Revisit: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We love this story for so many reasons. We love the art and we love the idea to grow into something wonderful.  This revisit was mainly a review for Benji  and an opportunity to extend higher learning for Jacob. 

We read the book and went over all the stages of the caterpillar and then learned our really big word Metamorphosis. We talked about other things that go through a metamorphosis.

We used our story helpers from Kizclub to help retell the story and to let Benji work on sequence. After that we worked on summarizing the story and used this wonderful worksheet to record our summery. 

We also did some fun crafts. We cut out a simple set of wings for a butterfly and then used a craft stick for the body. We used sponges to paint.

We did some recycle art for the caterpillar. We reused egg cartons and painted them and used some left over scraps from the art bin to make them special.

Here is the final product. Don't forget to display the art in the classroom or in your home. 

Extensions and Resources:

• The Eric Carle Web Site
• Sparkle Box- free printables and lesson ideas
• Homeschool Share - tons of printables and ideas for a full unit of learning
• Scholastic - Lesson plans

Review: Rory's Story Cubes

This is one toy we love! We received this wonderful addition as a gift from a wonderful Aunt. We opened the storage box that looks just like a book and found nine very nice dice inside. The game couldn't be simpler.....just roll and start story telling. If you have more then one person playing, share the dice and take turns adding what ever is on your dice to the story. We have officially made this a game we like to play for journaling and also before bed. These bed time stories couldn't be beat. 

Rory also offers other products including a set with "picto-verbs" and an app I would love to have if I actually owned a phone that would support it(my current phone doesn't even have a camera!) It sounds like they are even looking into making a larger version as well.

For more information including more ways to play in the classroom, go to www.Storycubes.com

A Writer's Guide

       I thought it would be great to have a display for journal so Jacob can check some simple writing points and I found one that was FREE from The First Grade Parade. It's a sweet set that leaves a few open pages for adding to it if you want.
       I kept to what she had available since we aren't moving on to more complex stuff till packet two(second six weeks)
Points the display shows:

• Capitalization
• lower case letters for the body of a sentence
• spaces between words
• end punctuation

        So if you are still trying to get these basics mastered this would be great to have. If you don't have the wall space you could print them out and put them in a binder or print them four to a page and they would occupy much less space that way.  And YES, that is the back of my door...no space gets wasted in this room!

Kitchen Science: Solutions

I love using my kitchen for learning stuff. It provides a hands on experience with the best part being that the end result can be touched and or tasted. Today we talked about solutions and we didn't even need fancy pricey lab equipment. We made Koolaid and Jello and then one more solution to show insoluble solutions. 

Materials:

• 1 large pitcher
• 1 packet of Koolaid
•  enough cool water to fill the pitcher
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 package Jello(my kids wanted the yellow kind)
• hot and cold water as per the directions on the box
• a small jar
• vegetable oil
• food coloring(any color will work except for maybe yellow)
• a recording sheet(just some lined paper will work well and the kind with a blank area at the top is even better.

First we went over some vocabulary and wrote it on our big chart paper

• Solution: groups of molecules that are mixed up in a completely even distribution
• solvent: does the dissolving
• solute: is what is dissolved

First we made the Koolaid and we added the dry ingredients into the pitcher. Then, we added the water.

 Just keep stirring, stirring, stirring.....

 Then when it was all dissolved we recorded what happened on paper. Oh and we drank the experiment!

Next, we made the Jello and showed how we can use hot water to dissolve solutes. We also practiced our spelling by labeling our hot and cold water.

 We slowly added the Jello packet and stirred showing how the heat dissolved the gelatin

 Then we added the cold water to stop the heat and start the Jello to coagulate. And now it's chilling in the fridge till desert time after dinner.

The last solution we made was in a baby food jar. I added some water and some food coloring and then a small amount of oil. I showed the kids that no matter what we did the oil will not mix with water. Even with heat the oil will still rise above the water and separate. I let them shake it and examine it and they loved seeing the bubbles rise up.

For more information on this and other great science activities for kids, check out Chem4kids.com

Beginning Blends: A quick and fun review

These past few weeks we have been reviewing our beginning blends to maintain our reading base from last year. We have been using our Sing Spell Read and Write curriculum as well as some other fine resources. I used the flash cards as stations to get my son thinking and remembering those blends.The first card of the flashcard set from Kizclub works very well for writing. I laminated my cards so I can reuse them and pass them down to the little pork chop who is still learning his alphabet! Allowing your little ones several methods for taking in this knowledge will give them the wings they need  to soar in reading and in learning all together. I have dug around the Internet and found some really great sources to share  with you and it is my hope that you will share what works great for you guys in the comment section below.

• Carl's Corner- This site has it all. If you want to one stop shop for reading stuff you can do that here. All of the content has been compiled by a wonderful teacher and poet. On the Blends Boulevard you have everything you need to teach blends from worksheets to dominoes and an assessment. Makes you wonder why I even plan to list anything else, huh! 
• Confessions of a Homeschooler- Is there anything Erica can't do? I am not sure, but she has a few great printables for blends. One being the blends latter that will allow you to help your child learn the blends quickly going from letter to letter, blending the first two sounds and the other is a set of worksheets. I wouldn't use these as a stand alone for teaching but definitely for enrichment to another set of instruction. 
• Free Phonics Worksheets- The creators of Rock N' Learn have put together a set of worksheets that could easily be used to teach not only beginning blends but vowel clusters and more. In a sequence that would get kids reading fast and know why the letters sound the way they do without a lot of senseless memorizing. 
• Kiz Club - They have a few activities that would work great in conjunction with a blending program from flashcards to matching activities. It's worth a look. 
• This and That - A great blog with lots of ideas for home grown activities that could work as a stand alone method for learning. There are folder games and crafting a plenty on this wonderful site!
• Quirky Momma - They might call them selves quirky but I call them clever with their wonderful use of low cost materials to jump start fun learning like their use of multi color paint chips for teaching word families and blends. 

A Pair of Socks: A story time connection

Stop! Don't throw out all those cute tiny socks that have been out grown by your little cuties. I saved a few of mine and we are using them for our story time connection with the book A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy. The story is fairly short in length but is long on ideas for learning connections from learning to count by two's to color matching and more.
         After our book, we looked for rhyming words and highlighted them.

Then I took a small bin and put the little socks in there for the kids to match up.

 They loved matching the colors and patterns and then clipping them together with clothespins. I then opened up the opportunity for them to color their own pair of socks.

 For those that like dictation and copywork, I found this wonderful poem:

"Two" by Cynthia Cappetta

Two hands, two feet, two eyes, two knees— You have a pair of each of these.

Mittens, socks, gloves, and shoes, These things also come in twos.

Children born in pairs have a special name. Some twins look different, and some look the same. 

Extensions and links:

*I found some really great extensions from Weekly Reader(do you remember them from when you were young? I do, and they've gone digital)-"What is a Pair" is a great edition of that reader where I found the above poem and other great activities.

*Mathstart also had great ideas for hands on learning geared for kids three and up. 

*Laugh, Paint, Create had a great blog post about making a sock collage. It's a great idea that can foster scissor and glueing skills.  

Vowel Reveiw

We are reviewing our short vowel sounds this week and had a great time having both kids doing a sorting game with the magnets. I just printed out these super cute owls from a great blog called First Grade Owls  and laminated them. Then put them up on the magnet board and gave the kids the basket of magnets and let them start sorting. It sort of grew from there, and they decided to start making word family words. I guess I was just there to start their engines! This was something so simple and can be transformed into what ever phonics directions you want.

D.E.A.R.s Program

"What the heck is D.E.AR.s ?", my husband asked me the other day...and I responded that it stands for drop everything and read. This year we are going to have this as a part of our little school. It is an opportunity for the kids to do just as it says, drop everything and read. All the books will be available as well as a selection of books from the Texas Library Association. They have a great selection of books that are leveled for children from the very young all the way up to adult. This year we will be reading the 2x2's and the Bluebonnets. I know other homeschoolers might be interested in voting for the bluebonnet books and should contact their local library. Homeschoolers can vote there and if you are as lucky as we are, they might even have a kid version of book club where they can discuss books and talk about what they liked and didn't like about them. If you don't live in the lone star state at all, you can still read the books and maybe even start your own book club! Either way, I think taking 20 minutes to just read can enrich anyone young or old.

We can eat a rainbow!

I am doing a health and money unit and I am getting the kids ready to be money smart and health smart. I set a really simple activity for the boys.

I pulled out the color cards from Kizclub and the bin of play food and gave the instructions to match it up and then a short explanation of why we should eat foods of different colors and why we need variety in our diet. This one was a huge success with Benji who loves our play food.

Hang man....ok not really.

In my pursuit to find new ways to learn to read and spell new words I remembered an old standby from when I was in grade school. I played hang man and was very good at it. I always figured Jacob was too young for this game, but I revamped it and now it is just right.

1. I pulled out our word sticks that I made  a while back, a basket of letter magnets, and a dry erase marker eraser set. 

    2. You pull a word and then make lines for all the letters in the word and put all the magnets on the board. As they guess letters to build the words, you build the stick man following the traditional rules. I didn't make the man "hang" because I am not ready to explain to my young ones why anyone person would want to make a person do that. 

Anyway, Jacob loved the game and it was a great way to do spelling and word memory with out pain. 

Centers!

We started off the day today with centers. Its always fun to mix things up and not start the day as a worksheet factory.

1. Reading fun with racing cars:  I went to the activity section of Making Learning Fun and loved the large assortment of stuff available. I would even call it a printables "wonderland". I found this race car activity that was very exciting and engaging to do. I tossed all the cards in a basket and then put out markers and the booklet that comes with it. It took no instruction for my child to figure out what to do. He read the cards and matched the correct car. Afterwords, he then colored the booklet with no problem. This is a great center for independent learning.

2. Counting Fish: I came up with this when Benji started to try to count past ten on his own. I found this is great for fine motor skills and counting and more. I just drew a simple fish bowl with marker on some cardstock and then gave him a sheet of small fish stickers and let him count as he placed them in the bowl.

3. Fish Addition (adding two): This is a super simple center. I just used laminated fish. I wrote the math sentence on one fish and the answer on the other fish and set them in piles. I gave unifix cubes as counters to help make the sentence. Just let the child do the addition and match the fish.

4. Chicka Chicka Sight Words: This activity also came from Making Learning Fun.
  I tossed the word cards into the basket along with some letter tiles.

I then had my child match up the tiles with the word on the cards provided.

Don't have letter tiles? No problem, just let your child use a dry erase marker on laminated cards. Or you can make these letters and just cut them into square tiles rather than circles.

Want to focus on vowels? You can have your child do a vowel sort before making their words
I found this card at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Looking for more? just check out the links from todays posts, they are loaded with tons of fun and easy educational ideas.

Animal Classification: Enrichment and Extensions

We have been working very steadily on our animal classification and adding to our bulletin board(which is really the bi-fold doors to the closet)

Up to now we have learned

• the difference between living and non living things
• kingdoms of living things
• vertibrates and invertabrates and how to tell the difference. 
• we have also subdivided the animal kingdom into mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish

At this point we are having fun adding extensions to our learning with lots of fun activities.

We played with puzzles to learn all about the different animals

We played folder games. The top folder games I made from Primary Partners and the bottom one came from File Folder Fun.

These were the selections pulled for silent/independent reading.

We sang Kindermusic songs about the creatures in our backyard

We played with animals and their habitats

We sorted mini animals into their different groups

We did our math using a barrel of monkeys(besides who says you have to count beans!)

We played fish games. (These came from Nana!)

We read the book Froggy gets Dressed. (The boys love these books, they are simple and sweet and fun)

We used the materials from Kizclub to add to our reading experience.

These activities were so fun and my kids really enjoyed them. It was also a nice way to step away from worksheets for the day.

I like to look for rainbows.....

This year for Sunday school/primary, one of the songs the kids are learning to sing is called "When I Am Baptized". The song is as follows:

I like to look for rainbows when ever there is rain

and ponder on the beauty of an earth made clean again.

CHORUS:

I want my life to be as clean as Earth right after rain

I want to be the best I can,

and live with God again.

I know when I am baptized my wrongs are washed away,

and I can be forgiven and improve myself each day.

CHORUS

I love the sentiment of the rainbow and how just like it was God's promise to Noah, it can be a promise unto us that if we can be clean and good "like earth right after rain" that we can live with God again. 



With this song in my heart I decided to make this the theme of today's learning.

I got a wonderful flip chart from sugardoodle. I used the one by Jolly Jen, but both of them work and both are filled with beautiful pictures to help your child learn the song.

We will sing along with this wonderful version I found on youtube:


We will read two books about rainbows:

We will hunt for letter Rr's *

We will sort upper and lower case Rr's*

We will line up the rainbows largest to smallest, smallest to largest and learn 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.*

We will learn how to spell the word rainbow*

We will color the number 24 Car from Nascar which is traditionally in a rainbow theme.

We will do-a-dot the letter R*

We will also graph rainbows*

We will also have centers set up so they can find how many different ways they can make rainbows using different materials.

• little vehicle counters
• buttons
• bottle caps
• play food like ice cream and the felt fruits and veggies
• beads
• legos
• linking cubes

We will also have this lesson on preparing to be baptized. I don't do a lot of "theme" lesson days, but this one left an impression on me that we should do this lesson at this time.

*All of these activities can be found at confessions of a homeschooler