What We Did This Week

Pinky is 5 years, Chaos is 3 years, Wild One is 17 months, and Sprout is 1 month

Counting and Numbers
We read two great books about numbers this week. The first, aimed more at the younger kids, was 1,2,3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle. It's a simple animal counting story, but, as with all Eric Carle books, is beautifully illustrated.


The second book we read was a new one to me, but has quickly become one of my favorites - Numbers, Counting in the Natural World. Filled with beautiful nature pictures, this book counts to twelve and discusses sequence, comparison (lot, little, none; smallest to largest, etc), greater than and less than, evens and odds, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I have the feeling we will be reading this book a lot!


Math Activities:
Pinky has decided that she really wants to learn to count to 100 before she starts Kindergarten. She knows the basic pattern but forgets the 10 place holders. I printed out a number chart from 1-100 for her to count with. I highlighted the 10 units and she practiced skip counting another love of hers) to help reinforce her memorization.

You can find the number chart here at apples4theteacher and the skip counting charts here at Homeschool Creations.

Chaos and I made sticker math charts together. He's gotten very good at counting, and I was surprised at how interested he was in completing the charts with me. The idea for this activity came from this post at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.


Magnets:
We had a lot of fun exploring magnets and their properties this week. We started by exploring our new magnet sensory box.


Next we tried an activity I read about on the Prekinders blog. Using a ruler, we placed a magnet marble at one end and slowly pushed our magnet wands toward it. We took guesses as to how far the marble would "jump" to the wand.

We then experimented with different strength magnets to see which could make the marble jump the furthest.

Our magnets - magnet wand, refrigerator magnet, a MagnaDoodle magnet and our magnetic cabinet lock "key"

Our next activity (inspired by this post at Tinker Lab) was to see if the magnets would work through glass and water. We submerged a marble magnet and tried to retrieve it using our different magnets. Both the wand and the cabinet lock key were able to move the magnets.

This was definitely the favorite activity for the kids. They loved "rescuing" the magnets over and over again.

We also read two books about magnets: Magnet Power and What Makes a Magnet?


We tried a few of the activities in each of these books which included magnetizing a needle, discovering North and South poles, making our own compass, and discovering that the refrigerator seal is magnetic (this was news to me too!).

Finally, we decided to do some magnet painting!! This is such a fun project to do. We filled 4 small bowls with Crayola fingerpaint and added a magnet marble to each one.

We put paper in the bottom of a shoe box and dropped in the magnet(s) of our choice.

By moving the magnet wand on the underside of the box we were able to paint our pictures.


Reading:
Pinky continues to read the Bob books. I've noticed she has some trouble distinguishing the lowercase b, d, p and q. Using an idea I found here at Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary, I made a letter matching game for her to practice matching uppercase and lowercase letters.


And since I had even more plastic eggs, I also made a few word family eggs to play with. The idea came from this post on Living and Learning Now.


Other Reading Activities:
This week we were also lucky enough to host Pete the Pigeon - a friend from Pinky's preschool class. He takes turns visiting each student during the school year.

This was our second visit with Pete the Pigeon. The first time he visited he brought along Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus for us to read. This time he brought Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. Pinky and Chaos both find the Pigeon stories hilarious.


At the end of Pete's visit, we record what we did with him in the classroom journal and Pinky is able to share her story with her classmates. It is so much fun to read all the stories! This week Pigeon Pete joined Abby at dance class, Spanish class and was even able to attend Sunday School and sing in church! I think he had a good time.


Also this week, Wild One had fun with her first sensory box - The Texture Box. She liked to cuddle the softer fabrics and had a fun game of emptying and refilling the bin over and over again. Finally, Pinky showed her how to use the squares as small blankets for her Little People.


Speaking of Little People, Wild One had the best time playing with the Little People school bus this week. She would open and close all the doors, pull out the stop sign, and push it all around the house. She even let her baby dolls take a few rides.


Sprout continues to grow bigger every day. I am amazed that she is a month old already. We spent a lot of time cuddling this week and spent some time on exploring her playmat (she has just started noticing the toys hanging from it). She surprised us all by rolling over from her belly to her back this week too!

Here's one of my favorite pictures from this week. Sprout was crying so Wild One gave her back her pacifier and was stroking her cheek. So sweet!


Linking up to: