What We Did This Week

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

We were blessed with beautiful weather this week so we spent a lot of time playing outside (and as I get ready to post this, it's back to rainy, cold weather). I hope you had some time to enjoy playing outdoors!

Geography
This week Pinky learned all about our state in school (in preparation for our state's birthday this past Wednesday). It tied in perfectly to some map activities. First we explored our new Usborne Children's Atlas.

This book is a good intro to maps and different cultures. Both Pinky and Chaos had fun finding the different animals pictured in each country.

For a more in depth map, Daddy printed out a giant map of all the parks in our city. The kids had a lot of fun trying to find our house based on landmarks (the lake, a big park, etc). We plan to use this map to mark all the places we've been on our playground tour.

Math
Pinky tried out a new book/game - Math Gear Addition. It's a neat book that quizzes kids on addition facts up to +12. Each page has a spinner so the child can change to first number that is being added. Once they've tried to find an answer they can lift the flap to see if they are correct.

Pinky LOVED this book. I was amazed by how long she played with it. I think it will be a great book to take on long car trips to keep her busy. There are other versions of Math Gear too, and I may just pick up the subtraction book as well.

Reading

Inspired by this post at Living, Loving and Learning at Home, I decided to make Pinky her own BOB books to illustrate. This activity combined her two favorite things - reading and drawing - so we may be doing more of this!

The books are simple to make with construction paper and plain printer paper (I'm sure you could make them much fancier too). I made two books this week: Pinky and the Cat and Dogs, Dogs, Dogs! The text in each book is simple:

"Pinky had a cat. The cat was sad. Pinky had a hat. The cat saw the hat. The cat had a hat. The cat was glad."

I made the second book to contain all of our names because Pinky loves to be able to spell and write names for the whole family:

"Pinky had a dog. Chaos had a dog. Wild One had a dog. Sprout had a dog. Mom and Dad had a dog. Dogs, dogs, dogs!"

Alphabet
I decided to start the letter of the week with Chaos. What's funny about Chaos is that he can tell you what the letters are for - he'll point to a P and say it's for Pinky, a C for Chaos, etc - but he can't actually name the letters.

We started by reading The Sleepy Little Alphabet. It's a cute book about putting all of the letters to bed at night.


Next, we made an Alligator A (from this post on No Time for Flashcards). We even gave the alligator glittery teeth! I was really happy that Choas made this (and surprised at how good his scissor skills are!) because he is not usually interested in crafts.

He's very excited to make the whole alphabet and hang it up in his room.

I also added some alphabet magnets to the fridge for him to explore. I selected A, B, and C (with lowercase magnets to match) to start with.


Finally, the most favorite activity of the week (for all of us), Alphabet Cookies!! I found this adorable alphabet cookie cutter set at a garage sale and was excited to try it out.

We had so much fun frosting and decorating these (and eating them too of course!).


Shapes and Colors
Chaos tried his hand at sorting shapes and colors this week. I printed these shape mats from Confessions of a Homeschooler and had Chaos sort plastic buttons according to shape.

He did pretty well (I was surprised that he knew the difference between a circle and an oval). The rectangles/squares confused him, but I know he'll get it soon enough. Later we tried sorting by color, but he got frustrated, so we stopped.

We also used our new geoboard for the first time this week. Pinky and Chaos had fun making shapes while I used it show the kids how to make letters. I hope to spend more time playing with this next week.


Fun With the Younger Kids
Wild One spent a lot of time playing with Chaos's Chuck E Cheese tokens. She loved to put them in the jar one by one and then dump them all back out and start over. It's the simple things, right?


As usual, she also spent a lot of time reading. I think she would be happy to read every minute of the day. I'm glad that she occasionally gives me a break and looks at books by herself too!


I introduced PlayDoh to her for the first time this week. She did so well! Much like the coins, she liked to dump it out and put it back in the jar, but she also had fun tearing it into little pieces. I gave her a stamper to try and was surprised that she had enough strength to make the stamp (a fish) show up!


Sprout has been spending a lot of time on her play mat these days so I made her her own felt board to look at (the instructions can be found at this post on Made by Joel) . It was super quick and easy to make and the kids had fun switching out the shapes and colors for her.


What fun activities did you do this week?

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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!


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