Animals: Birds Day 1

Ok, back on track.  Ready for some school this week, since it is my spring break from teaching, so I'll have a little extra time.  Since it is April, we moved on to animals!  (I realize I never did summer, but I couldn't really think of any activities to do with summer and we did do the seasons tree activity at the beginning and read a book so at least she got some exposure to it.  I'm ready to move on).

For this first week, we are going to be talking about birds.  Or course we did our usual Letter and Number warm up for the letter L and the number 12.

Then on to birds.

We read Birds by Kevin Henkes (the same author that wrote Lily's Purple Plastic Purse).  Super cute book.  It gave a good, basic introduction to birds.

We then made a picture of birds following this template.  (The link doesn't work for me, so I just saved the image, opened it as a word document and printed it from there).  She colored, then cut out the pieces and assembled it herself, following the small picture.  It looks awesome!  We talked about all the pieces as we were putting it together and what else a bird has that is not in the picture.

We then focused on bird beaks and did a little experiment.  I got four bowls of "bird food" (mini marshmellows, raisins, chips, and water) and four "bird beaks" (toothpick, tongs, tweezers, and a straw).  She then had to try each beak on each food and see which one worked the best.  We looked at some pictures of bird beaks and talked about how they are different and why they need to be different.  She had so much fun!  And she loved eating the chips and marshmellows when were done.  And yes, she continued to use the "beaks" to eat them.  Haha.

Letter Puzzles

Thursday I had planned for all this fun Easter stuff to do.  I wanted to read Curious George, The Story of the Easter Bunny and then make toilet paper roll bunnies and stained glass flowers  and torn paper easter eggs.  I also had some fun ideas for working on letters and numbers, but frankly, it didn't happen.  Like I said, I was overwhelmed last week.  So maybe we can do some of these things later, we'll see.  Or next year.

I did make a super cool letter puzzle game for her and she LOVED it.  I got the idea and the blackline here.  I used some craft foam I had to cut out the pieces, then put all the pages in pocket protectors in a small folder and let her go to town.  She did an awesome job and loved doing it!  (Note, the page says to cut out two of the small rectangles, but the "E" will require 3 small rectangles, so cut out and extra!)  Have fun!

Seasons: Spring

Last week I kinda had a burn out.  It's amazing how going from working full time to part time and I feel like I am busier now.  I shouldn't complain because I know there are tons of amazing moms who work full time and still make it through the day.  I know it's hard, because I've been there.  But lately I have felt bogged down with... stuff.

Anyhow, last week we really only did one full day of school (besides regular preschool.  That's what is pulling on my motivation...).  And, I didn't take any pictures.  Lame, I know.  So I'll at least let you know what we did and give you the links so you can do it yourself!

Tuesday:  Warm-up for letter K.
Letter book.
Writing our letter of the week.
Letter path (we used the stamps again, she loves using stamps).

Then we practiced counting and writing the number 11.

Then on to our seasons stuff.  We read a book about Spring.  I didn't love it, it was mostly about experiments and things you can do in the spring time.  Very wordy and not super explanatory about what happens in the spring time, just what you can do.  Anyhow, we mostly used the pictures to talk about what to expect during the spring time, as well as looking outside and seeing what changes we could see.  No leaves yet, but our plants are going quite well from when we planted them a few weeks ago.  :)

We then used paint and markers to make a thumb print flower.  (Of course, ours ended up with thumb prints all over it, but hey, I was just impressed she was willing to get her hands dirty to do it.  Haha).

Then we made paper towel butterflies.  This was super fun.  I put some water/food coloring in cups, then folded up a paper towel into sixteenths.  Brooklyn got to dip each corner into different colors, the we opened them up and put them outside to dry.  The next day we got some pipe cleaners and scrunched up the paper towel and twisted the pipe cleaner to make the body/antennae.  So cute!