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.

Money! Money! Money!

I am trying to get my kids ready for a unit that will be about both money and healthy eating. To kick things off though, I need to get them oriented with the coins. I am using the large demo coins that came with our saxon math units and I am using some play money from Lakeshore Learning, but you can find some at cool money printable from printable 4 kids that work just as great along with some other cool activities.

The activities I have my kids mastering are:

Matching and identifying coins

And using counting and skip counting to add coins. Again, You can easily create your own cards to what ever amount you think is helpful for you child.

Hopefully in a few days we will be setting up the playroom as a store and I can send the boys shopping. We will be shopping for healthy foods and be making our own food pyramids. So stay tuned. If you want some cool worksheets to work on money with you kids, I found some at super teacher worksheets.

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. 

I looked out the window and what did I see?.....Our new class pet!

Introducing: "Sheldon"

My neighbor knocked on our door this morning and in her hands was a box. She informed my husband that there was a turtle in it and asked if we wanted it.

He then said "hold on, let me get my wife..." and of course I thought this would be an awesome pet for the boys. So I came inside for a moment and we already had our first adventure because he climbed out of the box during that short time and went really far down the lawn. I am just glad he didn't try to cross the street! He was very hard to find since he blends in with our landscape. We picked him up and put some big rocks in the pond for him and put him in his new home....our small pond.

I actually don't know a thing about raising turtles, but am going to after a few trips to the library. The boys are thrilled to be the proud owners of the little turtle. Let the adventure begin.

I was actually contemplating getting them a pet, but it was going to be a fish in a bowl. I have to say this has already been way more exciting. The boys are now drawing pictures and talking up a storm about their turtle and Jacob has even made one out of legos!

http://www.petturtle.com/

Field Trip!

Today we had lots of sunshine all around, so why sit inside.....

We headed out to an awesome park that had not just one, but three play structures adjacent to each other. It was marvelous! I have to say, I am now a huge advocate for those huge coverings. It was at least 15 degrees cooler under them.

Benji continued his love affair with climbing and sliding

And Jacob was loving the activity centers on the playground

This place was a winner and I have no doubt we will be back again!

Other highlights include Jacob taking on a kite by him self

And Benji being king of the rock wall.

And this green and yellow tube tunnel

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.

Let's make some music!

   Those who know me know how much I love to listen to music. It leaves an impression inside of a person. It can impact how a person feels, help generate ideas and much more. One of the Chinese symbols for the word "joy" also means "music". I find it amazing how music can indeed bring joy. In our home it often allows us to express how we feel without having to search for the right words.

      I like to implement music where ever and when ever I can, knowing how important music is. I often play music during free choice, seat work, book nook time and any other time I can. I also like to set time apart just for music. I have the children practice violin, but we also do spend time learning about music. Many people think you have to be an expert at piano or have a music background to have music part of their homeschool but that is just not true. Most people are good listeners and can help their children become good listeners too.

Things I include in a music lesson:

• how to listen-Is the music fast or slow? Is it high or low? Is it quiet or soft? I often use a picture of a lion and a picture of a mouse mounted to a craft stick and have the kids hold up the right stick.
• when and how to participate- using egg shakers or rhythm sticks to the beat of the music
• moving to the music-moving fast or slow, etc. This would be a great time to use scarfs or ribbons or any other item to help exaggerate the movement. My boys especially love bouncing hula hoops.
• recognizing notes on the treble clef and and what rhythm they represent.

 While you can pop in your favorite tunes and learn these concepts, we have been very blessed to be able to use Kindermusic books and Cd's for our little classroom. It is a great curriculum that I took Jacob to and am now using our materials at home for both children.

    
   Items that we use for music are

• egg shakers 
• animal shakers
• bells
• kazoos
• harmonicas
• beanbags
• any kind of drum like instruments
• sand blocks

 Not pictured is a game I made for the kids for music. I made it from white felt and put strips of black felt on it to make a treble clef. I then made little black circular bean bags to toss onto the treble clef. It is a great game for learning the notes. I also have different types of rhythm notes to put on it and have the kids make the rhythms using small instruments. It is a great game and was very inexpensive to make and has certainly enriched our learning experience. Most everything I found for low cost or made for low cost. It is worth every penny and I am never surprised when my kids are most excited for this portion of our learning day.

Resources:  

• A great place for bigger kids is http://www.classicsforkids.com/ they have games and more                  
• Another great place that has free printables is  http://www.makingmusicfun.net/

So break out those shakers and that Beach Boy music and groove with your kids and teach them music and that music is fun!

St Patricks Day Fun

Lot's of fun to be had this March 17th. We made sure that we wore green shirts so we don't get pinched and then let the fun begin.

We did do-a-dot shamrocks from DLTK. Don't want to do a shamrock? They have lots of other designs to choose from including a pot of gold, a rainbow and more.

We played a game* where we rolled the dice and moved a green teddy bear from 1-20

We pulled out all of our green manipulatives and found different ways to express what was in the baskets using a piece of graphing paper.

We graphed: green vehicles

unifix cubes

teddy bear counters

linking cubes

Benji wanted to mix things up by adding orange ones....can you tell that is his favorite color!

We made necklaces with green beads

Again, Benji was not satisfied with just green.

We colored a snake and gave him beady eyes (I found the template here)

We made a St. Patrick's Day word wall*

We made a picture* to match our song we found at The Mailbox.

We played Pot 'o' Gold from File Folder Fun

 This is a great free file folder game that teaches nouns and verbs

We also did Shamrock Phonics to review some basic word families. You can find this one at File Folder Fun as well. They also have a color matching game and a place value game that fit this theme.

*These printables are all part of a wonderful download from Musings of Me. She had a lot of other activities in the packet, but alas, we did not have time to do them all. At least there is next year!