Summer of Science - Week 1 - Magnets

This week kicked off our first week of what I'm calling our Summer of Science. I am using Memorizing the Moment's Alphabet in Simple Science and adapting it to fit the needs and ages of my kids.

We began with Wild One's first First Start Reading Lesson on the letter M.  I really enjoy the simplicity of these lessons and the fact that everything is done for me.  Wild One was really excited to start her very own workbook too!  She loves to write and draw - she will sit for hours and write letters and draw pictures - which is one of the reasons I chose this curriculum for her.

After she finished her lesson (it took us about 15 minutes), we began reading some books about magnets.  I've done a magnet theme in the past for the older kids so it was fun to revisit some of our favorites.  Some of the books and supplies we used are listed in the widget below (nonaffiliate links).

Before we kicked off our experiments with magnets though, I asked the kids if they wanted to keep a science journal.  I want the focus of our studies to be on having fun and exposing them to science concepts, not on writing.  Pinky in particular is not fond of writing, and I didn't want something like a science notebook to stand in the way of her participating and enjoying our lessons.  They all agreed that they wanted a notebook, so I pulled together some free printables and made a couple of my own as well.  I will let them choose when they want to use the notebooks and when they don't.

The cover of their journals is a free printable from Read Like a Rock Star on TpT.

Chaos, Wild One and Sprout are all using the the free printables from Memorizing the Moments.

In addition, I made an observation sheet for Chaos and Wild One to use while viewing experiments.  Again, I wanted to focus on the science, so I chose to allow them to draw what they could see - something they both love.  You can download this very simple page by clicking on the picture.

For Pinky, I created a page for her to write out a definition of the topic we are studying and to make predictions about what she thinks will happen.  I also left room for her to draw a picture of what she sees.  You can download this page by clicking on the picture.

Because we've done a unit on magnets already, we repeated a lot of activities.  For that reason, I didn't really take pictures this week.  Here are some pictures of our last magnet study.  You can click on the pictures to learn more.

Some of our fun included:

A magnet sensory box:

Testing the strength of magnets (magnet "jumping"):

Painting with magnet marbles:

Discovering if magnets work when submerged in water:

We tried a few new things as well.  Together Pinky, Chaos and myself read The Magic Schoolhouse Amazing Magnetism.

We also tried making a paper clip dance like Kaysha did on Memorizing the Moments.

It was a fun week and the kids were excited to be back in "Mommy School."  I'm really excited to spend the summer diving into science with the kids!

What We Did This Week

**Just a quick note - I welcome any pinning from my blog as long as it does not include pictures of my kids. If I credit the idea from another blog, please be sure to pin from the ORIGINAL source so proper credit can be given. Thank you!**

Pinky is 6 years, Chaos is 4 years, Wild One is 2 years, and Sprout is 1 year

This week Chaos learned about the Letter T.


We started with our uppercase letter creation - Taxi T!

Chaos kept asking to do more, so we put a lot of pages in our Alphabet Binder this week:

1. Handprint T (Chaos traced his own hand) - Tiger
2. Tactile T - toothpicks. The idea for this craft is here at The Active Toddler and the letter sheets were printed from Quality Kids Crafts.
3. Color by Letter. The sheet is from here at Education.com.
4. Letter T maze (Chaos loved this even though it was a bit hard for him). This worksheet is also from Education.com.
5. Color by Number from here at 1+1+1=1
6. Animal T coloring sheet from here at Education.com
7. Triangle art page. The idea for this page came from here at Kidscount1234.com
8. Taxi T uppercase letter creation

Chaos has been asking to write his letters so I laminated some tracing sheets for him. He thought this was okay, but still prefers to write on the magnadoodle.

These adorable letter tracing sheets are a free printable from Lawteedah.

We also worked on letter searches from COAHS and Education.com.


We used our alphabet cookie cutters with our homemade playdoh.


We played with Chaos's Hot Dots Jr. this week too. We have the Getting Ready For School set and used the "Learn Your Alphabet" and "Uppercase and Lowercase Letters" cards. He did very well with these.


The favorite activity of the week was the Letter T Discovery box. I found the idea here at No Time for Flashcards and modified it a bit. I gave Chaos a bin and had him search the house for "T" items to put in it. We had a lot of fun talking about our "treasures."

One of Chaos's search results - a tissue, tea cup, toothbrush, tiger, table, triangle, toilet paper roll, and Thomas the Train.

For our second "row" Wild One and I read Goodnight Moon.

She really enjoyed this book, and I loved that she would say goodnight to every object in the room ' "Night-night chairs! Night Night bears!" She also insisted on counting the three bears each and every time we read the book.


After we read it a few times, I set up a baby bed for her doll and we had fun putting baby to bed. Wild One really loves playing with dolls so this was an activity we did a LOT this week.


Next we made a moon craft with instructions from I Heart Crafty Things. We added silver glitter glue for stars. All of the kids had fun with project (especially when they found out glitter was involved!).


Finally, we had some fun playing with a red balloon!

Pinky and I started our after school adventure by reading a book by one of my favorite authors: Bear Shadow by Frank Asch.


The book led to a discussion about why we have shadows.

To get a basic understanding of shadows, we read What Makes a Shadow?



We tried a few of the experiments in the book. First, we used a flashlight and a stuffed animal to predict where the shadow would be (in front, to the side, behind, etc). We moved the flashlight around to see how the shadow moved.


Next, we shined the flashlight through objects with different opaqueness and predicted if the shadow would be dark or light. We used a paper towel, a sheet of vellum and construction paper, and a book. We talked about why some of the shadows were lighter (more light could shine through the vellum and paper towel). I tried, but could not get a decent picture of this activity.

Finally, for some shadow fun, we made our own shadow puppet theater. I used the tutorial at minieco.co.uk to make a theater from a cereal box. I cut a few landscape shapes from cardstock to set the scene.

Instead of cutting out characters (which would be easy to do with your Cricut and some black cardstock) we used Star Wars figurines. We really had a lot of fun with this project, and I encourage you to give it a try. You may be surprised at how creative you kids can be while telling a story (and learning something too!).

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What We Did This Week

**Just a quick note - I welcome any pinning from my blog as long as it does not include pictures of my kids. If I credit the idea from another blog, please be sure to pin from the ORIGINAL source so proper credit can be given. Thank you!**

Pinky is 6 years, Chaos is 4 years, Wild One is 2 years, and Sprout is 11 months

In addition to doing letter of the week with Chaos, I also began Before Five in a Row with Wild One.

This week we talked about the Letter M. Here are the crafts we made (again while listening to the music on the Hooked on Phonics software).


We started by creating our uppercase letter craft - Mountain M. The idea for this craft came from No Time for Flashcards.

We did our usual pages: tactile letters, coloring page, color by number and handprint art. Sources are below.

1. Tactile M (masking tape). The idea for this craft is here at The Active Toddler and the letter sheets were printed from Quality Kids Crafts.
2. Animal M coloring sheet from here at Education.com
3. Color by number picture from here at 1+1+1=1
4. Monkey handprint art from this post at Handprint and Footprint Art.


Our favorite craft this week was our mosaic art. I drew a basic outline of a sun and rays on a sheet of paper. Chaos cut squares from strips of construction paper and glued them down to form the sun and sky. The idea for art inspired by the alphabet came from here at Kidscount1234.com

We also played some fun letter M games:


Using the alphabet blocks from Hooked on Phonics we played a great movement game. You could recreate this game with any alphabet block , foam letter, card or even letters written on construction paper. I scattered the letters around the room. The kids (Pinky wanted to play too) would have to run, skip, hop, jump or whatever fun and crazy movement we could think of - to the letter I called out. The kids loved to "do a silly dance to..." and "go crazy to..." Can you tell that my kids love to be wild? :)

We had a lot of (surprise) fun with our wooden alphabet blocks. I originally brought these out for Sprout to stack, but Chaos took quite an interest in them. The blocks have a lowercase letter on one side and an uppercase on the other side. He would turn the letters over to lowercase side and try to guess which letter it was. He could simply flip it over to check if he was right.


Next he pulled out his alphabet poster (from the Hooked on Phonics set) and matched the blocks to the letters on the poster.


He also did a lot of lining up the blocks in order and pointing to them as he sang the alphabet song. I love it when impromptu learning fun happens! Don't worry - we did our share of building and knocking down towers too!


Our favorite non-craft activity was writing in flour! I thought this would be a fun way to have Chaos practice his writing.

He had so much fun with this! Even Pinky decided to join us. It made a big mess, but it was worth it.

Finally, we did letter hunts using the Letter Hunt worksheets from COAHS and the nursery rhyme pages from Education.com.

After doing a lot of reading, I decided to give BFIAR a try with Wild One. She's always loved, loved, loved books. We will stick to only play activities (no lapbooks or worksheets) because she is so young. It's my hope that this will be a fun way for us to "hang out" together while the older kids are at school.

The first book we "rowed" was We're Going on a Bear Hunt. We had read it before, but this was the first time Wild One really LOVED it. She even carried it around with her everywhere we went. I'm not sure what made it "click" with her, but it certainly made this week fun!


The first day we read the book I built a cave (out of an old sheet) for us to explore - complete with a bear too! She was initially terrified (whoops!), but once she saw Pinky and Chaos exploring, she was excited too.


Wild One really enjoys coloring so I was really excited to find this coloring page at scholastic.com.


I made her her first ever sensory bin based on the idea here at Delightful Learning. The base is corn and split peas (leftover from our St. Patty's day bin last year). I used green foam sheets and Easter basket grass for the grass, cotton balls, snowflakes and sequins for the snowstorm, pipe cleaners for the roots of the trees in the forest, shaving cream and blue paint (well sealed in a plastic bag) for the river, brown foam for the cave and brown foam covered in contact paper for the (sticky) mud (we were all out of brown paint). I added a small toy bear to complete it.

She was a little unsure of what to do at first, but Chaos helped her. They eventually grabbed some dolls from her dollhouse and reenacted the book.

We also tried our hand at sound effects using the ideas here at Reading Confetti.

Throughout the week we also turned the book into a game for wherever we were going. When we picked Pinky up from school we were "Going on a Pinky Hunt" and I made our trip into it's own story (mud in the front yard, bumpy road to drive on, playground to walk through, etc). Wild One had a lot of giggles for this game and wanted to play nonstop.

Coming up next week: Letter T, Goodnight Moon and fun with Pinky!

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What We Did This Week

**Just a quick note - I welcome any pinning from my blog as long as it does not include pictures of my kids. If I credit the idea from another blog, please be sure to pin from the ORIGINAL source so proper credit can be given. Thank you!**

Pinky is 6 years, Chaos is 4 years, Wild One is 2 years, and Sprout is 11 months

After a very long hiatus, we're finally getting back into having some "fun stuff with Mommy" (at least that's what the kids call it).

While doing some organizing, I ran across the Hooked on Phonics sets (Letter Names and Letter Sounds) I picked up for a steal at a garage sale a few years back. I had intended to use them with Pinky, but they were a bit too young for her. I packed them away for Chaos and completely forgot about them.

We've been having a lot of fun reviving our Letter of the Week and adding in Hooked on Phonics. We started this week with a review of the letter A.

We added our Alligator A (I posted about it here) to a new alphabet binder. We're going to use this binder to keep track of all of our alphabet crafts.

We used a simple 3 ring binder with sheet protectors inside. The front cover I created in Publisher and printed out. Chaos loves his book!

One of Chaos's favorite things to do (at the moment) is to make crafts. So, following his lead, I aimed to make learning the letter A a crafty endeavor.

Some of our letter A crafts included:


1. Animal A coloring sheet from here at Education.com
2. Tactile A (aluminum foil). The idea for this craft is here at The Active Toddler and the letter sheets were printed from Quality Kids Crafts.
3. Color by number picture from here at 1+1+1=1
4. Ant thumbprint art page. The idea for this page came from here at Kidscount1234.com

We also made a handprint alligator like the one in this post at Snails and Puppy Dog Tails.


We jammed to the music on the Hooked on Phonics software while we made our crafts. Pinky and Chaos both seemed to love it despite there only being 2 different songs for each letter.

We also played some fun letter A games:


We went on a letter scavenger hunt. Equipped with a picture of "A" and "a" Chaos went in search of the letters around the house. We kept track of which we found more - uppercase or lowercase (lowercase won in case you were wondering). Chaos surprised me by wanting to write the letters that we found. He has just recently expressed interest in writing.


We played alphabet bingo. These cards are from the Hooked on Phonics set, but you could very easily make your own. (Sorry, this is upside down - I took the picture from the wrong angle.)


We checked out Starfall for some fun, online games (love that site!).


Inspired by this post at The Princess and the Tot and using the playdough mats we found Sparklebox, we added teeth to the "alligator" (he's really a crocodile, but we're okay with pretending).

We did some letter hunts using the Letter Hunt worksheets from COAHS and the nursery rhyme pages from Education.com.

I printed out the pages and laminated them so we could use them again. Instead of dry erase markers, Chaos used dry erase crayons.

Finally, we played Ants in the Pants. Always a fun, classic game!





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