned. I included all of the books I'd purchased and checked out from the library. (She hadn't seen them yet.)

I liked having everything organized in one box. Having all of the supplies ready in one spot helped me follow through with the activities I had planned. The shoes were just a little bonus for Sissy. I got them because one of her old dress-up shoes broke. Instead of not wearing shoes, she had been clomping around in one high heel for weeks. I felt bad for her!

This was the look she had on her face when she pulled out every single item. Complete with gasps. Even with the things she knew she already owned, like her princess dresses. (I had warned her ahead of time that some of her princess "things" including her dress were going to be in the box.) It just seemed more exciting when it was in a box mixed with other princess stuff.

Activities:

Of course, we made crowns because every proper Princess and Prince needs a crown.

(drawn onto and cut out from posterboard, stapled, decorated with markers and glued on jewels)

And since my royal court also needed lots of jewelry, we made some.

First, Dash and Sissy filled four different bags with two different shapes of pasta.

They added the drops of food coloring, and I poured in the rubbing alcohol or vinegar, just enough to entirely cover the pasta. (I tried both to see which worked better - didn't notice a difference.). I sealed the bags, and they squished it around with their hands to make sure all of the pasta was covered. I drained the bags and let the pasta dry overnight on layers of paper towels.

We used the neon colored food coloring, which made really pretty colors.

They've been busy making jewelry for two weeks. I just left it out for them to work on whenever they felt like it. Here are a few of their creations.

This was the coolest jewelry we made. I wrote about it here for stART.

another stART project we did after reading The Paper Princess

I printed off the P is for Princess and P is for Prince pages from MakingLearningFun.

Another page from MakingLearningFun. The boys used it to practice counting by 5's, but Sissy just counted out loud as she dotted the circles. It was the perfect size for these particular scrapbooking dot markers I have; they're smaller than regular dot markers.

more of our worksheets from crayola.com

Tornado also watercolored this castle and is going to make a suncatcher; we just haven't finished it yet. I got the idea from Raising Happy Children and thought it looked pretty.

her princess lapbook

I printed off the Manners, Gem's from God's Word, Kindness, and Petal book elements from Homeschool Helper and Homeschool Share.

She glued the princess characteristics onto the petals and the bible verse onto the heart.

A book we used a lot during this unit was A Little Princess in the Making. (We also bought Gigi, God's Little Princess Treasury.) After we read parts of them, I asked the kids to give me ideas of good manners, and I wrote down what they said. Under each flap, they gave an example of when we can use each good manner. Sissy, very seriously, said, "You say, 'Excuse me' when you fart."

Dash said he should say, "Yes, ma'am," when I tell him to: "Get down off the window sill." Yes, this really happens daily.

For the Gem's from God's Word, we brainstormed commandments from the Bible which would be good for a princess to remember, like do not lie and have a grateful heart.

alphabet page from Lapbook Lessons

I printed off the Pp Princess princess sheet from HandwritingWorksheets.com (that I found out about from Ticia at Adventures in Mommydom) where you can create your own handwriting worksheets.

She's not really ready for this yet. She's still in the pre-writing stage, but she did try really hard. And she carried this paper around all that day and would work on lightly tracing (like starting in the middle of a letter, not in the correct way) over a letter everytime she sat down. She'd say, "Where's my paper?!" if she misplaced it.

I bought this princess crown wooden jewelry box at Hobby Lobby for just a few dollars. (I think it was $5.99, and I got it for 30% off.) She painted it while Dash painted some wooden frames we had.

Her fingers weren't strong enough to work the scrapbook punches so big brother punched out little shapes for her to glue onto her box.

I spread Modge Podge over her final creation. She loves her little box because it stays shut with a magnet. She carries it around with her random daily assortment of treasures inside.

We had a Princess-themed muffin tin meal one day.

I saved some boxes and paper towel rolls, etc. and asked Ryan if he would make a castle for us. I can always count on him. Marrying an elementary ed. major sure comes in handy. The kids helped him. They're always very eager to use tape any chance they get.

The kids went to work painting the castle. I did have to give them clear instructions to keep the paint colors separate. Otherwise, it would have ended up all being that mixed brown color that results when left to their own devices.

the end result

They play with these chipboard Disney princesses I had bought at Hobby Lobby. They make great sturdy paper dolls. (You can see Sissy with the package at the top of this post.) Little dinosaur figures and Matchbox cars also call this castle home.

I included a picture of all the princess books we read in this post. Here are two of them. They were different versions of the "Princess and the Pea" story. They're both silly, but we enjoyed them.

For dinner: split pea soup (The mice in the pig book made pea soup with the "pea.") and pizza!

Update: Check out Sissy's Princess Birthday Party!

Kids Get Crafty